Cheating to save time

[Autumnflame]

Im sure we have all been in that point in a game where we dont relish the idea of 10 hours of grinding to get upto the necessary level required to kill the final boss or unlock every tech tree.

or as we age and have families and commitments we have less free time for the grind in some games.

So who here uses Trainers, save editors and the like sometimes purely to save time and not to give your self too much of an advantage,

Examples of my own, editing a save file for FF8 so I don't have to spend the first 3 hours grinding low level magic.

Editing the timed missions in DAI so i dont have to wait 24 hours for a mission to complete.

Editing resources to progress inorder to just keep playing instead of being bogged down farming,

Games that gave necessary grind points,boosting my exp gains so im ready to progress in 10 battles not 100

 

[Zhukov]

I generally don't play games of the sort that would require those measures. However if I did then I would happily cheat my arse off.

If a game is designed in such a way that it makes me want to skip content then that game, or at least that particular content, is shit.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

I enjoy the grind in the games I play and see it as part of the fun so I never feel the need to skip such things. Hell, in most rpgs you can win without grinding by simply not running away from battles if you are good enough at the game. You may not be able to beat the super secret bosses, maybe, but you should be able to at least finish the game.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I generally don't play games of the sort that would require those measures. However if I did then I would happily cheat my arse off.

If a game is designed in such a way that it makes me want to skip content then that game, or at least that particular content, is shit.

100% this. I'm all about quality above quantity, which with the open world fad there's fewer and fewer games for me to play. Everything in a game should be fun and enjoyable. If I have to swift through the shit to get to the good stuff, then I'm not going to play the game. It seems like game design has taken a huge nosedive with open world games and RPGs. RPGs are so concerned with having all these systems that don't enhance the core game and only dilute it. Getting new weapons/gear constantly only results in busywork, it doesn't make your game deeper or more complex.

The following video pretty much exemplifies what good game design is all about and most games are made with the opposite approach where more elements, systems, and content is thrown in regardless if it enhances the core game. It's why I love Team ICO games and why Arkane Studios is my favorite dev right now.

 

[Asita]

To my memory, the only time I've indulged in that was to get rid of the timers on Inquisition's War Table.

 

[tippy2k2]

I've never used any cheats or anything of that nature to get past a part (I'm more likely to just quit the game if I hit a roadblock like that).

I have looked up answers to puzzles if I've spent more than 15 minutes or so trying to figure it out (or right away if I knew I saw the answer previously but wasn't going to backtrack for it like Fallout 4 and the password to get to the Railroad). I don't have to do it very often but I'm not going to beat my head against a wall to figure something out and use up some of my precious gaming time doing some random puzzle.

 

[Yoshi178]

if i just want to hurry up and get on with the story i'll sometimes just use a guide but for the most part i try to get by without one

 

[WolfThomas]

If respecing is not available and I can cheat it without breaking the game I will. If I make a dumb decision early on I don't want to have to restart. I also want to be able to trial certain builds.

I did get a mod on XB1 to give me huge resources in F4 because I just wanted to see what I could build without resource limits.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Pokemon on my phone. I always turn on the fast forward glitch and sometimes I make it so I get all three starter pokemon from the beginning.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I don't play games that require you to grind to be able to beat a boss. Even in games were grinding is an option I'd rather beat my head against a boss for hours rather than spend the same amount of time grinding to get to a level that would reduce the difficulty of said boss.

Beating a boss when you're under-leveled for it feels rewarding. Beating a boss because you just spent 3 hours killing slimes to level up does not.

 

[aozgolo]

I prefer to play games where grinding is fun, I don't mind a grind as long as I don't hate doing it.

That being said, I have in many games cheated "the system", but not so much outright performed a cheat (as in a code or debug command, etc.) Some examples I can think of:

-Dumping a huge cache of late-game weapons, armor, and other items off in a chest in Terraria or Starbound so my fresh new character can go there and pick the items up
-Save-scumming to achieve desired drops from chests (especially in Final Fantasy XII where you practically have to)
-Used Auto-reroller tools for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale to get a high roll for new characters
-Used save-states in Emulators to get through difficult spots (The only reason I've seen late stages of Battletoads)


I have done cheatcodes in some games, but more towards the goal of just playing around and less about beating the game, and often times I don't save my progress. A few times where I have outright cheated though are like in The Sims where I want a certain level of "furnishings" for my house so I used the money cheat, or with Skyrim or Fallout 4 I will often turn on God Mode after everything is dead in an area so I don't have to make more than one trip to haul all the stuff I want back to my settlement (time saving)

 

[springheeljack]

I have used cheats many times if I find myself annoyed or way too frustrated in the combat or gameplay of certain video games

 

[Tanis]

As a kid I never really did it, but as an adult I almost have to.

I MISS the days of the GameShark.
That 10 Times EXP saved SO MUCH TIME...while not really 'cheating' anyways because I was just leveling up faster.

I wish MORE games would just toss that in there as an options.
It's not like I'm asking for infinite HP/MP.
I'd just like devs to remember not everyone has 100+ hours to GRIND just to beat the final fucking boss!

 

[Recusant]

Funny you should mention this now- having played The Witcher not long after it came out, I find myself curious about the world, so I decided to read the books, but found that despite being translated into something like sixteen different languages, English wasn't on the list, so I hunted down fan translations and read those. Then I ran through the first game again, transferred my save to the second, installed the combat rebalance mod so it was actually worth playing, and ran into a section that removes most of your abilities, takes away all your gear, and pits you against multiple enemies- but only after playing an unskippable cutscene.

Now, difficulty doesn't frighten me. I beat Nethack in only 642 tries (that sounds like a lot, but if you're using only the manual and information learned in game, it's practically a speedrun). I dogfought three Jalkehis in a Broadsword in a minefield and won. I beat Battletoads. I could beat this.

...and indeed, I'm sure I could, if I took the time. But I have a job now, and free time has suddenly become a LOT more precious. As I sat through the loading screen for the dozen-oddth time, and watched the same damn cinematic yet again, I thought back to Battletoads, and other difficult gaming moments of the 80's. I thought back to the cutscenes in Maniac Mansion, which not only pioneered cutscenes in games, but actually gave us the word "cutscene" (though now that I think of it, it may have been hyphenated, or two words). They weren't unskippable. I thought back to the loading times of the NES, then immediately stopped, because they didn't exist. I wondered at how far technology has fallen. And I said nuts to it. I'm still curious how the story shakes out, so one of these days, I'll look up how to cheat in the Witcher 2, finish it, and hopefully enjoy the third game more, but for now it's basically killed my enthusiasm.

 

[Dalisclock]

Once that I remember off the top of my head.

Stardew Valley of all things. Why? Simple.

I was working toward getting the community center done and I one of the last thing I had left was one of the fruits you can only get from trees that bear fruit in the summer. I swore that I'd planted at least two of each type of fruit tree, but the entire summer goes by and I have everything but that one fruit I need to finish that particular bundle. And since it takes like half the season for a tree to grow to maturity and bear fruit, by the time I realized I messed up somewhere, it was too late to try planting one now.

So I had the choice between waiting another in-game year so summer could swing around again so I could get the fruit legit, or I could edit a single specimen of that fruit into my inventory so I could finish the bundle.

I chose the editor, because I wanted to be done with the community center quest and I was already well into Year 2.

 

[Ironman126]

Do games these days even have cheats? I know old games did, but these days I can't really imagine, say Obsidian, putting a "bypass horrid, grinding kite-fest bullshit" cheat into Pillars of Eternity (or whatever unplayable RPG they're on now).

I guess games have exploits, though I'm struggling to think of any that are noteworthy. Some games, mostly Bethesda games, have console commands, unless you're playing on a console. Those can be cheating, for sure! But they're a pain to use if you don't have them memorized, which I suspect the overwhelming majority of players don't.

Still, I kinda wish cheats were a thing still. There are a lot of games that I'd like to replay, but I can't be bothered to put the time in to get out of the boring early-game bits.

 

[loa]

Oh yes, if I could break bravely defaults stupid village system with its real time bars and online requirement to get "villagers" so the bars fill faster, I so would.
Whoever came up with that can eat an unshaved cactus.

 

[Jerast]

Playing Kamidori Alchemy Meister again and some of the materials are so bullshit and grindy to get a reasonable supply of I just cheat 999 of every building material into my inventory because I cannot be fucked farming gobles or slimes for five hours to make an overall pretty shitty set of items and potions sword when I'm only playing for NG++ content to begin with so I'll have to go through the game 3x regardless.

 

[Jerast]

As a kid I never really did it, but as an adult I almost have to.

I MISS the days of the GameShark.
That 10 Times EXP saved SO MUCH TIME...while not really 'cheating' anyways because I was just leveling up faster.

I wish MORE games would just toss that in there as an options.
It's not like I'm asking for infinite HP/MP.
I'd just like devs to remember not everyone has 100+ hours to GRIND just to beat the final fucking boss!

The new pokemon games kinda did this with EXP share, having it active pretty much makes it super easy to level an entire party through the story instead of just the zone appropriate type pokemon in every battle, and you can turn it on and off when the whole group catches up to the level they're meant to be.

And it got absolutely slammed as "ezmode xDDDDDD only shitters use this" on this website.

Sometimes peeps don't realise that some of us need to save some time and can't do a grind sesh whenever we load up a game.

 

[Zendariel]

Do games these days even have cheats? I know old games did, but these days I can't really imagine, say Obsidian, putting a "bypass horrid, grinding kite-fest bullshit" cheat into Pillars of Eternity (or whatever unplayable RPG they're on now).

I guess games have exploits, though I'm struggling to think of any that are noteworthy. Some games, mostly Bethesda games, have console commands, unless you're playing on a console. Those can be cheating, for sure! But they're a pain to use if you don't have them memorized, which I suspect the overwhelming majority of players don't.

Still, I kinda wish cheats were a thing still. There are a lot of games that I'd like to replay, but I can't be bothered to put the time in to get out of the boring early-game bits.

In-game cheats are pretty rare and getting rarer I think, but some people still create trainers and other tools that can change values from outside the game by altering values in memory and save data and those kind of things. It's been years since I've used one but i'm pretty sure they haven't gone anywhere. At least on PC.