Bioware please do not permanent ban for exploit.

I get what your saying. I just would think that a three strike rule is more appropriate. If this is their only infraction, or very very first then a 7 day ban is pretty significant along with the removal of credits. If say it was someone who exploited in Ravagers then exploited here I'd give them a 1 month ban, and when they came back a 1 month "probation". If they did something like Ravagers/ Ziost/ Temple Chair I'd perma ban them. I'd rather us use some sort of escalation of punishments instead of just throwing baby down the well at the first chance they got.

Some game's take exploiting alot harsher than others, I know for a fact if you try and cheat even a couple seconds in World of tanks they don't take anything into consideration and ban your account right there and then, no 2nd / 3rd tries.

If that's the "modis operandi" then no worries. I don't really care either way. If someone got a perma ban for this temple chair thing after myriad warnings that would just make me laugh that much harder. I guess in the end of it the basis of my argument is that I always am into giving people most likely more chances than they may deserve to show they "get it".

This!

There is no room in any mmo for cheats at any level or seriousness - ban them for life and delete the lot of them!

Fail analogy is fail - try again.

Better analogy, tell a child specifically not to do something with an item / object / game, they do it - repeatedly and in a flaunting manner, you catch them, and then take the item / object / game away.

Yeah I mean it clearly says exploit right on the launcher, and everyone knows what an exploit can do to hurt you so why bother doing it

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone who exploited this should be banned, but I do support banning players that exploit.

At the very least I think that all players that took part to any non-trivial degree should have the credits and associated purchases removed, along with an account suspension. Further severity of course dictated by the level of exploiting done and past behavior.

This reminds me of the original Planetside. People refused to play it because of all the hacking going on there. The game has servers still up, but no one plays it. This was way before Planetside 2 even came out.

Ban them, ban their friends and then burn their house down.

1: these are adults or at least teenagers that we're talking about here (game is rated T, after all).
2: your comparison of killing someone is not exactly fair. But let's roll with the "punishment should fit the crime" thought. Let's say someone embezzles from their employer. Should they not get fired from the company in your opinion? Should they just get, say, a 7 day suspension from the job and then come back as if nothing happened?
3: There's no witch hunt. The people on the forums are not the ones banning people here. Bioware has clear proof of who did what and is simply punishing those who broke the rules (after being told not to break the rules on several different mediums, including the launcher, so there's no excuse to not knowing about it).