Nice post Velvet. That was a good read.
The thing with DoS "core" design was to recreate pen & paper experience as much as possible so yeah, the learning curve is hard when you are not experienced with this kind of games.
In a pen & paper you can do whatever you want, which is the case in DoS and also, if your DM throws you a monster 6 level above you and you decide to fight it, yeah, you will die.
This is the same thing in DoS.
DoS is an open game where you can do whatever you want and go wherever you want. It's overwhelming at first but I'm glad that you took the time to rethink about it and learned how to play this genre before coming here and vomiting insults. It's all in your honor.
