There were a couple of people who were very active in development and were very opinionated about good game design. Then they slowed down a bit, and some other people came in with more ideas, they may not have been quite as radical but by then it was established that upending designs was something DCSS did. (A bit of like the problem the Esperanto offshoots had).

It was at all time driven by very heavy players, and IMO the theme especially suffered from it (by the time you're a heavy player, you have completely abstracted it into a bunch of systems, and it's very hard to see it like a new player would see it).