by Stacy Jones on Jul 09, 2009
The discussion of exploiting has been a hot topic with the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) community as of late. Today Turbine developer Allan "Orion" Maki posted his view on the topic on his developer blog. The community feedback has been mixed with both praise and discontent. There may be no answer to this problem that will please everyone, but Orion makes a few good points in his blog as he explains what constitutes an exploit and emergent gameplay.
So, in the mind of a developer specifically this one, what are exploits and why do they need to be fixed? Exploit is typically defined as: a heroic deed or act, or to make productive use of; in video games we use the alternate: to make use of meanly or unfairly for ones own advantage. To me, as a designer, an exploit is anything that takes advantage of weaknesses in the underlying game code or design - including the purposeful implementation, unintended implementation, a bug, happenstance etc Its a very broad net I cast, and I need to cast it to make sure that I take into consideration the hundreds of thousands of iterative changes that can affect our work on a daily basis.
Orion also talked about the concept of emergent behavior and how it is viewed in comparison to single player games and MMOGs.
Ultimately, emergent behavior is the precursor to the discovery of an exploit. It is an unfortunate and painful truth about MMO design. The same experiences that would be strategic in a single player game quickly become exploits in an MMO. The design rules are different and are set by a stringent decision made early on in a project. It never seems fair to players and never makes a designer happy when they see something happen that they did not or could not predict happening. Unless that behavior is innocuous to the continued health of the game and fits within the context of the original design decisions.
Orion goes on to talk about some of the exploits in detail and steps that were took to correct the problems. Steps that if you have read the official LOTRO forums were not very popular. However, Orion defends his position and explains how the changes were for the overall health of the game.
You can read the entire blog entry here. Discuss this and more on our forums.