About cheating in solo crpgs

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Very often we have this discussion about what is and what is not cheating in the crpg's featured here at Sorcerer's Place.

This topic is about discussing cheating and if or when it should concern this community.
Please, keep it strictly to solo gaming, i.e. no other player is involved.

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To start it off here is what I think:

Cheating is ok as long as the only one affected by it is that player.
If that player makes comments or gives advice to others based on his experience while cheating it is very important to say so! IMO this is the most important problem with cheating in these solo crpg games.

Now let the discussion begin! What is cheating? When is it bad to cheat?

 

Yeah.

It's pretty common knowledge that I'm one of the biggest cheaters here, if not the biggest.

I cheat like crazy. If the game was fun, I come back to it and cheat some more. Nothing can ruin the game for me, unless it was a shoddy game to start with. You can't ruin a movie by telling me the entire plot and "surprises". It just don't work that way.
Having the lights on just doesn't bother me in the least.

It's bad to cheat when other people take offense to it. Which is why I don't play multiplayer all that much (read: ever).

 

It is bad to cheat when it has stopped being fun for you.

You bought it with your money, you use it as you like.

Or you might have borrowed it. Whatever. Hopefully you didn't pirate it.

 

Someone should be allowed to cheat in the privacy of his own game.

I however, solely cheat when I'm put at a disadvantage due to very nasty bugs or when I spent hours in frustration of not being able to advance. Those are the only exceptions.

 

I only cheat to test what I've made so far (in BG and IWD games) Though I used to use the heal (Ctrl+R) when I wasn't very good at BG

In some games the cheats are more like easter eggs and are just a bit off fun - I like looking up easter eggs and stuff. I will try things in games to see consequences, though I won't cheat for the sake of it or anything.

 

I'd like to steer this topic into more specific examples of what could be cheating and how you feel about it.
A few examples from BG2:
- "Image exploitation" (Project Image, Simulacrum)
- "Potion swapping" (Clicking on an item in inventory, then exchanging it with something else)
- "Cloudkill/script exploit" (Cloudkill and close the door)

I think all these three examples are cheating but not equally bad.
Of these Potion swapping is the worst because it's the most obvious abuse.

There are hundreds more. Is an exploit a cheat? Does an exploit have to be expecially abusive to be called a cheat?

Is there no better word than "cheating" that can be used in this context? Cheating is a very negatively charged word but since cheating in multiplayer is so very different from cheating in single player we should have another word for it, don't you think?

 

In cRPG only when facing very serious bugs, for example Sendai recreating her simulacra and repeating her dialogue just when she should have been killed or Imoen's XP in Spellhold where they take the average level value of the party and use dual-classed character's levels for this purpose as though they were active classes. Like they couldn't just use XP amount and select the CRE file accordingly

Also when testing custom made kits, spells and items, but that's not cheating: it's debugging. Strictly adhering to purist rules, every non-official addon you have is cheating.

Last but not least, I just hate cheated characters in competitions, rankings and similar. I'm perfectly OK with characters created with Shadowkeeper or Dalekeeper for the purpose of gaming fun. Let's say someone wants to play Drizzt in IWD2 HoF mode. Why shouldn't he? Or maybe someone doesn't really want to roll (2E) and gets some ready stats. No big difference between that and rolling whole day, so long as the stats are reasonable (everything above 90 for normal folk or 95 for heavily stat-intense classes should be rolled legitimately unless you confine yourself to the privacy of your cheated game). For example I'm going to measure my own stats and possibly levels and throw the Dalekeeper-created outcome in HoF in IWD2 just for fun. Why not? If I've aleady finished the game. But people who show off their wondrous tactics and achievements without mentioning they were cheating all the time should not come within the range of my Aura of *****iness. And creating rings of permanent alacrity and casting time 1 of all spells is cheating. When you have finished the game normally and are only playing for fun or to check some different possibilities, then you might for example get yourself sixth boots of speed in ToB (for all party members now), teleport to a location without going and going and going (big maps where nothing happens)..., use third party mods that actually add to the game instead of producing cheap XP, GP and items etc etc. But the first time playing everything illegitimate lessens your victory, even if it's just using CTRL+Y on bugged Sendai or fixing a stupid math formula 'manually' (I didn't and wouldn't do it the first time playing, when the objective was to *finish* the game, so it's possible to do without it).

Note: contrary to what some people might say, legitimate cheese is not cheating. CRPG isn't PNP and PCs are at least as limited as monsters are, if not more. Monsters use chease and illegitimate scripts all the time because it's CRPG.

 

Casting spells from scrolls with a non-spellcaster is cheating, but it's fun

 

I don't cheat, and avoid spoilers wherever possible. Sometimes I'll exploit the game system (ie. closing the door), but that isn't really cheating.

 

Someone on these Boards once said that something is cheezy when you start to feel bad about it (which BTW is a great definition IMO), and I think that the same could be applied to cheating. For example, I use 2 cheats on a regular basis:

The first is Ctrl-J to speed up travel across previously-explored areas. Technically, this is a cheat, but I don’t think too many people on these Boards feel that it comes even close to being a serious cheat. It’s just a time-saver.

The second cheat involves item creation. I usually don’t do the Firkraag quest unless I have a Paladin; it’s not that it’s a difficult quest, but to me there’s not much in the way of useful treasure unless you have a Paladin (except for Heartseeker, but I usually use short bows). However, by not doing that quest, I can’t get the sewer key. So I just console it in. My justification is that I am trading items (which I could use or sell for gold) and XP in exchange for an easy way to get the key.

But the bottom line is that it's still your game, so do what you want.

 

I cant play either BG1 or BG2 without Boots of Speed.
Why? You might wonder.
Because as someone said about Ctrl+J - "It´s a timesaver"
And I just get bored when the characters move that slow and quit.


I think cheating is okay, as long as it doesn´t affect another player. But if you play a game all by yourself, cheat on until you get sick of yourself