It's tough being an exploiter, especially in a game like Champions Online. It carries a certain social stigma, somewhere above catgirls but below most other castes of players. I feel like the exploiters have a bad rep, because other players misunderstand and misrepresent us.

Exploiters are the players that find bugs and ultimately discover FOTMs or gimmick builds and strategies. Because most people consider bugs and "flavors of the month" to be bad, the people who work to discover these things tend to be treated badly.

This is unfortunate, because exploiters are basically explorers. One might think that they are achievers or killers (as the end result of finding exploits is granting unfair advantages), but exploiters are explorers at heart. While other explorers journey through lands that have been charted by other players (except in the case where the game or feature is new), exploiters explore the landscape searching for things that other players haven't discovered and might never look for. The thrill of learning something new drives the exploiter, rather than the material reward of an imbalanced build.

After the jump, we'll talk about some previous exploits in Champions Online and the ways they impacted the playerbase.

Continue reading Behind the Mask: The exploiter's dilemma

Behind the Mask: The exploiter's dilemma originally appeared on Massively on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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