Contrast this with the documented philosophy of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which at least partly positions itself as a philosophical antithesis to Nethack: https://github.com/crawl/crawl/blob/master/crawl-ref/docs/cr...
I love DCSS, and in abstract I think that "meaningful decisions (no no-brainers)" is a great top priority design principle, but in practice I wish they cared more about maintaining the qualia of the game itself.
I understand why they removed food, because it wasn't "fun" or interesting to experienced players. But it was more than just a time pressure mechanic. Cutting up and eating monsters to make your bread rations go further is as thematic as the difference between Zin and Trog
Honestly, it's still potentially fun because of the logistical challenge (your carrying capacity is limited, so staying fed interferes with the ability to carry loot and equipment) and because of unique food effects that may confer mutations and resistances. Eating is very often not a "no-brainer" decision.
On the other hand, I love auto-explore and I don't think I could ever go back to a traditional roguelike that lacks it. "I want to see the entire level in case there are interesting things here" is only "not a no-brainer" if prepared food is very scarce and butchery is implausibly inefficient; walking around without interaction doesn't improve the game experience, etc. (And sure, you can balance the game around not needing to explore entire maps to gain experience, but then you spoil the fun for people who do want to do that.)
Food was almost never interesting in DCSS, except for maybe Centaurs.
Once you reached a certain point you either had a giant stack of rations or a giant stack of honeycombs if you were a Spriggan. Random mutations can happen from other non-food sources, and most items are not worth lugging around so it never really forced you to make decisions. I handled long term item storage by setting a waypoint on a square on a finished floor I used to store items. If you have ++Fire, +Cold, and +RMut then you have all of the resistance you’ll need.
FWIW I’ve won crawl dozens of times, at least once for every race and class. Placed in the top 3 for the 0.10 online tournament, both individually and my team. The two guys who beat me were both child chess prodigies, both won the Morgan Prize and both were multiple time Putnam Fellows; I went to public school and later got a GED. Felt pretty big brained after that tournament lol.
Haven’t played since 0.13
It's a _much_ better game now. You should try again!
DCSS pretty much plays itself and not in a good way. No idea why people find it fun at all, and I'm a hardcore fan of CDDA, Nethack, even Brogue.
Let's see your dcss stats [0] link if it's that easy?
I'm not the person you replied to but I'll give you my link [1]. At one point I had all species, backgrounds, and gods won but they've added a couple since I stopped playing. My win-loss ratio isn't anything to write home about but in my defence, many of my losses are scum losses (early deaths from messing around and not taking it seriously). When I take the game seriously I can win fairly consistently. The main thing stopping me from having a high win rate (besides not playing) is that I get bored and make careless mistakes.
The reason I don't play anymore is because I find the game pretty boring and overly-long. The most fun part of the game is D1-D10 or so, before you enter any branches. That's the point of the game where your options are very limited so you get a lot more situations where your decisions really matter. After that point in the game your character's power curve tends to leave the game in the dust (when you know what you're doing anyway), so those "critical moment" situations become fewer and further between.
You end up doing a ton of "autopilotting" your way through vast numbers of popcorn enemies, though you can still lose when a critical moment pops up and you're not paying attention. This makes losing feel really bad because the game feels like much more of a test of patience than skill to me (and other even higher-level players who have quit or semi-quit).
I'm currently playing in TNNT [2] because I love NetHack. On its face, NetHack seems way worse than DCSS because it commits all of the sins that the DCSS philosophy reacts to. In reality, I find NetHack more enjoyable to play because it has real character/soul/heart. DCSS has had every single one of its rough edges sanded off, leaving it a rather soulless game.
I also really love Shattered Pixel Dungeon [3], a mobile Roguelike that is now available on PCs as well. It has an active and very attentive, engaged, and smart developer [4]. It is highly approachable and has a UI that works extremely well on mobile (its original platform) as well as PC. It is MUCH SHORTER than most of the big PC Roguelikes but it doesn't compromise on gameplay depth. In practice that means the density of critical moments and meaningful decisions to make is far higher than a game like DCSS.
[1] https://dcss-stats.com/players/ChongLi
[2] https://tnnt.org
Totally agree about Shattered Pixel Dungeon's UI. I never thought a roguelike could play so well on mobile. Makes me wonder if it would be possible to give NetHack a similarly intuitive UI.
> overly-long
Worth noting that one of the focuses of the past decade-ish of development has been to make the game significantly shorter. D has lost 7 floors, Lair and Vaults lost 3, Elf, Orc, and Crypt lost 2, the S branches and Slime lost 1, and the first 6 levels of every hell branch have become much smaller. As a result the density of powerful monsters has increased and popcorn has been dramatically reduced compared to earlier versions.
Yeah I’ve done most of my playing since all those changes. I still find the game way too long!