We need to talk about cheating in single player games

[CaffeineAddict]

Talk about cheating in video games is mostly related to multiplayer (MP) where it makes sense for various mechanism to prevent it or at least to make it difficult.

However cheating is also possible in single player (SP), but unlike in MP...:
1. Opinions wary about what someone considers cheating
2. It's subjective whether anyone should dictate you not to cheat in SP
3. Game studios very rarely do anything to try prevent cheating in SP

For point 1, here is what I consider cheating:

• Save scumming
• Taking advantage of exploits
• Reading game wiki

For point 2, whether I for instance should command you not to cheat, the usual answer is, WTF do you care, I bought the game I play it how ever I want.
Or another argument is, it's not MP game, there are no other gamers that my cheating would harm.

However here is the catch, cheating in SP does harm somebody, it harms yourself without even realizing.
It harms you by:
- taking precious challenge away from you, there's no challenge with cheating, it's not even considered game play but maybe sandbox or god mode.
There is no point because no game is that difficult you can't win without cheating, exceptions are extremely rare, mostly very old games.
- Secondly you'll finish your game sooner with cheating, much sooner in some cases, that means you essentially wasted your money to buy game, problem isn't so much about money as it is that you probably won't find similar game that is equal or better to play further.
Some games are very good, and I personally want to enjoy them for as long as possible because finding better one can take months.

The point isn't to beat the game ASAP, the point is to enjoy it for longer time.

Why do I consider reading wiki is cheating?
For same reasons, wikis reveal too much, there's no point or fun in discovering stuff in game when you already know what you're going to discover upfront, when you know upfront exactly what kind of monsters are waiting for you and how to beat them, things like this we should discover on our own.

The only place where wiki makes sense is in game if there is one, usually called *pedia or similar.

Discuss as you want.

 

[Bongripper666]

It is my decision to cheat in a game. It would be arrogant to say, that you know, that cheating does always hurt the cheating people.
Bottom line is, i did cheat with my first ever game in 1987 and did it where i seem fit until the early 2000s. Afterwards i just stopped. In 2007 i started playing LOTRO and this is the only game i have played since.

 

[Rocketing-warp9]

In racing sims, Like GT, you usually can just keep upgrading your car to the point of making an Escort plow by a Chiron, that is just strategy for bot races. Like how I use a Boss 429 "mustang" against a bunch of supercars and can blow the doors off' em from putting a big supercharger on it. It gets you through the menus fine, but with GT's online mode, your "cheat" becomes the norm with almost everyone upgrading their cars to the point of blowing your doors off. It is a delicate balance. Wiki does make sense for GT as well, as you must know what car to run to have the best success chance of winning- in some cars, it might be impossible or extremely difficult to do. Look up Neo Classical compition for GT 7 and you will understand.

 

[KGIII]

• Save scumming
• Taking advantage of exploits
• Reading game wiki

I don't know what that first one is.

I do know what the next one is.

The last one is obvious.

So... Skipping the first one...

I don't mind.

Game guides might be older than you. Again, I don't mind.

If it's a single player game, I don't care if someone cheats. I would care if they were misrepresenting their accomplishments.

If you cheat and pretend you didn't, that's just wrong.

Otherwise, you're just playing with yourself. You can play with yourself any way you want to!

Just, you know, don't pretend otherwise.

If we take Fallout 2 as an example, there's a character editor that's out there. You can edit your character in many ways, even making them invincible from the very first time you can save the game. (The character editor works on the saved game file.) You don't have to go that far. You can tweak and adjust as you see fit. As there's an overall time limit for the game, this will let you pick so many different paths that you'd not have been able to do because there's not enough grind time, and the folks who made the game never imagined that we players would find so many different ways to finish the game.

By this point, you've already beaten the game a half-dozen times. I don't see anything wrong with mixing it up so that you can get more enjoyment out of it.

Just, again, don't misrepresent your accomplishments.

If 'save scumming' means that you save a game before a big boss fight, that's just good thinking. They allow multiple save points. Doing so can also save you a ton of time. Sometimes, the RNG is a terrible mistress. Trying it over and over again until you make it is not a bad thing.

But, I'm not actualy sure what 'save scumming' means.

 

[Mike-BTU]

I cheat at Microsoft Solitaire for Android.

I doubt that people will form a mob in front of my house, nor will I get hauled off to a federal penitentiary for it.

 

[NicWelds]

Some single player cheats are great. Like on GTA San Andreas where you enable the "pedestrian riot" and "pedestrians have weapons" cheats and watch the chaos unfold.

 

[wendy-lebaron]

i hate losing in rpg.

for that reason, i cheat. especially for "single player rpg" like angband. that if you make deep progress or not. once the player character dies, it's over! i look to become invincible. or at least a way to make my character near impossible to kill.

of course it cannot be allowed. by the game as it's presented. to permit someone to be invincible. for something which is not considered a game in other ways. such as "bypassing armor." boy that really peaks me off. work on armor class and magic defense and stuff like that. but still die to things like halving max hp. or taking away experience while not having died in the game and even losing experience levels because of it. no player of mmorpg would accept it.

i have downloaded the source code of angband. in december of last year. then made some edits. to make my character invincible. not surprisingly it left a bad taste. before telling all of you that other issues remained. such as being confused for a ridiculously long time. unable to do anything that way such as return to the city from a really deep dungeon level. so all that could be done in that case. was to quit the character totally. which indeed to me was like being killed under ordinary circumstances.

i have had to drift away from badly-done "roguelike" games like that. sadly i don't have an excuse to play other kinds of games. i downloaded a few things from "anylinux." but almost all of them require original purchased product data. really wanted to use "exult" or "vcmi" but not going to buy anything from "gog" for it.

a short time ago downloaded one game that interested me. from the "traditional ascii camp." called dwarf fortress. i'm still trying to get around it. i compare it unfairly to cataclysm dda. large world which is murder on my 15-year-old laptop with 2-core cpu and 4gb ram. i said "ascii" just above, right? but it does use sdl for an "traditional ascii" look.

the inability to use and comprehend is my fault. the need to cheat in other games also. but i hate losing even more than i hate cheating.

 

[theLegionWithin]

a short time ago downloaded one game that interested me. from the "traditional ascii camp." called dwarf fortress. i'm still trying to get around it. i compare it unfairly to cataclysm dda. large world which is murder on my 15-year-old laptop with 2-core cpu and 4gb ram. i said "ascii" just above, right? but it does use sdl for an "traditional ascii" look.

tried df a number of years back but never really got into it - havent played the new version that has graphics (not ascii) but it looks good. I have however been playing rimworld for years and years - and I've never beat it. not even interested in beating the game, it's more fun to play different scenarios or play around with mods - a recent mod i tried lets you adjust the map size to absurd levels. playing in a 50x50 tile map is almost always a losing scenario. but its fun! interestingly enough, df's tagline is "losing is fun"

 

[rado84]

There's only one single player game where I have to cheat because the game is too hard to play without a cheat - "Mad Max".
For others I either use or create mods that simply make the game easier to play.
There's also one game that I tried it with cheats but it stopped being interesting that way, so I deleted the cheated save and started over without cheats - "NFS Payback". Shortly after that I found an easy way to make money in the game without cheats and having a lot of fun in the process. On "NFS Payback" this below is my moneymaker, as evident by the amount of money I have and I made this much money in less than 20 minutes. That's in a game about which everyone says "money is hard to come by".

Two other games that I enjoy playing without cheats are "Mass Effect Andromeda" (bc I figured out how its economy works) and "Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning".

As for modding single player games, I made a mod for "NFS Most Wanted" named "Street King v4". It features A LOT of things but my favorite thing about it is that the GOLF GTI's top speed (when tuned at maximum) is 520 km/h (325 mph) and I make fun of the girls in blue uniforms.

I used to make mods for ETS2 as well but I abandoned this game a few years ago bc all the devs do is think of new ways to screw you up and make you give up on using mods.

I've made mods for a few other games but the racing genre has always been my number 1 genre ever since I was 6.

 

[kibasnowpaw]

For me there is a very clear line between cheating in single-player and cheating in multiplayer.

In single-player, I honestly do not care what people do. Use cheats, trainers, console commands, save scumming, exploits, a wiki, character editors, mods, whatever. You bought the game. It is your save. It is your time. It is your way of having fun.

Maybe cheating removes the challenge. Maybe it makes the game boring faster. Maybe it ruins the discovery. That can happen, yes. But that is still your own problem, not mine. Some people play games for challenge. Some play for story. Some play to explore. Some play because they want to break the game and see what happens. Some people are tired after work and do not want to spend three hours beating one boss just to prove something to nobody.

I also do not think using a wiki is automatically cheating. Some games are badly explained. Some old games are vague as hell. Some quests are written like the developer expected you to read their mind. Back in the day people used guidebooks, magazines, cheat books, friends, forums, and printed walkthroughs. A wiki is just the modern version of that. If someone reads every secret before playing, then yes, they may spoil the game for themselves. But looking up one annoying quest step because the game gives bad directions is not the same thing as ruining the game.

Same with save scumming. In some games it removes the tension. In other games it is just protecting yourself from bad design, bugs, random nonsense, or losing hours because the game decided to be stupid. I have played enough old games to know the difference between “fair challenge” and “the game wasting my time.”

I have cheated in single-player games before. I am not going to pretend otherwise. Sometimes it was to mess around. Sometimes it was because I was stuck. Sometimes it was because I had already played the game before and just wanted to see something else. That does not hurt anyone.

Some games even handled cheating in a funny way. SimCity from 1989 is one I played the hell out of back in the day. If you used the money cheat too much, the game could punish you with disasters like earthquakes depending on the version. That is a good way to do it in single-player: let the player cheat, but make the game slap them a bit for it.

Multiplayer is completely different.

When you play multiplayer, you are not just playing on your own PC anymore. You are connecting to a server, and that server has rules. It is the same as being on this forum. Yes, I am sitting at my own computer, using my own keyboard, on my own internet connection, but I still have to follow the forum rules because I am using someone else’s space.

A multiplayer server is the same idea. If the server says no aimbots, no wallhacks, no scripts, no duping, no exploit abuse, then those are the rules. If you do not like those rules, find another server or make your own where cheating is allowed.

That is why “I bought the game, I can do what I want” does not work in multiplayer. You bought access to the game. You did not buy the right to ruin the match for everyone else.

In single-player, cheating is like listening to pop music in your own car. I may hate it, but it does not affect me. Do what you want.

In multiplayer, cheating is more like driving 100 mph through traffic. Now your choice is not only affecting you anymore. Now you are putting everyone else into your mess.

That is the mental side of it too. In single-player, cheating may change your own reward system. Maybe the game becomes easier, maybe you lose the feeling of accomplishment, maybe you get bored faster. But that is between you and the game.

In multiplayer, cheating changes other people’s experience without their consent. They joined the match expecting the same rules as everyone else. Then someone shows up with an aimbot or wallhack and turns the whole thing into a waste of time. That is not “playing your way.” That is forcing your way onto everyone else.

That is also one of the reasons I mostly play single-player games. I have thousands of games on my main Steam account alone, and around 4000 if free games are counted too. That is not even counting other launchers, old physical games, console games, borrowed games, or everything I played growing up. I have been around games since MS-DOS and old consoles, so I am not saying this as someone who barely plays.

Single-player cheating is your own business.

Multiplayer cheating is disrespecting everyone else on the server.

That is the difference for me.

 

[kibasnowpaw]

I don't know what that first one is.

I do know what the next one is.

The last one is obvious.

So... Skipping the first one...

I don't mind.

Game guides might be older than you. Again, I don't mind.

If it's a single player game, I don't care if someone cheats. I would care if they were misrepresenting their accomplishments.

If you cheat and pretend you didn't, that's just wrong.

Otherwise, you're just playing with yourself. You can play with yourself any way you want to!

Just, you know, don't pretend otherwise.

If we take Fallout 2 as an example, there's a character editor that's out there. You can edit your character in many ways, even making them invincible from the very first time you can save the game. (The character editor works on the saved game file.) You don't have to go that far. You can tweak and adjust as you see fit. As there's an overall time limit for the game, this will let you pick so many different paths that you'd not have been able to do because there's not enough grind time, and the folks who made the game never imagined that we players would find so many different ways to finish the game.

By this point, you've already beaten the game a half-dozen times. I don't see anything wrong with mixing it up so that you can get more enjoyment out of it.

Just, again, don't misrepresent your accomplishments.

If 'save scumming' means that you save a game before a big boss fight, that's just good thinking. They allow multiple save points. Doing so can also save you a ton of time. Sometimes, the RNG is a terrible mistress. Trying it over and over again until you make it is not a bad thing.

But, I'm not actualy sure what 'save scumming' means.

Save scumming basically means saving before something important, then reloading over and over until you get the result you want.

So it can be saving before a boss fight, before a dialogue check, before stealing something, before opening a chest, before a dice roll, before a hard quest choice, or before anything where RNG or consequences can mess you up.

Some people see it as cheating because it removes risk. If a choice is supposed to matter, but you reload until you get the “best” result, then you are not really living with the choice. Same with RNG. If the game gives you a bad roll and you just reload until the roll goes your way, then some people see that as breaking the intended challenge.

I get that argument, but personally I do not really care in single-player. To me it is just logic. If I know there is a big chance something can go wrong, why would I not save before it? Especially in old games where one bad fight, one bad roll, one bug, or one unclear quest step could waste a stupid amount of time.

We did this stuff all the time back in the 90s when saving became a normal option. And before that, especially on older consoles, you often did not even have proper saves. Sometimes you had passwords. Sometimes you had limited save points. Sometimes you just left the console on all night because turning it off meant losing all progress. I remember that kind of thing. So when games finally let you save properly, of course people used it.

For me, saving before a boss fight is not “bad.” That is just common sense. Why would I replay 30 minutes of walking, talking, and trash fights just because one boss killed me? That does not make the game harder in a good way. It just wastes time.

Where I agree with you is the lying part. If someone cheats, uses a character editor, save scums, exploits, or uses a wiki in single-player, I do not care. It is their game. But if they then pretend they did it fully legit, or use it to brag, or compare themselves to people who played without doing that, then it becomes dishonest.

So yeah, in multiplayer cheating is trash because it ruins the game for other people. In single-player, do whatever makes the game more fun. Just do not lie about how you played.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

btw. maybe I falsely portrayed myself, I do cheat too however I'm not happy about it, cheating and wikis ruined so many games.
But it's hard to resist.

I understand that some people are fine with cheating, but that's their problem, I just shared 1 reason why it is bad.

I don't know what that first one is.

@kibasnowpaw explained to you.
Some games address it cloud saves and iron mode, iron mode means you can't save/load game, only one save maintained and is auto updated.
And cloud saves prevent you from locally modifying a save file.
With both modes enabled save scumming becomes impossible.

I have however been playing rimworld for years and years - and I've never beat it. not even interested in beating the game

Oh yes me neither, I haven't got further than 1/5 of tech tree, didn't lose I just lost interest to continue because loosing a pawn feels so bad.

I also do not think using a wiki is automatically cheating. Some games are badly explained. Some old games are vague as hell. Some quests are written like the developer expected you to read their mind. Back in the day people used guidebooks, magazines, cheat books, friends, forums, and printed walkthroughs. A wiki is just the modern version of that. If someone reads every secret before playing, then yes, they may spoil the game for themselves. But looking up one annoying quest step because the game gives bad directions is not the same thing as ruining the game.

I agree with this, some wikis mask certain info behind expandable tables or spoilers, so that anything that could harm your XP is hidden unless you explicitly want to see it.

 

[AlphaObeisance]

It really depends on what I'm doing. Lets take Conan Exiles for example, or ARK Survival Evolved/Ascended for that matter. I host dedicated servers for both of these games so that my entire family clan can play together. But with such varied preferences in play styles; we seldom ever actually make any form of progress because we're just too unorganized to do so.

Personally. In survival sandbox games, I can't stand the grind. Go here, break some rocks, mine some ores, farm some of this and farm some of that. The grind loop "gameplay" is mind numbingly monotonous to me. So it's typical of me to utilize administrative mode to build up a base, as I'm ok with skipping the grind of materials gathering in order to build a base sufficient to protect us while we focus more on grinding progressing and items more directly related to the progression of the core game play.

This saves us hundreds of hours of breaking rocks and cutting trees and allows us to focus on the more exhilarating experiences like taming creatures, defeating dungeons and bosses and what not.

I don't argue that in doing this I'm cheating my family out of the experience of going from mud huts to fortified infrastructures; but I'd say it's a worthy sacrifice considering that until I started doing this; we never even saw boss fights because we spent so much time just trying to survive long enough to keep the very items we were grinding for.

In games like Conan/ARK, death could easily mean complete loss and RTB naked and afraid. So without a huge clan of people working cooperatively; progression is near impossible unless you boost the yield rates of everything rather significantly at the server level; which I've dabbled with a time or two as well. But I prefer the challenge over the increased yield; so it just makes more sense for me to build a nice base out the gate and leave us to fend for ourselves after that.

It's been a healthy balance.