[ardent]

I am quite capable of understanding other people can have opinions based on their particular perspectives.

I am just as capable of dismissing them as objectively wrong based upon the criterion inherent to a "best" assertion; do you want the most options possible? Then Dragonrealms is the best. Do you want the lowest learning curve possible? Then Dragonrealms is the best. Do you want the highest learning curve possible? Then, paradoxically, Dragonrealms is also the best. Do you not want to engage in combat at all but for some reason desire that there be a combat system? Then Dragonrealms is the best. Do you want a system that handles melee weapons, polearms, and ranged weapons with enough granularity that choice(s) between them matter? Then Dragonrealms is the best. Do you want a game that forces you to learn an entirely new "combat style" to utilize different kinds of weapons? Then Dragonrealms is the best.

Anecdotes about what one person does or does not like are about as useful to an objective standard as shoes are to a someone without feet.

Pick something you would consider to be an objective standard for constituting a good combat system. Get four people to agree with you that it is a good, objective standard. It is true of Dragonrealms' combat system.

By the objective standards of a better combat system -- perhaps excluding enjoyability -- those Dragonball MUDs have good combat systems. But I would agree that they're not at all fun to play. You'll note I don't make any claim as to whether Dragonrealms as an entire construct is fun to play. But the combat engine is certainly among the most fun parts of the game, particularly for a new player.

This is the fundamental hiccup I hit upon in Shadows of the Empire. Once there was an element of player skill involved in combat -- both on the ground and in vehicles -- I got complaints about the unfairness of it.

At the time I was a teenager and dismissed this as whatever, but as an adult I can recognize the inherent distrust of any system that has advantages set aside for players with particular skills: reflexes, knowledge, lack of mores, so forth.

If fairness is important to you, then Dragonrealms is certainly not the MUD for you. There is nothing fair or equitable about the way things are done with the possible exception of how poorly you will be treated for making suggestions on how to improve fairness and equability. Players who have been playing for years will be objectively better at just about everything than you are and will have characters that literally demonstrate that in textual form.

I think Simutronics erred grievously by not capping the game at 150th and 1000 ranks but they're trying to be everything for everyone. The recent churn amongst experienced players is certainly demonstrative of the impact a simple staff misjudgment of player desires can be, and actually asking directly what players want is a trick the staff has only learned in the last few years, and only engages in in fits and starts.

It is if you understand the social dynamics of the game, wherein role-playing is clustered around areas you might recognize as having a facade similar to quest hubs in graphical MMOs. None of which was within reasonable proximity of high level hunting until about 2009, and even then it is still not really solved.

Which is fine. You're also not one of Simutronics' paying customers, so your opinion is worth exactly nothing. What's problematic is that as a paying customer of Simutronics, your opinion would also be worth exactly nothing.

If you define standards to which you objectively rank game designs, "forcing players to choose between role-playing or numerical character progression" would rank somewhere between "force players to eat and drink and undertake textual bowel movements" and "make logging on successfully a RNG call with less than 20% chance of success" on the "good ideas" list.