As you said, searching sites infrequently is one advantage of the DuckDuckGo feature over the browser feature: there are enough pre-configured bangs than I can generally just guess what the bang might be and I nearly always end up where I wanted to be. Many have multiple bangs too so you don't really need to remember them.
It's also nice that I can use them on my phone as well as my PC, or anyone else's PC for that matter. When I had my firefox set up with keywords I was forever searching for things like "w mushrooms" on the university computers, forgetting that they didn't have the same set-up.
In addition to that, it's also handy once you've done your search, particularly given that you probably won't trust DuckDuckGo at first. If you're not satisfied with the results, you can just add !g to check what Google can come up with (usually no better). It's harder to add in a keyword using the built in Firefox / Chrome equivalents once it's done the search.
Bangs are probably more of a big deal for a search engine like DuckDuckGo than they would be for Google, not only because people won't want to switch outright, but also because bangs help fill in the gaps where DuckDuckGo doesn't excel... things like maps (just add !gmaps, !ymaps, !bmaps). For me they weren't the primary motivation to switch, I agree with you on that - bangs aren't enough of a draw by themselves - but they did ease the transition.
Also note, when you use bangs in DuckDuckGo it always takes you to the HTTPS version of the site you're searching. Results within DuckDuckGo do this too. Naturally there is a Firefox plugin which does this however you might be reaching that site, but I still thought this was a pretty neat little feature to include.
As you said, searching sites infrequently is one advantage of the DuckDuckGo feature over the browser feature: there are enough pre-configured bangs than I can generally just guess what the bang might be and I nearly always end up where I wanted to be. Many have multiple bangs too so you don't really need to remember them.
It's also nice that I can use them on my phone as well as my PC, or anyone else's PC for that matter. When I had my firefox set up with keywords I was forever searching for things like "w mushrooms" on the university computers, forgetting that they didn't have the same set-up.
In addition to that, it's also handy once you've done your search, particularly given that you probably won't trust DuckDuckGo at first. If you're not satisfied with the results, you can just add !g to check what Google can come up with (usually no better). It's harder to add in a keyword using the built in Firefox / Chrome equivalents once it's done the search.
Bangs are probably more of a big deal for a search engine like DuckDuckGo than they would be for Google, not only because people won't want to switch outright, but also because bangs help fill in the gaps where DuckDuckGo doesn't excel... things like maps (just add !gmaps, !ymaps, !bmaps). For me they weren't the primary motivation to switch, I agree with you on that - bangs aren't enough of a draw by themselves - but they did ease the transition.
Also note, when you use bangs in DuckDuckGo it always takes you to the HTTPS version of the site you're searching. Results within DuckDuckGo do this too. Naturally there is a Firefox plugin which does this however you might be reaching that site, but I still thought this was a pretty neat little feature to include.