In Your Opinion, What is a "Farm"?

AFAIK they were working correctly. My opinion is that filling a map with only enemies that you know won't attack and proceeding to farm it is an exploit. However, I'm not assigning any morality to it(unlike some people). I just don't think it's a big deal. I'm just calling it an exploit because it is obvious to me(although some disagree, and I'm fine with that too).

I do agree that it isn't the players job to decipher what's ok to fight and what is an "exploit." IMO, that should be clearly stated if any punishment is to be handed out. The only exception to that, is when it has a direct significant negative impact on other players. And no, I don't consider somebody getting annoyed because some AE baby doesn't know how to play their character significant.

QFE. I think this part is extremely important to the long term viability of the game

That is a pretty accurate description of my activity in Comm Officers. Odd thing is the one 50 I got out of it I don't play, and I deleted five mid thirties characters I got out of it, and the couple I have left barely get played. Kinda odd how that worked out for me. But I did make a ton of influence and infamy.

Simply because the coveted item is different does not make them different things in my mind. Farms for drops, heals, damage, rep, kills, inf. All the same to me.

Here is the problem with requiring explicitly naming what is an exploit before hand, since exploits are a result of bugs they are typically unforeseen. If they saw it coming it would be fixed before needed to state what the exploit is. No here is where I can see some queuing up to say that they released it to live even if there were reports of the exploit on test (closed beta or otherwise). They cannot wait for every bug to be fixed. If they attempted to do so, they would never release anything. Some things will get through whether it is due to the complexity of the bug or to publishing schedules.

--Rad

And as they have been reluctant to provide any generally useful guidelines, the tactics of the previous regime (patch the issue and move on) seem to be the best approach.

Happily, our current devs seems to have figured this out.

I was always under the impression that statement was put there by the ESRB and mostly refers to the rating of the game. Thats what I was always told.

That's where I'm concerned. I know some people claim to have been banned for exploiting. It seems what the current dev regime did was come up with a lesser punishment than bannage (removing characters) after the fact, rather than using the punishment at hand, then applying it more liberally.

I'm doing a very poor job at communicating.

I'm certainly proud of a lot of the numbers I'm capable of generating, which is a mix of skill, mission design, and build design. I understand your point now. In any case, the argument was over semantics. We both admit we can maximize reward. What I consider a good player does this in their sleep.

I wanted that list to encourage a more moderate point of view in this debate. In that respect I failed. For lack of a better comparison, we're constantly inundated with Republicans and Democrats, yet where is Ross Perot in all of this?

It depends on the culture and the methods of defense. In this case, I don't expect to see anyone on either side of this debate strap explosives to themselves. (eagerly awaits the quote and reply of "We can only hope")

I wanted to make the point that in this AE debate, emotions and opinions have become intensely polarized. I suppose I could have done a better job at this.

A noble, if doomed, sentiment.

PP, yer killin' me with all these wacky dog avatars lately!

She is on vacation