Massively has a great article on folks learning how best to work MMOs and what the Devs end up doing to deal with those occasions (if they choose to deal with them).
Cheating, exploits, and the game-mechanics behind the nerf – Massively
All manner of such exploitation of the intricate game-mechanics of MMOGs have become institutionalized, leading to the general stratification of roles within the game, from Tank to Crowd-Control. Much of that is what is expected of us, even hoped for.
At the same time, you have 250,000+ players examining every possible combination of races, classes, powers, abilities, gears and buffs, looking for an edge. Looking for that combination that makes your Elven Rogue stand out from all the other Elven Rogues. The one that gets you picked for the A-team and not left behind when the guild goes raiding.
Eventually someone finds it. Usually a whole bunch of someones. Some combination of race, class, gear and skills transforms you from Neeshka to Prince Nuada, head and shoulders among the other characters of your type. That combination of Elf, Rogue, Flurry-of-Blades, and twin Spark Daggers seals the deal, and makes you awesome.
And you feel good. You’re playing by the game’s rules, and you’ve found an edge. You know a trick that nobody else knows, and that’s a great feeling. But someone else is going to figure it out, if they haven’t already.
Inside of a month, the developers/operators notice that half the server population are Elven Rogues with twin Spark Daggers, and pumping their Flurry-of-Blades skills. Most of the rest are healers, just so they get to go along on raids.
It’s not that the combo is overpowered, necessarily, but it makes everyone not playing that particular combo feel underpowered.
The devs are faced with a choice now. Either rename the game to World of Elven Roguecraft: The DaggerSpark Flurry, or change things up so that this particular combo doesn’t make every other combination seem pathetic.
Whether other things get boosted, or your things get nerfed, you’re not happy. All that special magic has gone, and your Elven Rogue is just another undistinguished character again.
The question is, were you cheating?
Generally, there’s stuff we know is cheating, stuff we’re sure is not cheating, and a whole lot of stuff in the middle that’s individually decided by millions of players per day, who each generally don’t think they’re actually cheating. They’re maximizing the benefits that they get from the game mechanics.
Hey, if I asked you to kill ten powerfully dangerous wolves with a bow and arrows, are you going to stand down there where they can maul you to kibble, or are you going to stand on something to prevent them getting to you while you pull off this undeniably dangerous chore?
Right. Because you’re not stupid.
The question is, most “fair” players understand the difference between cheating (if I do A and B in an unnatural fashion then I can get lots of XP for minimal effort — see Meow Missions in the early days of CoX AE — where “unnatural” means “not in keeping with the conventions of the genre), and simply optimizing play (“Hey, build X gives me a huge advantage over build Y, so I’m going to be an X”). Devs, though, see that on a continuum, and have to decide in every case hwne they are going to intervene with the nerf bat to “balance” things properly.
It’s always interesting — and rarely uncontroversial. Since even the most obvious “cheats” have their defenders (“Hey, I pay my $15/month, I’m entitled to get to the level cap in 12 hours”).
The problem being, of course, that we are incented to find ideals, and can think of ways that they are represented in-genre (both Blue Beetle and Superman are cool — but there’s no question that any Dev would consider the two unbalanced as character classes, and few players would choose the former vs. the latter). If the Devs spend too much time whacking on optimizations, then there’s no real incentive to excel.
What it comes down to is a every real-life conflict. We believe in equality of opportunity, but all the Devs (like the courts) can actually judge on is equality of outcome. If the latter is out of whack, then they assume (possibly rightly) that the former is messed up.
So it goes.
Brute + Corruptor