I don’t find shame in cheating in video games. It was a stigma to hear about growing up, that cheating in video games meant you prefer the shortcuts in life or that you didn’t know what earning anything was. When, that was all just bullshit talk.
I cheat in video games, when available to on some games, to give me a little kick of fun. Sometimes I don’t have the patience to tediously go through the standard way. Other times, I feel I’ve earned it anyways, because of having undergone the stresses and frustrations or the time I’ve played of certain games to go through the normal way.
Like in Terraria, it’s a game I’ve clocked in upwards of 900 hours. I felt like I had done everything in the game prior to the content that added the Moon Lord and many other things. At that time, it was 850 hours.
So the point of the matter is, yeah I don’t find it that big of a deal to cheat in video games. If I cared to and want to, I’m decent enough to handle games without cheats, given enough time.
Multiplayer of course I never cheat in those.
no, I mod them
there is no such thing as cheating in a personal game
don’t tell the people on Don’t Starve forums, but save mods are totally okay and not at all “cheating and ruining the game”. you know what ruins the game? losing my several hundred days of progress because I didn’t actually pause the game when my dog started making puking sounds and I ran away from my computer
also, Minecraft automation - sure, I could let my server run overnight, or I could just directly give myself the materials the farm would have produced in 12 hours and save the power consumption. ofc I validate all my farms before I do any of that, and I don’t give more resources than they produce.
Whenever Skyrim would randomly crash and send me back to the dungeon as soon as I get to the boss, I use console commands. Other than that, flying, lightsabers, killer mushrooms, turning zombies in l4d to fall guy bean people, those are all fare game.
These days games often allow you to individually change the difficulty which I make use quite often when I feel a game is becoming too much of a hassle than a joy and I still want to know how the story continues or see what might be coming.
I don’t think I have used a classic cheat in a long time. The last time I actively remember was The Sims 3 (I guess) and it kind of killed the game for me because suddenly everything was possible without any challenge and even a normal playthrough felt like I was missing something.
Mostly singleplayer, when I feel like I’ve completed the most that the game would offer. Sometimes save cheesing/rng manipulation if I can’t get a certain thing to go my way, but not a lot.
On multiplayer, I did used to play anarchy minecraft servers (where cheats level the playing ground for everyone), but nothing that breaks that balance. Multiplayer is only fun when everyone has similar tools to you.
Singleplayer do whatever you like, multiplayer do not cheat.
Multiplayer, don’t cheat - join or start lobbies playing the way you want to play.
In the original halo on PC I modded the game so the rifle was shoot out banshees instead of bullets. I also made the warthog fly. I guess now that I’m typing this is was not really cheating as it was a 1v1 match and we got to screw around with the mods is did.
The hex editor was a blast. I made the pistol shoot 100 bullets at once.
Haha, that never occurred to me. That’s a cool one.
I wanted to make it shoot plasma grenades, but at first it just blew up in my face, then it lobbed plasma grenades in front of me.
Eventually I changed the impact of the bullet on each object in the game so it would explode like a plasma grenade instead of giving off the impact animation.
Took forever.
I wonder if I can still install that old version anywhere and mess with the hex codes.
The only correct answer.
Except on 2b2t.
Context: that’s an “anarchy” server where modifying the client is explicitly allowed.
I wouldn’t count that as cheating.
Last time I remember cheating in a game was giving myself infinite lives in Sonic Mania. The game is really fun, but I’m terrible at it and I hated having to restart from the beginning of act 1 when I was struggling with the boss. Got really bad with the final boss.
I had to cheat to get any fun at all out of Far Cry 6. Piece of shit game.
In survival crafting games I’ll almost always make it easier on myself through the world settings or something. Getting rid of item and food decay, boosting XP gain, making sure I get 100+ of each resource anytime I go mining or whatever.
Enshrouded is a massive pain in the ass on normal settings, so I make it easier to explore, gather, and fight enemies. Otherwise it’d take me at least twice as long to get to where I’m at in the game, and that already took me over 100 hours.
Palworld I do all those things and increase pal spawn rate so there’s always at least 5 pals in a group at any given time. It makes capturing them so much easier.
Idk the last time I actually “cheated” in a video game though. Maybe one of the Lego games?
I’m single player games? Yeah.
Save editors for Mass Effect to unlock squad mates early for spoken lines that I would have never heard earlier, cheating in rare candies on emulated Pokémon games or making Pokémon shiny too.
I recall using something similar for Borderlands 2 circa 2012/2013 to get certain guns to drop with the right parts as well.
I absolutely love using save editors to dick around with borderlands gun drops. It’s the only game that I genuinely want a crafting system in, I wanna be able to scarp all those guns for the best parts and fuse them into an unholy abomination. Fuck balance, this is a co-op power trip not a chess match.
I save scum my rolls in BG3 to get desired outcomes
That is the one game I won’t save scum. It kills the spirit of DnD if everything can’t go to hell.
I use the mod that removes the inspiration point limit. That being said, some of the checks are absolutely hilarious if you fail.
It’s only really cheating if you cheat someone else. The point of video games is fun and entertainment. If “cheating” improves that, have at 'er.
Depends on the definition of cheating. Here are a couple of ways in which I “cheat”:
I didn’t have the skill to progress beyond 4BC in Dead Cells, so I downloaded someone else’s save file with all items unlocked.
If I hit a wall in Silksong to the point that it starts to put me off the game, then I look up a walkthrough to see where the nearest undiscovered bench is or where to fine the thing I’m looking for.
For any game if I end too frustrated by a boss, I’ll watch a YouTube video to learn the attack patterns and avoid repeatedly dying to learn them. This is especially true for roguelites where I may have to cross 3 levels to get to a possible chance at a boss, and then get killed.
In FTL I used to copy out the save files to allow me to save scum if I died. The game is a roguelite and doesn’t allow loading saves in case of mistakes of death…so this is a workaround to save scum.
The point of games is to have fun, “cheats” are essentially just difficulty options.
There was a game recently on a huge discount that had some great accessibility options. You could change how hard combat was, exploration, and resource scarcity. At least it would have been great if they did anything meaningful. Instead the base game was ridiculously hard, to the point that combat was nearly impossible, and even the easiest options only made it slightly possible. I guess the point was to force you into a certain stealth/no combat play style, but it was just done in a very unfun way. One of the few times I’ve actually refunded a game.
True; a lot of cheats are now found as Accessibility Options. Like a lot of action games have a god mode option in the same place you’d turn text to speech on and select colorblind modes.
The amount of times I’ve had to use a trainer to make gameplay possible when my hand is acting up (and one time when I was cat sitting, and the goblin demanded a hand just for him) is enormous.
It is literally the difference between being able to play a game or not. I really appreciate the options being under accessibility in newer games!
This goes for single player though. Multiplayer is reserved for days when my hand is functioning enough to allow it without trainer assistance.
Just did a second play through of Alan Wake 2, but I didn’t want to grind, just get the story, so I turned on one shot kill in accessibility. I was worth it.
Yes. You are worth it!
Only single player games – and usually only after they become monotonous playing the intended way.
The Skyrim mod that plays Danger Zone when a dragon shows up.
I need to know the name of this mod right now cause that sounds hilarious and epic in equal measure.
Truly the very apex of human artistic expression. Frankly, we might as well just call it quits. If you grab the chairs, I’ll turn off the lights.
If save scumming counts as cheating, then yes. But otherwise, I’ve only ever used cheats in single player games and I really only use cheats if either the game sucks or the cheats I used didn’t effect gameplay. Some of the times I remember using cheats are:
Using the “fixme” command in Morrowind because I got stuck somewhere.
Using various cheats in the GTA games, after I had already beaten the main story, just so I can cause some mayhem.
Using the “giveall” command in Doom because I installed a weapon mod that required it.
Using the free cam that built into some emulators.
I used to use save states in old video games that didn’t have saving systems but I don’t do this anymore. I just only play them until I get to a point I can’t progress.
I think I remember using a cheat code to access unused content in at least one game, but I can’t remember what game that was.
While I haven’t played it yet, there is a PS2 (I think) game that requires using a cheat code to enable widescreen (or was it 720i, or maybe there was more than one game that did this, I can’t actually remember now).
