Exploit vs unintended

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Do you guys see any difference between an exploit and an unintended rules interaction.

 

for me an exploit is something that is not supposed to be able to happen at all, but a strict RAW interpretation means it’s allowed due to typos or poorly worded rules.

 

whereas an unintended interaction of rules is two or more rules interacting in a totally reasonable way, but the number of rules makes it impossible to predict and foretell every possible interaction before the game/rules hit the diverse perspectives of the wider community 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

An example of each

 

exploit

9th edition Cadian Shock Troopers squad had weird wording regarding loadout options. RAW 2 of the same special weapons was legal but there was strong reason to believe that was not what they meant. Making using it borderline cheating imho.

they later proved that via FAQ/errata.

 

Unintended rules interaction 

the rules regarding leaders joining squads, means that a squad of regular infantry with castellan can ride in a taurox prime.

this seems unintended simply because they weren’t looking at the rules with the same perspective as some of the players, but i don’t think this is something GW would care to FAQ/errata, or that any reasonable person could view this as any sort of attempt to cheat.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm not certain what the value between the distinction is, even if one does exist.

 

To me, the only distinction between the 2 is a value judgment being placed on those taking advantage of the rule, namely whether such is a use of, or an abuse of, the rule.

 

For the examples you gave, the only difference between the 2 that I see is the value judgment you are placing on them.  Now, it may well be that I am an uninformed observer who has not previously been aware or contemplated these rules interactions, but as described the situations both seem to be (likely) unintended rules interpretations, one of which you think is okay to take advantage of and one which you do not.

 

And, to my mind, neither are cheating - which I guess means that no, I don't see a distinctions between rules exploits and unintended rules interactions.

 

 

Edited July 7, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Dr_Ruminahui said:

I'm not certain what the value between the distinction is, even if one does exist.

 

To me, the only distinction between the 2 is a value judgment being placed on those taking advantage of the rule, namely whether such is a use of, or an abuse of, the rule.

 

For the examples you gave, the only difference between the 2 that I see is the value judgment you are placing on them.  Now, it may well be that I am an uninformed observer who has not previously been aware or contemplated these rules interactions, but as described the situations both seem to be (likely) unintended rules interpretations, one of which you think is okay to take advantage of and one which you do not.

 

And, to my mind, neither are cheating - which I guess means that no, I don't see a distinctions between rules exploits and unintended rules interactions.

 

 

So you don’t think there’s an issue with playing a rule in bad faith because of RAW when RAI seems pretty obvious?

 

to me it’s a matter of taking advantage of poor editing, vs looking over the rules and putting 1 and 1 together to make 2.

Edited July 8, 2023 by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[KenaiPhoneix]

Well from how I see the stuff is the intention behind the action it self. And unintended action would be me playing the game and just because of random stuff or different movement/actions I just locked my enemy in a position of defenseless anihilation, I didnt expect it it just happened. I contrast, and exploit is when I know that this situation will cause that out come. If I remember correctly there was an exploit/error on one of the older Tau Codex that lead to an strategy that would lock enemy squads in combat while other units could attack from range. I dont remember exactly how it was, but it was something like that. Everyone that used that scenario is exploiting the rules. It is cheating? Well yes and no, after all you ARE using the rules. But this is still a game to have fun, and abuse the rules to just merciless destroy the other player is just a bad move.

 

Now, to give an example of unintended: a couple of months ago I played Kill Team v2 with some friends. 1v1v1 with a custom objective of picking a bomb and deliver it to any other player base, first one to successfully arm and detonate the bomb (plant and boom at the end of the next turn) would win. My Krieg boys where decimated because I usually have poor dice rolls, so I pushed to one of my friends base, put one unit on melee and one just arming the bomb. The result was that I, unaware, created the perfect strategy of putting the bomb on a place and blocking the advance on melee. My opponent couldnt beat my melee units AND disarm the bomb so I won the match. It was unexpected and I only realize this when my opponent start telling me that I have cheated (we all agreed on custom bomb rules btw, he was just a bad loser. my other friend was totally Ok with this), and I wouldnt call it cheating because it was an unexpected result of my actions, I wasnt searching for this situation, it just happened.

[jaxom]

10 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

So you don’t think there’s an issue with playing a rule in bad faith

I think it’s more that the only issue is whether the person plays in bad faith. Unintended consequences of rules interactions which one might deem unfair tend to stand out (and I assume it’s not just to me or this thread wouldn’t exist) because they can ‘break’ a game. At that point, either the interaction needs to be avoided or it becomes a race to the bottom. A good example of this was a D&D combination for infinite spell slots (coffee-lock). Players either jumped on the bandwagon or avoided the interaction, self-selecting the reputation they received. It became sort of short hand ethics question like would one do a crime if there was no chance of getting caught.

[Gederas]

16 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

exploit

9th edition Cadian Shock Troopers squad had weird wording regarding loadout options. RAW 2 of the same special weapons was legal but there was strong reason to believe that was not what they meant. Making using it borderline cheating imho.

they later proved that via FAQ/errata.

That's not an exploit, that's a poor wording on GW's part... except doubling up on the same special weapon was a thing that was semi-consistent in 8e and 9e until that point

Edited July 8, 2023 by Gederas

[Cleon]

14 minutes ago, Gederas said:

That's not an exploit, that's a poor wording on GW's part... except doubling up on the same special weapon was a thing that was semi-consistent in 8e and 9e until that point

I agree, it was marginal enough that I would have said 'maybe hold off building that way until the initial FAQ' but calling it an exploit rather than an ambiguous situation is overly confrontational.

[m_r_parker]

12 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

So you don’t think there’s an issue with playing a rule in bad faith because of RAW when RAI seems pretty obvious?

 

Unfortunately, there's a major assumption in that statement that you may not be able to validate. Specifically, that the writers / designers wrote something that they didn't intend, and that you know the mind of the writer / designer and understand their intent. Just because you don't believe that a rule shouldn't work in the way that it is written doesn't mean that it wasn't intended to be played in that manner - the writers / designers may in fact want that rule to be used exactly as they wrote it.

 

And therein lies the problem, in my opinion. The concept of RAI as "Rules as Intended" implies that we have better understanding of the what the designers actually meant, whereas what we're actually doing is "Rules as Interpreted" - we're altering the rules based off of our own experiences, whilst acknowledging that this is 1) not what the rule actually says, and 2) not having direct input to the design team. 

 

A current example of this: some units in 10th Edition Indexes gaining a flat -1 Damage. A lot of us, myself included, immediately pointed out that this should be to a minimum of Damage 1 rather than be allowed to go to 0 (or in some cases, negative damage aka healing). We interpreted the rule shouldn't allow Damage to go below one because that's the limit damage reduction has been in recent editions and across games (Age of Sigmar for example), but until we were given the FAQ to the core rules that explicitly stated that Damage couldn't be reduced below 1 we couldn't say that the our interpretation was the intention of the designers. 

 

Frankly, interpreting the rules to something different to what they actually say is a slippery slope, regardless of intention. I'm sure 99% wouldn't want to take advantage of a poorly written rule, but there's always a 1% that will stick to their guns because they've found what they consider to be a "loophole" that they're allowed to use because it isn't explicitly stated that they can't.  And with so many units having unique rules, and allowing units to merge with leaders again to combine rules, there are just so many permutations that the designers will struggle to catch them all before release - hence FAQ's and balance updates. Allowing the designers to clarify their intentions, rather than allowing us to continue with our interpretations. 

 

Back to the original topic question: is there a difference between an Exploit and an Unintended Interaction? Frankly I only see this as a grammatical difference, and wholly dependent on which side of the board you're playing on. Your opponent has done something that isn't technically illegal that benefits them and disadvantages you, you will see it as an "Exploit" (Negative connotation), whereas your opponent will see it as an "Unintended Interaction" or "Loophole" (Neutral / Positive connotation).

[sal of manders]

18 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Do you guys see any difference between an exploit and an unintended rules interaction.

 

for me an exploit is something that is not supposed to be able to happen at all, but a strict RAW interpretation means it’s allowed due to typos or poorly worded rules.

 

whereas an unintended interaction of rules is two or more rules interacting in a totally reasonable way, but the number of rules makes it impossible to predict and foretell every possible interaction before the game/rules hit the diverse perspectives of the wider community 

 

I put it in computer terms. If I'm writing a rule book, or if I'm writing code for a computer game, in both cases I am writing the rules of the game.  In the case of the latter, the computer is going by RAW for everything, and every rules interaction MUST be deemed as reasonable, otherwise it crashes. Yet we still have "exploits" in computer games. 

 

In short, "exploits" ARE (in accordance with your definition of) "unintended rules interactions". More persicely, they are  "unintended rules interactions" which may be "exploited" to gain advantage. It's really a "square vs rectangle" comparison.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

11 hours ago, Gederas said:

That's not an exploit, that's a poor wording on GW's part... except doubling up on the same special weapon was a thing that was semi-consistent in 8e and 9e until that point

No it was an exploit. Most people understood the intent.

[Gederas]

1 hour ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

No it was an exploit. Most people understood the intent.

I don't think it was "most people". Between my FLGS and my local GW, people read the text to mean exactly what it said.

 

Now, of the people who read the rule like that, all of us are autistic and very literal, so if book say you can do this thing, you can do the thing. That's not an exploit, that's poor wording on GW's part.

Edited July 9, 2023 by Gederas

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

32 minutes ago, Gederas said:

I don't think it was "most people". Between my FLGS and my local GW, people read the text to mean exactly what it said.

 

Now, of the people who read the rule like that, all of us are autistic and very literal, so if book say you can do this thing, you can do the thing. That's not an exploit, that's poor wording on GW's part.

Yes it is poor wording, and that’s why it’s an exploit. 
that clearly wasn’t the what they intended, as a result people exploited some bad wording. They were literally exploiting bad editing and quality control.

[Sea Creature]

Overall the rules are a lot tighter now compared to what was prior to eighth edition.

[Orion]

When in doubt, just ask the red-shirt or roll off.

[Brother Nathan]

one that annoys me is the tyranid heavy weapons... gw especially last ed but this edition too have had terrible wording on the venom cannon and barbed strangler units ie carnifex hive tyrants and warriors. realistically it should be one per unit/ 3 models but for a while you couldn't take both on a model, but could take  2 of one, or as is currently with warriors, you can take one of each per 3 men... should a take a unit of 9 warriors with 3 venom cannons and 3 barbed stranglers...?  i now want to but if i do will gw up the prices of those models again or restrict the wargear again so ive to change them again... if i intentionally take multiple units of that is that  fair?  this would be an exploit and the way the weapons and stats currently are in the game its probably fairly common atm. 

 

unintended- i think some armys are far more open to this than others. nids had it last edition heavily with the malceptor spam being able to delete units with mortals that clearly wasn't intending to hit armys as hard hence several harsh and calculated nerfs to just them(blocking them off casting strats and making limits to certain interactions requiring the character keyword. followed by a heavy points increase. aka gw got it very very wrong. 

[sairence]

9 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

No it was an exploit. Most people understood the intent.

 

You really have a chip on your shoulder about that.

[Orion]

49 minutes ago, sairence said:

 

You really have a chip on your shoulder about that.

I think it might be more of a systemic issue of the divide between players who get off on the rules lawyering and those who don't.

 

I also can't help but feel it contributes to rules that are harder to read, despite maybe being more accurate.

Like a contract or tax document - it might be watertight, but man are they not fun to read. Like we literally pay people to do it for us.

 

GW actually put in a section of polite cooperation and not springing rules on people.

[m_r_parker]

11 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Most people understood the intent.

 

This is a particular bugbear* of mine - claiming that a majority support your point of view, without actually having conducted any research or have any sources to back-up the claim. It's better to use terms like "lots of people", where the definition of "lots" is loose and doesn't imply over 50%. Otherwise, I'm going to be the pedant who asks that you cite your sources, and point out that I wasn't asked for my view when this research was undertaken...

 

And as I've mentioned before, a lot of this is coming down to interpreting the intention of the writers rather than following the rule as written, and interpretation is subjective. That in itself is a slippery slope. The last thing I want is to come across someone who calls all sorts of rules into question because they don't believe it's the intention of the writers; they may have a point and it becomes a thing in the next FAQ, they themselves might be gaming for advantage by restricting what's written by inferring "it shouldn't work that way". Either way, I don't want to be in a game where I feel I have to debate the intention of the writers multiple times - that's not a fun game for me.

 

* 'bugbear' being a slang term for something that annoys you, and not referencing a mythical creature in this context.

[Orion]

Why does everyone die on the "BUT HOW CAN WE TRUELY KNOW" hill.

Just be a human about it, dude. To OPs point, the rules said, can have no more than 2 of each type for an option that only allows 2 total.

That's clearly a typo. No "research" needs to be undertaken.

[Cleon]

18 minutes ago, JayJapanB said:

Why does everyone die on the "BUT HOW CAN WE TRUELY KNOW" hill.

Just be a human about it, dude. To OPs point, the rules said, can have no more than 2 of each type for an option that only allows 2 total.

That's clearly a typo. No "research" needs to be undertaken.

Or it's a copy paste error left over from one of the other squads that can take more weapons like the Kasrkin with 4 weapons or perhaps a lay over from a previously considered option that let them take a third weapon if they don't take a vox like the Death Korps.

 

Just because it was answered one way, doesn't mean that was the only way it could have been answered.

I didn't intend to take my guard out during the tail of ninth so game wise it didn't impact me either way, but lets stop with the 'I turned out to be right, therefore everyone else was trying to cheat' self righteousness.

 

Anyway I'm bugging out of this thread because it's clear no one wants a discussion, it's just about pointing out they were right.

[Kallas]

38 minutes ago, JayJapanB said:

Why does everyone die on the "BUT HOW CAN WE TRUELY KNOW" hill.

 

It depends on the circumstance, but it's because it's often simply not clear which way is intended. We, the players, can speculate that it's meant one way or another but until an FAQ/errata comes down from the people who wrote the thing it's just that: speculation. 

 

Which is why RAW vs RAI has been a thing for literal decades: deciphering what the intention of a particular phrase is isn't always super transparent.

 

Some things are obviously mistakes (eg, some weapons being lower/higher damage than identical versions) - but even there, are the designers intending to draw some kind of additional distinction between units? Is an Autarch meant to have a D2 Reaper Launcher (Starswarm) while Dark Reapers themselves only have D1? It's very likely that they're meant to be the same - but we can't really know which one is the correct one. Are they meant to be D2 so they remain Marine killers, like they've usually been throughout the editions (the 3rd Ed Codex by my side says they were Heavy 2, S5, AP3, definite Marine killers), or are they meant to be D1 and the Starshot (8/-2/2) is meant to be the Marine killer now?

 

This is why exploits and unintended interactions are often discussed so heavily, especially the ones where it's not obvious, and that's why people sometimes stake their position down in the face of others disagreeing.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

On 7/7/2023 at 4:54 PM, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

An example of each

 

exploit

9th edition Cadian Shock Troopers squad had weird wording regarding loadout options. RAW 2 of the same special weapons was legal but there was strong reason to believe that was not what they meant. Making using it borderline cheating imho.

they later proved that via FAQ/errata.

 

Unintended rules interaction 

the rules regarding leaders joining squads, means that a squad of regular infantry with castellan can ride in a taurox prime.

this seems unintended simply because they weren’t looking at the rules with the same perspective as some of the players, but i don’t think this is something GW would care to FAQ/errata, or that any reasonable person could view this as any sort of attempt to cheat.

 

Both of these examples would be exploits assuming the castellan interaction is unintended. If its unintended the difference between the two scenarios is the benefit provided by the exploit. Neither option has a moral high ground over the other. I would avoid both scenarios personally.

 

That said if a player told me they were doing either of these before a game, or if they ran it by a TO I wouldn't have a problem with it. Mainly because I've been playing since 3rd and the game has never been particularly balanced and GW isn't consistent. For example, I'm assuming the shock trooper issue has to do with the specials in the kit which GW has been limiting some units to, but then units like grey hunters can take upgrades that don't come in their kit. That makes it hard to argue what GW's intentions are, I have opinions on it but people don't have to share them. 

 

[Gederas]

56 minutes ago, Jorin Helm-splitter said:

 

That said if a player told me they were doing either of these before a game, or if they ran it by a TO I wouldn't have a problem with it. Mainly because I've been playing since 3rd and the game has never been particularly balanced and GW isn't consistent. For example, I'm assuming the shock trooper issue has to do with the specials in the kit which GW has been limiting some units to, but then units like grey hunters can take upgrades that don't come in their kit. That makes it hard to argue what GW's intentions are, I have opinions on it but people don't have to share them.

This.

 

Havocs, Devastators and Retributors can all take weapons that aren't in the kit in the numbers they can (4 of each. Key example: Havoc Chaincannons, only 1 in the box, but you can still have 4). But other units? Only one of each special weapon because there's only 1 per box (outside of Sisters iirc)

Edited July 9, 2023 by Gederas

[MegaVolt87]

RAW vs RAI, if it can be exploited it should be. And it should be documented and shared on the internet. This way GW won't drag their feet to fix it in an FAQ. IF GW wants to release minimum viable product and not really playtest properly etc, this is what needs to happen. We are unpaid product testers at this point.