I was inspired by the recent D3 article that explains the immortal wizard exploit to find out the community's overall opinion on exploits in general. When you find one in your game or online, do you stop playing, use it, or keep playing but don't use it?
There was one comment on the article that caught my attention, essentially
Personally, I've found proponents of the "it's there, why not use it crowd" to be one of two groups. Either they're constantly looking for the "best" way to do something, and that best way just happens to be an exploit that makes you invincible or puts you in an advantageous spot (the hardcore "optimal build" crowd). Or they're too lazy to do the work the game was asking for, and this is the easiest way (the casual "I want everything but I don't wanna earn it" crowd). Either way it boils down to looking for the "easiest" way to play something.
To me that kind of violates the spirit of the game. The point was never about doing something "the best way" or about beating it/unlocking everything. The point of the game was for you to PLAY it, and have fun doing it. If the only way for you to have fun was to find the easiest way to play it, then that makes it seem less like a game and more like an obstacle you had to hurdle no matter what.
There was one comment on the article that caught my attention, essentially
There's kind of an unwritten rule between games and gamers, and that is to play fair. Not just in multi-player but also in single player as well, since finding some sort of back door that gets you the end result is kind of a complete disregard for the experience and the work put into it. So even if you find an exploit, using it kind of breaks the unspoken agreement you had with the game.it's Blizzard's fault the exploit is in there, so they shouldn't punish anyone for using it
Personally, I've found proponents of the "it's there, why not use it crowd" to be one of two groups. Either they're constantly looking for the "best" way to do something, and that best way just happens to be an exploit that makes you invincible or puts you in an advantageous spot (the hardcore "optimal build" crowd). Or they're too lazy to do the work the game was asking for, and this is the easiest way (the casual "I want everything but I don't wanna earn it" crowd). Either way it boils down to looking for the "easiest" way to play something.
To me that kind of violates the spirit of the game. The point was never about doing something "the best way" or about beating it/unlocking everything. The point of the game was for you to PLAY it, and have fun doing it. If the only way for you to have fun was to find the easiest way to play it, then that makes it seem less like a game and more like an obstacle you had to hurdle no matter what.