First off, let’s get the complaining out of the way. Right now Exploits are more like Trophies in Kingdom of Loathing, in that in order to obtain them, you need to either perform an arbitrary task, (be here on the first day, don’t wear pants when new years comes around) reach a seemingly unattainable goal by a casual user (be at the top of one of three leaderboards, level your familiars up to a total weight limit that cannot be attained unless you have all possible ones including ones that are no longer availaible)* or happen to be at the whim of the people who run the game. (Being gay, or by getting a real life tattoo of some in-game artwork)

Conversely, Achievements (on XBox or Steam) usually have a list of most of the tasks necessary to unlock the achievement and at least one is something that is super easy to do, whether it’s pbuming the first stage or killing your first enemy. They usually get harder than that scaling to usually some pretty hard or near impossible tasks, depending on the game. If I remember correctly Sneak King’s achievements were hilariously easy to get.

Now, I’m not criticizing how Exploits work in this game, but if you want them to compare more to Achievements, I suggest that a couple of changes get made. Nothing taken away, but a couple of additions. First, I would suggest a really easy achievement for either finishing your first mission or pwning your first forum. It’s easy to get, yes, and anyone can do it on their first day. (Hopefully) This will help reinforce the idea that Exploits are like achievements and how they operate. Then, there should be a couple of incrementally increasing exploits for things like number of contacts on your sTalk list, number of forums visted or pwned and number of missions completed.

These additional exploits would be listed in the exploits list right from the beginning, but not appear on the public profile page until they are unlocked. In a player’s exploits list they would either have some sort of locked icon or maybe the actual icon greyed out with a big red circle with a hash through it obscuring most of the graphic. Most of these would list how to earn the achievement, but the hardest ones might only be filled with question marks, or have really vague descriptions like, for example, “pwn a great many forums”.

The way Exploits work now is fine, but I think that these additions will help make the site a little more fun and be an extra carrot to dangle in front of users faces. Like some of the design philosophy that went into Pogo.com says, everyone wins something. The more you can make every user feel special and like a winner, the more they will be satisfied with your site.

*This I believe is no longer true in Kingdom of Loathing, though it was for quite some time.