Aggie Posted:

Wet Sprocket, the point I was making was that these shenanigans could very easily have frustrated and discouraged new players from wanting to participate because of the fear that they’ll once again be victims of another bout of cheating like this. Why would anyone continue to play a game that seems to be stacked against them from the very beginning?

Luckily, the “victims” of this exploit were almost entirely in the upper brackets, so they’d already medaled in Domination at least once. Just from looking at your bracket, I’m fairly certain that nobody was using the exploit, or at least not to a degree that would actually impact gameplay.

Aggie Posted:

You know, someone finds an exploit that actively damages other players instead of merely profiting themselves? I don’t know if you play Kingdom of Loathing, but there was an infinite meat bug exploit a long time ago that was aggravating because not only did it allow players to VASTLY increase their resources, but it allowed them to purchase items they never would have otherwise been able to afford in order to get the edge in PvPing against people who did not use said exploit. It’s cheating and it makes the game less fun for a lot of people.

I definitely know what you mean. I stopped playing KoL due to the infinite meat bug, because it made my hours of efforts cornering the market the week before meaningless. The same kind of thing directly applies to Domination for many players, especially in this case but to some extent with the recent adoption of large-scale Vanilla raids. I think it’s been a few weeks of frustrating gameplay for a lot of people. I don’t have a solution for the problem, and I don’t know that there is one.

Arktor Posted:

Allow me to pose a question to you: If you agree that fixing exploits is a good idea, and it seems that you do, then what fault lies with a harmless demonstration that results in a fix?

The watchword here is “harmless.” While the members that took place in the stunt seem to feel it was harmless, that’s a difficult point to prove.