|
Something that tends to bother me about the fiction of the majority (every one that I've seen) of MUDs is that killing everything in sight is the norm. Especially when it comes to player vs. npc combat, I can't see the point or usefulness of this. The combat either boils down to typing "kill such and such" or repeatedly typing "slash such and such". The AI tends to be atrocious, not to even mention the huge advantage games like Everquest or DAoC have over text muds in that they are at least viscerally pleasing.
So why does everyone stick with it? Why keep the bashing treadmill other than for cheap skinneresque operant conditioning? And even so, why must killing be the behavior to be reinforced?
And on a related note, anyone care to postulate how players would react to having this removed from a game?
-Ryan
|