Getting Over Cheating

[Daiyus]

Does anyone else find it hard to even finish a play through because they keep discovering more mods they just have to have, or is this just me?!? :D

It's not just you. The amount of times I've built my "perfect" Skyrim and played it for a few hours and then thought I wonder if there's a mod for that?" and then done a complete rebuild and restart is unbelievable.

 

Damn mod authors being so good!

[ElioraArin]

I am so with you, cheating isn't the problem - it's all the great mods! No more!! Enough is enough!!! :D My dirty little secret ... I've NEVER even finished a play through! Not even close :D

[cdcooley]

Perhaps. But is there a safe way to travel from Riften to Markarth without a single NPC or animal or dragon encounter? And why would you want to do that? I suppose JRR Tolkien could have skipped to Mordor but... not as fun.

Tolkien did skip major chunks of the six months it took Frodo to get to Mordor from the Shire. And he skipped even more for the return to the Shire. It's impossible to tell a good story that spans any significant amount of time without skipping past the routine and boring parts.

 

You're right that if you use fast travel (or even the carriage system) to get from Riften to Markarth every time then you're just cheating yourself of a chance at adventure. But if you're returning to Riften a day later how many of those wolves, bears, bandits, etc. that you killed do you expect to be a challenge on the way home?

 

I've traveled between Riften and Markarth plenty of times without encountering anything seriously threatening like a dragon. Uneventful is a relative term. For a hero that slays dragons a few wolves along the way is nothing. Even the average farmer seems to dispatch them without a thought and continue traveling down the road.

 

Think of it this way. When you choose to use fast travel, you're intentionally deciding that nothing particularly interesting is going to happen during that trip. Any in many cases that was going to be true anyway because of game mechanics. If you walk from Riverwood to Whiterun then go back to Riverwood the next day there's only a tiny chance that something interesting will happen. Why not use the story-teller's old trick of a quick and uneventful return trip? Then you can spend your time actually exploring some new place not traveling down the same road over and over again.

[shep8234]

Does anyone else find it hard to even finish a play through because they keep discovering more mods they just have to have, or is this just me?!? :D

I'm either or adding new mods, or fixing ones that are messed up, but it's mostly because i cram so many into one playthrough, that i forget that they need a certain load order to work properly.

[saurusmaximus]

The biggest cheating I do is using the console to give myself armor that isn't available at lower levels; not so much to be OP, but for vanity reasons (it's the armor this particular character would wear). Then there was the time I started a new playthrough and I really wanted Serana has a follower but I couldn't figure out the console codes I needed to make that happen without going all the way through DG. So, TGM in the console, with a few well-placed killall's, and I blew through DG as fast as I could just to get it over with.

[CaarosKingOfChaos]

I use the console in a few situations. Mostly when I am on a high difficulty, in the middle of nowhere, and can't just drop what I am doing to go to a town and buy healing potions. I tend to also use it to give extra healing potions to vendors, because they never sell enough of them for the player to survive. There is never enough healing potions in the game, despite the fact they are the single most vital resource in the game. . .

[TheSpaceShuttleChallenger]

It sounds to me like you're having impulse control issues. The solution? Remove impulse from your decision-making process. Personally, I don't allow myself to cheat to deal with temporary annoyances, period, even if they're severe annoyances like Fair And Balanced enemies or not being able to marry Argis until level 20. Why? Because I know that more often than not, how annoyed I am now is directly proportional to how awesome I'm going to feel when I overcome the annoyance.

I do cheat, though. Why? Because Bethesda did not make a perfect game and cheats, like mods, are one way that you can address things that are missing, underdeveloped, or buggy. But, like I said, it's important not to let temporary annoyances be the deciding factor. I make long-term decisions based on long-term observations about what I do and don't like about the game, and then I stick with them, Currently I have settled on using the following cheats for the following reasons:

1) Fixing game bugs, like tcl when I get stuck on a rock or teleport when an important NPC has vanished into oblivion

2) At the beginning of a new playthrough, using console to buff or nerf my character's stats according to the kind of person I imagine them to be. Because honestly what sort of a**hole shows up on Skyrim's border, twenty years of age or older, without having developed a single skill or talent? To me, it's kind of immersion-shattering when a skinny bard who has never touched a broadsword in his life is somehow level fifteen in two-handed, or when a fancy-pants foreign ambassador starts the game with the persuasive abilities of a skeever, so I use cheats to make my characters' starting skills reflect their backstory.

3) At the beginning of a new playthrough, setting my carryweight to 10,000. Why? Because Bethesda's encumbrance system is moronic, and I would rather remove the mechanic entirely than have to constantly stop in the middle of a dungeon to clean out my inventory because apparently that flower I just picked has broken my back.

4) Abusing cheap-recipe, high-value crafting recipes to level my crafting skills quickly. Because Skyrim's crafting system is not immersive in any way, shape, or form, and I would rather not spend four years stuck inside a crafting menu clicking on words and churning out hundreds of unwanted items just so that my high-level characters can get a high-level weapon.

Edited August 3, 2015 by TheSpaceShuttleChallenger

[shep8234]

It sounds to me like you're having impulse control issues. The solution? Remove impulse from your decision-making process. Personally, I don't allow myself to cheat to deal with temporary annoyances, period, even if they're severe annoyances like Fair And Balanced enemies or not being able to marry Argis until level 20. Why? Because I know that more often than not, how annoyed I am now is directly proportional to how awesome I'm going to feel when I overcome the annoyance.

 

I do cheat, though. Why? Because Bethesda did not make a perfect game and cheats, like mods, are one way that you can address things that are missing, underdeveloped, or buggy. But, like I said, it's important not to let temporary annoyances be the deciding factor. I make long-term decisions based on long-term observations about what I do and don't like about the game, and then I stick with them, Currently I have settled on using the following cheats for the following reasons:

1) Fixing game bugs, like tcl when I get stuck on a rock or teleport when an important NPC has vanished into oblivion

2) At the beginning of a new playthrough, using console to buff or nerf my character's stats according to the kind of person I imagine them to be. Because honestly what sort of a**hole shows up on Skyrim's border, twenty years of age or older, without having developed a single skill or talent? To me, it's kind of immersion-shattering when a skinny bard who has never touched a broadsword in his life is somehow level fifteen in two-handed, or when a fancy-pants foreign ambassador starts the game with the persuasive abilities of a skeever, so I use cheats to make my characters' starting skills reflect their backstory.

3) At the beginning of a new playthrough, setting my carryweight to 10,000. Why? Because Bethesda's encumbrance system is moronic, and I would rather remove the mechanic entirely than have to constantly stop in the middle of a dungeon to clean out my inventory because apparently that flower I just picked has broken my back.

4) Abusing cheap-recipe, high-value crafting recipes to level my crafting skills quickly. Because Skyrim's crafting system is not immersive in any way, shape, or form, and I would rather not spend four years stuck inside a crafting menu clicking on words and churning out hundreds of unwanted items just so that my high-level characters can get a high-level weapon.

I agree with you one hundred percent, like i said in my post, i use console to have a better start, such as the list you posted above, i think the decison to use the console is about what you want, this is soley a decision that every player makes for themselves, as you said the game has alot of mechanic issues and too many bugs to list, so the console should really be to work around them without being stuck in agame that you can't finish, out of all the complaints about Skyrim, the weight factor has all ways been at the top of my list, The witcher series also has this in thier games too, but it's not as off balence as Skyrim.

 

This is a good topic and good subject to discuss, but in the end this a personal issue that you need to find a way to work out, no one can say do this or that, it depends on your playing style, Me personally i use the console at every new playthrough to beef up my new character, so i at least have a decent start.

[KanesGhost]

 

2) At the beginning of a new playthrough, using console to buff or nerf my character's stats according to the kind of person I imagine them to be. Because honestly what sort of a**hole shows up on Skyrim's border, twenty years of age or older, without having developed a single skill or talent? To me, it's kind of immersion-shattering when a skinny bard who has never touched a broadsword in his life is somehow level fifteen in two-handed, or when a fancy-pants foreign ambassador starts the game with the persuasive abilities of a skeever, so I use cheats to make my characters' starting skills reflect their backstory.

This is my take also...I love immersion in game and realism, it's what floats my boat. My most played Character has the appearance of a man in his early to mid 30's and is also the only character I use this "cheat" on (yes, have played him a number of times, I like his story, personality and RP)...As a man of such age in a land like Skyrim I couldn't imagine him still breathing if he was still unskilled. I level out his chosen Skills and Perks and play him as a honed, seasoned Warrior....I find the skills grind very immersion breaking and unrealistic when playing such a character.

 

And so I console and Mod the Game I want and RP the hell out of it...also to counter short comings in the vanilla game, such as he will collect certain chosen ingredients or items, then sit and wait for a few hours, when the wait is finished I then console add what he created...such as Arrows...and dump the collected ingredients in the nearest unsafe Barrel, etc...He can do things without the need for special stations, such as create Poisons with Mortar and Pestle in the middle of nowhere, Smith and improve Leather (I imagine with Awl, new leather and Sinew), RP'ed as carrying a Whetting Stone to sharpen his Weapons, etc...things that I feel he should really be able to do with out the need for large, heavy equipment.

 

I think the only "cheat" in such Games as Skyrim (Single Player) is to OP the character and leave no challenges in the game for yourself, I don't see the fun in that personally (but some people enjoy that and that's fine, it's their game)...I love a challenging game, want to go hard, play smart and work my *ss off for survival, playing Perma Death and adding Mods that introduce hordes of deadly NPC's helps that play style along :smile:

 

I perhaps take my 'realism' too far (as far as it can go in a Game anyway), but is what makes me happy and enjoy my game. Removed all his Magic, no Spells for him to use, no Healing Potions (relies on Bandages and never applied during combat), no Buffer Potions, no Enchanted items...Each to their own :smile:

Edited August 6, 2015 by KanesGhost

[Whyhellothar123]

Cheating is a hard word to put to something. Some consider exploits/glitches to be cheating if they're abused (speed runs for example), but at the same time they're a part of the game. On the other hand, cheats are often part of the game too, though usually accessed through external means like the console or button combinations, and of course they're not intended for a legit play through by the developers. When I consider 'cheating' for something I ask myself, is there any way I could do this normally, or through some arduous means on some occasions. I think straight up giving yourself something you could obtain normally really breaks any immersion if you value role-play. There's always exceptions though, like noclipping out of a rock you fell into or a floor you suddenly clipped out of.

 

I think the amount of mods you have can also effect how often you might 'need' to cheat too, since stuff is more likely to break or work differently. Cheating is really just a limitation you put on yourself if/when you consider loading a saved game is overpowered as hell and nothing else in the game can do that, unless you believe since you're the Dragonborn that you have this special ability.

 

At the end of the day, if you can convince yourself its not cheating and nobody got hurt, then that's probably ok.