This is one of the first games which changed so much that I picked it up again and realized it's not the game I liked anymore. It may still be a fine game, but it has little association to Linley Henzell's Crawl left.
These days, as more non-open games go into "updates forever" mode, it's probably going to happen more. I can see it happening real time with Minecraft.
I was pretty shocked at the rate of change in Crawl. I played it for a couple of years and during that time entire major game mechanics changed, like moving from many kinds of food, to only one kind of food, to completely eliminating food and hunger (while adding a completely new form of clock to kill players who didn't keep moving).
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.-
I love that you can play every previous version for free too! I THINK I like the current version the best, but there are some other good versions in the past, like just before food disappeared (I actually thought food was a great mechanic).
Now that I'm getting back into it, I am tempted to stick with the current version for a couple of years so I can really learn it.
I'm giving ToME a go on steam deck now, I like the idea of having more of a narrative and open world. I feel like the dungeon in DCSS is more like a series of individual encounters.
Something similar happened to Angband, when I went back to it recently it had been given an overhaul that included making the game shorter. So I went back to v3.4.1.
Now that I'm getting back into it, I am tempted to stick with the current version for a couple of years so I can really learn it.
I'm giving ToME a go on steam deck now, I like the idea of having more of a narrative and open world. I feel like the dungeon in DCSS is more like a series of individual encounters.