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Decline "Cheating"? Discuss.

Cheating / Looking up walkthroughs / Etc

  • Yes, totally acceptable

  • No, absolutely unacceptable

  • Light or indirect hints are ok

  • It's OK but only if really really really desperate

  • I only cheat with urmom (KC)


Results are only viewable after voting.

Jools

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What's your stance on cheating, when it comes to adventure games?

Is it acceptable, in order to progress (and enjoy) a good story? Is it unacceptable, and will it utterly spoil the overall enjoyment of the story as well? Is there a "middle" way, eg asking for "light" hints, or a nudge in the right direction, to someone who already completed the game?
 

Eirikur

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Save scumming and constantly looking up where to find things (and how to do things) in wikis can definitely spoil the game for me. When you do that, you reduce the game to an unchallenging mechanical step-by-step kind of process, the magic disappears, and you might as well just watch the story-related videos on YouTube instead. I do use wikis from time to time though, for tips on how to improve my tactics, and particularly to check the correct order to do things in as to not miss out on content (in example, in The Witcher 3 certain side quests will fail if you proceed too far with other quests).
 

Borelli

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Sometimes i look at solutions to puzzles if i really really don't know how to progress, usually i try to find a spoiler-free FAQ if possible. I admit i am not good at adventure games but i do try to keep it to a minimum.
 

dunno lah

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I must admit that for Fate of Atlantis, I looked up a video to find the Atlantean stone thing at the Nazi digsite in the desert. (Wits Path)
 

Eirikur

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Incidentally I remember spamming an old-fashioned phone hint line as a kid, because I was stuck in the text-based King's Quest III and hadn't learned English yet. Basically just kept walking around in the wizard's house trying to do stuff, constantly looking up words in a dictionary, for weeks probably.
 
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Jools

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I must admit that for Fate of Atlantis, I looked up a video to find the Atlantean stone thing at the Nazi digsite in the desert. (Wits Path)

Oh yes, that was a tough one.

Sometimes I'm glad I played many those games before having access to the internet, thus completing them through my own effort. The best I could do, and I often did, was gather up a few friends and kind of play "together": multiple minds work better than a single one, and sometimes someone would come up with the proper idea. Of course only one person at a time would "control" the pc, but it still was fun! The others would still enjoy the story and chip in their advice or hints, and it was a nice "social" event (however nerdy).
 

agentorange

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I look up the solution if I get stuck. I don't consider it "cheating" since, after all, you are only robbing yourself out of the satisfaction of solving the puzzle, and frankly I play most adventure games for the story (games like Myst are different, however, and I don't look up solutions in those).
 

Animal

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Depends on my disposition.

I grew up in a time when if I wanted to cheat I was shit out of luck and going through stuff that had me stuck for days was an achievement. I wrote so much crap in Leisure Suit Larry I even found a cheat myself (some command to spawn items in my inventory).

Nowadays I can't be bothered to get stuck scanning pixels for more than a minute.

But I don't do much adventure gaming in quite a while. Used to be my favorite genre...
 

Eirikur

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I wrote so much crap in Leisure Suit Larry I even found a cheat myself (some command to spawn items in my inventory).

I was watching my cousin play Leisure Suit Larry as a kid, before I had learned English. There's a store where you think you're alone and purchase a weird condom, and a bunch of shocked customers peek out from behind the shelves. I asked my cousin why they were peeking out, and he LIED saying 'Because we're an adult buying a Donald Duck magazine' (I was veery young, and believed him). Later on when I knew a little bit English I bought the game, and became enormously frustrated because I couldn't figure out how to buy that damned Donald Duck magazine. Sat there with my dictionary trying everything, constantly failing.

:rage:
 

hello friend

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If I get stuck for half an hour or more without progress, I consider consulting a guide. Usually it's not a failure of creativity that get's you stuck, it's something stupid like having checked an area and thinking you've picked up everything that can be picked up, interacted with everything that can be interacted with. Then you find out you didn't move the mouse over the right pixel. Or you were 100% sure you'd tried using an item with another item or an object, so it never occurs to you to try it. Turns out you were wrong. Without a walkthrough, you won't find that out without trying every other possibility in the game first. Twice.

Problemsolving is best done without cheating, but fuck if I'm going to comb over every section of the game multiple times in case I missed something. That's not gameplay. That's 10 000 monkeys banging on a typewriter long enough to exhaust all possibilities, however inane.
 
Self-Ejected

Ulminati

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If I'm stuck for an hour or so at a spot, I'll usually ask a friend who's completed the game for a hint. If noone has, I'll try and find a non-spoilery guide and only read the bit about the puzzle I'm at.
 

Melan

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If I'm stuck, I set aside the game for a few evenings so I will come back with a fresh mind, and preferably new perspectives. If I still can't solve a puzzle, there is no shame in looking up a hint. Of course, I try not to abuse it, because overusing spoilers can really spoil a game - and good adventures are rare enough that this is a big waste.
 

Gozma

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I cheat on puzzles when I suspect the reason I'm not getting the answer is stupid. About 25% of the time I see the logic in retrospect and know I prolly cheated myself out of solving it, about 75% of the time no regrets because it was fucking dumb you fuck game

For non-puzzle cheating I do it when not doing it would be boring, or when I'm using cheats to figure out game mechanics.
 

Barbarian

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When I checked up on old sierra games I never played before and some others I have to admit I used walkthroughs, albeit sparingly most of the times. You have to at least check out ways to avoid the dreadful dead ends, otherwise you are bound to have to start the game all over again after failing at some point. Although intentional, those were design flaws I think. It is quite fucked up to force the player to track back hours of gameplay for missing something. Worst is that some dead ends you would only find out about near the end of the game if your were playing without a guide(The "conquest" series, for instance).

For most adventures I don't see the point of using a walkthrough though. Unless off course you are completely stumped. Some old adventurers have silly "pixel hunting" moments for instance.
 

JarlFrank

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Depends. I try to solve the puzzles without consulting a walkthrough, but when I get stuck and have even randomly tried everything that came to my mind, I look up the solution.

Usually that makes me either go "d'oh, could've found that out myself, it was obvious!" or "What the fuck, of course I missed this solution it requires ridiculous pixel huntery!"
 

Wizfall

Cipher
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I try to do resolve the problem but if i can't after trying everything i could figure (usually 15/30 min max) i don't mind at all using a walkthrough.
I will never set aside the game to think about it for the evening or a day or two.
But i play adventure game much more for the dialogues and story even if puzzle solving is a key feature for my enjoyment (i dislike Telltales cinematic games for example)
 

Aeschylus

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Part of me wants to say unacceptable, but the rest of me just says do whatever the hell you want. It's basically the equivalent of turning on god-mode in a shooter.
 

Cadmus

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I guess that if you grew up playing these games without the net, you have a thicker skin + know how stupid the solutions can be so you are more likely to stick with it and complete it. I grew up playing those games with shit english and no internet and never completing any because of the fucking puzzles.
Nowadays when I play an adventure game and suspect the solution to be stupid, I look up the guide after trying everything I can think of, just to progress. Usually it's something I already tried doing but didn't click the correct pixel or something totally insane. Very rarely I think to myself "oh I should have tried more".

So I wonder how many people consider the puzzles to be stupid most of the time?
 

Eirikur

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Must admit that the first time I got on the Internet, I altavistaed for a Daggerfall walkthrough. Was desperately lost looking for something in Nulfaga's castle. Found a site called Daggerweb that solved my problem (doesn't exist any longer).
 

FeelTheRads

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Sometimes I play adventures with my girlfriend (hurr durr) and she doesn't have much patience when getting stuck so I have to check a walkthrough.
Womyn amirite?:decline:
 

CryptRat

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When I'm stuck, I try everything on everything or more often stop and return to the game later. For example I have spent more than six months on Night Of The Rabbit and I will probably spend as much time on Discworld 1.
Usually that makes me either go "d'oh, could've found that out myself, it was obvious!" or "What the fuck, of course I missed this solution it requires ridiculous pixel huntery!"
This but you forgot the rarer "Ok, it was a bug", for example I was stuck because of some inventory bug in The Inner World.
Sometimes, I look for a hint. That's not a home rule, but so far I think I never got more than one hint for a single game. The real problem is that even with only one hint I have a horrible feeling of failure after completing the game.

EDIT : I recently thought about opening a thread about cheating regarding side contents in JRPGs. On FF9 or Tales Of Vesperia for example, I never got a single hint, but I assume I have mess half of the games. On FF12 I have done everything but I used a guide after my first 150hs.
 
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I think it's okay if you treat it as a fail state but don't want to skip the rest of the game. Eg setting yourself a time limit for getting stuck that starts ticking only once you've ground to a standstill. Say, if it's been 1 hour of continuous play since you last found a new potential solution (not since your last successful puzzle, but from where you see no alternatives left to try).

And yes I know that's robbing oneself of the satisfaction of being stuck for ages, sleeping on it, brainstorming ideas on forums and with friends, etc. But I just don't trust games enough these days to assume that being totally stuck is due to a difficult and challenging puzzle, as opposed to a retarded piece of developer laziness that will make me rage if I take it as a challenge. If one is told on good authority that a game is challenging in the right sort of way, then I won't cheat at all.
 

Siveon

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I usually use this when I'm stuck. Most of the time when I spend like 30min-1hr trying to solve a puzzle, it usually ends with "well, that was stupid". I just default to hint systems like UHS if I get close to an hour.
 

Black

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It's a single player game, your PC doesn't care, it only matters whether you personally do.
 

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