Punishment for exploitation of Power Leveling

[Nabiri]

Yep.

He also said himself that it was intended, they just didn't foresee it being so potent that you could do NOTHING and still EXP. That's the part of it they are going to fix.




The issue here is one of semantics. The original meaning of the word "exploit" was merely to make use of something advantageous, but the domestic implication of the words usage these days has immoral connotations. To exploit is to take advantage of something in a fashion that potential harms or disadvantages another involved party. You can quote the dictionary meaning of a word, but you can't discount the domestic interpretation -- there's a reason why dictionaries are updated on a regular basis.

Neither of those is the case here.

Yoshida himself expressed that the PL system was an intended looseness to allow people to help each other advance through levels. People are using the system as it was intended to be used, the development team merely did not foresee the potency of the function being so strong that people could do nothing and still plow through levels. This is a balancing issue, and people using it is no more of an exploit than using the Experience Chain system.

Yoshida's team made a mistake with regard to their calculations, and they've already expressed that they aren't going to hold their mistake against the players. The system was intended, the numbers are just higher than they wanted/expected and they've decided they will modify them.

Hence, not an exploit. It has nothing to do with whether or not you like or enjoy it -- I haven't even used the system, but its not cheating/exploiting in any way.

It IS exploiting something the way people took advantage of it. Exploiting may be assumed to be a negative word, but it isn't always so. It's not cheating because SE allowed it.

I'm fully aware that Yoshida-san said that PLing is fine. It wouldn't make sense for them to punish players for something they said, "go ahead and take advantage of it if you want," to. That has nothing to do with the word exploit and people's assumptions about it though.

Something being allowed does not mean it can't be exploited, AKA: taken advantage of.