Poll: Skyrim mods, when does it become cheating?

[Conza]

I've recently downloaded several mods, and in my mind, most of them aren't cheats at all, but there are some that are sort of grey. I also want to mention that I've beaten the game entirely (main quest) without any mods, this is my second playthrough now where I'm experimenting.

I've tried to put this list in order of objectionable ascending (meaning they should become less and less innocent as you go down).

Colourful Dragons
Enhanced Horse Skins
1 Day Vendor Restock
Get Arrows Back
Smelt Weapons
Faster Horse Sprint x 2
Lydia - Exchangeable Armor
Rich Merchants

Now, I downloaded these back when they had just hit the 1000 mark I think (maybe it was 10,000? anyway, a week or so ago), so I'm going to go back and get more now, but it'll be interesting to hear what the escapists think about these or any other mods

 

[Epona]

If you are cheating, then you are only cheating yourself. Since you are applying the mod I am going to assume that you don't mind cheating yourself so....You're not cheating.

 

[WolfThomas]

Your just playing the game as you like it, it's not like you've made a mod to just give you 100k of gold. But at the same you are inviting yourself to be told that you're not playing the game correctly, by people who are perhaps a little jealous that they don't have mods (like us xbox 360 players).

 

[KeyMaster45]

It hardly matters since Skyrim is a single player game. Older games were riddled with cheats so you could just god mode your way through. The badge of Epeen came from beating the game with no cheats, the unmittigated fun came from cheating and roflstomping everything that gave you so much trouble the first go round.

So no, you're not cheating. Mostly because it's a single player game and no one other than yourself is going to be effected by it.

 

[Ghengis John]

I say enjoy yourself, however rich merchants is a blatant cheat. There's a whole line of perks that are supposed to make up for that.

 

[Handbag1992]

I don't think any of the mods you're using are cheating exactly. Getting your arrows back and your rich merchants are a bit of a grey area for me.

I consider cheating to be when you install something that alters something in the game that was deliberately inserted to be debilitating. An obvious example of this would be immunity from all magic.

Of course there's absolutely nothing wrong with cheating in a single-player game. I have every intention of installing horribly overpowered mods into skyrim at one point or another.

 

[Joccaren]

I don't get what the Lydia Exchangeable armour does, so I'll leave it out, but these are cheats as they are giving you an advantage over what the default game would have given you:

-1 day Vendor restock
-Get Arrows Back
-Smelt Weapons
-Faster horse sprint X 2
-Rich Merchants


That sort of stuff is giving you an advantage over the default game. Things that change skins and add random effects, or extra missions that don't give hard to obtain items as rewards are not cheating, but things like giving your merchants extra money so that you can sell more more often, having them regain their stocks every day so you can buy all that stuff you wanted quicker, being able to turn those random weapons you find into ingots to craft more expensive wares to sell, allowing you to run faster than normal (On a horse) and allowing you to get your arrows back after killing someone is cheating, they are things that will allow you to beat the game easier.

Is the cheating hurting anyone? Nope, unless you feel bad about cheating, but it is cheating. For a reason why, imagine this: A guy goes up online and says "I've beaten the Skyrim main quest in the fastest time to date, 1 hour or something". Pretty amazing right? Now comes the fun part: "I was using the faster horses mod, 1 day vendor restock and rich merchants". Has he beaten the record? Yes, but he cheated to do so. Someone not using the faster horses mod would not have been able to travel to new places as fast, someone not using the 1 day vendor restock and rich merchants would have had to wait extra time to be able to sell things to the merchants. He cheated. Therefore, these same mods you are using (And the get arrows back, but I don't see why you'd need that as I have about 1000 iron, 800 steel, 400 elven, 200 forsworn and 100 dwarven arrows legit without even visiting dwarven ruins or any high level places yet).

 

[Irridium]

Personally, I say do whatever the hell you want. It's a single-player game, it's yours, nobody can tell you what to do. So play by your own rules.

As for me, well I do whatever the hell I want. I've gladly exploited the glitches and bugs in the game, so complaining about someone "cheating" by installing a certain mod seems rather silly to me.

Your game, your rules.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

Nah, they're all legit things that'd make the game more fun.

Colourful Dragons (Helps distinguish them from each other, and makes the game less bleak)

Enhanced Horse Skins (The horses were U..G..L..Y to begin with!)

1 Day Vendor Restock (I'm pretty sure that guy who claims to have 1 health potion for sale, yet a full shelf behind him is a dirty liar!)

Get Arrows Back (If I stab you with a sword, do I lose my sword? If not then I should be able to retrieve ALL my non-broken arrows)

Smelt Weapons (If I can turn igots to blades, I should be able to do the opposite)

Faster Horse Sprint x 2 (Horses are so slow that I'd rather fast travel otherwise)

Lydia - Exchangeable Armor (Gotta get her some BLING-BLING!)

Rich Merchants (It's a sad day when I'm carrying more money in my pocket than the richest merchant in town)

 

[Scizophrenic Llama]

Rich merchants and one day stock are the only things I'd flag as cheats, smelt weapons as well since getting metal out of that for crafting could make getting smithing up easier than it already is.

As for the rest though they seem to be fine to me.

Horses are slow as fuck, but that is kind of acceptable given that they pretty much tell Isaac Newton to fuck off about that whole gravity thing when it comes to inclined plains, but I don't see the harm in a faster sprint.

Getting arrows back can be fairly useful given that there is no means to actually create arrows at the moment(unless that has been patched/added in 1.2, but I doubt that).

Lydia dies on me all of the time, so giving her better armor is more than welcome.

The other two are just aesthetic, so no problem at all there.

Although I really see no problem with any of this, it isn't like you are affecting other's games with these mods. Play it how you want.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

Ya Ill just mirror everyone else things. THings that make the game easier I call cheats. The merchant ones and the arrow pickup ones therefore id call cheats. Things that add to the game but dont change difficulty, they are fine. The smelting one Id probably say the similar thing, though ts hardly neccessary to the game. Same with the horse sprint, yes the make it easier, but to a very minor degree.