You can't really blame userfriendly controls for the fact, that they didn't become popular, though.
I don't blame the fact, I only wonder that maybe providing userfriendly controls was a bit of a wasted effort.
Also I think developers should also listen to the players and not only do what they like themselves. You claim they are never 'done' with their roguelike, but I can't really imagine that. I mean there must be some point where you think you're done with your game and want to make a new one.
Developers of free games usually do what they want, not what they "should". Or maybe they "should" do their real job, raise their children, or whatever their life requires, not develop their games. If you feel that you want to make RoguePlanets complete and user friendly, that is great for RoguePlanets. But unfortunately lots of RL drop or slow down the development, especially the ones with big plans. Things such as user friendliness may be below the required level of motivation.
ADOM is somewhat unfinished (there are bugs and imbalances there), but Thomas Biskup has decided he prefers to make a new game. Linley Henzell, the original developer of Crawl, has lost interest in its development AFAIK (although it was maybe quite complete, not counting missing tiles and menus), but luckily the Stone Soup team appeared, who manages to continuously improve it. IVAN is a great game, although incomplete (version 0.50 is displayed) - the developers had some plans which have not been executed yet; however, they lost their interest (or maybe their free time), and unless they change their minds, or a new team emerges, IVAN will remain incomplete.