My understanding is that one of Angband's principal principles is
it doesn't tell the player what to do.
Options like forced descent and no recall (which together make ironman) are in a sense unnecessary - as a player, you could choose never to take upstairs or use recall, and the effect would be identical.
I think your statement
Quote:
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I know no one is forced to use it, of course, but I tend to try "optimizing" as much as I can, and since it is allowed, doesn't really has any in-game cost, and improves your chances of winning, I somehow "have to" overuse it.
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is the key one here, and is for some people the down-side to not being told what to do.
So my philosophy is there is more to gain by allowing the player free rein than not, and so the default will be to give the player maximum freedom (note that I'm not sure if defaulting to no selling contradicts this
).
That said, note that there's also the persistent levels option, which you may find interesting in some combination with forced descent and no recall, as well as various numbers you can tweak in constants.txt (stair skip, for example).