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A very interesting player once sent me a rather large file containing a new method of gaming the game. I read through it and was amazed at the level of detail that he'd put into this exercise. In fact, I'd wager that the amount of effort he put into writing the gaming script was at least equal to the amount of effort it would have taken him to get through the same level of areas and wilderness legitimately.
Kudos to him for having gone through the tremendous task of logging and memorizing the paths to take in each of several areas in order to encounter the proper mobs, recite the right litany, gain the right keys, unlock the right doors, bash the right heads, etc etc.
I thought him to be a brilliant lad until I reached the end of the message... where he calmly asked me if I could please tell him why it did not work.... ... .. .
He did not quite understand why the owner of the game he was writing his cheat for would not assist in debugging it.
There are often a handful of actions in a game that can be so earthshatteringly boring that they reach out and demand to be scripted. Anyone who has played a game that still forces a player to eat and drink can attest to that. Many crafting systems come to mind.
Personally I think we should thank anyone who takes time to script a portion of our games, even if they bring this to our attention unwittingly. It reveals places where we designers may need to spend time in the player shoes for much longer than the pure testing phase.
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