Comment by Bluestein
3 hours ago
Why was the rate of change so huge? And the changes so deep? These roguelikes particularly tend to be stable, almost frozen - at least in terms of mechanics.-
3 hours ago
Why was the rate of change so huge? And the changes so deep? These roguelikes particularly tend to be stable, almost frozen - at least in terms of mechanics.-
There were a couple of people who were very active in development and were very opinionated about good game design. Then they slowed down a bit, and some other people came in with more ideas, they may not have been quite as radical but by then it was established that upending designs was something DCSS did. (A bit of like the problem the Esperanto offshoots had).
It was at all time driven by very heavy players, and IMO the theme especially suffered from it (by the time you're a heavy player, you have completely abstracted it into a bunch of systems, and it's very hard to see it like a new player would see it).
I started playing (from a thread on HN) ~7 years ago. The changes are both broad and deep - devs are not afraid to rework something three times until happy with the outcome. I missed food/hunger entirely but very few players speak highly of it.
There is no difficulty playing previous versions, changing and compiling your own etc etc. Devs are changing the game to be better (in their own view), more fun, more engaging. They should do that! It is a living piece of art imo