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Do any of you video game snobs cave to the temptations of cheat engine, console commands, etc.?

spectre

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2008
Messages
5,614
I only really did IIDQ and IDKFA back in the day, like every other kid. But I haven't really enjoyed twitch gameplay.
Although if you consider reading spoilers and save scumming a cheat, then guilty as charged.

I have this deeply ingrained compulsion where I find it hard to accept subpar RNG results, unless enforced by the game. This was especially painful when looting things in Wasteland 2.
The same completionist compulsion also wants me to make the most out of a given playthrough, so I tend to double-check if I missed anything.

I also dabbled a bit with save editing, not sure if that counts. It was mostly out of curiosity about how stuff works, or to bypass limitations in game demos.
 

WhiteShark

Savant
Joined
Sep 17, 2019
Messages
370
Location
滅びてゆく世界
It's interesting to note that the same argument of "my time is so valuable I don't want to waste it" is used in the same way by people demanding easy modes in games, demanding that no one attempt to implement save systems that go beyond save-anywhere, demand that no games experiment with time limit features, and people that rely on speedhacks. It's all the same casualization, and if your time is so valuable then maybe go spend it doing something else.
Apples and oranges. There is no benefit to waiting around for slow animations to finish. It doesn't add to the challenge. It doesn't increase immersion. The gameplay isn't enhanced. I don't see anybody, not even a fringe minority, begging for slower animations and lower walking speeds. And don't act like speedhack is some profane violation of sacred developer vision. Sometimes developers make bad choices. Painfully slow animations is one of them.
 

Shadowfang

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2009
Messages
2,045
Location
Road to Arnika
Shadorwun: Hong Kong BattleTech
I no longer use them but after finishing Deus Ex i gave myself a crazy amount of lams and tried to do crazy stuff with it.

Almost broke it once. It went to a freeze after blowing 50 lams at once in the Hells Kitchen Hotel. I was amazed to see it comeback.

I also spawned different units and watched them fight each other.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
Patron
Joined
Jan 4, 2007
Messages
34,607
Location
KA.DINGIR.RA.KI
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Imagine believing that Wizfast for Wizardry 8 is cheating because you assume the developers intended for enemy turns to take 5 minutes due to slow animations, lmao.
 
Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
Honestly the point of singleplayer games is to entertain you. Like a TV show or movie or book or immersive art installation or whatever. You can cheat yourself out of some of the potential entertainment value if you use cheats (see what I did there?) so there's definitely some logic to avoiding cheating or what have you just to bypass every momentary obstacle. There's satisfaction in finally beating a hard encounter or what have you, which you wouldn't get if you just cheated.
That said, you're the one in charge of your entertainment. And some things aren't any kind of challenge, they're just 'wastes of time' to the individual player. One dude loves walking slowly down picturesque pathways through a computer generated forest, obviously that dude isn't gonna want to speedhack through it. Another player might like the same game for its combat, and have no interest in virtual hiking. So it makes sense for him to skip or speed up that part. Just like Mr. Hiker guy might want to set the combat difficulty to easy or cheat so he can get through the fights he's not that interested in to get back to his nature walks.

Now, cheating in multiplayer, unless everyone's on the same page, is a whole other thing. But obviously that's not what this topic is about.
 

Stavrophore

Most trustworthy slavic man
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Messages
14,972
Location
don't identify with EU-NPC land
Strap Yourselves In
My own skill level is now well below average, and I haven't had issues with giving myself boosts to get through a campaign these last ten years. For example, I got wasted a bunch of times early in Elex, so I fired up cheat engine to give myself unimited jetpack fuel to fight my battles like a chickenshit from the sky.

What I was angling for were a half dozen anecdotes from the kindly group of faggots here that entertain me on a daily basis: something involving console commands, cheat engine, mods, etc. What were some acceptable cases of compromise?

I avoid using external programs because modern games have very accomodating difficulty settings. If it's too hard for me i just lower the difficulty. There's no reason to be a tard and suffer, if the game gives you an option to do so. The only exception would be a game where you can't change difficulty on the fly, and you are 2/3 into the game and the game throws some complete bullshit at you, then i generally do everything i can to progress, unless i feel that the bullshit is actually fair and it isnt the game fault but my clearly unoptimized build - i can then tolerate to restart the game with better build. This usually happen when i roleplay instead of minmax, and in more obscure low level games -the AAA and AA industry very rarely have such problems. Last time i restarted the game due to difficulty was my first underrail playthrough, where i did clearly unoptimal choices and got stuck in junkyard. After remaking char and completing junkyard, the game opens and you have more chocies to correct your build as time goes.
 

Hagashager

Educated
Joined
Nov 24, 2022
Messages
647
With Elder Scrolls games yes, the console is my friend. Mostly for bug fixing, but every now and then I'll cheat in a weapon or something.

Before I discovered shadowkeeper/EEKeeper I used to manually mod my PC class and skills from the console in Baldur's Gate.

In my latest Kotor playthrough last year I didn't have the patience to play normally so I consoled in force powers and a saber on Taris. I also consoled a saber in on Peragus when I did K2.

Kotor 1 has not aged well.
 

LarryTyphoid

Scholar
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
2,233
I'll only ever seriously cheat when I'm really sick of a game and I just want it done and over with to get it off my checklist. I used save states and game genie codes to beat Dragon Quest 2 on NES because after two straight months of playing that game I was completely sick of it, and DQ2's endgame being a giant nigger didn't help. Although whenever I do this, I do feel bad about it later and eventually return to beat the game legitimately.

There's also sort of a scale on the acceptability of cheating. Exploits, for example. You can exploit the save system of Wizardry 1-3 to avoid your party members getting their levels drained or permanently dying, and this is pretty much cheating, but it's an obvious exploit within the game's own systems, so really it's the game's own fault for allowing me to so easily bypass its design; this gets a pass for me, although of course a "pure" playthrough is always preferable. However, if you were to use some kind of external editor to pump up your stats, then that would be haram.
 

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