Discussion Friday: "Exploits" fault or freedom?

Some people hesitate to use the word "exploit" in forum/game discussion because of the negative connotation it carries with so many people. This likely rises from the idea of "an exploit" being equivalent to "a punishable offense", and indeed sometimes this is the case. However, in the vast majority of cases, an in-game exploit is something more subtle. Something useful, for sure, but not necessarily unbalancing in its own right. Unintended, surely, but at the same time a component that generates fun.

I believe much of what makes modern choice-based gaming successful are what many people would call "exploits", but it is important to distinguish how I define this term as opposed to some of the other popular definitions. I discussed the "Oh nos, bad things you should never do or talk about" position above, and the most relevant standard definitions of exploitation are as follows (from dictionary.com):

1. use or utilization, esp. for profit: the exploitation of newly discovered oil fields.
2. selfish utilization: He got ahead through the exploitation of his friends.

So how would I define an exploit as it pertains to gaming, especially the MMO environment. Simply "Anything that can be done, to a level of benefit, that was not considered by the developers at the time of design".

Now, this certainly encompasses things like dupes, abusing broken geometry, and these types of exploits are definitely to be looked down upon and fixed. The kind of exploits I admire, however, are those that thrive in ingenuity. Any class in EQ can claim to have developed tactics that weren't necessarily intended by developers. And, indeed, while some of these exploits are fixed-nerfed (I don't consider the terms mutually exclusive), still others live on and actually become part of classes. Case in point: Both snare kiting and feign-death pulling were entirely unintentional byproducts of skills put into the game that were "exploited" to great use by players. This is not to be looked upon as a bad thing, but rather as a conjunction of the tools given by developers and the ideas of players together creating an unanticipated result, and I believe this to be a Holy Grail of game development.

To explain that statement, we have to go back to the history of MMOs. In the most rudimentary sense, you can trace them back to MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), of which some were simply text-based MMORPGs. Certainly the modern MMORPG was influenced by things like roguelikes (both classic roguelikes like Nethack, and more modern roguelikes like Diablo I/II), but the first games we could consider in the same genre as, say, EQ or WoW, were the graphical MUDs. MUDs, in turn, were a blend of the traditional text-based adventure game which added the freedom of deciding your own path and interacting with others. Freedom is the key phrase here.

The modern fantasy MMO also has its roots in D&D, this is fairly obvious to anyone looking at especially oldschool EverQuest content (gelatinous cube, anyone?) This, like MUDs and roguelikes, is the extension of the goal to "play D&D on the computer". This goal, although not in so many words, has been central to modern fantasy game design. Players want a world with rules, sure, but only in the most basic sense. What players really want is freedom. Just enough information, structure, and restrictions to get them going, and the ability to flesh it out from there.

This is why exploits are the Holy Grail of MMO game design. Look at EQ, one of the oldest modern MMOs in existence. Play for a few months and about half of what you'll learn are hard-set game laws and mechanics, the other half is how 10 years and millions of players have bent these rules, combined the tools they've been given, and carved out a path ultimately of their own choosing through the game. In EQ, we define an experienced player not just as someone who knows "Hey, I'm a warrior and I'm supposed to tank and use the taunt button", or "Hey, I'm a cleric, I heal", but as someone who knows how to use those basic tools, along with an ability to think on their feet, to adapt to the situation.

This beneficial situation arises from a couple facts.
1. Players will always always have more time to figure out how things work than developers. There are just way more of them, playing for way more time, and trying way more different combinations of abilities.
2. EQ's depth of content, in particular, means that the developer team today likely doesn't know as much about the entirety of the things available in EQ as the veteran players do, and as a result don't always anticipate that, "Hey, this new expansion ability might work really well alongside this ancient clicky".
3. This is a big one, the developers don't immediately try to quash innovation. Yes, every class has been burned by one of their favorite unintended (but not necessarily overpowered) tactics being fixed-nerfed, but each class will also tell you success stories of how some of those little tactics became a permanent part of their class.

Now, I say all this with the experience of having been beaten down by "exploit-fixes", surely. But I believe EQ is much more lenient (indeed, *must* be much more lenient) with this than other games. Some developers have an issue with the players "Not playing the game the way I designed them to", and these individuals are entirely missing the point. You needn't show them the path up a mountain. You needn't give the boss one weakness. You needn't provide set skill paths along which players can choose to be "An A-style warrior or a B-style warrior". Give them freedom, they will fill the space between your mechanics with ingenuity. They will climb the mountain if you build it. They will kill a boss creature even if you give it no weaknesses (Hi, Kerafyrm kill). They will create their own specialized sub-classes out of the abilities they pick and choose from the ones that are available. Just give them the structure and set them free.

What do you think?