[color:"orange"]even being irredeemably evil does not cause people to want to fight to the death even when they are clearly losing horribly and near death.[/color]
They might fear what their masters do to people who fail more than they fear death, or they have no fear of death because of what they have been promised as a reward for dying in battle. They may simply hate enough that they would rather die than accept mercy.
Anyway, however common these things may be, they wouldn't be universal (especially a lone thief or random animals, etc not under some form of compulsion). You would think animals should withdraw from prolonged fights or avoid humans wearing armour and carrying weapons (based on sight or the noise that makes). Animals (or common thieves) tend to be fairly low level opponents, though, so only last a couple hits anyway, for the most part. Perhaps a flee response doesn't seem worth the effort of programming for the amount it would be used, especially if it is just going to annoy players. Actually, if you got the same experience for a wounded creature that fled, that would mitigate most of the annoyance of having an opponent run away. You would not get any meat, claws, scales, or whatever from animals (unless you tracked them down), but fleeing people could still drop excess loot, etc.
[color:"orange"]Clearly, some think nonfatal combat isn't important, and prefer monty haul dungeonbashes to scenarios that have any moral depth.[/color]
I think it is a great idea, but wouldn't feel terribly constricted in play style if it wasn't widely implemented throughout a game.
I never finished Diablo, and only got as far as I did due to the novelty (for me) of multi-player, and being able to play with my brother (when our schedules matched).
DD had a good mixture of combat and non-combat quests. For most of the game I could explore and clear areas when I felt like hack and slash, or explore in towns and do non-violent quests when I didn't.
[color:"orange"]One argument against allowing people to have more options than kill/die/flee is that it takes effort on the part of the game designer.
...
But I don't feel that this "Game designers shouldn't have to think" argument holds any water whatsoever. If it did, we'd still be playing Pong.[/color]
I don't think it is a question of having to think, but (in part) of diminishing returns on investment. Some options for non-combat quest solving are good; more are better. At some point, though, most people would not see a significant difference.
The increased complexity also makes it more difficult to debug the game, and increases the costs of translating it. I'm not saying these are reasons not to have non-combat options, but they are factors to consider when developing a game.
[color:"orange"]any combat which just has "kill or be killed" as the options is lazy game design.[/color]
While this can be true, it is certainly not always true. People still buy Diablo clones with better graphics, unfortunately. Since these action 'RPGs' are cheaper and quicker to make than anything having an actual plot, let alone multiple ways of solving quests, many publishers are going to see them as safer investments with better marketing potential, with a wider audience than the 'hard core' RPG gamer that wants more than just hack and slash.
