As long as I can remember, there has been a back-and-forth between players and developers on the subject of game exploits. I remember back in my first days of Final Fantasy XI there were players openly using third-party hacks and bots for various purposes, usually involving fishing, leveling Enhancing magic, and other tedious tasks. Right now The Division is mired in a long series of exploits, and as soon as one gets fixed, another one gets discovered and used. It’s a bit of a mess.
I’ve seen people defend it, of course, but a lot of those defenses don’t hold a whole lot of weight. Yes, the developers should have fixed bugs before they went live, but that’s what makes it a mistake instead of a design feature. No, no one should develop game mechanics so tedious that you feel the urge to automate them, but cheating doesn’t seem like the proper way of addressing that problem. At the same time, if the developers have left in something that makes the game absurdly easy, I can understand rolling back unethical gains made, but banning people seems kind of harsh if it’s not specifically harming other players. And that’s not getting into things like FFXI‘s Windower, which was technically an exploit of a very poorly coded port.
But I’m just one writer, and today my question is for you, dear readers. Do you blame developers or players for rampant exploits in MMOs? Is it a culture of entitlement or a natural result of poor QA?
Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!
