My problem with Nethack was that it actually becomes too win-able, once you know the dominant strategy. There is very little variability in building a successful "ascension kit".
Early game strategies can vary and some can be quite fun (healer/pacifist run) but in my experience the "sameness" sets in once your strategy becomes "step 1: get wand of wishing".
Of course you don't HAVE to use that wand. But it's there.
I think my favorite games are when I don't have a wand of wishing, but I still end up obtaining most of a decent ascension kit, anyway. It's very satisfying in a way that few "grinding" games are. Especially that moment of getting dragon armor "the hard way".
I think knowing what the ascension kit contains doesn't necessarily break the fun or the challenge of the game. It just makes it possible to win (whereas, while flying blind, you probably won't win the game given a normal human life span and a normal working adult's amount of available free time and willingness to keep playing and experiencing YASD after YASD).
I've seen folks suggesting NetHack is not a good game, because it requires so much spoiling in order to be winnable. But, I kinda enjoy reading the lore. It's part of the game for me; just because it happens on the internet rather than in the game terminal doesn't make it less fun.
>I think knowing what the ascension kit contains doesn't necessarily break the fun or the challenge of the game. It just makes it possible to win (whereas, while flying blind, you probably won't win the game given a normal human life span and a normal working adult's amount of available free time and willingness to keep playing and experiencing YASD after YASD).
I didn't know what "YASD" meant so had to search it. Neat! I learned something new.
And on that same note, there is an entire game based entirely around YASD/YAAD! "I Wanna Be The Guy" a game about dying in a million different unpredictable and stupid ways combined with many ways to kill yourself through user error or forgetfulness.
I'm not sure if the completion of IWBTG is at all comparable with NetHack as I'm not too familiar with NetHack.
It's also about memorizing the tricks. I would recommend finding videos of it from Awesome Games Done Quick or Summer Games Done Quick. Bonus! An even more challenging variant exists: I Wanna Be The Boshi.
Here's the Boshi speedrun, it's entertaining even if I would never want to play myself.
I sort of agree with your point but your analogy with Chess is not a good one.
Chess is played with another person. Not that it is possible but reading spoilers and looking at source code is sort of like cracking open the persons brain to figure out what sort of general strategies and tactics they will use on you... it is not equivalent to learning the rules chess.
> reading spoilers and looking at source code is sort of like cracking open the persons brain to figure out what sort of general strategies and tactics they will use on you...
No it isn't. That would be running the game in a debugger so you know what will happen. Learning the rules of nethack just tells you what can happen; this is absolutely the norm for everything else you do.
I felt Sporkhack fixed most of the problems I had with vanilla nethack. Wishes are harder to get, Elbereth is nerfed, ESP is nerfed, ascension kits are less binary, Gehennom is less tedious, Vlad is no longer a pushover, etc...
You might want to try SporkHack. The goal of SporkHack is to remove guaranteed win strategies, while making the game not harder (and perhaps even easier in some instances) for less spoiled players.
Early game strategies can vary and some can be quite fun (healer/pacifist run) but in my experience the "sameness" sets in once your strategy becomes "step 1: get wand of wishing".
Of course you don't HAVE to use that wand. But it's there.