[Mabus]

This is all just "to much coffee, and not enough sleep" talk from me, but here is my opinion on that:

"Tedious and boring" are highly subjective. I may find combat interesting, while another person might consider it a "grind". You may enjoy doing a series of complex quests, while another person will have a friend do them and send him a script that does them with little to no inpuit from them but starting the script.

I have never played a telnet-client text-based game that could not be scripted/botted. Never.

To me it is a means of gaining something without spending the time doing it. I can understand on highly repetitive tasks setting up macros, or scripts. Pushing one button instead of typing things over and over is certainly easier, and less prone to typing errors. I have used scripts and triggers on games before, but never while afk. I have never botted, but have helped people script a few bots in the past.

We could say the game is flawed, or could look for players looking for gain with minimal effort. Both may have a partial impact. What is a game's "flaw"? Each individual would a different opinion on that issue, as would each designer. If a game gave a player everything they wanted without any time or effort botting would be a lot less of an issue, but those games would also likely be deserted.

For reward to have its fullest positive impact there must be risk, investment (time or otherwise) and/or means of measuring it against others.

Some play-systems in MUDs will take time. Some will be repetitive. Some will require speed. Some will require accuracy. As long as any of those conditions exist some players will use triggers, scripts and bots. Even proprietary clients would be hacked and the capability added, if enough players played the game. I have seen it.

The best that can be done (in my opinion) is to have a clear, public, consistent policy on these issues, and their use (or inability to use), for each individual game, and for the staff of these games to stand by the policies.