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Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013, 13:33
by Master Gunner
He is agreeing with you.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013, 14:07
by Geoff_B
I would like to say that I am also with stupid. If some part of the game gets in the way of my enjoyment, eg a difficult fight that I cannot get past legitimately, then I will happily cheat my way past it. :D

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013, 14:11
by wartjr2373
Lately I've taken to playing games on their easiest difficulties. I'm playing Ni no Kuni on easy mode now, and I plan to play Fire Emblem Awakening on casual mode (where your units don't die permanently).

Mostly it's because I don't have the time or patience to repeatedly fail. I don't play games necessarily to challenge myself. It's more about escapism and experiencing another world or a well-written story.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013, 14:14
by Geoff_B
Yep, that all pretty much describes me exactly :D

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 06 Feb 2013, 14:39
by Metcarfre
I like a little bit of a challenge, but I don't want to slam my head against the wall repeatedly.

If I have to repeat anything more than three times you better believe I'm gonna cheat.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 09:36
by Mara Kalat
If it improves my game experience?
Yes.

Though that mostly is limited to Flash games these days, since they're easy to crack, but I've cheated in pretty much every game I grew up on.
I can still type the Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries godmode cheat in under 4 seconds.
superfunkicalifragisexy See? :D

The only people you can hurt by cheating are the players in the game.
So in multiplayer I wouldn't do it, unless explicitly agreed with the other players (e.g. spawn commands in Minecraft).
But also in Single Player, I wouldn't want to max out my level or jump to the last level, because that's not the point of the game.

Mara.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 09:42
by Geoff_B
I remember that cheat :D Still didn't help when the mech you were escorting got shot to pieces or when the building you were supposed to be protecting blew up :D

Anyone remember Star Trek Armada? To get invulnerability in that you had to edit the game files and set the damage multiplier for your chosen difficulty to 0 so ships would do no damage to you. In one of the Borg mission briefings you watch as two Romulan ships attack one of your scouts as a scripted event. The cutscene progressed when your scout was destroyed. Now cutscenes used the same damage multipliers as the main game with the result that the Borg scout destroyed both Romulan ships and then the game just stayed there. It didn't hang or crash, it just patiently waited for the Borg ship to be destroyed. In the end I closed the game, reset the multiplier to what it was originally, reopened the game, got through the briefing then saved at the start of the mission, closed the game and set the multiplier to 0.

And there was one mission where invulnerability didn't help you at all - Borg vs aliens who could only wipe out your crew but not destroy you, and you couldn't destroy them with your normal weapons. So damage multipliers were useless.

Fun times :D

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 13:09
by AdmiralMemo
Oh, I've played Armada a whole bunch. Never finished it, and got into Armada 2 and played that much more. :)

What I would do is edit the files so that it was a small, but non-zero value, so the cut-scene would work.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 13:17
by General Michi
I've found that the most recent form of cheating is the quicksave, at least for me. I may be guilty of spamming that button in XCOM. I know it's frowned upon but I'm not that great at strategy games.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 15:17
by Geoff_B
Oh save scumming, where would we be without you?

A whole lot less 5-star cases in LA Noire for one. Got a suspect interrogation wrong? Reload and retry. Only problem with that was you had to go through the whole sequence again, including finding any clues lying around.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 15:40
by empath
If not for save-scumming, Nethack, Angband & other roguelikes wouldn't have been NEARLY as popular. :)

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 17:56
by phlip
I haven't used cheats just to get through a game in quite some time... On a replay, for screwing around, sure, I'll do that, but I'll try to avoid them on a real playthrough. FAQ's I'll look up when stuck, but I'll try to make an honest attempt at solving the puzzle first. I make exceptions for things like, say, Minecraft, where making an honest attempt at solving things isn't really a viable strategy... I consider the Minecraft Wiki to be more "external game manual" than "cheatyface walkthrough site".

That said, there are some games that I would still probably cheat my way through... if the gameplay was annoying but I wanted to see how it ended. Like, if Spec Ops: The Line had a god-mode cheat, I'd turn it on in an instant, because I hear the story is great (and have so far avoided most spoilers) but the actual game mechanics shit me to tears. Which I understand is intentional, but intentionally bad is still bad, and when I already can't stand the genre as a whole... But if I could blast through the padding gameplay bits between the actual story bits, then I might actually ever finish that game.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 21:45
by Vigafre
I had an Action Replay for my Gamecube. Infinite water in Super Mario Sunshine was...weird. That cheat sure did make the rocket pack interesting.

Besides that, I've done small scale stuff. God mode in Warcraft 3 campaign (I suck at strategy), unlock everything in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 (I was impatient, and probably wasn't good at it). I also did some cheats in Grand Theft Auto 4 but who didn't?

FAQ-wise, I think I only used them (and strategy guides) for my Gamecube games. Not necessarily because I didn't know what to do; I just thought they were nice to read through. However, I've only beaten 2 out of 6 Zelda games I've owned. I beat Skyward Sword guideless, but I used one to beat Twilight Princess. I used guides for the other four as well, but I never got around to finishing those.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 22:24
by ANeMzero
Vigafre wrote: I also did some cheats in Grand Theft Auto 4 but who didn't?


I didn't! Despite having put a collective 50~ hours into GTA4 and Liberty City episodes I don't even know how cheat codes are entered in that game. The improvements to driving and shooting made stuff like health cheats and weapon cheats completely unnecessary. Especially when you could call up people to bring cars/guns to you.

Aside from the occasional save scumming and faq/walkthroughs I've tried to avoid cheats this generations. Partially because of an unhealthy obsession with achievements and partially because I realized they just don't entertain me the same way they used to.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 12 Feb 2013, 22:29
by Vigafre
Well, I never used cheats in GTA as a necessity. I only used them to mess around. Granted, the copy of the game was not mine.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 15 Feb 2013, 02:49
by the amativeness
I love cheats. I'm more into the story of a game, and can be easily frustrated by action (especially dumb action), so I tend to play on lower difficulties and/or with cheats on.

Plus, there's nothing more fun than playing a FPS like HL2, but hacking in endgame weaponry at the beginning of the game.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 15 Feb 2013, 16:08
by Trymantha
Geoff_B wrote:
Anyone remember Star Trek Armada? To get invulnerability in that you had to edit the game files and set the damage multiplier for your chosen difficulty to 0 so ships would do no damage to you. In one of the Borg mission briefings you watch as two Romulan ships attack one of your scouts as a scripted event. The cutscene progressed when your scout was destroyed. Now cutscenes used the same damage multipliers as the main game with the result that the Borg scout destroyed both Romulan ships and then the game just stayed there. It didn't hang or crash, it just patiently waited for the Borg ship to be destroyed. In the end I closed the game, reset the multiplier to what it was originally, reopened the game, got through the briefing then saved at the start of the mission, closed the game and set the multiplier to 0.


Fun times :D


I remember something like that in the original starcraft, a couple of games had scripted events after you won like kerrigin killing a protoss leader, it took me a good ten minutes to figure out that the reason he wasn't dieng was cause I had the invincibility cheat on

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 21 Feb 2013, 14:41
by Cureless_Poison
As a kid I didn't have the skill to overcome a lot of end-game stuff so I would routinely wind up using cheats to beat games.

Now-a-days however, I exclusively save cheats for screwing around/sandboxing.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 22 Feb 2013, 23:49
by Kayden
I only cheat for games that don't have achievements and cheating won't kill the entire feel of the game, and even so I don't go overboard like in CK2 I don't give myself ALL OF THE MONEY I just give me a little boost to help me out and give myself a minor upgrade on my stats, though I am guilty of file editing.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 23 Feb 2013, 08:29
by Dominic Appleguard
When I was a kid I would cheat at Warcraft, because I wasn't smart enough to finish the campaign fairly.
Age of Empires always had some fun easter eggs as cheat features, so I did those to see what was there.
I also remember doing the Missingno trick on my brother's Pokemon Blue. He was displeased.
wartjr2373 wrote:Lately I've taken to playing games on their easiest difficulties...I plan to play Fire Emblem Awakening on casual mode (where your units don't die permanently).
You can do that now? Personally, I always treated the permanent death thing as an incentive to perfect my strategy, but considering the way misses and critical hits can ruin your day in Fire Emblem I might just try that once I get around to Awakening.

But I probably won't. Because masochism.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 23 Feb 2013, 11:25
by My pseudonym is Ix
See, CKII and other total war style things are the only games where I would flat out never use cheats (except maybe to unlock factions; SPQR on Rome was interesting, since you started out making a net loss). Particularly with CKII, since I feel like it should try to replicate reality; it's all designed to make it damn near impossible to conquer an entire continent as you could in Total War, and part of the fun is building yourself back up when you fall. I never even go back to old save files if I can help it.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 28 Feb 2013, 12:51
by wartjr2373
wartjr2373 wrote:Lately I've taken to playing games on their easiest difficulties...I plan to play Fire Emblem Awakening on casual mode (where your units don't die permanently).
You can do that now? Personally, I always treated the permanent death thing as an incentive to perfect my strategy, but considering the way misses and critical hits can ruin your day in Fire Emblem I might just try that once I get around to Awakening.

But I probably won't. Because masochism.[/quote]

I have been playing Awakening and casual mode has me conflicted. Fore pretty much the reason you stated, I want to be on casual mode. I hate losing an hour of my life to an unlucky crit or miss. But it also means I'm a lot more careless with my units; most chapters have me lose at least one unit. I'm not sure which is better.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 18 Mar 2013, 05:49
by dai_panda
I cheat all the time, especially with some older games. Last one I think was... Painkiller. Just because when I play it, I play it to dick around with the various funky weapons and so on, rather than for the actual challenge.
So really, it all depends on why I'm playing a given game at the time. If I just want to relax and watch the pretty giblets, I tend to play with cheats. Though, strangely with alot of newer games I haven't really needed to cheat either. Maybe I've just gotten that much better at games.
Oh and, activated cheats for Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines because I was stuck in an unwinnable fight in Santa Monica and, thanks to the game being as buggy as it is I... couldn't turn God-mode off after getting through the fight without the game crashing horribly and almost taking my saves with it...

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 18 Mar 2013, 10:50
by EikoandMog
I've been playing Etrian Odyssey 4 on my 3DS and... I kind of wanted to play it on Casual but then I wondered what the point was playing an old school dungeon scrawler like that on a low difficulty? Turns out I'm doing just fine on Normal.

Re: Who uses cheats?

Posted: 18 Mar 2013, 15:25
by DeltaStrata
Cureless_Poison wrote:As a kid I didn't have the skill to overcome a lot of end-game stuff so I would routinely wind up using cheats to beat games.

Now-a-days however, I exclusively save cheats for screwing around/sandboxing.


This. I vividly remember my first run-through of the first Starcraft, punching in 'poweroverwhelming' and 'operationcwal' in the black-screened span of time between when the mission briefing ends and the mission actually starts. I've since gone back and played the whole campaign 'properly', and ultimately think it was more fun that way.

Occasionally I'll still use a code, but never god mode or the like. In the Megaman Zero series, for instance, I disable the time and elf-use criteria for your ranking, leaving damage and so on. Not removing the challenge completely, just only using the ones I actually want to engage in; if I want to be judged on my speed, I'll play a Sonic game. And while it's not explicit cheating (in terms of there's no code), I do often use a combination of save scumming and fast forward to reduce or eliminate grinding and randomness in some games. There's no challenge there to me—no execution challenge, at any rate.

As folks have said, it's about the fun. And we all have fun in different ways, neh? Sometimes cheats help us tweak that.