[SnowTroll]

Only in a purely roleplay-driven, tabletop-type environemnt (like a chatroom or MUSH being overseen by a GM/administrator) can you truly and flexibly account for every variable and skill. I have yet to find a mud where I can take a social behemoth, unassisted by some type of GM/administrator, and grow my power and influence in non-traditional ways. A MUD, by definition, is going to have some type of engine (whether experience point, skill-by-use, roleplay-xp, or time-driven) that you grind against to improve a character. That means, whatever the mud engine happens to be, the characters that grind the engine the most efficiently turn out "stronger," whatever that means in the context of that particular mud.

I think where most muds strive to be isn't niche vs. niche equality/balance, so much as niche utility. If crafting, socializing, and combat (or any other niches) are all equally necessary parts of a game, but a character is really only worth a darn if he specializes in one of those rather than doing average at all three, and the end result is a system of inter-dependence, it doesn't matter if somebody is less equal than somebody else. If a combat behemoth kills a social behemoth, then finds himself forcibly barred from the walls of every major city, jailed, or killed by an angry mob, or if a social behemoth picks on a hack-and-slasher and gets himself and a few of his friends killed, that's equal enough. If a combat master can kill a social character without being the least bit concerned about any consequences, then that social character wasn't strong enough socially. No different than the combat master killing a weaker combat master.