Hard time not playing without cheats

[Erttheking]

As much as The Total War series (and mods) are great fun, I always cheat in the campaigns to give me money and instantly build the biggest cities, simply because I like the battles but want them to have some meaning. Some of the mods I play (Third age and Roma Surrectum) also just feel like a slog in campaign, and spams the AI with loads of full stack armies, so I personally think it's pretty fair game.

Overall though, I do like to finish a game at least once without cheats. It's a shame cheats don't seem to be too much of a thing these days, as in the PS2 era games with cheat codes significantly extended the fun and game length of many titles for me.

Same series, I'm really, REALLY considering a mod that makes it so that the enemy stops fucking spamming agents at me because that can fuck right off. I haven't gotten to that point yet but I am fucking close.

 

[Asita]

It's fine for people to play a game how they want, but cheating in any way removes legitimacy.
I think for an honest run of a game, like a playthrough of Fallout 4 or something, the only acceptable cheats are to compensate for failures or oversights in the game design.
I can attest to having enabled noclip several times when I get stuck in a wall, manually progressing a quest because there was a logic error in it, and turning on god mode because I randomly died of hunger, thirst, and tiredness when loading back to a previously fine save.

I play a lot of games for the challenge of it, or mod them to make it as such though - so I recognize that most people probably don't agree.

Well here's the thing, the only cheat I've used in recent years[footnote]Unless you count gameplay mods like Skyrim Redone, which I personally don't[/footnote] has been a mod that removes the timers on the War Table in Dragon Age Inquisition. Strictly speaking, that's a cheat designed to circumvent a very intentional mechanic, and I acknowledge as much.. I balk, however, at the idea that it somehow delegitimizes me or my playthrough because it's a terrible mechanic put in place purely to artificially lengthen the game with well over 200 hours[footnote]Due to some technical difficulties and personal frustration, I stopped counting at 209.37 hours[/footnote] of waiting. You plug in your choice for the War Table event, then you go do other things for anywhere between 15 minutes to 24 hours before it gives you the results. I maintain that nothing of value is lost with the elimination of that pointless padding.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I've heavily, heavily modifed my ME2 and ME3 coalesced.ini files. I've essentially removed the need to do any of the minigames (ie. scanning, avoiding reapers, refuelling, etc), I've tweaked weapon properties to make them more enjoyable, unlocked all cosmetics/armour sets, one button to max out renegade and paragon (so I can approach any conversation however I wish without the need to only go one or the other) and more.

I feel stupid for not thinking of these before, but I'm glad to know it's easily possible, probably a month after andromeda comes out I'll do a solid trilogy playthrough if I decide to get andromeda, I'll remember to do stuff like this.

OT:

Depends on the game and why I'm playing it, but alot of times I will purposefully remove certain "difficulties" in a game because they are pointless to me

such as most recently, in the witcher 3, I gave myself infinite carry weight, you run over shit all the time and I never knew *exactly* what I might need at some point, so it made it much easier to keep everything and just sell it next time I reached a big city. (plus some of the gold requirements are fucking insane for the expansion stuff, trying to get everything to grandmaster + level 3 runes is killer on the wallet)

so yeah, stuff like that I'll "cheat" usually, hell I'll even switch it to easy mode sometimes when I enjoy the game but I'd rather breeze through it.

 

[MHR]

I generally never use cheats. I can barely remember the last time I used one. I think it was probably Red Faction Guerrilla when I briefly activated a cheat that made it so there was never a "green" security alertness state, essentially making the game a bit harder. I don't see the point in making games any easier than they are, even to skip timesinks. I usually enjoy timesinks in fact, partly because I know they extend the gameplay.

If you use cheats and then wish the game were more substantial, you don't have many people to blame other than yourself.

 

[Trunkage]

It's fine for people to play a game how they want, but cheating in any way removes legitimacy.
I think for an honest run of a game, like a playthrough of Fallout 4 or something, the only acceptable cheats are to compensate for failures or oversights in the game design.
I can attest to having enabled noclip several times when I get stuck in a wall, manually progressing a quest because there was a logic error in it, and turning on god mode because I randomly died of hunger, thirst, and tiredness when loading back to a previously fine save.

I play a lot of games for the challenge of it, or mod them to make it as such though - so I recognize that most people probably don't agree.

Id agree with fixing bugs. I wish other games would let you change things like a Bethsheda game

There is on game I will always cheat - the Kings Bounty remakes. There is never enough resources even on the normal difficulty

 

[Guffe]

Only time I really used cheats was in GTA III / San Andreas when we just wanted to fiddle around and do stupid shit like drive around witha tank or something. In stead of going to some military base, it was a lot easier to just summon the tank. That kind of stuff.

 

[maninahat]

I don't use them now, but I loved to use them back in the day. Often instead of buying games, I would just take one of those game demo CDs that came with a computer magazine, and play those ten minute vignettes over and over, ad nauseum. Cheats let me extend the play-ability of these even further, and even allow a bit of role play. Immortality modes on Rainbow Six let me saunter through an Egyptian museum, blasting away terrorists at my leisure like the Terminator. In Hidden and Dangerous, "zombie mode" let you come back from the dead, even if your limbs had been blown off. It is quite possible in that to attach bombs to your own legs, wander into an enemy squad, wxplode, and then bring yourself back to life.

It seems like cheats are fewer and less interesting now. Back then coding let people have giant heads and over-inflated chests. Nowadays games are shipped without cheats at all, unless you mess around with the sourcecode.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

First playthrough? No cheats. Ever. Mostly no guides or walkthroughs either, unless it's one of those very rare cases where I really don't know what I'm supposed to do.

Second playthrough is reserved for challenge or completionist runs. Still no cheats, but I might use a guide for the more 'guide dang it' collectibles.

Beyond that? All bets are off. I'll mod and/or cheat a game into oblivion, finding ever more insidious ways of breaking it.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I've heavily, heavily modifed my ME2 and ME3 coalesced.ini files. I've essentially removed the need to do any of the minigames (ie. scanning, avoiding reapers, refuelling, etc), I've tweaked weapon properties to make them more enjoyable, unlocked all cosmetics/armour sets, one button to max out renegade and paragon (so I can approach any conversation however I wish without the need to only go one or the other) and more.

I feel stupid for not thinking of these before, but I'm glad to know it's easily possible, probably a month after andromeda comes out I'll do a solid trilogy playthrough if I decide to get andromeda, I'll remember to do stuff like this.

It's a little intimidating to start but with the use of this tool [http://blog.gib.me/2012/02/16/mass-effect-3-coalesced-bin-tool/] from Gibbed and following information on the wiki [http://masseffect.wikia.com/wiki/PC_Tweaks_(Mass_Effect_3)] and elsewhere around the web, it's not too difficult. There's a lot of stuff to do that makes QoL better, f.ex: faster sprint in ME1, change FoV, skip intro videos and add various keybinds. There's lots of game tweaks, like one keybind in ME2 to add all the palladium/eezo/etc you need so you can skip the scanning, or you can set paragon/renegade points so you don't have to use one approach for the whole game to get the conversation options you need later. You can unlock all the armours and change the bonuses they give, like if you prefer the bonus of armour A but the look of armour B. Lots of good options that let you play the game in slightly different ways You can also add other bonus powers, say you want Singularity on your Infiltrator or whatever, you can do that too.

There are also graphical mods on ME3 nexus [http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/?], tho these seem a little more complicated to use. I used one that gets of the god-awful purple lens flare lines everywhere in ME3. I've seen others that shorten/remove the nightmare bits and of course, the alternative ending mod [http://www.nexusmods.com/masseffect3/mods/265/?] that's infinitely better than the the official ones.

 

[CaitSeith]

I usually don't use cheats in my first run because I want to experience the vanilla version of the game first (the experience that the developers decided to deliver). Afterwards, sometimes, sometimes not.

 

[sageoftruth]

I don't cheat, but in the Souls games, I tend to be a relentless wiki reader. It helps because I'm not very observant when playing and I tend to miss things, like the fact that I could talk to NPCs behind windows in Bloodborne. Sometimes I just go on the Wiki because I'm bored, need something to do, and don't have any games handy.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Geez I can't really think of many games I've ever used cheats in. Warcraft 3 and the GTA games are probably it really. I'm not opposed to them or anything of course- play your game the way you want to play it. I tend to make my games harder. Stealth runs, limited equipment, things like that.

 

[Alma Mare]

I cheat all the time. Almost never to make the game easier, typically to save time. Most games have absolutely no respect for my time, so I fuck them right back. What's that, a non-respawnable enemy has a 2% drop rate of what I want? Fuck that, edit that shit into my inventory.

 

[Strazdas]

My personal experience with cheats is Ill always finish the game first time without them, then if the game is worth being replayed a second time i will sometimes use them to have fun in the game. Though nowadays most games dont have proper cheats systems, but mods and trainers fix that.