how much do you consider cheating?

[Wouter445]

hi,

i played skyrim quite a few hours, i try each time higher dificulty levels.

at i play from start on expert doing quite wel.

 

but i have rater a ethical problem with my own.

 

in my gameplay i cheated the weight, from the basic 300 to basic 5000

also i redused my levels a quite a few times, do to insane speed of leveling. redused my true level at least 7 times now.

 

now the question is do you consider this cheating?

[rhowington]

Personally, how you play is your business. My only caveat is you should play the game through on the highest level at least once. That includes not using the smithing/alchemy/enchanting leveling for overpowered weapons and armor. After that I have no problem with raising carry weight or adding gold. Others probably will but, I think whatever makes the game enjoyable for you, go for it. It was your money that bought the game, play as you want and not how others think you should.

[GoodfellowGoodspring]

I believe players should be able to play however they want. Unfortunately with this gen of games, cheating is seen less due to online play and achievements and i miss the days of looking in my cheat book and having some fun!

 

When i was playing Oblivion on the 360, i propped up my controller so that the analog stick was always up, then sneaked against a wall for like an hour in till my sneak skill reached 100. Is this considering cheating? I would have reached that level eventually but i wanted it right away! I would quite happily edit a save file or mod my character's stats in order to reach the same result.

 

I enjoy roleplaying within Skyrim but i have no problem in adding a few coins into my inventory via console or unlocking a door when i have ran out of lockpicks.

[PsYchotic666Joker]

I honestly never cheat for anything....period.

 

my dad on the other hand, massive cheater.

 

he remakes his characters so often and says the same thing every time " i hated that i cheated so much i am not going to cheat this time"

 

he starts off strong but gets his butt whooped and says i need this armor/weapon/etc and i need these perks i am crap without them or he needs gold...so he consoles in everything.

 

and he will literally start farming a few giants attacking them or getting beat up by them and farming their loot then resurrecting them just to build up all his skills to get his perks. he goes from lvl 1 to 50 in a few hours just doing this, During this whole process he consoles in 500 ultimate health potions, and heals himself when his health gets low...i told him if you're going to just cheat do it the lazy way and enable TIM and just walk away for hours lol...but he don't listen.

 

He hates it when i mess with him about him cheating and he always says "Oh i bet you cheat when i'm not looking either" i don't, and besides i can't even cheat if i wanted to. Godmode don't work on my game due to location damage ( tested it for fun ) He also plays pretty much a vanilla game and refuses to use a lot of mods cause he claims the people who make them don't know how to do things right and will mess my computer up and corrupt my game or give me a virus...which is why he has hardly EVER used mods, Been trying since the prime days of MORROWIND to use mods but he won't unless i make the mod ( he makes me make cheat mods for him i.e. a chest placed somewhere that has armor, loot, jewelry, gold, etc...oh and it's all enchanted loot btw. the chest respawns too.

 

The way he plays drives me nuts! >.<

[Wouter445]

I honestly never cheat for anything....period.

 

my dad on the other hand, massive cheater.

 

he remakes his characters so often and says the same thing every time " i hated that i cheated so much i am not going to cheat this time"

 

he starts off strong but gets his butt whooped and says i need this armor/weapon/etc and i need these perks i am crap without them or he needs gold...so he consoles in everything.

 

and he will literally start farming a few giants attacking them or getting beat up by them and farming their loot then resurrecting them just to build up all his skills to get his perks. he goes from lvl 1 to 50 in a few hours just doing this, During this whole process he consoles in 500 ultimate health potions, and heals himself when his health gets low...i told him if you're going to just cheat do it the lazy way and enable TIM and just walk away for hours lol...but he don't listen.

 

He hates it when i mess with him about him cheating and he always says "Oh i bet you cheat when i'm not looking either" i don't, and besides i can't even cheat if i wanted to. Godmode don't work on my game due to location damage ( tested it for fun ) He also plays pretty much a vanilla game and refuses to use a lot of mods cause he claims the people who make them don't know how to do things right and will mess my computer up and corrupt my game or give me a virus...which is why he has hardly EVER used mods, Been trying since the prime days of MORROWIND to use mods but he won't unless i make the mod ( he makes me make cheat mods for him i.e. a chest placed somewhere that has armor, loot, jewelry, gold, etc...oh and it's all enchanted loot btw. the chest respawns too.

 

The way he plays drives me nuts! >.<

this is exactly the thing i talk about.

even if you console weight, you can carry more, craft more gain more skills and faster leveling

*then you can say, dude you can also revisite the same location twice to loot it dry, witch is ofcourse true*

this is why i think the game is made wrong, they sudden have extracted skills, from leveling *leveling from killing not skilling*

reason i am in conflict is if i cheat weight, i feel like i reduse my gameplay and so doing reduseing my mastering the gameplay.

[StayFrosty05]

I believe it all depends on how you 'cheat' as to whether your ruining your own Game experience or enhancing it's enjoyment....and each of us has our own preferences in what we consider fun. Me, I love Role play and a hard challenging game, the greater the challenge the more fun, love being forced to have to think about what I am doing in regards to tactics, strategy, etc....(I play Perma-Death)....but leveling bores the daylights out of me and takes the fun out of my Role Play (I like RP'ing a seasoned Warrior). And so I cheat the levels....have a leveling Cheat Chest Mod installed in Riverwood and max my characters chosen proficiencies out at the start of the game, this takes him to around level 50-53...then I re-set the world around him so it levels up immediately with him and time to play....My Mod list is set for challenge and I handicap my Dovahkin in resources....aka. He uses no Enchanted items of any sort, no Healing or Skill Buffer Potions and absolutely no Magic what so ever....always Light Armor, a Bow, a Crossbow and a Sword (sometimes Shield), none of them with OP stats....I don't enjoy OP stats on his gear, though his Poisons are more realistic than vanilla Skyrims, but that goes both ways in my game also...Frostbite Spiders are truly something to be feared in my game, their deadly.

 

We each play what we most enjoy....if you don't enjoy it, don't do it....the game is all about having fun, not stressing over what we should and shouldn't do, it's a single player game.

Edited September 7, 2013 by StayFrosty05

[FishBiter]

Reducing your level could be considered cheating since it could mean that you have higher skills relative to the level of the NPCs that you're fighting, especially if you're doing this because you leveled blacksmithing/alchemy/other non-combat skills. So yes, in a most technical sense you are cheating.

 

 

Now, as far as this being unethical; the elder scrolls series have never really been about the challenge of the games and instead have always been more about the story and the character experience. If the leveling system, enemy ai, or really any other part of the game is getting in the way of the story or your ability to experience the kind of character that you want to play then it is entirely expected that you would change that.

 

 

Heck, just look at the built in difficulty adjustments. If you put it on the lowest difficulty you're hitting enemies like four times harder than they hit you, and that technically would not be considered cheating, so the different between that and what you did becomes fairly irrelevant.

[Hypermouse1mil]

I've played skyrim since it first came out on PS3 until around July when i finally bought it on PC. Having to spend the first 5 hours of the game grinding at blacksmithing, alchemy, and enchanting just to get my character up to fighting shape only to have the game start to lock-up at 30 hours of save time (if you ever played this game on PS3 you know exactly what i'm talking about). Playing on PS3 means that its very difficult to impossible to cheat to get your character leveled, for example the ogma infinium glitch was patched by Bethesda almost as quickly as it was discovered. I had almost given up on the game before i went to the PC version because restarting meant a carbon copy of all that i had done before in an endless loop. I don't consider things such as alternate start or even the stone of learning to be cheats. I feel they allow you to get your character as you want them from the start so you can get on with exploring and enjoying the game as you want it to be. Allowing the gamers to adjust the game to suit their personal tastes was the best idea any game developer has ever had.

[Urtel]

Last time i cheated when was curious about the rumor, that you can actually see whole tamriel, if cheat through skyrim borders. So i used a console.

That was first time since playing gta2, i guess that was back in 2001-2002. So damn long time ago.

So yes, i think in single player you can do whatever, if it does not break your gaming fun. But in multiplayer... i can find only bad words for those, who cheat against other players. Other than that its ok, but not for me) I like challenges. I use only one save for one character, have immersion and hardcore mods... so cheating is no fun for me. But when you play with mods, no way you can avoid using console even once, which is already cheating in a way))

[baltasaronmeth]

Cheating means, that you break the rules you agreed to earlier. I do, for example, not agree with the lack of an athletic skill in Skyrim, so I added one. I found the vanilla number of monsters boring, so I added monsters. Some of them carry dragon bones and scales, but it does not feel like cheating, because those materials lose effectivity above level 50. I felt, on the other hand, that combat is too easy, so I added AI mods for both mobs and dragons. This causes me to level up much faster, because I have to do more, than hitting the enemy once. I save my game before trying anything out of the ordinary and if it goes wrong, I simply load. This would be considered cheating for some already. In the game State of Decay, you cannot save your game. If one of your PC's dies, he's gone.

 

Sometimes the game is just broken in a way no patch can fix. There are... horses you can't get rid of, so I park them somewhere safe and disable them in the console. Sometimes my AI mod causes a trio of vampires to wipe out half Whiterun, I sometimes consider resurrecting the townsfolk, because one mod should not throw the game off ballance like this.

 

I have a player home installed, that has enough metal ingots in its basement to level smithing to legendary twice - and that stuff respawns, since it counts as a dungeon, if left alone for long enough. In addition, there are two NPC's in that house, who have a shared pool of ~11.000G every time NPC's reset. If that wasn't enough, the people of Skyrim come to the place to have a bath, so they are super friendly and sometimes act, as if I had done a few quests for them without actually touching the questline. I do not consider this cheating. I have played a merchant in vanilla, this char already ate many many hours, so I am no longer interested in the economy of Skyrim. I also explored the ore collection process and smithing to a certain extreme in vanilla, so I guess I can concentrate on other things now. So, while the special perks of this player home sure act as a cheat, they do not reduce the fun I have with my current character.

 

Ultimately, I consider some vanilla mechanisms cheating. Quick travel is one of them. Adding quick travel to TES ruined most of my immersion, TES5 quest design did the rest. You basically have to hop around the world, like a teleporting maniac on cocain. This and the omnipresent quest marker did the rest. So, all I had to do, was follow that white triangle in my compass until I reached the target and warp to the next target. While I get it, that Bethesda simply wants more cash and the lack of a quick travel follow the triangle system would scare off the masses, I simply turned both off. Then I was confronted with two problems Skyrim has, one was the fact, that the quest descriptions are basically non-existent, so you are SOL and JWF without quest markers (solved by only having those makers on the map, not the radar) and the fact, that non-quick travel opportunities are almost inexistant as well. So, there had to be a carriage mod, adding wagons to every settlement, not only the big cities. Then I added Mark and Recall from Morrowind, as well as Devine Intervention. I ultimately realized, that my player home also had something in on this, the Bride of Migal would teleport me a) out of dungeons into the player home cellar and b) around between my player homes. I use the teleport cheat only if I'm stuck and cannot get out (the way you would have quick traveled out of a cliff you are stuck in) and the other option to reach places faster. I still have to buy the house, so I actually have to invest gold in my travel.

 

Speaking of quick travel: I am currently running around in Falskaar, which is great, but it was definitly designed with quick travel in mind. There are no carriages and half the island can only be accessed in one specific spot. When I entered Falskaar (out of accident, sort of), I had no space in my or my followers inventory, I had only one recall scroll, but no mark scroll. Leaving Falskaar means playing through a certain portion of its story. The Bride of Migal could have teleportet me out of Falskaar, but I would not have been able to return the way I got in. This was actually one of the most immersive moments I had in a while. The ultimate oh-crap-moment! Stranded in the pampas! Every bit of cheating would have ruined that.

Edited September 9, 2013 by baltasaronmeth