What do you consider "cheating" in a video game?

Outside of the obvious modpacks in online gaming, I'm kinda curious as to what qualifies as "cheatng" in video games. Granted, I can get away with this if I don't act like an complete asshole

which leads to this

There's also the rare sight of someone claiming that I hacked World of Tanks since I killed them via an obscure line-of-fire. But that was just sheer ignorance on my victim's behalf. And I can't sequence break around my stepbrother without him claiming that I'm cheating, inciting disbelief ad/or anger, or that I'm playing the game wrong because of the way he thinks.

Other than that, I just replay them to see what kind of insane stuff that I can do since I'm pretty easy-going and have an turbo Game Cube controller (which did confuse him the first time that I used it against him).

So does anyone else have any stories about exploiting the mechanics of their favorite game?

edited 2nd May '16 4:24:36 PM by RabidTanker

Well, when playing Smash Bros Brawl against a friend a few years back, I was Bowser and he was Meta Knight. I ended the match by using Bowser's up-smash to KO him, while he was in the air. he claimed that was cheating.

Obviously any illegal software, and mods that give a clear cut advantage.

Other than that though I say anything but the most dubious of glitches is fair game. I'd be more impressed than salty if someone improvised something say, a really silly or uncommon hiding spot to foil me. I remember how way back when, people considered something like dropping from above like a piano was considered cheap.

Heh. Teleporting enemies, insta-respawns of enemies, bullet sponge enemies, enemies that make you backtrack through an entire level just to find the plot coupon weapon that will kill them and enemies that just won't fucking die when you fight them at the level you are even though they look like any other that you've already fought. That's what I call cheating. Anything else is just getting back at the bastards who've programmed all that crap.

Those sound more like cheese tactics or simply bad enemy design then cheating.

I get kinda twitchy when people use console commands or other PC hacks to sidestep the challenge in games, especially when they then blame the developer for making them cheat by claiming that the level, enemy, and/or entire game was poorly designed anyway.

But ultimately, as long as they aren't doing it in a competitive game, there's no harm done. Some people just prefer to adapt the game to suit their playstyle rather than adapting their playstyle to suit the game. As long as you're enjoying yourself, there's no wrong way to play; even if it does make me sad when my story of epic victory against the bullet sponge goes right over your head as you go, "Oh, I just turned on God Mode."

As an aside, I feel like there's an alarming risk of this thread turning into a "Git Good"-style complaining thread.

edited 2nd May '16 8:49:30 AM by TobiasDrake

It can feel like it sometimes. I can still remember one entry about it when we had the Troper Tales section for Pet-Peeve Trope: "All right, I just have to win this here race to get the prize and - what the hell?! Did the computer just teleport to the finish line?!"

I caution against this turning into a complaint topic, and will lock it in a heartbeat if it does.

Generally, "cheating" in a video game takes several forms:

• When AI opponents have access to tricks, rules, or information that the human player doesn't, up to and including things like rubber-banding in racing games. This is also known as The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard.
• When a player uses mods, bots, trainers, console commands, cheat codes, bug exploits, or similar things to make the game easier than its developers intended.
  • In offline single-player games, this is a matter that's reasonably up to the player, who is buying a game so they can enjoy it, not so they can be frustrated to death.
  • In single-player games with an online component, cheats can impact the gameplay experience of other players by lagging the system or otherwise causing technical issues. This is not cool.
  • In single-player games with public leaderboards or reward systems associated with scores/achievements, cheats allows players to unfairly gain a competitive advantage and should either be banned or disqualify the user from the reward system. Example: Diablo III
  • In social (non-competitive) multi-player games, cheating is a matter of the player's willingness to permit/engage. If everyone wants to play Super Mario Party with hacks because it's funny, who am I to tell them no? But if I want to play a normal game and they don't, we might have a conflict.
  • In competitive multi-player games, cheating detracts from the experience for other players because it provides an unfair advantage. It can and should be banned, except for the rare situation where everyone mutually agrees that they are competing not to see who's most skilled but who has the best cheat.
• When someone says someone else is cheating because they used an ability, character, or technique that is, in their subjective opinion, "unfair". This is a matter between players and has nothing to do with the technical definition of cheating.

edited 2nd May '16 9:16:20 AM by Fighteer

• Using non-cosmetic cheat codes.
• Using non-cosmetic glitches.
• Using 3rd-party software(Action Replay, Game Genie, etc.) to alter the game non-cosmetically.
• Using bots to play the game for you in an MMO or MOBA.

I guess I would broadly consider cheating as "Anything that is used to give someone the advantage that can not be done within the limitations of the game itself."

Basically, artificially lowering the difficulty by means not possible during normal gameplay. I include console commands in that category as well, such as Doom's god mode or no-clip modes.

Alright, my definition is a bit talkative, but please bear with me!

For single player games in which there is NO benefit/effect to applying modifications/cheats outside of your own personal offline usage [No online achievement tracking, no multiplayer, no online scoreboards, ect.], then the definition of cheating comes down to your personal belief in what "cheating" is. If you think that it's fair to change the rules of a game in a certain way, then by all means, it is fair. Someone may disagree, but given this theoretical situation, they will not be impacted in any way by this event. Cheating is anything you think it is...

... Until online/real life interactions become involved. Then it becomes a bit more of a complicated situation. When it comes to playing with people whom you personally know, then you must come to a unanimous compromise to what your rules are. Of course, people will always seek loopholes, or find oversights, and this leads to many a conflict. When it comes online interactions, a very, VERY fine line is drawn. Though you may or may not consider an action cheating, this is when other's opinions start to heavily conflict with the morality of the situation. The only way to be truly fair in an online video game is simply to play it as is, without any outside input. If it's in the game by default, then who is to say you're cheating? Well, then that leads to the topic of exploits, which is a whole other can or worms to delve into.

TL:DR - Cheating is whatever you think it is, unless it effects other people. Then it's complicated.

I personally don't play any multiplayer, so I don't really care.

In singleplayer, my stance is that whatever the AI is capable of is also fair game for me. I mean, giving yourself stuff the opponent can't do is considered bad form - but what about your opponent having stuff you can't do? That's just as unfair. This is why I believe that any AI that has to rely on cheating is poorly written, even though professional game designers insist that the computer has no chance against a human player otherwise due to processing power limitations in consumer-grade gaming rigs simply not allowing human-level cognitive algorithms.

And this is why, when I couldn't pass That One Level in Dawn of War Dark Crusade due to it deliberately stacking the odds against me to a ridiculous extent ^note finite army versus three maximum-difficulty AI players with unlimited resources - in fact, I had to dig into the game's data files to even find out that I had three opponents!, I fired up the modding kit and wrote myself a cheat mod for that one level, beat the level, then went back to playing the unmodded game.

edited 3rd May '16 6:36:03 AM by amitakartok

Quick theoretical:

You are playing Baldur's Gate, and during character creation, it's time for you to roll the stats. You can reroll the stats as many times as you want, but if you click past a high total, you can not go back. You may only reroll.

The problem is, some people spend a good hour rerolling until they get what they want, while others make this process "faster" by simply modding in the physically possible stats they desire without the carpal tunnel. Do you consider this "cheating", or "being fair"? I've seen many argue the latter, what about you?

Edit: "cheating" or "being fair" was accidentally biased in phrasing. I'm more looking for your opinions on morality!

edited 4th May '16 9:13:58 AM by GreenWiwerna

I'm reminded of the old Eye of the Beholder games (the originals, not any of the remakes, which removed this option) where if you got frustrated by rolling stats, you could just manually adjust each character's attributes to be whatever you wanted, including the max in all of them. This was also present in the rogue-lite spinoff Dungeon Hack too.

Minimizing randomness is not cheating if the game lets you retry/reroll an action as often as you want. Save Scumming is based on this idea. If a game's developer says, "You can press reroll as many times as you want, but we won't let you manually adjust the stats," they are just being silly.

edited 4th May '16 7:38:01 AM by Fighteer

I can agree with that, largely because I feel that RNG is an overrated concept in game design. There's more I could say on the matter but it would cross the line into complaining about games I don't like so let's leave it at, "It's not cheating to sidestep the RNG if the game allows endless retries anyway."

edited 4th May '16 8:06:34 AM by TobiasDrake

Basically anything that gives you an unfair advantage in a Pv P environment. I have no qualms with cheating on single player campaigns.

Would changing the difficulty of a game so you can beat the level count as cheating?

Difficult settings that come with the game would not be cheating by my judgement. I've heard people call it "Scumming", or "Cheesing", but you are not technically cheating.

Anything and everything is cheating as long as someone uses it against me.

Seriously though, cheating is when someone who's a pro kicks the crap out of a noob player. If someone's a pro, you should only fight against people of equal or similar skill level.

Yes, I'd consider that cheating.

edited 7th May '16 6:08:25 PM by ThePest179

If everyone only played with people at their skill level, then we wouldn't have moments like these.

But seriously, that's an bad idea since you can't expect everyone to be at your level all the time

(Rewatches ending) Fake video is fake: No wires attached to that thing.

edited 7th May '16 11:38:16 PM by RabidTanker