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I'm not sure how, unless you're suggesting that a large majority of players specifically enjoy reflex-based combat. And as I've already mentioned, reflex-based combat tends to require scripting in order to remain competitive, which then moves the skill away from reflexes anyway.
Well I don't think you really need to concentrate particularly hard on it - it's just a design decision, like any other. If you don't want players to require scripts in order to remain competitive, then obviously that's something you should take into account when creating your combat system.
Yes, there's more to mudding than just combat, but if combat is an integral part of your mud then it stands to reason that you'd want to pay particular attention to it. In my case, combat is the main focus of the mud, and obviously I don't the main focus of the game to be something which players automate with scripts.
I actually tried running a pure PK mud like that (just wins and losses). The problem was that a player would log on, see there was nobody else to fight with, and with no other reason to stay they'd quit. The next player would log on, see there was nobody else to fight with, and quit. And so on.
You need things for players to do in order to keep their interest - and getting them to invest in the game also increases the chances of them staying (even if they get bored, they won't want to throw away all the effort they spent playing). If you're running a competitive game, it's vitally important that you have players to actually compete with.
Long-term political struggles, storylines, plots, clan wars - that sort of thing? Those are also good ways to retain a player's interest once they've "maxed out", but you still need to give them a feeling of investment. The proverbial 'wedding ring' to keep them committed after the fuzzy feeling has worn off.
That can work as well, but there's a thin line between discouraging bots and punishing hardcore players.
Some time ago I introduced a system whereby a player earns up to 2.5 'boosts' per day - however each kill the previous day subtracts 0.01 from that number (so 250 kills would result in 0 boosts the following day). If you exceed 250 daily kills then you start earning less for your kills, and each kill over 250 is also carried over to the next day. Players can spend 1 boost to earn 2.5 times as much primal (exp) for their next 10 kills, or to raise their skills faster.
This means that casual players can actually achieve quite a lot in a short period of time, while excessive botting becomes counter-productive. Unfortunately it also discourages hardcore players, and most players won't even bother killing things for unboosted primal (the player attitude very quickly moved from "boosted primal is a bonus" to "unboosted primal is a penalty").
There are very few combat systems that make scripting obsolete, but it's possible to remove the need for scripting in order to compete.
Right - as with automated combat. But I don't want a level playing field - I want player skill to give an advantage. You can download your friend's scripts, but you can't download his playing skill.
Not really - as was pointed out earlier in the thread, players could reverse engineer it, and would certainly do so if there was sufficient demand (just like they did on various MMORPGs).
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