[shultays]

I had a similar experience in past with MUDs. I mean it provides an incentive to learn programming but cheating is cheating. Popular competitive games would be dead if they didn't fight against cheating. I consider anti-cheat measures a necessary evil

Scripting menial tasks is probably lowest form of cheating but still cheating. Would it be ok if someone made a bot that plays perfect PVP?

There are plenty of games that allows modding. Or games that are focused on programming. Plenty of opportunities to learn scripting in more legit ways.

[elif]

scripting for high level pvp was actually my favorite task. Things like automatic potions at X health, trapped pouch management and execution, teleport target timing, fast looting, etc.

UO pvp was not about being perfect, it was about selfishly manipulating a mass of fighting to loot stuff while not losing your loot. 3 people precasting flamestrike is more broken than anything an individual or bot can ever do. instant trapped pouches were the only way to escape that and the only way to activate the right one is to script it or to stop moving, mouse over to your inventory, and double click it. scripting became THE BALANCE in that regard.

[Operyl]

There are places for this kind of play, but I suppose they don’t give the same kind of thrill. Bot vs Bot scripting challenges online, like Battlecode https://battlecode.org/