We can't know it's broken unless CCP says it is. Plenty of mechanics had unintended side effects. Jetcan mining wasn't an intended side effect of jettisoning cargo, but there you have it. Tech's current issues were pretty clearly unintended, but it's not an exploit. Incursions weren't an exploit even though CCP didn't expect influence to immediately peg to 0 once people swooped in.

Just because it's unexpected doesn't mean it's an exploit (Jetcan mining) and just because it's profitable doesn't mean it's an exploit (Tech, NPC PI goo, etc). So how can you tell?

Uh, Tech? And intact armor plates aren't an exploit any more than insurance fraud is when it's possible due to changing markets.

just because an exploit got reported in good time to prevent it making it onto TQ, doesn't mean its ok to then use the unfixed exploit and expect to keep everything gained from it. "Wah, we told them it was broke, we used it knowing it was broke and now they take our moneys, why???? waaah" is all it sounds like from my balcony in common sense land. Its not on CCP's head at all, its on the head of every person who knowingly abused an exploit, they were the ones planning, preparing and carrying out the act after all.

In my honest opinion, using an exploit that you have previous knowledge from the test server of in conjunction with knowing that it is indeed an 'exploit' by very definition should result in a permanent ban of the account/s and account holders using said exploit and total reversal of all ill-gotten gains received via use of the exploit.

After all, there no telling how many totally unconnected people were affected by the use of this exploit, they may be out of pocket, they may have had enough of hearing about goons constantly and quit, or they may be put off by the fact that there is that much high level organisation going into gaming a system to an advantage. It would seriously put me off wanting to play if I was new to the game and heard people were in serious planning sessions, speadsheets an all, on how to gain vitual currency from a loophole/exploit in a game I was enjoying. Theres really no telling how far the ripples from something like this travel.

When its so profitable that it makes you question the reality(might not be the word im looking for) of it then its most likely not intended.

Just as there was an "exploit" a while back that i discovered by getting killed to rats doing a level 3. Back when retribution hulls were 13m each, i bought a few and died to rats on purpose to further "test" it.

It was a lot more chance based profit but it was still profit by non intended game mechanics. You died in your retribution(uninsured) then salvaged it(sometimes you got intact armor plates which sold for 34m).

Me being a person with common sense i didn't abuse the exploit even though i knew it would get rich, feel free to do it if you wish.

At worst you will lose a few mil, at best you will double your isk.
The % of success is in your favor

Devs didn't intend us to buy stacks of AFs and play lottery in space with them by ourselves, did they ?

We can't know it's broken unless

Nope. But unintentional mechanic != Exploit. It's called Emergent gameplay

See:
Jetcans
AFK Cloaking
Tech
And so many more.

Nope. But unintentional mechanic != Exploit. It's called Emergent gameplay

When its so profitable that it makes you question the reality(might not be the word im looking for) of it then its most likely not intended.

Just as there was an "exploit" a while back that i discovered by getting killed to rats doing a level 3. Back when retribution hulls were 13m each, i bought a few and died to rats on purpose to further "test" it.

It was a lot more chance based profit but it was still profit by non intended game mechanics. You died in your retribution(uninsured) then salvaged it(sometimes you got intact armor plates which sold for 34m).

Me being a person with common sense i didn't abuse the exploit even though i knew it would get rich, feel free to do it if you wish.

Uh, Tech?

Nope. But unintentional mechanic != Exploit. It's called Emergent gameplay

Your evidence of ""premeditation" only show that they planned to make money (most industrialists use spreadsheets to ensure a profit).

Market Manipulation isn't an Exploit
Profit isn't an Exploit
Blowing up your alts isn't an Exploit
Spreadsheets in Spreadsheets Online certainly aren't an exploit

Where's the exploit?

Your evidence of ""premeditation" only show that they planned to make money (most industrialists use spreadsheets to ensure a profit).

A small group of market and game mechanics wizards sat in a channel, put their heads together and designed a theoretical exploit to game the system. It succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

The GÇ£costGÇ¥ in this equation was CCPGÇÖs own metric, which you can see by opening your cargo window or your station hangars and looking in the bottom right of the window. Therein lies the heart of the break -- CCPGÇÖs item value calculation was very vulnerable to manipulation. If you picked the right item, loaded hundreds of thousands of them into a Badger, then blew it up in the context of Faction Warfare, you could generate as much LP as you want for practically no cost. As long as you did the math right, the result was foolproof.

Directly from the goons own mouth from the long explanation posted earlier in the week. He uses the word 'exploit' which to me states that they knew what they were doing was wrong.

When CCP originally released their devblog on Inferno and revealed the formula they intended to use, we sat in shock. I immediately stated a phrase I would repeat many times: GÇ£/10000 will not save themGÇ¥. CCP made the assumption that rewarding a player 1/10th of the value of the playerGÇÖs kill at 1K ISK/LP, for a total of 10K ISK destroyed CCP Value/1 ISK reward, would prevent manipulation of the system. While this was an understandable mistake, it turned out to be several orders of magnitude off.

We laid in wait.

The original babby step was to use hydromagnetic datacores. Hydrocores had a CCP Value of 317,000 ISK (pay attention to this number, because itGÇÖs important). When we bought Minmatar into Tier 4, we were rewarded with a 50% reduction in both LP and ISK cost of our purchases from their loyalty store, so one datacore from the LP store at Tier 4 cost 25 LP and 25,000 isk. When the hauler with the datacore inside was duly murdered by our Minmatar loyalist, it rewarded the murderer with 63.5 LP. Blowing up datacores in this manner grossed enough LP to cash out into implants (at 2000 ISK/LP) to cover the isk portion of the cost of the datacore, while still netting excess LP in the process. Essentially, we were able to convert ISK to LP at the rate of 1390 ISK per LP, then immediately sell the produced LP for 1.5 times what we paid