No, but we can criticize the aspects of the game that make the exploit necessary or possible.
You can-- but let's be honest, this thread isn't about criticizing the aspects of the game that make it necessary (otherwise it would be titled "Do you think military dwarves train too slowly?"), and I don't think you or I think that they are necessary.
Now, as to the aspects of the game that make this possible: yes, we can complain about it. (And yes, I can complain about people complaining about it
) However, the parts of this game that would be necessary to fix the effectiveness of danger rooms just aren't there yet. Do you assign an arbitrary xp penalty to trap avoidance? It doesn't make any sense that goblins would develop dodging any less from a trap than from a swing; either relies on quick reflexes. Do you build a knowledge system so that dwarves become quickly immune to/gain no xp from on-site traps? Such a system would be best designed taking into account all sorts of other knowledge; anything designed now would be premature.
Or maybe we could just not care all that much about it, since there are countless other more exciting things we'd rather Toady code anyways, and the solution to the problem (for people that see it as a problem) is absolutely, utterly trivial?
Some exploits in some games are weird, one-off things that are easily ignored. Most glitch-based exploits fall into this category, and they largely don't affect the people who can just ignore them. However, this isn't one of those things. The fact that "danger rooms" even work means there is something wrong with skill gain rates, or at least something highly unfinished about them, and this is felt elsewhere in the game (example: when using weapon traps against things, or... well, seriously, anywhere skill gain is important or consequential). The fact that some people find danger rooms necessary might speak of other flaws.
Yes, the fact that some people find danger rooms necessary speaks to flaws, but I suspect it speaks more to flaws in the difficulty curve, which I'm not sure are things best addressed at this time. Making the game equally accessible to everyone is not in the ultimate best interests of DF. In my opinion.
Of course skill gain rates are unfinished. And in my opinion, and in the opinion of anybody who's saying that danger rooms are exploits, they're also okay. As in, they're playable. I care much less that it takes a matter of years to train a dwarf to legendary (and shouldn't it take more, really?) than I do that goblins can send innumerable quantities of moderately skilled foes against me. That second problem will be fixed soon, and in an interesting way; the first problem will take forever to hammer out, and won't even be that interesting when it's finished.
Some "parts of the game" only exist because game systems are incomplete, unfinished, or flawed, and sometimes this results in features that are not working as intended or as envisioned.
Right. But who knows what's intended, besides Toady? The bug tracker is full of "bugs" that dwarves don't dig or construct or deconstruct safely. Is that intended or not? (The game would be much less interesting if the dwarves were smarter; I'd probably never cause a cave-in again.)
Look, in a multiplayer game, "exploit" has actual meaning. It means that you gained an unfair advantage-- that the people you played with can discount what you did, that the game's managers can enact some sort of retribution.
In a single-player game? No meaning. It's vaguely a cry for something to be fixed, but so vaguely it's almost not even a suggestion. As I said before, the solution to people who find danger rooms to be exploitative is totally simple:
stop using them. It's not that hard. So what exactly is the significance of whether danger rooms are exploits or not? If they are, and you make them stop working-- it has no effect for people who find them offensive, because those people don't use danger rooms, because they consider them to be exploits.