Quote Originally Posted by Lux_Rayna View Post
Yoshida has stated quite clearly that this was not supposed to be possible for Garuda, it was a dev oversight. It was clearly an exploit by anyone that did it, and once yoshi confirmed it *was* an exploit that ends any discussion about whether its cheating or not. Yoshida confirmed it was an exploit. Yes it is cheating. There is no way around it, so your opinion, while you are welcome to maintain it, is not based on the facts of the matter right now as far as game designers are concerned. The facts of the matter are that Yoshi says its an exploit, so it is an exploit. But we all knew this before Yoshi even said it. Cheating to get rewards is not something anyone should really respect, and the OP pretty much had it coming to him by making it so obvious. I do agree ppl went too far, but they always go too far.
So I guess groups that skipped phase 2 would be considered exploiters too as well right? What about the groups that are able to kill Miser's Mistress before she even moves rendering the majority of that encounter pointless? Or players that used certain abilities/return to territory to solo NMs back in the days? All this is just players making note of encounters and adjusting to the AI. Yoshi did acknowledge that this was oversight but at the same time commended the players for being able to do such a thing.

At the end of the day, this is good for the general populace since it allows the devs to adjust to the players ingenuity and hopefully create better encounters where the enemy AI isn't so easily abused.