I think there is two competing theories of games here.
How to write one that will sell and how to write one that folks will play decades from now. the latter almost requires permadeath in some form.
I think the 2 schemes for partition divide the universe the same way. I am going to say we agree.
permanent/costly death I think is the default state if you look back to arcade games. costly as in 1 quarter.
Well sure, because then they got more quarters. Replayability was a goal for arcade games because more replays meant more money. I think it more plausible that the arcade games that were successful still being fun the nth time made players ok with costly deaths than that costly deaths made people want to keep playing.
Chicken and Egg. Causality is not something easy to do more than speculate about. Also the early days were not so slick and formulaic. The Sid Meyer philosophy of game-making has steered games down a boring path.<-obvious hypocritical-ironic speculation.
delver looks rad. just bought it on steam, and i don't do that often. check out brogue for a more traditional roguelike that's still pretty light. dwarf fortress adventure mode is interesting and should have another release soon that changes a lot of things. and of course FTL is cool but i haven't played that in a while.
I am enjoying delver. You keep your gold after you die and can buy a few items to help your next go, it's not too much help but I like it's minimalist advancement. I really don't enjoy DF adventure mode but maybe I should try it again. I've definitely played many more rouge likes in the past few years maybe it would take now. I loved FTL.
i've actually become significantly disappointed in delver since i bought it. the game is short and easy enough that i've already grabbed the orb once, and i haven't even spent much time on it. i actually prefer the less complex roguelikes but this one just goes too far. there's no real character customization because the weapons and armor are all the same, this results in a boring upgrade path because there are no tradeoffs, there's a clear superiority between each option. a good 90% of the items i encounter stay on the ground. melee combat is as shallow as it gets, archery is inexplicable (most frustrating arcing mechanic ever, shot-for-shot more expensive than wands yet still inferior), magic feels tacked-on and is essentially a colorful easy-mode archery, leveling up feels vague and pointless, and the mobs are simple. consumables are abundant yet have no clear distinction and and it seems potions don't properly identify half the time which makes them not worth the trouble. even the carryover gold mechanic feels unsatisfying, i'll end up blowing a whole run's worth of cash on some single-use magic or weapons and armor i'll probably throw away by level five anyway. and don't get me started on the ui. at least it's still in development. maybe it'll get better. FTL was great, but it's about as shallow as i'll tolerate. if you're going to play dwarf fortress, you should wait until the next release, it's going to be a big one.