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...
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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