'Cheating' in single player games

[BlinkingDuck]

To avoid further hijacking this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11301337&posted=1#post11301337

I just cannot understand folks.

This thread has suggestions to:

- Reload the game after failed speech challenges
- Mods galore to make things easier.
- People talking about playing the game on easy mode cuz it's too tough (though others said it wasn't and instead of figuring out why others find it easy...why bother...hey I'll just ramp down the difficulty.

This might hit close to home because I have a son (though he is 25 now) who did this stuff constantly when he was a kid. He modded to make things easy. Constantly reloaded games if things didn't turn out right (watching him play Civilization was a real hoot....lose a battle...RELOAD!)

Gah...drives me batty. Why play? Just say you won and do something else.

Am I in such a minority? It seems so widespread, like I am alone in this view.

[Frodo]

To avoid further hijacking this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11301337&posted=1#post11301337

I just cannot understand folks.

This thread has suggestions to:

- Reload the game after failed speech challenges
- Mods galore to make things easier.
- People talking about playing the game on easy mode cuz it's too tough (though others said it wasn't and instead of figuring out why others find it easy...why bother...hey I'll just ramp down the difficulty.

This might hit close to home because I have a son (though he is 25 now) who did this stuff constantly when he was a kid. He modded to make things easy. Constantly reloaded games if things didn't turn out right (watching him play Civilization was a real hoot....lose a battle...RELOAD!)

Gah...drives me batty. Why play? Just say you won and do something else.

Am I in such a minority? It seems so widespread, like I am alone in this view.

I Agree 100%.

I've seen people reloading when they lost a soldier in UFO (XCom). What's the point?

[Munch]

I just cannot understand folks.

This thread has suggestions to:

- Reload the game after failed speech challenges
- Mods galore to make things easier.
- People talking about playing the game on easy mode cuz it's too tough (though others said it wasn't and instead of figuring out why others find it easy...why bother...hey I'll just ramp down the difficulty.


To be fair, a lot of mods that people use are to make the game different, not easier.

[Bosstone]

There's a number of reasons. Not all are applicable at once, but they apply in different situations.

- People like a challenge, but they also like to win. Sort of like how a movie can be tense and exciting even though you ultimately know the good guys will win out. When the bad guys win, even when it's a reasonable conclusion from the rest of the preceding plot, it's almost always a letdown and upsets moviegoers. Similarly, there's plenty of gamers who enjoy a fight but hate seeing a Game Over screen.

- The game balance might be out of whack. Mods to make things easier sometimes aren't so much about giving you an I Win button as simply making the game more fair and reasonable.

- Some folks do like an I Win button. There's a certain amount of visceral thrill to be gained from being able to one-shot enemies. For some the experience is fleeting and boring, for others they could spend hours dominating enemies.

- Some folks just play for the experience, not the challenge. When I do use cheats, this is usually the reason why. I want to see the plot of a game unfold and experience the set pieces, and my skill may not be enough to see the game through. I generally have better things to do than waste several hours working on one particular irritating boss.

Of course, although the thread title mentions it, it bears repeating that this is only for single player games. Cheating is never, under any circumstances, okay or appropriate in multiplayer games.

[Phatlewt]

They bought the game and should have whatever experience they want. It's not harming anyone else, since it's a solo game.
Why should gaming be about saying that I won? I'm more concerned with enjoying the time I spend gaming. Who cares if I "won" by the game's terms or my own?
Fun is the point, after all. Additionally, what makes a game too easy for you might make it just right for another player.

[Blaster Master]

I don't have a problem with cheating in single-player games. I have cheated from time to time, but it's almost always after playing the game legitimately without cheats and then setting a new goal. For instance, I'm sure there's plenty of other completionists out there who will like to play through an RPG again a second time and make sure they get EVERYTHING and make all of their characters as powerful as possible. It's a different way to play the game. But often playing through again to find everything means finding a guide. Sometimes it means using cheat codes to make a LONG grind faster, or make certain other parts easier because you're no longer interested in playing for the story or concerned with making sure that the leveling process keeps the content challenging. At that point, it isn't challenging to kill the same enemies over and over for hours waiting for a rare drop when you can just use a code for it and save a lot of time.

For some other people, they may like a particular game and get stuck at a point that they just aren't good enough to get past, or maybe it uses a different mechanic than most of the rest of the game uses and they don't enjoy it. I wouldn't blame them for cheating to get past that.

And sometimes it's just fun to play a game in god mode. I remember playing through GTA and I would get bored of the story missions, so I'd occassionally just use the weapon and health codes and spend some time causing all kinds of havoc. Either way, it's your experience, just because it's not how the game designers necessarily meant it to be played doesn't that that if you find it fun that way you shouldn't do it.

However, what DOES make me angry is cheating at multi-player games because there you often will affect the experience that other people are having playing the game. So, yeah, no weapon codes, or god modes, or bug exploits there please. Thanks.


it's cheating in multi-player games that makes me angry because you're a

[Palooka]

Forget about cheating. Why bother playing at all? Beating some script isn't a particularly impressive accomplishment.

If you're doing it for the experience of the game (which is a good reason to play), then it doesn't matter if you alter things to get through it.

[DigitalC]

The only single player game where i can understand and encourage cheating is The Sims. Honestly the game is simply a whole lot more fun if you start off with a bunch of money, i found it very frustrating to play without the money cheat.

[Frodo]

They bought the game and should have whatever experience they want. It's not harming anyone else, since it's a solo game.
Why should gaming be about saying that I won? I'm more concerned with enjoying the time I spend gaming. Who cares if I "won" by the game's terms or my own?
Fun is the point, after all. Additionally, what makes a game too easy for you might make it just right for another player.

Nobody is saying that they should be prohibited from doing it, what the OP and I do not understand is the point of it.

It's like cheating at solitaire, why play at all?, just tell yourself that you won.

To be honest, i, personally, understand the points you make, however there are some things about which i am unreasonable:


Pepsi drinkers.
Single player Cheaters
People who complains about sayin Hi to opal in 3 point lists


Should all be dragged to the Frodian Pet Peeve Inquisition and punished according to their sins.

[Bosstone]

The only single player game where i can understand and encourage cheating is The Sims. Honestly the game is simply a whole lot more fun if you start off with a bunch of money, i found it very frustrating to play without the money cheat.This is generally true of most of the Sim games. I found Simcity vastly more entertaining when I had a bottomless well of money.

This is actually true of a lot of games that limit your resources in order to create an economic aspect to the game. In Blizzard's RTSes Warcraft and Starcraft, I enjoy removing the resource scarcity from the equation, because it allows me to focus on creating units and messing with the strategic side of the game rather than the economical. Similarly, in Simcity, it allowed me to focus on the city-building side, which was way more fun (at the time I played it, anyway, which was in my teens. I might find the economic side more fun now, I don't know).

[Frodo]

The only single player game where i can understand and encourage cheating is The Sims. Honestly the game is simply a whole lot more fun if you start off with a bunch of money, i found it very frustrating to play without the money cheat.

People who play The Sims!

I forgot to add them to my list of evildoers.

Why would anybody play that game?, is just the same as real life!.

[Bosstone]

Pepsi drinkers.
Single player Cheaters


Should all be dragged to the Pet Peeve inquisition and punished according to their sins.Ohh, I'm doubly screwed. :D

[Tom Scud]

Hmm. I totally cheated to win Myst IV - just looked up the color-code door lock. Of course, that was because my copy of the game was bugged and froze every time I tried to go into the dream-state thingy where you learn what colors you're supposed to use.

Also, I would totally use a cheat to avoid every time an otherwise-fun game turns into a platform-jumper. Generally I just grit my teeth and plow through, because finding cheats is annoying, but if I had one at my fingertips I totally would.

[Frodo]

Ohh, I'm doubly screwed. :D

Vade retro!
:P

[Bosstone]

People who play The Sims!

I forgot to add them to my list of evildoers.

Why would anybody play that game?, is just the same as real life!.Now this is a gigantic falsehood. No offense intended toward you personally, because I'm pretty sure you haven't actually played the game. But please read this article (http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3/), then try to claim it's the same as real life. :D

[Frodo]

Now this is a gigantic falsehood. No offense intended toward you personally, because I'm pretty sure you haven't actually played the game. But please read this article (http://www.cracked.com/blog/exploring-the-mysteries-of-the-mind-with-the-sims-3/), then try to claim it's the same as real life. :D

See!, people who play The Sims are Evil!, Eeeeeeevil!. Where is Torquemada when you need him?

[Who_me?]

I just tease anyone I see cheating in single player games. A friend of mine has a son (18 years old) that does this. I tell him he's "just not man enough" to beat it without cheating. On the other hand, if I get into an online game that he's in, I try mightily to not be on the same side as him. He's an easy kill.

[Darkhold]

I cheat a lot in RPGs. A few reasons.

1. Usually there's too much min/maxing going on. Why can't I have a warrior who is charming and intelligent? I'm the damn hero. Also many RPG's make you feel like you're missing out on half of your choices if you have a low speech skill yet battles are murderous with a charming rogue type character. I want to see every option in the game. I tend to do this less on team based RPG's where I can have one member be my 'talker' and another be my dumb warrior.

2. If I feel like there's a nonsensical grind thrown in just to make the game longer. I've proven I can kill 10 swamp rats for 50xp what's the point of me killing another 1000 just so I can level? This has become less of a problem the last few years as more and more RPG's seem to be better balanced.

3. Somewhat related to 2 if the game has become a slog for no reason and I want to see the next part of the story. This is more common with First Person Shooters. If I clear out a room and took say 25% damage and know there's a healthpack I left 30 yrds behind I'll just cheat myself a health pack instead of walking back to pick it up then walking forward again. It's one reason I think health regenerating FPS's are much better for me. I don't want to make a mental note everytime I leave health behind because I didn't need it then but I might need it up the road.

4. Back to RPG's. I'm 20 hours into a game and realized I didn't fully understand the leveling system. I've made a crap character that can't swat a fly. Do I restart? Or do I pump his stats and if I still like the game after the first go around make a better character when I do replay it? I'll take option two.

5. I've beaten the game a million times before. I've mastered it and I just want to make a mini god and stomp everything in sight.

6. I occasionally load up Starcraft or Warcraft so I can play a few levels I really enjoy. I'll just cheat through the ones I think suck so I can get to the fun ones. Heck I've beaten the last level of the Frozen Throne expansion more times then I can count but I'll cheat through the 'easier' ones because I don't enjoy them as much.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Yes and no. People have the power and prerogative to do what they want within a game to finish it, but it may end up saying something about the person that chooses to complete or play a game a certain way.

After all, you've got people that with any given game will be very good and will beat it on the highest levels, the bulk of people that complete it on the intermediate levels, and then the few that really, truly suck at the game and a game has to try and cater to everyone.

Also, what Blaster Master said about multiplayer. Cheaters on multiplayer deserve beatings.

[YamatoTwinkie]

I've seen people reloading when they lost a soldier in UFO (XCom). What's the point?

I'm one of those guys who constantly reloads the game when I lose a battle in Civilization or when I lose a trooper in X-com. I can't help doing otherwise. I think part of the problem is that a single game of Civilization can take a full day to complete, and something like X-com can take multiple days. It's really tough to invest so much time, only to have single blaster bomb wipe out your entire elite strike team and screw you over for the remainder of the game.

And the thing is, I hate it when I savescum, because I never learn the value of scouting (why bother when I can just reload if blindly send my army out and they get slaughtered), keeping a good defense (why bother when I can just reload if the enemy sneak attacks one of my bases, and have my entire army waiting for him next time), or tactical withdrawal.

I really think more PC game developers should include a "iron man" difficulty setting option, that only allows for a single "save and exit" slot. That way there's some sort of official encouragement for playing it the *real* way.

[Small Clanger]

IDKFA

You know it makes sense.

[Blaster Master]

Nobody is saying that they should be prohibited from doing it, what the OP and I do not understand is the point of it.

It's like cheating at solitaire, why play at all?, just tell yourself that you won.

This, I think, is the fundamental disconnect. Not all games are played, or necessarily have to be played, to be won.

Obviously, a game like solitaire is only played to be won, but even then there's some room for cheating to keep it interesting. Like "hmm, I wonder what would have happened if I'd moved the 2 of clubs onto the red three instead of the 2 of spades" and then you find that, as luck would have it, all the cards you would have needed were in that pile.

For story based games (like RPGs), some people really are much more interested in seeing how the storyline unfolds, especially if they can effect changes in it through their actions. If, for instance, someone is playing an RPG with that mindset and can't beat a certain boss. He can try over and over again or he can grind out a few levels, but both of those options are boring, and the first may take dozens of tries to master a frustrating mechanic that is an otherwise easy fight, and the latter may still not be enough to deal with a bad mechanic. Or, he can just use a cheat to beat the boss and keep going with the part he's interested in.

As others have mentioned, this is also something that comes up in strategy games. Sometimes there's just a certain mechanic that you just don't enjoy where, if it weren't there, you'd find the game more fun. If it's something like the economics, an infinite resource code could essentially remove that component while still leaving the parts you like in tact.

Games are about a lot more than just the end result of winning or losing. It's far more important that you enjoy the experience, and sometimes a little bit of tweaking can make a game more enjoyable or bring added replay value.

Now, I will say it's silly to get a brand new game on openning day, go home, immediately look up god-mode codes, beat it in an hour, and complain that the game was too short or uninteresting. I DO think those sorts of people are idiots because they didn't even try the game legitimately first, but I would think they're a small minority.

[Sitnam]

I thump the computer regularly at Civ 4, but will never raise the difficulty past noble because after that your guys do not equal their guys. It may be a challenge but when it takes 3 of your swordsmen to beat one of theirs I want to stomp the keyboard. I will however take minor empires in hard scenarios filled with18 civs or more.

Madden '09 gets reset if I lose a player to a season ending injury or continue to lose to a team thats beneath my contempt.

[Harmonious Discord]

You like a game in general and it has a point you won't ever get through. I use a cheat. Others quit and never play again. I bought the game for entertainment, not to stop at a point that I can't do. It's not about winning every part of a game for me it's about playing the game some more.

Mods get added to expand the game or make it better fit what some people prefer. Why do you think the seller sold the ultimate product that is optimized for everybody?

[Rigamarole]

I don't really think of reloading when things don't go your way as "cheating". It's "refining your game". If you mess something up and know your game is going to suffer because of it, why suffer through that when you can try again to do it better? You're still accomplishing whatever you wanted to accomplish, even if it takes 5, 10, or 100 tries.

[DSYoungEsq]

Madden '09 gets reset if I lose a player to a season ending injury or continue to lose to a team thats beneath my contempt.

The Lions? :D

[Zsofia]

Seriously, there's somebody who thinks I'm a low down dirty cheater because I set the game on easy? I paid for the damned game, I'm not good at games where you shoot things, I want to enjoy the thing. It isn't fun to die and die and die and die and never get to play the damned game - so conveniently, the game developers realized that people have different skill levels and gave me an easy setting, so I can enjoy a game I paid for. I didn't realize it made me a bad person.

Honestly, if you're so tired of "cheating", go out to a real irradiated wasteland and learn how to kill mercenaries and scavenge your own food and water. Playing Fallout instead is just cheating!

[DSYoungEsq]

Having played computer games for a LONG time (like, way back into the late 70s :eek:), I believe there are two sides to this issue.

On the one side, it's understandable that you want to retry things to see if you can create a better outcome with a different decision. Thus, in a strategy or 4-X game, jumping back in time to build unit X instead of building Y makes some sense. It's a learning process, in other words. And it can be understandable that you want to progress past a sticking point so that you don't end up having to give up on the game in disgust at your own inability to figure something out. Thus, reading up on how Link can defeat a certain boss to get to the next level makes sense.

But on the other hand, cheating always has the unfortunate effect of handicapping your own progression in ability. If you don't learn from your mistakes to overcome a problem, you never get past a certain level of ability. Thus, if you insist upon reloads simply to hope for better random outcomes in a battle, and need to do this regularly to avoid losing the game, your ability becomes stunted. If you ever end up playing multi-player, you'll get stomped because you never forced yourself to overcome the problem through figuring out how to keep the bad result from happening, or to keep it from resulting in your eventual loss in the game.

And, as pointed out, if the only way you win your games is to cheat at them, where is the legitimate sense of accomplishment? All that does is reinforce in you a tendency to avoid hard challenges. I see this in students of mine a lot. :(

[by-tor]

I just want to make a mini god and stomp everything in sight.

This pretty much sums it up for me. Also I like to see the story unfold. I don't play games "for the challenge." I just play for fun. If I needed to do something hard and challenging to feel fulfilled, it certainly wouldn't be video game.

[Chronos]

Right now, I'm near the end of a playthrough of Civ3 where I'm using every exploit I know of, just to see how high I can crank up the score: Saving before and after every random event, setting only one opponent, etc. It doesn't mean I always do that: Usually, I play it straight, and even disable the options that would make it possible to cheat.

On the other end of the scale, I had a roommate once who absolutely loved the Doom II level "Barrels of Fun", where you start off completely surrounded by exploding barrels. He loved it because he couldn't figure out any way to beat it without cheating, and thought it was absolutely great that the programmers would force you to cheat to beat a level. It then became my favorite level of the game, too, when I figured out how to do it without cheating.

[Frodo]

I see it like this:

When i play something I always roleplay, what I mean is that internally I suspend disbelief and think like the game is real, I think about my X-Com soldiers as having personalities, and roleplay them, I internally "simulate" the politics of my Civilization, is much more fun that way for me.

So, when a X-com soldier dies, or an army is destroyed, I cannot reload without compromising the internal "reality" of the situation.
Also, the defeats are part of the game experience, if you never lose a soldier, never lose a battle you are cheating yourself for fully experiencing the game, what civilization never lost a battle?, what special forces squad never lost a soldier?.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

I can understand why people think like this. I believe it comes down to the following.

Player A plays through game exactly as it was meant to be played, and completes it.
Player B uses cheats/exploits and completes the game much quicker and more easily than Player A, whilst gaining the same benefits.

The insinuation here being that B's actions detract from the accomplishment of A's, or that B is robbing himself of the satisfaction of victory. I can understand why A would be pissed at B. B has gained the exact same result for less effort.

I don't use cheats much myself, although I metagame like a mother - fail? Reload! It's a function of the game, ergo, not cheating. Cheating implies a violation of preset rules, if the method to facilitate progress is already in the game it is hardly a violation, eh? A slight hijack but I feel there needs to be that distinction.

However, it come down to this: B doesn't care about A's abstract sense of self-satisfaction, and rightly so. In multiplayer games cheaters should be hung, drawn and quartered because they are actively detracting from the experience. In single player games though; it's your money, your product, do what you want with it. Rule of Fun clearly applies too.

[Mosier]

To avoid further hijacking this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11301337&posted=1#post11301337

I just cannot understand folks.

This thread has suggestions to:

- Reload the game after failed speech challenges
- Mods galore to make things easier.
- People talking about playing the game on easy mode cuz it's too tough (though others said it wasn't and instead of figuring out why others find it easy...why bother...hey I'll just ramp down the difficulty.

This might hit close to home because I have a son (though he is 25 now) who did this stuff constantly when he was a kid. He modded to make things easy. Constantly reloaded games if things didn't turn out right (watching him play Civilization was a real hoot....lose a battle...RELOAD!)

Gah...drives me batty. Why play? Just say you won and do something else.

Am I in such a minority? It seems so widespread, like I am alone in this view.

Dad? I didn't know you were on the dope!

[Lute Skywatcher]

You like a game in general and it has a point you won't ever get through. I use a cheat. Others quit and never play again. I bought the game for entertainment, not to stop at a point that I can't do. It's not about winning every part of a game for me it's about playing the game some more.Exactly.Mods get added to expand the game or make it better fit what some people prefer.Or fix what people think was broken in vanilla mode.

[Zsofia]

This pretty much sums it up for me. Also I like to see the story unfold. I don't play games "for the challenge." I just play for fun. If I needed to do something hard and challenging to feel fulfilled, it certainly wouldn't be video game.
Exactly - I don't get my "legitimate sense of accomplishment" from playing video games, I get it from baking a pie crust or finally teaching my dog not to pull on the leash or knocking a reference question out of the park. I have a real life - I play video games to enjoy them.

And it still cracks me up that somebody thinks I should be ashamed of letting people know in public that I set a game to "easy".

[Anaamika]

I never cheat in RPGs the first time through. Sometimes, though, it's fun to replay and cheat.

I never cheated in Oblivion or Falliut but you can bet I have the difficulty set to low. I want to enjoy it, not have impossible fights!

And I did cheat pretty much all the way through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Why? I am not that great at FPS (though not bad either) but it was the first time in a FPS that I really liked the story. A lot.

What's it to ya? I like playing it, I bought it, I play it the way I want. Why is it any skin off your back? I never understand people who have to judge other people's personal activities.

Hey, I knit too, and have never finished a project. No really! I just like the clacking of the needles and the repetitive motions - it's a kind of Zen for me - and making little squares. I can afford the yarn, I can afford the needles, I do it. Wanna judge me on that, too?


Oh yeah. All you people that are jonesing for tough video games? Google "I wanna be the guy". Watch some of the videos. Play it. Get back to me and tell if that is fun or arduous. We just set our definition of "arduous" at different places.

[Frodo]

I see nothing wrong with setting the game to "easy", how would one learn to play in "Fricking Absolutely Impossible" if one is not allowed to start in "easy"

(FTR: I play mostly on Normal, but if i really like a game i will not stop until i finish it on its toughest setting)

[Ferret Herder]

I suck at video games, basically. Crappy reflexes/hand-eye coordination. However, I like RPG games that have good plots, especially Bioware's. So I crank the difficulty all the way down to the lowest possible, and if I keep banging my head against a particular spot, I cheat my way past it. I don't brag or care about "beating" games, I don't talk about how good I am, and I fully admit that I cheat.

I use addons for some of these games, especially Baldur's Gate 2. I've played that game more times than I can think of because of new NPCs to interact with via addons, and I really don't want to grind through certain spots again, just to interact with these new characters, because it gets boring. So I cheat.

[Frodo]

Hey, I knit too, and have never finished a project. No really! I just like the clacking of the needles and the repetitive motions - it's a kind of Zen for me - and making little squares. I can afford the yarn, I can afford the needles, I do it. Wanna judge me on that, too?
.

:eek: HEATHEN!, burn her!






:p

[Least Original User Name Ever]

I never cheat in RPGs the first time through. Sometimes, though, it's fun to replay and cheat.

I never cheated in Oblivion or Falliut but you can bet I have the difficulty set to low. I want to enjoy it, not have impossible fights!

And I did cheat pretty much all the way through Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Why? I am not that great at FPS (though not bad either) but it was the first time in a FPS that I really liked the story. A lot.

What's it to ya? I like playing it, I bought it, I play it the way I want. Why is it any skin off your back? I never understand people who have to judge other people's personal activities.

Hey, I knit too, and have never finished a project. No really! I just like the clacking of the needles and the repetitive motions - it's a kind of Zen for me - and making little squares. I can afford the yarn, I can afford the needles, I do it. Wanna judge me on that, too?


Oh yeah. All you people that are jonesing for tough video games? Google "I wanna be the guy". Watch some of the videos. Play it. Get back to me and tell if that is fun or arduous. We just set our definition of "arduous" at different places.

Actually, I Wanna Be The Guy kinda looks fun, although painful.

[Chronos]

Another aspect: I enjoy asymmetrical games, where one side has one set of advantages and disadvantages, and the other has a completely different set, and where to win you have to figure out how to use what you have to negate your opponent, rather than just doing the same thing better. So I'll often set up a scenario in games like Warcraft with terrain that the AI isn't good at handling, or the like, but then make up for it by setting multiple opponents allied against me. Sometimes some of the things I give myself as advantages would be considered "cheating", but I make up for it by giving the opponent advantages, too.

[Bosstone]

Another aspect: I enjoy asymmetrical games, where one side has one set of advantages and disadvantages, and the other has a completely different set, and where to win you have to figure out how to use what you have to negate your opponent, rather than just doing the same thing better. So I'll often set up a scenario in games like Warcraft with terrain that the AI isn't good at handling, or the like, but then make up for it by setting multiple opponents allied against me. Sometimes some of the things I give myself as advantages would be considered "cheating", but I make up for it by giving the opponent advantages, too.Yeah, that sounds about right. I'd remove the resource limitation from the equation in Starcraft, but I'd never just play against one opponent. That's too easy.

[The Hamster King]

I'm a gamer from way back, so I'm accustomed to tinkering with the "official" rules. If my old gaming group didn't like a particular aspect of a board game or a pen-and-paper RPG, we'd CHANGE it. The point wasn't to hew to some designer's arbitrary rule set. The point was to have fun, and if changing the rules made the game more fun, then changing the rules was the right thing to do.

There's nothing wrong with "cheating" in a single-player game. (Or in a multiplayer game, for that matter, so long as all the players agree to the cheat.) The official rules of a game are not holy writ. They're merely a scaffolding for the construction of an entertaining experience. And if they fail to serve that purpose for a particular player, or group of players, there's nothing wrong with changing them so they do.

[Frodo]

I'm a gamer from way back, so I'm accustomed to tinkering with the "official" rules. If my old gaming group didn't like a particular aspect of a board game or a pen-and-paper RPG, we'd CHANGE it. The point wasn't to hew to some designer's arbitrary rule set. The point was to have fun, and if changing the rules made the game more fun, then changing the rules was the right thing to do.

There's nothing wrong with "cheating" in a single-player game. (Or in a multiplayer game, for that matter, so long as all the players agree to the cheat.) The official rules of a game are not holy writ. They're merely a scaffolding for the construction of an entertaining experience. And if they fail to serve that purpose for a particular player, or group of players, there's nothing wrong with changing them so they do.

It's not the same thing, I am also a gamer from way back and i think the kind of rule change we made to RPGs is more of a kind with mods than with cheats, you are changing the game not cheating.

Again i ask, why do you play Civilization if you dont want to play a civilization simulation?, and what real civilization managed not to lose one single battle?

[The Hamster King]

It's not the same thing, I am also a gamer from way back and i think the kind of rule change we made to RPGs is more of a kind with mods than with cheats, you are changing the game not cheating.What's the difference between changing a game and cheating?

Again i ask, why do you play Civilization if you dont want to play a civilization simulation?, and what real civilization managed not to lose one single battle?Heh. It's not like Civilization is a simulation. It's a fun few hours of fantasy. And if my fantasy is to be the ultimate dictator who never loses a battle, why shouldn't I play that way?

[Frodo]

What's the difference between changing a game and cheating?

You can change the game to make it harder, or simply different, if you change it for the express purpose of makint it easier then you are cheating

Heh. It's not like Civilization is a simulation. It's a fun few hours of fantasy. And if my fantasy is to be the ultimate dictator who never loses a battle, why shouldn't I play that way?

because its WRONG :mad:



:D.


I think there lies the difference, players like the OP and me (and I?) see the game as a simulation, while others see it as a sandbox to enact their fantasy, thus the misunderstanding.

In view of that, i'll think of removing my fatwa against cheaters, you can breath freely again (checks watch) Except Anaamika, I think is already to late for her...

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

First, I am not fan of speed challenges - KoTR, Neverwinter Nights and Fallout 3. I rather they just give out the option when your Speech reaches a certain level, or not make it black and white. I do load before a Speech challenge because I think those are stupid challenges (especially those with no retries).

The only other time I have cheated is to save time. I can't remember what game it is, but I occasionally do cheat to speed up getting from point A to point B. For some reason, I remembered using cheat codes in HoMM 4, but I think it is just to remove the fog of war (if you explore some large damned map, it would take you hundred of turns)

Thirdly, take Fallout 3 - the random encounters are so extremely unbalanced for a new player. I usually save before I head to anywhere important and reload if it turns out to be some crazy monsters which I could not defeat at my own level.

The purpose of the game is to provide entertainment. If you cheat to do it, and you enjoy it, I guess there's no big deal.

[Gorsnak]

It's not the same thing, I am also a gamer from way back and i think the kind of rule change we made to RPGs is more of a kind with mods than with cheats, you are changing the game not cheating.

Modding Fallout 3 is exactly like changing the rules in a pen and paper RPG. Out of the box, weapons deteriorate at a ridiculous rate - fire off one clip with your pristine sniper rifle and it'll be sitting at 80% condition or some ridiculous thing. So there are a whole host of mods to change that mechanic - either by increasing the number of items that can be used to repair your sniper rifle, or by making it degrade from use more slowly, or some combination of the two.

How is that different than using house rules for D&D because you think that class X is silly overpowered so you give them an extra handicap (or whatever)?

Granted, some Fallout mods make things extremely easy. Some godlike weapon might be added to Moira's inventory available for peanuts or something. But the people who use such mods are often simultaneously adding extra extremely nasty beasties wandering the Wasteland. Or they might have completely changed the combat mechanics to make their character far more susceptible to damage. Or whatever. The glory of the game is that nearly anything about it that you don't like can be changed, to the point where heavily modded it might not be anything like the original except superficially. If it also happens to be easier because some kid likes the decapitation animation on supermutants, who the hell cares?

[Nava]

Playing in easy mode is a cheat now? It's part of the official game mechanics!

I would never have beaten Civ I in the highest mode if I hadn't started in the lowest...

[jayjay]

I have a confession to make. I totally cheat coded my way through all three Warcraft strategy games.

1) I hate strategy games. I suck at strategy games. I am the world's worst strategy player. (The exception was the Impressions City Builder games (Caesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus)...I was mediocre/okay at those.

2) I started playing World of Warcraft before I ever even cracked the seal on a Warcraft game. The Warcraft strategy games ARE the backstory and lore of World of Warcraft and I was very interested in experiencing that backstory and lore. However, see 1).

3) I was not playing to win. I didn't care if I won or not, so much as caring that I get to go on and see the next scenario because I'd BEEN THERE in WoW.

The interesting thing is that, in some scenarios, cheating (and I went whole hog: infinite resources, God mode, etc) "breaks" the scenario. In the scenario of the Battle of Mount Hyjal, I killed Archimonde at his base camp at the bottom of the mountain...and then waited for 10 minutes while the game counted down the time it would have taken him to march his army up to the base of Nordrassil. It was a REALLY boring ten minutes...

[Frodo]

Playing in easy mode is a cheat now? It's part of the official game mechanics!

I would never have beaten Civ I in the highest mode if I hadn't started in the lowest...

Who said that playing in Easy mode is cheating?

[Lute Skywatcher]

#3 in the OP's list:To avoid further hijacking this thread:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=11301337&posted=1#post11301337

I just cannot understand folks.

This thread has suggestions to:

- Reload the game after failed speech challenges
- Mods galore to make things easier.
- People talking about playing the game on easy mode cuz it's too tough (though others said it wasn't and instead of figuring out why others find it easy...why bother...hey I'll just ramp down the difficulty.

[Zsofia]

The OP did. Evidently if we're going to do our perverted little cheats we should certainly be too ashamed to tell people on a public message board.

[Frodo]

I see, well that does not look like cheating to me.

[Hoopy Frood]

Since my post apparently led to Blinking Duck's brain hemmorage in that other thread, here's a repost of my response (which I posted before realizing he opened this one):

I'm a completionist. I like getting the optional conversations that won't occur/areas that can't be accessed without succeeding at speech challenges.

You never have to succeed at a speech challenge to finish the game. And usually when the successful speech challenge gives me a shortcut, I'll do it the hardway just to see it all. I've visited every room in every map I've been to, whether I needed to or not, just because I want to see the whole game. I'll repeat conversations over and over just to see what the different information branches give me, even if I don't really get any new info and the various branches merge to the same point anyway.

So if I metagame to do it, so be it. I still beat the game, because my metagaming doesn't change the overall outcome of any quests I undertake.

[Frodo]

That sorta makes sense, is still WRONG though, and you'll pay for it in the afterlife, for sure.

[Kobal2]

I have a confession to make. I totally cheat coded my way through all three Warcraft strategy games.

1) I hate strategy games. I suck at strategy games. I am the world's worst strategy player. (The exception was the Impressions City Builder games (Caesar III, Pharaoh, Zeus)...I was mediocre/okay at those.

2) I started playing World of Warcraft before I ever even cracked the seal on a Warcraft game. The Warcraft strategy games ARE the backstory and lore of World of Warcraft and I was very interested in experiencing that backstory and lore. However, see 1).

3) I was not playing to win. I didn't care if I won or not, so much as caring that I get to go on and see the next scenario because I'd BEEN THERE in WoW.

Same here. Some games, I "cheat" through only to get to see the story unfold. I don't remember using actual cheat codes, invincibility trainers etc... ever, but using cheap strats such as quicksaving/loading every 5 seconds, or using only the most broken, unbalanced, bug exploiting mechanism the game has to offer ? Sure. Because I don't enjoy the game itself that much - so I don't give a damn about messing it up.
That's only for games I utterly suck at, so RTS mainly. Oh, and that damn Dark Elf mission in Heroes 5. If you've played that game, you know the one I'm talking about. I don't mind a challenge, but 1 city against 5 ? Enemy heroes with artifacts up the keister ? And additional, random Inferno armies popping every other week for shits and giggles ? You've got to be shitting me.

[YamatoTwinkie]

I don't get my "legitimate sense of accomplishment" from playing video games, I get it from baking a pie crust.

Imagine you're talking with a friend, who insinuates that he too bakes excellent pies from scratch all the time. But upon further pressing, you find out that he just buys his pie crusts premade from the store, pours in a can of pie filling, and heats it up in the oven.

In addition, your friend tells you that he's *never* going to attempt to make a pie crust himself, thinking it too much work. Not now, not ever.

How would you feel about this? I'd bet you feel:
A) a little angry that he's insinuating he makes pies from scratch (who know how many other people he's told that to?)
B) a little disappointed that he's never going to have the experience of making a pie crust by himself.

[Ferret Herder]

Imagine you're talking with a friend, who insinuates that he too bakes excellent pies from scratch all the time. But upon further pressing, you find out that he just buys his pie crusts premade from the store, pours in a can of pie filling, and heats it up in the oven.

In addition, your friend tells you that he's *never* going to attempt to make a pie crust himself, thinking it too much work. Not now, not ever.

How would you feel about this? I'd bet you feel:
A) a little angry that he's insinuating he makes pies from scratch (who know how many other people he's told that to?)
B) a little disappointed that he's never going to have the experience of making a pie crust by himself.
But if he never talked up his awesome scratch pies, and instead just made them, ate them on his own, and says he likes pie but takes shortcuts if he's making them, no big deal. You can get a lot of the Pie Experience by eating other people's homemade pies, even if you don't make them yourself.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

How would you feel about this? I'd bet you feel:
A) a little angry that he's insinuating he makes pies from scratch (who know how many other people he's told that to?)
B) a little disappointed that he's never going to have the experience of making a pie crust by himself.

C) Don't care because what he does in his own time with his own money does effect me in the slightest, and I shouldn't be taking pie-boasting seriously in the first place.

;)

[astorian]

A game is supposed to be FUN. If one person is playing any kind of game by himself, I figure he's entitled to do things any way he likes.

It's only "cheating" if you're getting somekind of reward you're not entitled to, or if you're stealing a victory that rightfully belongs to someone else.

I haven't played any PC role-playing games in almost 10 years, but when I did, I frequently used a "cheat book" to get me past the puzzles or features that jst didn't interest me. If I enjoy the strategy-related or mystery solving-related features of a game, but don't enjoy wending my way through endless mazes and tunnels, why on Earth should I spend hours wending my way through tunnels? Why shouldn't I just look at the book and find out how to skip ahead to the features I DO enjoy?

On a more low-tech level, SOME people think it's "cheating" to use a dictionary when solving a crossword puzzle. Me? My take is, a crossword is supposed to be fun. If you're taking part in a competition against other puzzle solvers, yes, youd' be cheating if you used reference materials. But in your own home, at your own kitchen table? Do whatever you want! Again, solving a puzzle is supposed to be fun. If it's NOT fun for you to get stuck in a corner with blanks you can't figure out how to fill in, why NOT look it up? No sense giving yourself ulcers over something so trivial.

In a competition, you have to follow the rules. If you're playing alone, YOU make the rules, as far as I'm concerned.

[Zsofia]

Imagine you're talking with a friend, who insinuates that he too bakes excellent pies from scratch all the time. But upon further pressing, you find out that he just buys his pie crusts premade from the store, pours in a can of pie filling, and heats it up in the oven.

In addition, your friend tells you that he's *never* going to attempt to make a pie crust himself, thinking it too much work. Not now, not ever.

How would you feel about this? I'd bet you feel:
A) a little angry that he's insinuating he makes pies from scratch (who know how many other people he's told that to?)
B) a little disappointed that he's never going to have the experience of making a pie crust by himself.
Dude, I don't tell people I beat a game on the Awesome Evil Brutal Ass Kicking level. Essentially I'm doing the equivalent of mentioning, "Hey, I made a new pie last weekend. It was really good!" Lying about your pie (or your difficulty level, or whatever) is just sad, and I'd feel sorry for that person because he obviously thought I gave a crap what level he plays video games at, and it's clearly important to him for some pathetic reason.

[Just Some Guy]

Actually, I Wanna Be The Guy kinda looks fun, although painful.

It is but not for the reason the designer intended. The controls are absolutely terrible. If they fixed their interface code and kept the insane level design it would still make the point and be a better experience.

I think the fundamental thing that the OP is missing is gamers are not a monolithic block. You've got explorers and challenge seekers and fiddlers and community builders and on and on. People are looking for different things in their gaming experience and for some of them "cheating" (and I'd be hard pressed to call playing on easy cheating) doesn't diminish their experience.

Just last night I was listening to someone ask developers at the GDC the simple question, "Why game?" And as I was listening to their responses of, "It's fun," or, "Escapism," over and over I was thinking that these guys were not particularly deep thinkers. The answer to "Why is it fun?" is also the answer to the OP's question and it's going to be personal.

[DSYoungEsq]

Hmmm, it's almost like I was invisible. The attempt to inject some analysis into this has gone totally by the wayside. :(

You can do with a game whatever the hell you WANT to do with it. Who CARES if you "cheat" your way through the game. It's like playing golf on the course alone, with nobody playing against you, no bet on the line, not turning your score in for handicap, etc. If you fluff the lie, or replay a shot, what difference does it make?? NONE.

But, you are going to handicap your ability to play the game well if you insist on doing it regularly. This means that, if you ever DO have to play against someone else, you will do relatively poorly. It also means that you'll never ever be able to enjoy the deep satisfaction of knowing that you completed the game without having to "cheat."

[Ferret Herder]

But, you are going to handicap your ability to play the game well if you insist on doing it regularly. This means that, if you ever DO have to play against someone else, you will do relatively poorly. It also means that you'll never ever be able to enjoy the deep satisfaction of knowing that you completed the game without having to "cheat."
Eh, I'll never achieve any of those even without mods/cheats/easy mode forever/etc., so I'm not worried. If you're someone who that matters for, then sure, this makes sense.

[The Hamster King]

This means that, if you ever DO have to play against someone else, you will do relatively poorly. It also means that you'll never ever be able to enjoy the deep satisfaction of knowing that you completed the game without having to "cheat."Life is short and not everything is a competition.

Under what circumstances do I HAVE to play against someone else? Is a gun being held to my head? Why should I waste my precious free time playing a game in a way that bores and frustrates me just so I'll "be prepared" in case someone challenges me down the road?

And ... I'm not a completist. I don't get a deep feeling of satisfaction when I finish a game. Mostly I'm annoyed that I wasted so much time on something that had such an unsatisfactory resolution. For me gaming is about the journey, not the destination. I don't care very much about winning (or losing for that matter). I just want to have some fun and kill some time.

[Jragon]

I see it like this:

When i play something I always roleplay, what I mean is that internally I suspend disbelief and think like the game is real, I think about my X-Com soldiers as having personalities, and roleplay them, I internally "simulate" the politics of my Civilization, is much more fun that way for me.

So, when a X-com soldier dies, or an army is destroyed, I cannot reload without compromising the internal "reality" of the situation.
Also, the defeats are part of the game experience, if you never lose a soldier, never lose a battle you are cheating yourself for fully experiencing the game, what civilization never lost a battle?, what special forces squad never lost a soldier?.

Believe it or not, I do too, and this is one of the reasons I allow myself to metagame on some occasions. I am not under any illusions that I am as smart as my 28 int score epic mage. This actually stems from my tabletop experiences, where the DM (sometimes me) would allow Wise characters to "rethink" actions that violate every law of common sense available, intelligent characters to know things they shouldn't know (to a degree, some things weren't allowed because they fall under Knowledge ability checks), or slip exceptionally Charismatic characters pieces of paper with the NPC's likes and dislikes (or something) on them. Because none of us are Gandhi, Einstein, or MLK Jr.

If I'm playing a warrior character I generally go through with it and accept it (unless I pumped up my int stat, that's another story), if I'm a mage I may allow myself a couple reloads on the pretense of "that was my character thinking through what would happen if I said that to him."

That said, there are game mechanics or goals that I'll cheat through under the condition of being arbitrary or bullshit. I'm playing NWN2 again right now, so I'll use that. You need to raise gold to rebuild a keep. Getting gold is not hard, holding on to gold is not hard, and nothing to do with any of that is hard... at all, on top of that, it's not a challenge either (I'll explain the difference shortly). The only thing that's hard about it is not falling over unconscious from boredom while spending 30 minutes cleaning my inventory and traveling back and forth from A to B to pick up items I didn't have room for on the previous trip. I'll cheat myself the gold instead, thanks.

Now hard and challenge... this is a concept I think people confuse on occasion (meaning: confuse my arbitrary distinctions no-one else would logically have :D). I see it on gamefaqs often enough. People will point out something hair-pullingly difficult, but entirely unfair and claim it as a challenge and god forbid games have challenge now and all that, they'll cry at the "whiners." I'll use Canary Mary from Banjo Tooie.

She was evil to beat, she had the worst Rubber Band AI you've seen, unless you're a god at mashing buttons you weren't going to win (there are ways to bug the AI into losing, but they're equally esoteric skills). Even the developers mentioned they ran out of time to fix her, and that it was completely imbalanced. This is not a challenge, it does not have a reasonable way of completing it, it's buggy, terrible, and beating it tends to illicit the "thank god, finally" reaction more than the "I won! In your face!" reaction. Fake Difficulty (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.FakeDifficulty) basically, it's what Yahtzee was saying in Zero Punctuation with adventure games that involve "meticulously rubbing one object against another in hopes that that particular combination will allow you to hop on to the particular train of logic unique to that game's developer." I do not hold it against anyone for cheating through these (except the few acceptable cases where the Fake Difficulty is actually needed to make it a challenge at all, such as giving computer players stronger units because they're not as good tactically).

I also don't mind guides in some games (RPGs are the most guilty) simply because of the ridiculous amount of lost forever items and sidequests. I try to find "spoiler-free" guides if I can, meaning ones that list roughly when and where you can get a sidequest and when it can't be started/finished anymore, but not how to solve it or any actual "walkthrough." They often also list what dungeon an ultimate item is in, but not how to obtain it.

The only other form of "cheating" I think it completely passable is in simulation games like The Sims because oftentimes upkeep is more fun than character building (besides, not everyone is brought into the big wide world as a dirt poor person who barely has the skills for an entry level job, it may be nice to simulate someone who inherited 10 million dollars... or something).

Also... goddamn event Pokemon, I will say no more on that.

[BigT]

I just want to add that "cheating" in multiplayer is not bad if everyone your playing against knows your cheating and doesn't care. Some people don't mind the handicap of letting a lesser player cheat. And sometimes, everyone has agreed to cheat in a certain way and just wants to have fun.

As for roleplaying in video games, I do it, too, sometimes. But sometimes, you encounter something so difficult that it pulls you out of the game. Or are required to do something your character would never do.
I had a roommate who played a strict non-magic user in Morrowind. He cheated around anything that required magic. And he was hardcore; potions had sparkles, so they counted as magical. He didn't mind handling magic items as long as they didn't effect him, as his character just assumed that they weren't really magical. Anyways, you have to have a magical item to beat the game properly. Rather than take the time and mod a non-magical way to get the ending, he just knocked the self-healing guy into the lava, getting him glitched in such a way that, even if his character came back, the guy stayed there. So his character thought it was just as dying, as the bad guy was essentially stuck in hell. Then his character went back and massacred every magic user.
Cheating to get past those is fine. Although I don't like calling it cheating, because actual cheating requires deception on someone's part. And, in a single player game, there's no other entity to have been deceived. I know I didn't play it the way it was supposed to be played and can always go back and play it the "right" way later.

Saying all that, I do understand why it would be frustrating when someone brags about beating a game, and implies that they played the game as written. Since they are being deceptive with you, what they did retroactively becomes cheating. Just remember that they may not be intending to deceive you.

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

Ah, now I remembered when I do cheat.

Games like Diablo II and Titan Quest, where you have limited skill points. I forgot how many times I have to use a character editor because the skill I have invested in just don't plain work out (and re-starting and play another 3 days to get the point I am at?)

Another 'cheat' I use is basically just external programs to store items from said games. It's just like a pack mule on steroids.

[Trepa Mayfield]

It's probably been mentioned, but I figure I'll throw in my two cents.

-Occasionally I will look up how to solve a particular section. I do this, not so much when I am having difficulty doing the task at hand, but when I have no frickin' clue what to do next. I, personally, take no joy in figuring out where I'm supposed to go next if it involved 2 hours of doing the same thing slightly differently over and over and over and OVER again.

-Sometimes I look up stuff that I already completed, because I feel pride from reading it and thinking 'yeah, I did that'. Sometimes I find stuff that I didn't know about, and then go back and do. Is that cheating?

-With a certain franchise--Fire Emblem--I feel perfectly fine resetting the level if I screw up. However, I see this differently than other games. Mainly because, when you play that game, there are two places to aim:
Finishing the game (i.e. completing all the levels)
or
Getting everything (i.e. recruiting all the characters, getting all the treasure, etc.)

Also, this franchise doesn't allow for second chances. Ever. Meaning that if one of my characters die, I either have to restart the level or go on without him, for the rest of the game. Since I play to get everything, I would have to have an ungodly amount of skill in order to not reset.

[Trepa Mayfield]

It's probably been mentioned, but I figure I'll throw in my two cents.

-Occasionally I will look up how to solve a particular section. I do this, not so much when I am having difficulty doing the task at hand, but when I have no frickin' clue what to do next. I, personally, take no joy in figuring out where I'm supposed to go next if it involved 2 hours of doing the same thing slightly differently over and over and over and OVER again.

-Sometimes I look up stuff that I already completed, because I feel pride from reading it and thinking 'yeah, I did that'. Sometimes I find stuff that I didn't know about, and then go back and do. Is that cheating?

-With a certain franchise--Fire Emblem--I feel perfectly fine resetting the level if I screw up. However, I see this differently than other games. Mainly because, when you play that game, there are two places to aim:
Finishing the game (i.e. completing all the levels)
or
Getting everything (i.e. recruiting all the characters, getting all the treasure, etc.)

Also, this franchise doesn't allow for second chances. Ever. Meaning that if one of my characters die, I either have to restart the level or go on without him, for the rest of the game. Since I play to get everything, I would have to have an ungodly amount of skill in order to not reset.

Now that I have actually read the thread, allow me rephrase my comments on Fire Emblem.

I see the games--at least the playable parts--as a challenge. How can I outsmart the designer, such that I can get everything without missing a beat? The storyline, obviously, is different. But to me, those two parts are completely separate--the storyline is a well-told story about a war in a fantasy-type world with undertones about the real world, and the gameplay portion is a highly complex tactical challenge that just happens to use the same characters as in the storyline. So when certain characters have lines that 'should have' died based on my first run-through of the level, to me, the story isn't wrong because I cheated--the characters are alive because that's what the story wants. It's just a different perspective, is all.

[DSYoungEsq]

Life is short and not everything is a competition.

Under what circumstances do I HAVE to play against someone else? Is a gun being held to my head? Why should I waste my precious free time playing a game in a way that bores and frustrates me just so I'll "be prepared" in case someone challenges me down the road?

And ... I'm not a completist. I don't get a deep feeling of satisfaction when I finish a game. Mostly I'm annoyed that I wasted so much time on something that had such an unsatisfactory resolution. For me gaming is about the journey, not the destination. I don't care very much about winning (or losing for that matter). I just want to have some fun and kill some time.

No one said it was all a competition. But I've found that some of the most fun you can have playing computer games is to do so online against human opponents. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. :)

And if you don't care about finishing a thing, well, then, that's fine. I'm just saying that there is a satisfaction that most people get from accomplishing something unaided by "illegal" help. YMMV, obviously.

[Garula]

I think god-mode style cheats are horribly un-fun and worthy of eye rolling. However, there are a few things I will do to make things easier for myself.

-Removing item carry limits. I am far too patient a person. After clearing a dungeon in an RPG or similar, I will meticulously return over and over again to make sure I get every last piece of loot. This isn't exactly a challenge, it's just boring. So, I'll just edit my character to be able to carry everything and get on with my day. I will usually compensate by mentally restricting myself to a reasonable equipment loadout.
What RPGs with carry limits SHOULD have, in my mind, is a "send to storage" option whenever you find loot. Hitting that option would send the item to your domicile or home base or whatever. That way, you wouldn't have to backtrack for hours to pick up everything, but you would still have to make hard choices about which equipment you want to take along.

-Fixing character build mistakes. Sometimes I'll play an RPG and not notice that I made a mistake making my character. Usually something like improperly allocating skill points so that I can't qualify for something. In that case, I will think nothing of editing my character to fix that. I will always make sure that my changes result in a character that I could have had legally, if not for my mistake.

-Checking for 'Lost Forever' things. I am a completionist. I hate Hate HATE it when games have permanently missable items or sidequests if you fail to do something at some arbitrary point. I don't care if the reward is something I will never use, I need to get it. It crushes my morale when I find out I missed something. I have no compunction about checking a guide ahead of time to see if this will come up. This also means I will save scum if a speech check or whatever is needed.

I'll also cheat if it increases my fun options. When I was playing Neverwiner Nights 2, I removed the party size limit, but compensated by only allowing myself to have the normal number of characters fighting at any one time and only allowing myself to rest once per area. If my main group was defeated, then I'd use my backup team to try and pull through. It was a much more interesting resource management setup than then normal fight, rest, fight, rest, fight, rest flow.

I never cheat in action games, though. Seems antithetical to the whole point.

[Jragon]

-Checking for 'Lost Forever' things. I am a completionist. I hate Hate HATE it when games have permanently missable items or sidequests if you fail to do something at some arbitrary point. I don't care if the reward is something I will never use, I need to get it. It crushes my morale when I find out I missed something. I have no compunction about checking a guide ahead of time to see if this will come up. This also means I will save scum if a speech check or whatever is needed.

Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark actually forces a lost forever on you, this pissed me off so much I got really creative.

You see, you're sent to get allies, or anything that can help you, from (I think) 4 locations, two deep in the Underdark, two down a river that you talk to a boat NPC to get to in order to fend off an attack from some Drow that rather don't like you. After finishing (again, I think) two of those missions and returning to town the Sergeant/General/Organizer dude runs up to you to say "job well done" forcing you to miss two of the locations.

The completionist I am, I said screw that. There's a plot item you get that, effectively, allows you to teleport anywhere you please. So I just went to the last two places I wanted to do, set up my teleport destinations, and then went and completed the one I just did and went to the other two without passing through town and thus getting stopped.

Metagaming? Totally. Worth it? That was my favorite "screw you!" To the designers ever, so yes. Sometimes reloading a save to work your away around something like that is totally justified in those cases, imo of course.

[TBG]

Gah...drives me batty. Why play? Just say you won and do something else.

Am I in such a minority? It seems so widespread, like I am alone in this view.

Just because you like games, doesn't mean you're always good at them. To me, it's much more fun to play a game with cheats than to play one that I can never win. That's not to say I always cheat and never play normally, just I like to have the option should I so choose.

Why should such things drive you batty? My cheating or not doesn't affect you in any way in single player games. You play your way, I'll play mine, and we can each get what we want out of the games.

--TBG, who once went to Canada just to buy a GameGenie for the NES when Nintendo got the courts to temporarily keep them out of US stores

[The Hamster King]

No one said it was all a competition. But I've found that some of the most fun you can have playing computer games is to do so online against human opponents. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it. :)Heh. I've played (and designed) lots of online games. If you're looking for a competitive experience, I agree that a human opponent always beats an AI. It's just that some of us aren't looking for a competitive experience as a freetime activity.

And if you don't care about finishing a thing, well, then, that's fine. I'm just saying that there is a satisfaction that most people get from accomplishing something unaided by "illegal" help. YMMV, obviouslySee, I don't view finishing a game as an "accomplishment", any more that I view finishing a book or watching a movie as an accomplishment. I do it for the journey, not the destination. And based on the comments in this thread, lots of people feel like I do.

[Mister Rik]

5. I've beaten the game a million times before. I've mastered it and I just want to make a mini god and stomp everything in sight.

This is me. I played through Duke Nukem 3D the first time without cheating. After that, when I just wanted to kill some time I'd type in the code for "God mode" and just run through blowing shit up. Because it was fun :)

ETA: Also, WarCraft II and III (moreso with III than II). It didn't take me long to figure out that I'm just not very good at RTS games. But I found the stories fascinating and wanted to see how they ended, so I used cheat codes where necessary to progress through to the end of the games.

[Fenris]

The game balance might be out of whack. Mods to make things easier sometimes aren't so much about giving you an I Win button as simply making the game more fair and reasonable.

This.

Last game I played all the way through was Tron 2.0.

Well designed game, beautiful graphics, compelling storyline. And never really play-tested by the authors.

I started using cheats when, halfway through the game, there was a part where you had to run up a flight of stairs, grab a rifle, run up another flight of stairs to a window and start target-shooting 'storm troopers' that were about 8 pixels big. They came running in like ants in a line, exactly at the maximum speed I could fire. There were hundreds of them. Then, halfway through the fight, you had to stop firing, run back down the steps, recharge your weapon, run back up and shoot another hundred or so of them who were now that much closer to the door. If even one of them got in--if you missed one time, you lost. Too bad.

It was about a 15-20 minute sequence of the most tedious point-and-click shooting I've ever dealt with and with literally no margin for error, it was near-impossible (if you took one extra step between the window and the recharge unit, if you took one extra second at the recharge unit, you lost).

You couldn't progress in the game if you didn't get past that scene. Everything bottlenecked there.

I cheated by getting a hack that let you fire grenades, taking out dozens of them at once. Made the scene about 4 minutes long and a lot more fun.

There's no way that anyone tested that scene.

I have no qualms about using mods to fix game-designer errors.

[Martini Enfield]

I can see most of the "Did they let you out of the nursing home, Grandpa?" and "Why the fuck do you care if someone cheats in/mods a purely single-player game?" comments have already been made, so I'll move past that and mention that computer games have evolved considerably in the last few years to the point (especially post- Half-Life) where they're really interactive movies and as such are very much now (IMHO) more about the journey than the destination.

As for Mods: Most of the mods I've used have been to fix gameplay imbalances or to restore features from previous games in the series removed in sequels. For example, in the 1994 game Colonisation, you could "abandon" a colony which turned out to be indefensible or in a really crappy location, provided it didn't have a stockade. This "feature" was removed from the re-make Civilisation IV: Colonisation, but has been restored by Mods. Actually, there's a comprehensive, balanced Mod for C4C which makes it an incredible game and fixes pretty much every criticism anyone has ever had with it, but that's by the by. ;)

In Most RPGs, your character will find a lot of Stuff lying about the game world. In Ye Olde Days, most of the Stuff your character found would invariably turn out to be useful (or even vital) much, much later in the game- to the point where, in early RPGs, it was entirely possible to find yourself at an impasse because (for example) you didn't collect the pocketwatch from the jeweller's back in the Town Square section several play-hours previously. So, rather than restore from a previous save and have to re-play half the game, you could just open up an Item Editor programme and magic the Pocketwatch into your character's inventory, removing the "roadblock" and allowing the game to continue.

Contrary to what the OP seems to think, most people using cheats in single-player games are not looking for an "I Win" button. So, in the above scenario, most players would not simply open the Item Editor and magic themselves every. single. item in the game. It's there as a form of "Lifeline" to help the player progress through the story.

In modern RPGs, however, the "forgetting to collect a vital quest component at the start of the game" trope is (more or less) redundant and instead game worlds are now full of Stuff that is completely and utterly useless, but looks useful- and therefore your character might very well find themselves lugging about Oddly Shaped Rocks and Steering Wheels From a '67 Chrysalis Highwayman because they look important- but they aren't.

So, there are mods in place to allow your character to carry more- or, even better, actually use all this Stuff to make useful things. It's about enhancing the in-game experience, not detracting from it.

The game designers want you to enjoy the game. And in something like Fallout 3 or Oblivion, it's not enjoyable to be getting your ass handed to you at Level 3 when you're constantly getting attacked by Raiders with SMGs or Whirling Banshees With Fire-Magic and the best you've managed to get is a 10mm pistol with one spare clip of ammo, or a Rusty Dagger Of Not Doing Very Much Damage.

My policy is to play the game "properly" through the first time, with reference to a Walkthrough in areas where I'm really, really stuck (say, have spent 15 minutes of Real Time wandering around and around in circles looking for the Cavern Entrance, when it turns out that there's a switch concealed in the rockpile next to to the dead badger that needs to be activated to reveal it), or perhaps a quick check of a Components List to see if that Fusion Battery I've picked up (having not seen many) is actually used for anything or if it's just in-game "colour".

Having completed the game properly, on re-plays I'm going to explore and want to sightsee (and do quests I missed the first time around), and to that end I have no problem with anyone wanting to give themselves better starting equipment or more ammo or anything like that.

I view meta-gaming (walkthroughs, save/reload etc) as being very similar to watching a movie, going "Hmm, I don't think I completely understood what the Director was getting at there" and going onto IMDB or Wikipedia and discovering that the scene with the Aardvark and the Millkman represented the Milkman's fear of change and desire to be strong about... whatever it was that was happening.

It's not "cheating", it's adding to the experience and enhancing my enjoyment of the subject. As long as you've made an attempt to do it "properly" first time through, I see no problem at all with mods, cheats, and meta-gaming in single-player games.

Multiplayer is an entirely different kettle of fish, of course, and rightly so.

Incidentally, playing a game on "Easy" is not cheating, and anyone who says otherwise, IMHO, is grabbing at straws in a vain attempt to make themselves feel vaguely superior to everyone else.

[emcee2k]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge? Is it just pressing buttons and seeing things change on the screen?

[Hoopy Frood]

Hmmm, it's almost like I was invisible. The attempt to inject some analysis into this has gone totally by the wayside. :(

You can do with a game whatever the hell you WANT to do with it. Who CARES if you "cheat" your way through the game. It's like playing golf on the course alone, with nobody playing against you, no bet on the line, not turning your score in for handicap, etc. If you fluff the lie, or replay a shot, what difference does it make?? NONE.

But, you are going to handicap your ability to play the game well if you insist on doing it regularly. This means that, if you ever DO have to play against someone else, you will do relatively poorly.

Because obviously save/reload on a speech challenge rather than simply living with the results will permanently damage my long term ability to press a button on a controller.

[Bosstone]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge? Is it just pressing buttons and seeing things change on the screen?Turns out it's possible to put plot in games. Freaky, I know.

[Trepa Mayfield]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge? Is it just pressing buttons and seeing things change on the screen?

Sometimes, cheating adds to the challenge, as people have been explaining throughout the thread.

[kushiel]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge? Is it just pressing buttons and seeing things change on the screen?

I dunno, you tell me how 20+ hours of level grinding is a challenge. I see it as the developers saying 'Oh hey, we've set out 15 hours of plot and characterization. Let's put in another 30 hours of level grinding. Hmmm, well, we can just recolour this sprite 3 times and make each colour a harder enemy, and then we can initiate a random battle every three steps!'

Or, how kushiel got bitter when she got to the end of disc 3 of Final Fantasy VIII only to realize she wasn't leveled up enough to defeat the bosses but she couldn't leave the area to level grind and so had to start a new game file.

[The Hamster King]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge?Is playing make-believe challenging? Not really. But it is fun.

Consider a game like Flower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_(video_game)). Your goal is to collect petals. It's not hard, there's no time limit, and no way to lose. There's no real challenge to it, but it's still a satisfying and interesting experience.

If the only thing that makes games fun is the challenge, why is Flower fun?

I think one of the things that has been holding back the evolution of games as an art form is the idea that they must always be structured so that they require significant effort to beat. It's like dismissing ballet as viable form of entertainment because the dancers aren't competing for a prize.

[Martini Enfield]

You know, I strongly suspect that the people getting upset about people "cheating" in single-player games don't actually play "modern" PC games, because it's one of those things that if you were a regular game-player you'd either A) agree with the idea of modding/meta-gaming or B) Choose not to mod/meta-game as a personal choice, but not care if other people do so with their single-player games.

[Bosstone]

You know, I strongly suspect that the people getting upset about people "cheating" in single-player games don't actually play "modern" PC games, because it's one of those things that if you were a regular game-player you'd either A) agree with the idea of modding/meta-gaming or B) Choose not to mod/meta-game as a personal choice, but not care if other people do so with their single-player games.It's probable. I mean, depending on the game, many of the posts above make sense. Take Tetris. The challenge is the entire point of playing Tetris; any sort of cheating (giving yourself an incredibly high score or something) completely defeats the purpose of the game. (Even then, one might 'cheat' to access the higher levels of the game faster, because they're good enough at it that the first, say, 10 levels of speed are just boring.)

Modern games tend to be more complex than that, though. Many games these days are rich in detail and story. Cheating provides a way to bypass those aspects of the game you're bad at in order to enjoy the parts of the game you want to see. Why should I be stymied in a first-person shooter game just because it threw one of those 15-tile slider puzzles at me, which I hate and don't like to do?

Now, I'm not condoning cheating as standard practice, and I think people who cheat to win and then boast about winning are incredibly immature. But there are situations in which cheating is not automatically morally bankrupt.

[HPL]

What exactly is the fun in a game besides the challenge? Is it just pressing buttons and seeing things change on the screen?

I dunno....plot, atmosphere, humor, blowing shit up, puzzle solving(provided the puzzles aren't running on moon logic).

Maybe I don't feel like replaying the same ****ing race sequence in GTA for the 30th time just to proceed with the game because the designers were dicks and decided to make this rather difficult race MANDATORY for no good reason other then the make the game longer.

Or in C&C where the AI never seems to follow the same rules you have to, and they have the added advantage of being able to do 20 things at once while you can only do one. And they can see the whole map.

Some challenge is needed or the game gets boring. Too much challenge and the game becomes frustrating and most people don't play games to be annoyed. They'll just give up because they don't feel it's worth it anymore.

If the developers play fair, I'll usually play fair. If they want to be cheating assholes, turnabout is fair play.

[Miller]

I see it like this:

When i play something I always roleplay, what I mean is that internally I suspend disbelief and think like the game is real, I think about my X-Com soldiers as having personalities, and roleplay them, I internally "simulate" the politics of my Civilization, is much more fun that way for me.

I do sort of the same thing, but for a different reason. I don't want the game to be like real life, I want the game to be a good narrative. And if, in the narrative I have in my head, Soldier A is the star, then there are certain narrative conventions that need to be obeyed. One of those conventions is, "The main character doesn't get killed in Act 1." So if my star character steps on a land mine during mission 4 and gets his legs blown off - I reload. Because I want to craft an interesting story, not a realistic story.

Of course, there are times when a good death makes a better story than surviving a fight. If my star character dies, but after single handedly killing twenty enemies, I'll keep that result, because that's an interesting ending to the character. If he dies because there was a sniper on the other side of the map that I had no way of knowing about, I'll reload. Because that's a pointless and stupid way for the character to die.

No one said it was all a competition. But I've found that some of the most fun you can have playing computer games is to do so online against human opponents. If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend it.

I don't see the appeal in about 95% of the multiplayer games out there. Especially in FPS. Deathmatch has got to be the most tedious thing ever devised for a computer that did not involve Will Wright. There are a few exceptions, mostly involving co-op or story-based play, but mostly, multiplayer options are a gigantic waste of time as far as I'm concerned.

[OneChance]

I pretty much only play PC-based first-person shooters, and often use God mode to Rambo through games. I don't always want to stop and strategize and sneak up on enemies and change weapons for different situations. That's just not fun to me. I just want to run through and kill everything in my path. Normally, in subsequent plays, I'll play the games as they were meant to be played, only using God mode to get through difficult parts.

[Gatopescado]

Hence the Allure of The Drink!

[Spectralist]

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is that some times it's fun just to try to figure cheats out. I often get more enjoyment fiddling with Cheat Engine trying to figure out how to make my character jump higher or trying to figure out why a seemingly bizarre game mechanic works the way it does then i do from actually playing the game. Or spending hours looking through save files with hex editors trying to figure out what all the values represent. And what would happen if i replaced them with numbers outside of their normal scope.

[Just Some Guy]

How about that; I just ran into a perfect example of why someone would cheat when playing on their own.

I've been playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. because in my foolishness I figured a few years were enough time to get all the bugs worked out. It wasn't. And the game suffers from a particularly strange case of split personality: the combat is structured like the game should be a stealth based sneaker (your weapons are wildly inaccurate and you die in half a second if you get attacked; and this is playing on the medium difficulty) but many other aspects of the game design (AI that knows from half a kilometer away that you're there once you draw a gun and aim at them, locked down environments that you can't sneak through). I suspect that the game was going to be stealth based until about half way through when they shifted tone.

The reason that I stuck with it is that if it had been titled "Exploring Run Down Soviet Architecture" and that's all there was to it then it would have been brilliant. The environments are some of the greatest I've ever encountered. And considering that it's mainly gray and brown industrial facilities that's an astounding accomplishment. It may be gray and brown but nothing looks monochrome (at least not unless your brain is being fried by the hole in reality Chernobyl left behind). It maybe industrial facility #435 but they look like they have a purpose and are in appropriate states of decay.

Still I'm getting fed up with having to crawl through combats. Like I said, combat is brutal and fast and you're just as likely to die as the enemy which makes engaging in it frustrating. I just want to get to the sarcophagus and check out what the nuclear plant is like. I finally complete the mission that opens up the route to get to through and as I enter the zone to start the game changes so that I'm escorting a team through sniper hell. Fine. At this point I'm worn out and I just want to get into the next section and take a look around. I do that and once you're at the plant it starts a sequence where you're forced to go to the end game. Oh, and if you didn't ditch the guys you were escorting to explore the previous map section you can't through to the proper ending (which goes on for a while past the false ending including letting the player continue to explore the environment). Didn't keep your save from back there? Oh well, you get to start over.

Screw that, I say. I got to poke around the top of reactor #4; that was the only thing I was playing for. I'm not going through the irritation again just to complete the game. So I thought I'd just cheat and walk to the end. Nope. No can do. There are no cheats for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. so I can't just noclip through the last door and end it.

I want to explore radioactive ruins that I'll never get to check out in real life and the game won't let me. That's what cheating is for.

[PatriotGrrrl]

Is playing make-believe challenging? Not really. But it is fun.

I think one of the things that has been holding back the evolution of games as an art form is the idea that they must always be structured so that they require significant effort to beat. It's like dismissing ballet as viable form of entertainment because the dancers aren't competing for a prize.

You may be on to something there. I know when my friends drop by and we put on a game, they often don't want a competition - they want to put on something free-form like GTA and run around doing random stuff just to see what happens. And to make things go boom.

[Jack Batty]

Sometimes it isn't about winning. Not everything on a planet is a competition. Do you win or lose when you watch a movie? (Well, maybe you lose if the movie is Transformers 2, but I digress).

I played Far Cry 2 for weeks when I first got it, and I steadily made may way through the story, but after a while, the gleam of lost its luster a little and I lost track of playing it. But lately, I decided I was interested in the story, so I've been re-playing it on Easy mode -- not exactly cheating, but not a huge challenge ... because I want to know where the story goes without investing 3 months of my life.

I'm also doing the same thing with Medal of Honor: Airborne at the moment. It is fun, even if I can't brag to the uber-nerds online about how great I am at a video game.

[BlinkingDuck]

I was called out of town on biz...

I see some peeps have agreed with me and made posts I fully agree with.

As I've said before, it's your life. Yes, it bugs me but do what you will.

I do, however, like to participate in 'strategy' boards...where people discuss strategy/the game. However, most posts are irritating to me because IT IS TERRIBLE STRATEGY.

Why is it terrible?

- They play on too easy a level. You will go back and forth a bit until you realize that this must be the case and so you ask 'what difficulty level do you play on?' Invariably it is 'baby cake walk mode'. Well, hell dude....ANY strategy will work on baby cakewalk mode! Play at a real, manly level next time!

- It is terrible strategy because they cheat. For example, in Civ someone will recommend (just making this up) - build 2 armies right off the bat and attack the player next door! I then ask..."What do you do if the 2 armies don't take the city?" (actually this is the most probable outcome)....silence...This is because THEIR answer is that their armies ALWAYS take the city. Well...DUH!...ANY strategy will work if you don't allow it to fail!

So...go ahead and cheat. However, do it in private. Do NOT pretend you have actually played the game. Also, for the love of Pete, do not advocate to others reloading after failed speech challenges in FO3. :)

[Bosstone]

I do, however, like to participate in 'strategy' boards...where people discuss strategy/the game. However, most posts are irritating to me because IT IS TERRIBLE STRATEGY.Okay, this? This makes a lot more sense and I heartily empathize. I have no desire to defend people who act like cheating to win a game means you've accomplished something.

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

I was called out of town on biz...

I see some peeps have agreed with me and made posts I fully agree with.

As I've said before, it's your life. Yes, it bugs me but do what you will.

I do, however, like to participate in 'strategy' boards...where people discuss strategy/the game. However, most posts are irritating to me because IT IS TERRIBLE STRATEGY.

Why is it terrible?

- They play on too easy a level. You will go back and forth a bit until you realize that this must be the case and so you ask 'what difficulty level do you play on?' Invariably it is 'baby cake walk mode'. Well, hell dude....ANY strategy will work on baby cakewalk mode! Play at a real, manly level next time!

- It is terrible strategy because they cheat. For example, in Civ someone will recommend (just making this up) - build 2 armies right off the bat and attack the player next door! I then ask..."What do you do if the 2 armies don't take the city?" (actually this is the most probable outcome)....silence...This is because THEIR answer is that their armies ALWAYS take the city. Well...DUH!...ANY strategy will work if you don't allow it to fail!

So...go ahead and cheat. However, do it in private. Do NOT pretend you have actually played the game. Also, for the love of Pete, do not advocate to others reloading after failed speech challenges in FO3. :)

I still think it's anyone's business what difficulty level what people play at. Of course, people play games at higher difficulty levels for boasting rights, but I don't see any need to tell people who play at easier level not to post their experience (I don't mean you are not suggesting that explicitly), but for people who post strategies, it could be a good idea for them to state their difficulty levels.

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

I was called out of town on biz...

I see some peeps have agreed with me and made posts I fully agree with.

As I've said before, it's your life. Yes, it bugs me but do what you will.

I do, however, like to participate in 'strategy' boards...where people discuss strategy/the game. However, most posts are irritating to me because IT IS TERRIBLE STRATEGY.

Why is it terrible?

- They play on too easy a level. You will go back and forth a bit until you realize that this must be the case and so you ask 'what difficulty level do you play on?' Invariably it is 'baby cake walk mode'. Well, hell dude....ANY strategy will work on baby cakewalk mode! Play at a real, manly level next time!

- It is terrible strategy because they cheat. For example, in Civ someone will recommend (just making this up) - build 2 armies right off the bat and attack the player next door! I then ask..."What do you do if the 2 armies don't take the city?" (actually this is the most probable outcome)....silence...This is because THEIR answer is that their armies ALWAYS take the city. Well...DUH!...ANY strategy will work if you don't allow it to fail!

So...go ahead and cheat. However, do it in private. Do NOT pretend you have actually played the game. Also, for the love of Pete, do not advocate to others reloading after failed speech challenges in FO3. :)

I still think it's anyone's business what difficulty level what people play at. Of course, people play games at higher difficulty levels for boasting rights, but I don't see any need to tell people who play at easier level not to post their experience (I don't mean you are not suggesting that explicitly), but for people who post strategies, it could be a good idea for them to state their difficulty levels.

As for speech challenges in Fallout 3, this is how I see it. The designers made Charisma a dump stat. Some people doesn't want to be bothered with it, and hence make the choice to say "this is a faulty design, screw it, I am going to just save and reload". For me I just accept my lot and give a 6 for Charisma and invest in Speech.

Sorry, double post

[Lute Skywatcher]

They play on too easy a level. You will go back and forth a bit until you realize that this must be the case and so you ask 'what difficulty level do you play on?' Invariably it is 'baby cake walk mode'. Well, hell dude....ANY strategy will work on baby cakewalk mode! Play at a real, manly level next time!I suggest you keep in mind that some of us are much less skilled than you, would still like to win eventually, and have little to no chance of ever winning above carebear level without cheating.So...go ahead and cheat. However, do it in private. Do NOT pretend you have actually played the game.I also suggest you remember that not everyone plays the same way. Games are supposed to be fun, not work; some of us play to have fun and enjoy the story. What's it to you that we don't play your way, Mr. Albertson?

[Hoopy Frood]

As for speech challenges in Fallout 3, this is how I see it. The designers made Charisma a dump stat. Some people doesn't want to be bothered with it, and hence make the choice to say "this is a faulty design, screw it, I am going to just save and reload". For me I just accept my lot and give a 6 for Charisma and invest in Speech.

Except for the following:

You can't exceed 100 in speech regardless of your charisma, so it's rather useless as a skill boost.

Charisma can, however, increase a characters disposition toward you. But so can karma, once again lowering the usefulness of the stat. (Although, charisma will work regardless of alignment. But then again, I'm guessing you'll be hard pressed to get a good success chance from someone of opposite alignment anyway).

Even with a full out speech check and matching karma/charisma, there are speech challenges in the game that still have chance of failure.

And for any that care, I boosted speech pretty consistently through my game, so it wasn't as if I wasn't at least attempting to make a character with a golden tongue.

Speech was a bad mechanic in FO3, IMO.

[Max the Immortal]

It appears that the anti-cheaters' main complaint is people who cheat at a game and then brag about their exploits. However, I don't think anyone in this thread is denying that one forfeits any and all bragging rights when one uses a cheat.

Like many others, I always abstain from cheats on my first play-through. The more I've played a game, though, the more inclined I'll be to fiddle around with it. In Fallout 3 I may just remove an encumbrance limit, or I may add extra perks to my character and give him unique weapons that would be a time-consuming hassle to get the legit way. In the latter case I'm playing more for the scenery and the music than anything else, and there's something about mowing down enemies with a gatling laser that makes the music sound better.

In other cases I'll fiddle around with a game to explore and appreciate its structure. Sometimes it's fun to see how a game of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri unfolds if I use the map editor to cover every land tile with forest, or with mag tubes. Maybe I'll start a game of Civ IV and see what happens if I plunk every wonder into my first city on the first turn; maybe I'll grant myself every technology to see just how useful endgame tech is without resources or large cities. Maybe I'll place wonders in their historical cities as they're founded.

My knowledge of the inner workings of programs is minimal, but I know how to crack open a text file for Rome: Total War, alter a small part of a single line, and all of a sudden my principes throw scorpion bolts instead of pila. It's not anywhere near playing the legit way, but it is hilarious.

In short, I see a video game not as a challenge to be overcome and bragged about, but as a toy to be played with. Playing with a toy in unconventional ways is still perfectly valid. If I saw a child playing with action figures, and he had He-man team up with the Decepticons to fight the Ninja Turtles, I wouldn't yell at him for playing with them the wrong way. He's not playing with them the way they're "supposed" to be played with, but that's not the point.

[emcee2k]

I dunno, you tell me how 20+ hours of level grinding is a challenge. I see it as the developers saying 'Oh hey, we've set out 15 hours of plot and characterization. Let's put in another 30 hours of level grinding. Hmmm, well, we can just recolour this sprite 3 times and make each colour a harder enemy, and then we can initiate a random battle every three steps!'

Turns out it's possible to put plot in games. Freaky, I know.

They make games that are just plots with no game play at all. They call them movies. Freaky, I know.

Sometimes, cheating adds to the challenge, as people have been explaining throughout the thread.

That's obviously not cheating.

Is playing make-believe challenging? Not really. But it is fun.

Consider a game like Flower (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flower_(video_game)). Your goal is to collect petals. It's not hard, there's no time limit, and no way to lose. There's no real challenge to it, but it's still a satisfying and interesting experience.

If the only thing that makes games fun is the challenge, why is Flower fun?

I think one of the things that has been holding back the evolution of games as an art form is the idea that they must always be structured so that they require significant effort to beat. It's like dismissing ballet as viable form of entertainment because the dancers aren't competing for a prize.

If they invent something fun and interactive, with no real challenge, great, but that's not a game.



There used to be a commercial for a computer with someone saying "Every time I get a new game, I go online and find codes so I can beat it faster". It annoyed me that not only was he not even going to attempt to play without cheating, he actually considered that "beating" the game. When in fact, as soon as you resort to cheating, the game has beat you.

No, it doesn't personally affect me, so it shouldn't bother me. But it does. I'm not saying you can't cheat on your own game. It's not like I'm going to run into your house and club you over the head if you do. I just think it's stupid.

[Martini Enfield]

I was called out of town on biz...

I see some peeps have agreed with me and made posts I fully agree with.

It appears that if a few people have tangentially agreed with you, it's been with a "But only on the first playthrough" proviso, with all bets being off for subsequent replays. I think there might be one or two posters of the Older Generation taking the same "Damn kids not playing the game right!" attitude as you, but nearly everyone else in the thread is disagreeing with you (or so it seems).

As I've said before, it's your life. Yes, it bugs me but do what you will.

Then why are you ranting about it on a messageboard and going to so much trouble to tell people how much the way they play the game at home alone irritates you?

I do, however, like to participate in 'strategy' boards...where people discuss strategy/the game. However, most posts are irritating to me because IT IS TERRIBLE STRATEGY.

Why is it terrible?

- They play on too easy a level. You will go back and forth a bit until you realize that this must be the case and so you ask 'what difficulty level do you play on?' Invariably it is 'baby cake walk mode'. Well, hell dude....ANY strategy will work on baby cakewalk mode! Play at a real, manly level next time!

- It is terrible strategy because they cheat. For example, in Civ someone will recommend (just making this up) - build 2 armies right off the bat and attack the player next door! I then ask..."What do you do if the 2 armies don't take the city?" (actually this is the most probable outcome)....silence...This is because THEIR answer is that their armies ALWAYS take the city. Well...DUH!...ANY strategy will work if you don't allow it to fail!

So...go ahead and cheat. However, do it in private. Do NOT pretend you have actually played the game. Also, for the love of Pete, do not advocate to others reloading after failed speech challenges in FO3. :)

Ah, I see. So you don't actually play many PC games at all, besides Civilisation, and therefore have no idea what you're actually talking about.

If you really cared about strategy you'd be playing Chess at International Grand Master level. But you're not. You're playing Civ and trying to make yourself feel good about beating it on Deity level. You know what? No-one cares. It's a game. An excellent game, but only a game nonetheless.

Why not re-post your rant on the strategy board you frequent? Then you can have everyone there agree with you and everyone's happy.

There's no difference, when you think about it, between modding a copy of Fallout 3 (And have you actually played the game, or are you just seizing on it as an oft-mentioned titled in an effort to sound like someone who doesn't wear a tweed jacket, smoke a pipe, and drive an Austin-Healey?) and fiddling around with a car.

Sure, a (for example) "factory" BMW E60 M5 has a top speed of around 250km/h, but there are any one of a number of modifications and tune-ups available to make it go much faster (get rid of the speed inhibitor and the car will do around 300km/h, for example).

But, by your logic, every petrolhead on the planet is "Cheating" for "Modifying" their car. But I'm sure you'll say "No, that's not what I meant at all!"

There is absolutely no difference, IMHO, between modifying or customising a car to suit the owner's preferences, and "modding" or using cheat codes in a computer game to provide for a more enjoyable experience for the individual user.

Just because you don't get The Stig to do a playthrough of Fallout 3 or Civilisation IV after it's been modified doesn't change the fact that the item's performance has been modified from original to provide a better experience for the user, and this is a perfectly valid, acceptable, (and in most cases, desirable) thing to do.

If you don't want to mod or use cheat codes in games, you're quite welcome to avoid their use. It's a perfectly cromulent personal choice. But choosing to use mods or cheat codes in single-player games is also a perfectly acceptable choice as well.

There's no "moral high ground" to be taken by wrapping yourself in the Flag Of True Strategy and declaring yourself a Patriot To The Ideals Of Playing Games On Really Hard Difficulty Levels. If that makes you happy, great. But don't presume to lecture other people on what they should be doing with their entertainment sources.

In short, I see a video game not as a challenge to be overcome and bragged about, but as a toy to be played with. Playing with a toy in unconventional ways is still perfectly valid. If I saw a child playing with action figures, and he had He-man team up with the Decepticons to fight the Ninja Turtles, I wouldn't yell at him for playing with them the wrong way. He's not playing with them the way they're "supposed" to be played with, but that's not the point.

Bravo! Couldn't have put it better myself- I agree completely.

[Really Not All That Bright]

I like slaughtering things. Not just defeating them, but crushing them and all their little friends. If I'm not good enough to slaughter things without help (which is the case most of the time), I'll cheat.

I just finished Freelancer, for example, and I didn't cheat, because every time I got a new ship I was able to waste other people's ships more or less at will for a while.

[Auntbeast]

Seriously, there's somebody who thinks I'm a low down dirty cheater because I set the game on easy? I paid for the damned game, I'm not good at games where you shoot things, I want to enjoy the thing. It isn't fun to die and die and die and die and never get to play the damned game - so conveniently, the game developers realized that people have different skill levels and gave me an easy setting, so I can enjoy a game I paid for. I didn't realize it made me a bad person.

Honestly, if you're so tired of "cheating", go out to a real irradiated wasteland and learn how to kill mercenaries and scavenge your own food and water. Playing Fallout instead is just cheating!

Did I write this? Do a google search for fallout death loop. I had a choice, either die, get up, die, get up, die, get up etc. Restart after 20 hours of play, or find a cheat to get me out of a loop. I was really surprised it had such a wonky option. RPG's usually will revive you at a particular location, usually away from the fray.

I love post-apocalyptic stuff, I suck at FPS's. God Mode Please!

[Gorsnak]

Oh man. I started a new game of Fallout 3 last night. And the first thing I did? Loaded a mod that puts a set of mirrored sunglasses into the game, opened up the console, and "player.additem 0305c99f 1" (or whatever the hell the item code was) and cheated those shiny shades right into my inventory. I should really mod that mod to give them a +1 charisma stat, too, cuz they're just so damned sexy. Re-textured leather armor (that's not really cheating, I guess) and the shades and a laser pistol, I'm too sexy for the Capitol Wasteland.

The OP can go suck eggs. :p

[Dangerosa]

Obviously, a game like solitaire is only played to be won, but even then there's some room for cheating to keep it interesting. Like "hmm, I wonder what would have happened if I'd moved the 2 of clubs onto the red three instead of the 2 of spades" and then you find that, as luck would have it, all the cards you would have needed were in that pile.

Sometimes solitaire is played to keep your hands busy.

I used to fish. I used to fish without a lure or bait - gaming the system to loose. I didn't want to catch anything, I wanted the peace of sitting in the boat casting. But often it is more fun to win than it is to loose. A lot of computer games are about releasing stress by killing things. Or about the enjoyment of playing - if its more frustrating than relaxing - then it isn't any fun and why play it? If you can cheat through it, it might be fun again after this one thing you are banging your head against.

[Mister Rik]

There is absolutely no difference, IMHO, between modifying or customising a car to suit the owner's preferences, and "modding" or using cheat codes in a computer game to provide for a more enjoyable experience for the individual user.

Well, there's one difference. Assuming all of the components are functioning properly, I'm still getting my money's worth if I leave the car unmodified. But if I get to a certain point in an (unmodded) game, and no matter how I try, no matter what I do, I simply cannot get past that point and thus cannot finish the game, I'm not getting my money's worth.

I paid for the whole game, not just that portion up to the point where I find myself stymied, and if I cannot finish the game, I've wasted my money.

This is in fact what happened the first time I played through WarCraft II (or maybe it was III - it's been a few years). There was a scenario perhaps 60% of the way into the game that, for whatever reason, I just couldn't wrap my head around. I actually worked at it for several days, trying many different strategies, each of which failed. I finally broke down and looked up the cheat codes, used them as necessary to get me past that scenario, and then didn't need to use them after that.

Had I just given up and stopped at that point, as far as I'm concerned I wouldn't have gotten the game I paid for.

[Max the Immortal]

There used to be a commercial for a computer with someone saying "Every time I get a new game, I go online and find codes so I can beat it faster". It annoyed me that not only was he not even going to attempt to play without cheating, he actually considered that "beating" the game. When in fact, as soon as you resort to cheating, the game has beat you.

To reiterate, nobody here is defending that attitude. In fact, I'd wager that the guy who wrote that line wasn't a gamer; after all, when was the last time anything on television depicted a video game accurately? Television always gets it wrong. ("I have a level 60 night elf mage!" No you fucking don't!)

[Mr. Kobayashi]

Ok, this is getting ridiculous.

The other day in Fallout 3 I used console commands to give myself Liberty Prime's laser, make myself 25 feet tall and invincible. Nothing could kill me and I could dismember anything in one shot. Cheating? Undoubtedly. Fun? You bet your ass.

Unless you want to impose some sort of fun embargo let people cheat away. It's not fun to lose your two armies (or whatever), and the purpose of a game is...well, fun. If you buy a set of golf clubs and play on your own land in your own time, who the hell cares if you give yourself constant Mulligans or modify your clubs or whatever (maybe you're not gonna win any US Opens, but chances are you're not gonna care). If it's fun, it justifies it; it's your money, your product, which gives you the right to use the product however you please.

[emcee2k]

To reiterate, nobody here is defending that attitude. In fact, I'd wager that the guy who wrote that line wasn't a gamer; after all, when was the last time anything on television depicted a video game accurately? Television always gets it wrong. ("I have a level 60 night elf mage!" No you fucking don't!)

Television or not, I know a lot of people with that attitude. Not just believing they beat the game when they didn't, but immediately entering infinite ammo, invisibility, "God Mode" or whatever codes as soon as they get a game without even attempting even easy mode. Or running to a walk through the moment they're not sure what to do next in an RPG, or, worse yet playing the game from the beginning, "Players' Guide" in hand.

They don't even the give the game a chance the way that the designers and programmers created it. It's like putting a movie in your player and fast-forwarding over huge chunks, then saying you watched it.

[Martini Enfield]

Television or not, I know a lot of people with that attitude. Not just believing they beat the game when they didn't, but immediately entering infinite ammo, invisibility, "God Mode" or whatever codes as soon as they get a game without even attempting even easy mode. Or running to a walk through the moment they're not sure what to do next in an RPG, or, worse yet playing the game from the beginning, "Players' Guide" in hand.

So I guess you have a problem with travel guides to real-world locations as well, right? Next time you stop in at the Vatican or London or Saigon, you're just going to wander around aimlessly and hope you discover all the interesting stuff worth seeing before you leave?

And as has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, modern games are more about the journey than the destination. You don't "Beat" them, you finish them. Which again proves you're not a gamer (or you'd know this), which means you forfeit your right to object to how (some) people play modern computer games.

[Jragon]

And as has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, modern games are more about the journey than the destination. You don't "Beat" them, you finish them. Which again proves you're not a gamer (or you'd know this), which means you forfeit your right to object to how (some) people play modern computer games.

I'm on your side on this debate, for the record, but I have to disagree here. "Beating" a game is still a perfectly usable term. I'll say that I recently "beat" Half-life 2 or some other such game, especially if I've already played it once (which I'll admit I may say "completed" the first time through).

Granted, when *I* hear people say they beat Warcraft III my first response is "man, that Arthas dude is a bastard, huh?" Moreso than "what ended up being your winning strategy on March of the Scourge"* so that seems to be where me and emcee differ.

* I defy anyone who's played WCIII on hard to not curse the very name of this mission, along with Blackrock and Roll too and Under the Burning Sky.

[Robin Goodfellow]

This is a bizarre thing to argue about.

I am, I guess, what you could consider one of the Older Generation of gamers, from a time before Game Genies and mods. There were cheat codes, yes, but they were never open-ended and usually existed just so you could keep playing the game rather than seeing the title screen again. Think Konami code or free continues.

This parallels playing your favorite game in the arcade with your friends. If you feed it your whole allowance's worth of quarters, then hey - you're obviously just playing to have fun. If you insist on beating it in one Continue - you're playing it to conquer the game.

Different people play games for different reasons. None of these reasons are the wrong reason for the person playing the game. But, when those 'gamer personality' types mix and argue about how to play, it can get pretty messy.

How do you explain to a new bowler playing with gutter-guards that their score doesn't count next to a professional player? How do you tell a stock racer that some people like the thrill of driving on pro courses without getting their car to spec?

...

Okay, those are crappy analogies. But the fact that they're crappy analogies points to why it's bizarre to have this argument. Videogaming is a relatively new hobby, and people do it for wildly different reasons.

Yes, it's your $50. But if someone walks up and tells me they 'beat Half-Life/Fallout/Peggle,' I expect that means I can reasonably expect them to sympathize with how goddamn hard the boss of Level 3 is, and we can share stories about our favorite way of getting through the prerequisite stealth section.

However, if they one-shotted the boss of Level 3 and level-skipped the stealth section, then we have nothing to talk about. We didn't play the same game. We can both reasonably say that we put the same game in the same slot, and even saw the same ending and credits, but beyond that the actual Game part is totally unrelatable. I recently played inFamous about the same time as a coworker, and we were both pretty delighted when the game saw our performance on the first section and automatically offered to switch us to Hard mode. His response was, "hell yeah I'll play your hard mode; you got anything more difficult?!" :D

I can't expect everyone to play games like I do. People pay their money and get their fun how they want it. But the people who use cheats in every single game, I find, are usually solo players who don't interact with many other gamers. Not that they're ashamed of how they play at all, nor should they be--just that plenty of socially-connected gamers consider that one stealth section a challenge, not an annoyance, and want to be able to swap stories about what the game is like as an experience, which is hard to do when the swapée did not have the same level of challenge, if they were challenged at all.

I'll caveat and say that modding a game so you can have sweet shades is not actually cheating - it is awesome. :D Seriously, tho, there are plenty of mods in Fallout 3 that actually increase the difficulty, or just modify the sky, or something else that changes the game laterally. Mods in and of themselves aren't necessarily game-breaking.

It's a silly thing to judge people for, but it's also silly to think that some people's version of fun can't involve the feeling of accomplishment from beating a game on Hard.

[Trepa Mayfield]

That's obviously not cheating.

...

If they invent something fun and interactive, with no real challenge, great, but that's not a game.

Your definitions of 'cheating' and 'game' are not universally shared.

[Jragon]

Or running to a walk through the moment they're not sure what to do next in an RPG, or, worse yet playing the game from the beginning, "Players' Guide" in hand.

They don't even the give the game a chance the way that the designers and programmers created it. It's like putting a movie in your player and fast-forwarding over huge chunks, then saying you watched it.

These parts aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, I just want to say. World of Warcraft is a prime modern offender between being practically required to watch boss videos beforehand but also having to know arcane behind the scenes stuff about your class and use 3rd party mods (some of which Blizzard added later because they were a good idea). It got to the point where this isn't player institutionalized, the raids are more or less unwinnable without this knowledge. And now that I think about it, Blizz actually includes guides with all their Battle Chests now (though Blizzard games have gotten somewhat notorious for somewhat baffling scenarios, especially defense maps)

But this isn't the only case, Earthbound shipped with a players guide, at least implying they probably intended you to use it and I'm not entirely convinced that help hotlines weren't Sierra's ACTUAL business model, with the games being merely a facilitator (okay, that last one is a joke... maybe). Also, sometimes something seems not to be working and you look at a strategy guide just to make sure you're not crazy (i.e. see if it takes a bit to "stick"). For example, in WCIII (yes, that again) there were several missions on hard where I was relieved after looking it up that I was, indeed, using the correct strategy, it was just a matter of pulling it off. Or, bouncing back to Earthbound, the "fuck you" boss that is the Clumsy Robot, which is pretty much a joke boss that causes people to panic and reset their game before they get to the cutscene that defeats it because it appears unbeatable. (see: Guide Dang It! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt) for further examples)

I know I probably extended that somewhat into territory you agree with (or at least I assume you acknowledge that sometimes developers don't quite have their heads on straight in truly mind-boggling ways), but I just wanted to point out that guides and information sharing like that aren't necessarily unintended. This especially holds true in certain playtesting styles (aka the "we never rotated out our testers so they got so hellishly good at the game we forgot you mere mortals wouldn't be able to handle it in 900 years" style).

[Lute Skywatcher]

A lot of computer games are about releasing stress by killing things.This is exactly why I had Mortal Kombat for SNES. I later bought MK3 for SNES and found that my motor skills simply aren't fast enough for the newer game. With nobody to play against and zero chance of passing even the first round against the AI, I bought a controller capable of cycling the start button really fast, putting the game in slo-mo. This limited my playable characters to Cyrax and Sektor but at least I could play the game and survive a few rounds.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Well, there's one difference. Assuming all of the components are functioning properly, I'm still getting my money's worth if I leave the car unmodified. But if I get to a certain point in an (unmodded) game, and no matter how I try, no matter what I do, I simply cannot get past that point and thus cannot finish the game, I'm not getting my money's worth.

I paid for the whole game, not just that portion up to the point where I find myself stymied, and if I cannot finish the game, I've wasted my money.

This is in fact what happened the first time I played through WarCraft II (or maybe it was III - it's been a few years). There was a scenario perhaps 60% of the way into the game that, for whatever reason, I just couldn't wrap my head around. I actually worked at it for several days, trying many different strategies, each of which failed. I finally broke down and looked up the cheat codes, used them as necessary to get me past that scenario, and then didn't need to use them after that.

Had I just given up and stopped at that point, as far as I'm concerned I wouldn't have gotten the game I paid for.Same for me with Silent Storm and Neverwinter Nights.

[Bosstone]

They make games that are just plots with no game play at all. They call them movies. Freaky, I know.Get back to me when they make a Half-Life 2 movie. Or a Psychonauts movie. Or a Planescape: Torment movie.

[Left Hand of Dorkness]

And, as pointed out, if the only way you win your games is to cheat at them, where is the legitimate sense of accomplishment?
I'd say the legitimate sense of accomplishment is down at the homeless shelter, where I could be volunteering to feed the hungry instead of sitting on my ass in front of a screen playing pretend.

Computer games (and tabletop roleplaying games, too, another subject where I've had this same conversation) are great entertainment, great for passing the time--but they're crap for accomplishing anything. The challenges are pretend, and so are the victories. If you're having fun, you're doing it right; and if you're not having fun, you're completely wasting your time.

[Mr. Kobayashi]

But this isn't the only case, Earthbound shipped with a players guide, at least implying they probably intended you to use it and I'm not entirely convinced that help hotlines weren't Sierra's ACTUAL business model, with the games being merely a facilitator (okay, that last one is a joke... maybe). Also, sometimes something seems not to be working and you look at a strategy guide just to make sure you're not crazy (i.e. see if it takes a bit to "stick"). For example, in WCIII (yes, that again) there were several missions on hard where I was relieved after looking it up that I was, indeed, using the correct strategy, it was just a matter of pulling it off. Or, bouncing back to Earthbound, the "fuck you" boss that is the Clumsy Robot, which is pretty much a joke boss that causes people to panic and reset their game before they get to the cutscene that defeats it because it appears unbeatable. (see: Guide Dang It! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt) for further examples).

Speaking of tropes, I think this one (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys) also applies to the current debate.

[Salix]

There are some games that you practically have to play with a FAQ next to you if you want to see everything. Chrono Cross, for example, although that has a New Game+ option. Also Final Fantasy XII with the Zodiac Spear that you can only get if you didn't open four arbitrary chests you encountered earlier. It's especially annoying in long RPGs because I don't want to play for 30 hours just to find that I screwed myself out of some item that I might really want.

I've found myself save scumming the Fallout 3 speech challenges as well. Now that I think about it, Bethesda probably added the speechcraft and lockpicking minigames in Oblivion so that those actions would be more than just a cycle of saving before you try to pick a lock or raise someone's disposition and reloading if you fail.

[BlinkingDuck]

Speaking of tropes, I think this one (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys) also applies to the current debate.

This is actually helpful! Some of those archtypes are so foreign to me that I scratch my head over people playing like that.

I am a club...and didn't know it.

I normally play Battlefield Europe as my online game. This is a pure PvP game.

When I played other games, like COH, I still played like a club...but I was the kind that gravitated to healing and buffing other players.

=========

That being said...cheating is still wussy no matter what your reasons :D

[YamatoTwinkie]

Then why are you ranting about it on a messageboard and going to so much trouble to tell people how much the way they play the game at home alone irritates you?

If you really cared about strategy you'd be playing Chess at International Grand Master level. But you're not. You're playing Civ and trying to make yourself feel good about beating it on Deity level. You know what? No-one cares. It's a game. An excellent game, but only a game nonetheless.

I'm not sure where all the apparent vitriol is coming from. Come on, we're on an internet forum dedicated to gaming. I'm not sure why you seem to think that any sort of discussion of that nature is somehow beneath your standards. I'm not going to go around posting on the various LoTR threads in Cafe Society saying that everyone there interested in a spirited debate on something like the nature of the Maiar is pathetic and should either go somewhere else or spend the energy reading a "real" work of fiction instead.


There is absolutely no difference, IMHO, between modifying or customising a car to suit the owner's preferences, and "modding" or using cheat codes in a computer game to provide for a more enjoyable experience for the individual user.

I agree you, but that really depends *if* the user is *truly* going to get a more enjoyable long-term experience out of it. I think in many cases, a user attempting to modify or customize their product right off the bat (whether a videogame or a fancy BMW) winds up with a *less* enjoyable experience, because they simply just didn't know any better.

IMHO, I think that a good percentage of the people that cheat or put the game on baby-mode the first time through would probably have a more favorable view of the game in the long-run if they just played it like the developers intended the first time.

And because I like certain videogames a whole lot, I get a little disappointed to see that sort of behavior, because I want others to have as much enjoyment out of them as I did. Why should I care? It's just human nature I guess.

[Lute Skywatcher]

IMHO, I think that a good percentage of the people that cheat or put the game on baby-mode the first time through would probably have a more favorable view of the game in the long-run if they just played it like the developers intended the first time.

And because I like certain videogames a whole lot, I get a little disappointed to see that sort of behavior, because I want others to have as much enjoyment out of them as I did.How do you know they're not? Getting as much enjoyment as possible out of a game sometimes means having to cheat in order to progress past a certain area.

[emcee2k]

So I guess you have a problem with travel guides to real-world locations as well, right? Next time you stop in at the Vatican or London or Saigon, you're just going to wander around aimlessly and hope you discover all the interesting stuff worth seeing before you leave?

And as has been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, modern games are more about the journey than the destination. You don't "Beat" them, you finish them. Which again proves you're not a gamer (or you'd know this), which means you forfeit your right to object to how (some) people play modern computer games.

Games aren't designed with the intention that the player will have internet access to read a walk-through or the extra money for a players' guide. If you take the time to explore the world and talk to the NPCs, you can't beat (or "finish") games without an extra guide. If you have a guide to tell exactly what to do, when and how, you lose a huge chunk of the experience of the game. You might as well just have the author of the guide come in and play the game for you, and you can watch. If anything, I'm a gamer, and you're not.

Get back to me when they make a Half-Life 2 movie. Or a Psychonauts movie. Or a Planescape: Torment movie.

Are you saying you really only play video games for the story?

Your definitions of 'cheating' and 'game' are not universally shared.

I'll grant you some gray area on the definition of a game, but I don't see how you can consider making the game harder cheating. Cheating specifically means giving yourself an advantage, not just "breaking the rules".

These parts aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, I just want to say. World of Warcraft is a prime modern offender between being practically required to watch boss videos beforehand but also having to know arcane behind the scenes stuff about your class and use 3rd party mods (some of which Blizzard added later because they were a good idea). It got to the point where this isn't player institutionalized, the raids are more or less unwinnable without this knowledge. And now that I think about it, Blizz actually includes guides with all their Battle Chests now (though Blizzard games have gotten somewhat notorious for somewhat baffling scenarios, especially defense maps)

But this isn't the only case, Earthbound shipped with a players guide, at least implying they probably intended you to use it and I'm not entirely convinced that help hotlines weren't Sierra's ACTUAL business model, with the games being merely a facilitator (okay, that last one is a joke... maybe). Also, sometimes something seems not to be working and you look at a strategy guide just to make sure you're not crazy (i.e. see if it takes a bit to "stick"). For example, in WCIII (yes, that again) there were several missions on hard where I was relieved after looking it up that I was, indeed, using the correct strategy, it was just a matter of pulling it off. Or, bouncing back to Earthbound, the "fuck you" boss that is the Clumsy Robot, which is pretty much a joke boss that causes people to panic and reset their game before they get to the cutscene that defeats it because it appears unbeatable. (see: Guide Dang It! (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GuideDangIt) for further examples)

I know I probably extended that somewhat into territory you agree with (or at least I assume you acknowledge that sometimes developers don't quite have their heads on straight in truly mind-boggling ways), but I just wanted to point out that guides and information sharing like that aren't necessarily unintended. This especially holds true in certain playtesting styles (aka the "we never rotated out our testers so they got so hellishly good at the game we forgot you mere mortals wouldn't be able to handle it in 900 years" style).

The players' guide was only included with the US release. It was a marketing decision, since they didn't think the game would sell well on it own with American consumers. I'm not really sure how the developers felt about all the puzzles and secrets they took the time to build into the game being given away with it.

Anyway, I agree with most of what you say here. I understand the distinction between being completely stuck at a part of a game, and after trying everything you can think of, looking at a walk-through for that specific part just so you can progress to the next part of the part of the game.

And, I'm not above trying to squeeze a little more entertainment out of a game that I've beat many times over by enter a code. But for me personally, I can only use the the levitate code to drop Link head first into a bridge so many times before the novelty wears off.

[Bosstone]

Are you saying you really only play video games for the story?Tch. Of course not. What I'm saying is that there are legitimate reasons other than challenge, such as story, for wanting to play through a game, and saying "go watch a movie" doesn't cut it, because there are quite a few unique stories you can only get through games. Games provide depth movies lack and a visual element books lack.

[Lute Skywatcher]

Games aren't designed with the intention that the player will have internet access to read a walk-through or the extra money for a players' guide. If you take the time to explore the world and talk to the NPCs, you can't beat (or "finish") games without an extra guide. If you have a guide to tell exactly what to do, when and how, you lose a huge chunk of the experience of the game. What about games with a built-in map function that isn't exactly user-friendly? Fallout 3 comes to mind; I'm sure there are people who bought the guide to that game because they couldn't figure out what the local map was trying to tell them.I don't see how you can consider making the game harder cheating.In the thread that spawned this one, the OP claimed adding any mod is cheating; some mods are designed to make a game harder.

Disclaimer: I did buy the guide to the Fallout 3 but didn't use it, or any mods save one that added more music, until after the first time I played through.

[YamatoTwinkie]

How do you know they're not? Getting as much enjoyment as possible out of a game sometimes means having to cheat in order to progress past a certain area.

Notice I qualified my statement with "a good percentage of people". Certainly you're correct that in some cases (whether to poor game design, lack of time to develop appropriate skill needed for completion, or a user that just plain doesn't care about the intended story and pacing of the game and just wants to smash things with a Mjöllnir-wielding-god-of-destruction), plenty of people that "cheat" might end up having just as much of an entertaining first experience as I did, maybe even more so. I can't fault that.

But some people just plain don't know whats best for themselves, and get cheated out of a better experience because they aren't forced to play it as the developers intended for their first-run.

[Hoopy Frood]

Games aren't designed with the intention that the player will have internet access to read a walk-through or the extra money for a players' guide.

Obviously you haven't played Final Fantasy XII and tried to complete the beastiary.

What was it I had to do now to get the obscure rare monster to show up? Stand on my head and whistle Beethoven's Fifth Symphony backwards when it's after Midnight but before Noon and make sure I have the Sword Of Doom equipped on one of my party....

(Note: I exaggerate, but only slightly.)

[Jragon]

What was it I had to do now to get the obscure rare monster to show up? Stand on my head and whistle Beethoven's Fifth Symphony backwards when it's after Midnight but before Noon and make sure I have the Sword Of Doom equipped on one of my party....

You forgot the part about wrapping the power cord around your pinky finger and catching every 5th raindrop in Malaysia in your mouth for EXACTLY 6.73 picoseconds and then giving a pit bull an acorn you're forced to use in the tutorial but can get around by pressing X, O, Triangle, X, X, R1, L2, L3, selecting "time travel" and then using a T-Rex to impale the tutorial giver on his 3rd most right tooth. (That is to say, the T-Rex has to pull out the tutorial giver's third most right tooth and then impale him on it, not the T-Rex's tooth).

[wonderlust]

My son, even at 16, goes straight for God Mode on single-player games, then plays for an hour and says the game is too boring. Well, duh. It bugs me a bunch when he plays god mode, which just reinforces his laziness.

Once, playing Oblivion, I tried playing with unlimited wealth, so I could buy all the cool stuff the pirates sold. After that, the game lost all its fun for me. Clearly, that's not for me.

But I do a few small cheats now: in Fallout 3, I force all map locations to be shown at the beginning, get rid of encumbrance limitations, make my canine companion immortal. These just ease up the things that massively irritate me so that I don't quit playing, without removing the other challenges.

I agree that the experience belongs to the player, but I think many players might give up a game too soon, when all it needs is more (or fewer) cheats.

[JayRx1981]

What do some of you anti-cheaters define as cheating anyways?

Reloading a level when you make a mistake?
Turning on a developer-provided purchased "Extra" (Lego Star Wars I'm looking at you)?
Utilizing a hidden but still developer-provided cheat code (Starcraft, Warcraft, I'm looking at you)?
Exploiting a game-loop to super-level your characters (Final Fantasy VI, I'm looking at you)?
Using a game guide?

And I'll freely admit to doing all of the above on occasion. Because I personally don't play video games to feel accomplished. I'm not good enough at them for that. I play them for the fun, the story, or even just to pass the time.

[Trepa Mayfield]

I'd say the legitimate sense of accomplishment is down at the homeless shelter, where I could be volunteering to feed the hungry instead of sitting on my ass in front of a screen playing pretend.

Computer games (and tabletop roleplaying games, too, another subject where I've had this same conversation) are great entertainment, great for passing the time--but they're crap for accomplishing anything. The challenges are pretend, and so are the victories. If you're having fun, you're doing it right; and if you're not having fun, you're completely wasting your time.

Whoa now, let's not go too far. Some people see games--and some games are specifically designed--as a gauntlet; a series of difficult and complex challenges that the player is trying to accomplish. Sure it may be virtual, but it's like...say...completing a Professor's Cube without memorizing any algorithms. Or being able to run the yard in 45 seconds. Or FINALLY being able to toss the stupid *&#(ing ring on the stupid (#^%ing bottle for the stupid #$)*ing teddy bear. Would you deny those people their sense of accomplishment? Their activities were just as pointless and frivolous.

[Isamu]

It is but not for the reason the designer intended. The controls are absolutely terrible. If they fixed their interface code and kept the insane level design it would still make the point and be a better experience.

I think the fundamental thing that the OP is missing is gamers are not a monolithic block. You've got explorers and challenge seekers and fiddlers and community builders and on and on. People are looking for different things in their gaming experience and for some of them "cheating" (and I'd be hard pressed to call playing on easy cheating) doesn't diminish their experience.

Just last night I was listening to someone ask developers at the GDC the simple question, "Why game?" And as I was listening to their responses of, "It's fun," or, "Escapism," over and over I was thinking that these guys were not particularly deep thinkers. The answer to "Why is it fun?" is also the answer to the OP's question and it's going to be personal.

I agree entirely - for me the story is the most important thing and I make up my own backstory for myself and for enemies, most of the time. I "cheated" like a motherfucker in Sim City (a singleplayer game) when it first came out and it was so much more rewarding for me that way. I had no interest in seeing if I could play by the designers' rules to see if I could build a functioning city despite the impediments thrown at you. I wanted to build my perfect utopia, and then when I go bored of that, seeing if I could turn the same city in to a perfect dystopia. Then I wanted a totalitarian regime where the wealthy lived in splendor and the poor toiled in slums. And so on, and so on.

Despite the hours I put into that game I don't think I ever once tried to play a game without "cheating". I'm so ashamed. :rolleyes:

[BlinkingDuck]

What do some of you anti-cheaters define as cheating anyways?

Reloading a level when you make a mistake?
Turning on a developer-provided purchased "Extra" (Lego Star Wars I'm looking at you)?
Utilizing a hidden but still developer-provided cheat code (Starcraft, Warcraft, I'm looking at you)?
Exploiting a game-loop to super-level your characters (Final Fantasy VI, I'm looking at you)?
Using a game guide?

And I'll freely admit to doing all of the above on occasion. Because I personally don't play video games to feel accomplished. I'm not good enough at them for that. I play them for the fun, the story, or even just to pass the time.

Yes.

(well...except for an extra that doesn't make gameplay easier like, an example given above, adding more music to FO3 or making a game harder, not easier.)

[Jack Batty]

I agree with Left Hand of Dorkness. Chrissakes, I'm 44 years old and I play video games ... do I have to further patheticize myself by bragging about how good I am at it?

[appleciders]

I cheat for two reasons- either I cheat because something in the game is obviously broken and I cannot progress without cheating or would take a silly penalty for not cheating, or I cheat because I know that I'm capable of beating the game to the designer's capability and want to see if I can beat it to my own goals without worrying about the more tedious aspects or want to pick apart the game mechanics.

An example for the first condition would be Medieval II: Total War.* My computer is only marginally capable of running this game. Occasionally the game will repeatedly crash 2/3rds of the way through a battle that I'm clearly winning. I cannot beat this battle because the game is crashing. However, autoresolving this battle will result in a spectacular defeat or a Pyrrhic victory for me, which is a silly penalty because I can indeed beat this if given the chance. (I'm typically speaking about siege defenses, wherein I believe the autoresolve doesn't give enough credit to the defenders.) So I cheat to win that battle because I can indeed beat it, but see no reason to spend days hoping that the machine won't crash while I try.

The second condition is better shown in Age of Empires II. I can beat this game by playing the developers' rules. But doing so will involve a lot of tedious micromanaging resource gathering, and I'm more interested in whether I can create an army of exactly 40 men (the largest number that can be selected at once) that can defeat an enemy base without losing a single man. In Medieval II, I might play through trying to keep maximum chivalry, or using all-cavalry armies, or without siege equipment. In Delta Force: Landwarrior, I played through using each character's stereotypical loadout (sniper rifle for the sniper, silenced weapons for the sneaker, explosives for the demolitions expert) and once without any weapons except my knife and those I took from an enemy's body. In each case, I learned something about how the game mechanics work and could then apply that to how I played in the vanilla game. And if I had to savespam to do it, who cares? Each time I had to reload, that was a failure in my eyes, and I had to refine my tactics to succeed.

*Yes, I know that playing this game unmodded was my first mistake. Can we move on?

[Pleonast]

I've always cheated in Sim City and The Sims games. They're more like toys than games anyway, and I doubt that many the anti-cheater folks actually like that kind of game.

In Fallout 3, I cheated by ramping up the rate I regained VATS points. I much preferred the old turn-based system. The FPS style is simply too difficult for me. My character is supposed to be good at combat, it's silly that the character should be limited by the player's limitations. The VATS lets the character be as accurate as the game says.

[JayRx1981]

Yes.

(well...except for an extra that doesn't make gameplay easier like, an example given above, adding more music to FO3 or making a game harder, not easier.)

But *why* is reloading a cheat? It's a game mechanic, intentionally programmed a certain way. If the designers didn't want you to do it, they'd disallow it. It might not be the most challenging route through a game, true, but it is, IMO, not cheating to take advantage of a game mechanic.

Likewise with purchasable/unlockable extras. I spent the effort to obtain them, why is it cheating to use them. Again, it certainly removes any skill otherwise required to play when you can turn on an infinite rocket launcher (RE4) or invincibility (Lego Anything), thereby reducing or eliminating game challenge, but it's still using an intentionally designed game reward mechanic. To get them in RE4, as an example, I have to finish the game the "normal" way and play a new game +. In the Lego games, I have to complete most of the levels the "normal" way before I can unlock the extras (and accrue Lego studs to purchase them after otherwise unlocking them). I don't see how that is cheating.

About the only choice in the list I posted I see as cheating is the hidden cheat code route (which you basically have to figure out using non-game means), and I personally only use those sparingly or after finishing the game normally.

And the Final Fantasy VI loop, I'll admit is a hazy/gray area. On the one hand, it just uses a certain character's native skill along with the one area in the game you can go around in circles without actually watching the game to keep your characters from dying while accruing small bits of experience. Given enough time, you can then level them far higher and access spells sooner than otherwise. But you can do that anyways fighting monsters in the first area (it just takes a ton of time that way) if you wanted. The exploit just takes advantage of a poorly planned game area. It *is* an exploit, however, so I could see someone arguing that it's cheating.

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

Yes.

(well...except for an extra that doesn't make gameplay easier like, an example given above, adding more music to FO3 or making a game harder, not easier.)

What, reloading a level when you make a mistake is cheating? I'm sorry, I sucks at action games. And platforming. If I have a chance to save before doing something that would waste hours, then I would do so. Some FF bosses only drop certain loot on a random percentage. Does it mean i have to replay the whole game from the start till that boss just because I miss that loot?

I know that some people desire a challenge - I have a friend who plays all games on Hard immediately, and could do DMC3 in Dante Must Die mode, but he don't call people who aren't as good as him and need the help of technology, FAQs, or walk-throughs cheaters.

Edit: The only game which reloading/saving is cheating is Nethack or those which specifically disallow it. If a game let me does it, why not? I like to play New Game+ in Chrono Cross because this is the only way you can get all the party members. I like to re-experience the story in Chrono Trigger and just blaze through it with my New Game+. That's cheating? Cheating is when you are presenting bogus achievements. Which, I don't think anyone here, is advocating.

[DKW]

I did just fine without a Game Genie for a long time. In fact, I didn't even get the one for the Super NES for the first few months I owned the system. It was an idyllic period, where I could blast the hell out of a bunch of ducks or hop across platforms and love it.

Then I started dealing with super-quick, super-tough foes. Impossible jumps. Tedious level grinding. Bullet hails. Enemies swarming at absolutely blinding speeds. Obstacles that popped up for no reason and served no purpose but to hinder me. And checkpoints. DAMN the checkpoints. I call this my Screaming Period. Because I could not play video games without screaming. (Don't get me started on computer games...)

I was initially dissatisfied with the PSX until I got a Gameshark (and a tremendous upgrade). The PS2 was the big turning point...the first thing I sought was a Gameshark. And when it turned out to be defective and not good at all? I got a Codebreaker. And when that turned out to be inferior? I got the Action Replay Max. And then another Codebreaker. And now I'm going to buy the latest Action Replay Max, which is going to be the last, simply because the Codebreaker site isn't updating anymore. Plus I could never get the Gran Turismo 4 codes to work.

Why the drastic change? How did a cheat device change from a novelty to a necessity? Well, it's a bunch of things:
The Golden Rule: Being able to make the rules is golden.
Prime example: NFL Blitz
The Gameshark extended NFL Blitz's replay value roughly ten times. Start on fourth down! Set however many points you want for a touchdown, field goal, or conversion! One side always has the ball! Not to mentioning activating any combination of in-game codes at will. The possibilities are nearly endless. Withought a Gameshark, this is just another dumb, flawed Midway rubberband-a-thon potboiler.

Keep the good parts and throw away the rest.
Prime examples: Elite Beat Agents, Guitar Hero 3.
Ah, EBA. Wonderfully creative, an absolute romp to play, colorful, witty, in a class by itself. So why does the last level have to be like FOUR TIMES AS HARD as everything that came before? Not that it'll matter come The Divas, where about two-thirds of the songs are impossible. And I'll never understand why they make you do those clumsy guitar battles in the otherwise stellar GH3. Play it straight when the good times are rolling, but be prepared when the BS comes into play, that's what I do.

You BS me, I ICBM you.
Prime example: Defender of the Crown, Puzzle Bobble, every WWE game for PS2
Seriously: We all know what BS is. We all understand when the game doesn't play fair, when the otherside is just too fast, too strong, too smart, or too tough. As far as I'm concerned, they take any kind of unfair edge, the gloves are off and I will be as dirty and destructive and merciless and mean as I feel like. And I can go pretty far.

As soon as you pry it out of my cold hands.
Prime examples: Robocop, The Punisher (Capcom), Time Crisis 3, Crime Fighters, Heavy Barrel, etc.
Some amazingly powerful weapon or ability that has like 3 shots at a time or can only be called up once in a blue moon. Hell, I'm no good with temptation. I get something that's 10x as effective as what I normally got, I'm keepin' it!

Because otherwise I'd be screaming.
Prime example: Contra 4
Sometimes there's just no middle ground, y'know? Either play it dirty as hell or be subject to unspeakable aggravation and the same 1 1/2 levels for all eternity. And if it's just barely tolerable with cheating, well, that's when you know it's time to throw in the towel. Thank goodness Gamestop is so generous with buy-backs...

But feel guilty, or any loss of achievement or whatever, no, no way, never. I'm with the sensible voices here: there's no such thing as meaningful accomplishment with a friggin' video game.

[Mosier]

You BS me, I ICBM you.
Prime example: Defender of the Crown, Puzzle Bobble, every WWE game for PS2
Seriously: We all know what BS is. We all understand when the game doesn't play fair, when the otherside is just too fast, too strong, too smart, or too tough. As far as I'm concerned, they take any kind of unfair edge, the gloves are off and I will be as dirty and destructive and merciless and mean as I feel like. And I can go pretty far.

I am a student of the "You BS me, I ICBM you" school of thought. I do not tolerate computer cheating in my video games, and will ruthlessly punish a cheating computer using the most destructive means possible. When the cheating computer wins 13 out of 15 times with less than 20% defense chance, and counters my turn by killing a great general with a 5% attack chance, the blinders go on and I obsess over ripping the Carthaginians to shreds with battle reload cheese until they beg for mercy. CAN NOT STAND IT WHEN COMPUTERS CHEAT! Rawr!

[Anaamika]

Wow, now reloading a game after you make a mistake or whatever is cheating? Why don't I just go back to real life, WHERE I CAN'T RELOAD ANYTHING. That's why it's a game, yo.

Currently my favorite game is Oblivion, and I play it on the Xbox, where I have no mods or cheats whatsoever. But do I have it set on easy? You betcha! I'm not in there to get into lots of difficult fights! I'm in there to do the cool assassin's guild quests, to run around in a beautiful wilderness with tons of things to kill or ignore, with gods and mortals living practically side by side. A place where I can leap 40 feet into a waterfall and not break my neck. A place where I can pick a guard's pocket and maybe screw up and go to jail and come out, and still be an accepted member of society!

I don't call any of that cheating. When I save before I do the really difficult quests, I fully expect to reload when/if I die.

Oh, and I totally, totally disagree that playing online has any semblance of fun whatsoeever. What do you get online but teens, with their stupid leetspeak and all their arguing, and god forbid you are good at the game, they call you a cheater. My SO is very good at shooting games and plays online a lot and enjoys it. I hate the very idea. Last time I played online for any length of time was Diablo II. I hate playing online with other people.

I am trying to think of what games I actually "cheated" on recently, other than Modern Warfare. I don't count having a hint book as cheating, to be quite honest, and definitely not setting it to low difficulty. Oh yeah - we got the cheats for Baldur's Gate I & II on the PS2 so we could play together and kick some butt. And I would have jumped all over a real cheat for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. :(

[Jragon]

Wow, now reloading a game after you make a mistake or whatever is cheating? Why don't I just go back to real life, WHERE I CAN'T RELOAD ANYTHING. That's why it's a game, yo.

I don't think they mean "restart the whole game if you wipe." They mean "if you get to the last with 16 health and a wrench and it's technically possible to win don't reload to get there with 78 health and 8 rockets left on your rocket launcher."

There are definitely unwinnable situations and if you die reloading is fine, but they're saying that you don't have to win EVERY battle in Empire Total War, if you're defenseless now, do your best to rebuild even if you lose some of your empire in the process and then try different tactics next time instead of saying "that direction didn't work, reload, ambush, reload, maybe cannons would work better? reload."

[Anaamika]

I don't think they mean "restart the whole game if you wipe." They mean "if you get to the last with 16 health and a wrench and it's technically possible to win don't reload to get there with 78 health and 8 rockets left on your rocket launcher."

There are definitely unwinnable situations and if you die reloading is fine, but they're saying that you don't have to win EVERY battle in Empire Total War, if you're defenseless now, do your best to rebuild even if you lose some of your empire in the process and then try different tactics next time instead of saying "that direction didn't work, reload, ambush, reload, maybe cannons would work better? reload."

No, I don't do that - but my SO does. When he plays Oblivion, he goes about it in a very methodical fashion. He works on gaining each stat and working it up to 100. I mean, he will literally stand there and jump, jump, jump for a long time to get his acrobatics up. I can't remember the last time he has beat any kind of RPG, open-ended or not, he just trains, trains, trains. If he gains a point in the wrong stat when he is not ready (I don't really understand his system) he reloads.

Needless to say this drives me crazy. My half-ass method of gaining stats I'm sure drives him a little bonkers.

What I am trying to say is we all play our games differently. Why does anyone care how I play mine?



Oh, and Frodo I meant to say - sorry about the knitting. :) In truth I am not a very good knitter, but since all I am doing is making what are essentially coasters, I never cared much. As I said, it's soothing.

[Jamicat]

IDKFA

You know it makes sense.

IDDQD...muhahaaa :D

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

Games aren't designed with the intention that the player will have internet access to read a walk-through or the extra money for a players' guide. If you take the time to explore the world and talk to the NPCs, you can't beat (or "finish") games without an extra guide. If you have a guide to tell exactly what to do, when and how, you lose a huge chunk of the experience of the game. You might as well just have the author of the guide come in and play the game for you, and you can watch. If anything, I'm a gamer, and you're not.



This is my thinking when younger and still in school. Now? If I take more than half an hour in a pixel hunt or wandering over a map littered with random encounters every 5 steps I take, I look for a FAQ. Same for coming across boss fights which requires some form of inane puzzle to take down. It doesn't get fun when it becomes frustrating. If a guide helps me to get through, then so be it.

Heck, I play DMC3 on Easy because it's fine for me. If playing it on the hardest mode means I miss out "ok you killed one mob by accident and the rest can all now one-shot you" frustration, it's fine by me.

Edit: Though FAQs which gives away spoilers for the plot irate me to no end

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

No, I don't do that - but my SO does. When he plays Oblivion, he goes about it in a very methodical fashion. He works on gaining each stat and working it up to 100. I mean, he will literally stand there and jump, jump, jump for a long time to get his acrobatics up. I can't remember the last time he has beat any kind of RPG, open-ended or not, he just trains, trains, trains. If he gains a point in the wrong stat when he is not ready (I don't really understand his system) he reloads.

Needless to say this drives me crazy. My half-ass method of gaining stats I'm sure drives him a little bonkers.


I was conjuring up imps and killing them to boost my weapon and unarmed skill so that I could improve my strength. Then a strange thought came to me. I would be spending hours doing this to improve a virtual stat. Why don't I haul my ass off my chair and go for a real run? So I shut down my Xbox360 and went for a jog, and never touched the game again.

Oblivion has a, IMHO, stupid leveling system.



What I am trying to say is we all play our games differently. Why does anyone care how I play mine?


Quoted for Truth.

[OneChance]

It appears that the anti-cheaters' main complaint is people who cheat at a game and then brag about their exploits. However, I don't think anyone in this thread is denying that one forfeits any and all bragging rights when one uses a cheat.Honestly, how big of a loser does one have to be to actually brag about finishing video games? I can't imagine sitting with friends and someone saying, "Wow man, I totally finished Crysis last night in hard mode in like two hours. It was so frakin' awesome." We'd laugh at that person. Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

[Just Some Guy]

Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

Only when the discussion has already been elevated to that level of gaming nerdiness.

BTW, I totally beat the first NES TMNT.

:p

[Crowbar of Irony +3]

Honestly, how big of a loser does one have to be to actually brag about finishing video games? I can't imagine sitting with friends and someone saying, "Wow man, I totally finished Crysis last night in hard mode in like two hours. It was so frakin' awesome." We'd laugh at that person. Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

No, they FRAPS or link their xbox360 to a video capture card, capture their exploits and post it on on YouTube where everyone debate endlessly whether the player is cheating and try to find reasons why each other is a moron.

Like all things, I think it's poor taste to boast about your gaming achievements. When my bunch talk about games it's usually about the game and its strategies, though my pals are not the competitive sort.

[emcee2k]

Honestly, how big of a loser does one have to be to actually brag about finishing video games? I can't imagine sitting with friends and someone saying, "Wow man, I totally finished Crysis last night in hard mode in like two hours. It was so frakin' awesome." We'd laugh at that person. Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

I know plenty of adults who would brag about how far they hit a golf ball. What's the difference?

[The Hamster King]

Games aren't designed with the intention that the player will have internet access to read a walk-through or the extra money for a players' guide. If you take the time to explore the world and talk to the NPCs, you can't beat (or "finish") games without an extra guide. If you have a guide to tell exactly what to do, when and how, you lose a huge chunk of the experience of the game. You might as well just have the author of the guide come in and play the game for you, and you can watch. If anything, I'm a gamer, and you're not.LOL. I've been in plenty of design sessions where we've talked about what information will probably go in the strategy guide. Designers know that some players like to figure things out for themselves, and that others don't, and so we design KNOWING that some people will be using a guide to play through the game.

Here's something to think about: When you finish a game you haven't "beaten" the designer. Because if the designer wanted to, it would have been trivial for him to make the game impossible. To you it may have felt like a fair fight, but in fact it was rigged from the start in your favor. It's like a little kid wrestling with his good-natured big brother. When the six-year-old pins the seventeen-year-old, it's because the big guy knows that it will be more fun if the little guy has a chance, even if it means that he's pulling his punches.

The designer WANTS you to win. He wants you to see all the cool things he put in the game and have so much fun doing it that you buy the sequel two years later. The game has been tuned so that it provides a decent challenge to the average gamer, but we know that there will be lots of people who find it too hard or too easy, and if there's a way for them to have fun with the game too, that's great!

Lots of modern games actually have dynamic difficulty adjustment. The designers have built the cheating in, so players don't even have to work to cheat! If the game notices that you're dying a lot, it will start nerfing the enemies so you have an easier time progressing. Think about that the next time you brag about completing a game. You might have been cheating and not even known it! :D

[Mister Rik]

Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

How are you defining "adult"? I work with a number of younger adult males, that is, 18 to 20-somethings, and from what I can tell bragging about their mad video game skillz is one of the most frequent topics.

[Anaamika]

I don't brag about my mad video game skillz (what skillz? I set it on easy, remember), but sure, if I'm in a like-minded group I'll sure as hell mention I beat X game, but more for conversation pieces.


All of this conversation about games not being intended for you to go online reminds me of FF IX, which was not only intended to go online, but when you bought the hintbook, there were tons of hints there that were left out, thus:

"Want to know how to _____? Go to playonline.com!"

I still remember the rage. I think when I first got that game I was still on dial-up, too. Fucking fuckers.

[Least Original User Name Ever]

Honestly, how big of a loser does one have to be to actually brag about finishing video games? I can't imagine sitting with friends and someone saying, "Wow man, I totally finished Crysis last night in hard mode in like two hours. It was so frakin' awesome." We'd laugh at that person. Do people really brag about their video game exploits? I'm talking about adults here.

Yeah. Why not? If it comes up in conversation, why wouldn't you talk about what books you read recently, or what golf courses you played?