In survival crafting games I'll almost always make it easier on myself through the world settings or something. Getting rid of item and food decay, boosting XP gain, making sure I get 100+ of each resource anytime I go mining or whatever.

Enshrouded is a massive pain in the ass on normal settings, so I make it easier to explore, gather, and fight enemies. Otherwise it'd take me at least twice as long to get to where I'm at in the game, and that already took me over 100 hours.

Palworld I do all those things and increase pal spawn rate so there's always at least 5 pals in a group at any given time. It makes capturing them so much easier.

Idk the last time I actually "cheated" in a video game though. Maybe one of the Lego games?

Depends on the definition of cheating. Here are a couple of ways in which I "cheat":

I didn't have the skill to progress beyond 4BC in Dead Cells, so I downloaded someone else's save file with all items unlocked.

If I hit a wall in Silksong to the point that it starts to put me off the game, then I look up a walkthrough to see where the nearest undiscovered bench is or where to fine the thing I'm looking for.

For any game if I end too frustrated by a boss, I'll watch a YouTube video to learn the attack patterns and avoid repeatedly dying to learn them. This is especially true for roguelites where I may have to cross 3 levels to get to a possible chance at a boss, and then get killed.

In FTL I used to copy out the save files to allow me to save scum if I died. The game is a roguelite and doesn't allow loading saves in case of mistakes of death....so this is a workaround to save scum.

I'm strongly of the mindset that cheating only means taking a dishonest and unfair advantage over another person. Changing the rules of the game is not cheating, it's house ruling - in tabletop discussion, that's part of what we call Rule Zero. If I'm not in competition with another person, it's just playing by my own rules.

I remember one HL1 CS (Specialists Mod) LAN party I was in where we all turned on Matrix Vision and multiplied the slo-mo timer. It was great - utterly chaotic, but everything was equal.

So no, I don't cheat in games. I just play by my own rules as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. And if I do play multiplayer, I try to bring my house rules to them. I've never had any person accuse me of cheating when I ask about various options. TBH, the closest I come to cheating is turning on all of the assistive features - colorblind mode, target highlighting, auto target, sound notifications in minimaps, custom keybinds, and whatever else is in the menu. Everyone else can also choose to do that, and I'm just as happy if everyone I play with has those same things.

I remember trying a Game Shark on a few games back in high school, and what I found is that it made the games boring really fast.

More recently I tried applying cheats in Super Ghouls and Ghosts. I still didn't make it past the first level. 😭

I'm generally not interested in playing a game in any way other than how the dev(s) intended. Ex. for a souls like, I don't get any enjoyment using mods to access content I'm otherwise unable to on my own. Using cheats to unlock all guns in GTA, or to get infinite rare candies in pokemon, or to time travel in Animal Crossing is fun for all of about 5 minutes, at which point I feel like I've deconstructed the fun out of the game.

My unique experience with a game is defined both by what I do and what I don't experience. If I use cheats to ensure I experience everything, then IMO I've effectively dashed anything unique about my experience with the game.

That said, there are games that I feel I've experienced all there is that the dev intended, and now I can use it as a platform for my own creation through mods or custom game modes. Those are generally few and far between though. Something like Minecraft, primarily because it works great as a platform for multiplayer interaction.

Last time was in GTA 5 online, when it launched on pc, got some billions, all the things available and then stopped, never got banned, but forgot my password some years later.

The grind was too much, I never tried to instakill anyone, nor getting planes to harass other players, just wanted the grind to go away.

Edit: holy shit that was more than 10 years ago.

What do you define as cheating? Like I might look up a guide online, sometimes, but I never use mods or exploit bugs.

In single player games? Yeah.

Save editors for Mass Effect to unlock squad mates early for spoken lines that I would have never heard earlier, cheating in rare candies on emulated Pokémon games or making Pokémon shiny too.

I recall using something similar for Borderlands 2 circa 2012/2013 to get certain guns to drop with the right parts as well.

I cheat the fuck out of Skyrim. I add all my perk points bc I don't feel like grinding for 200 hours to get my build.

Cheating in first player games is perfectly fine.

I really find I can't cheat on an ongoing save even when I think most people would consider it completely justified, an example being when the medusa enemy was first added to terraria it was pretty buggy and could turn you to stone from off screen and through walls (despite explicit patch notes saying it should not do this) so I ended up losing all my gear to an objective bug. Tried save editing it back in but it still ruined the feeling of the save to me.

The only time I can cheat and not ruin my own fun is for testing purposes in games without any kind of creative mode, particularly 4X games which tend to be pretty long and I don't want to play a several hour game just to test a random theory about how 2 mechanics might interact in a lategame build.

How else are we supposed to play DK Mode Slappers Only?

Multiplayer games are absolutely off limits cheating wise for me. HOWEVER... using trainers and mods and things like Cheat Engine in single player games is not only ok, but I often treat it like it's a mini game. Can I give myself an extra 100k gold? Hmm fire up CE and let's see :)

The immense thrill I get from reducing some horrible grind from hours to minutes is just huge fun. I'm basically a sandbox guy. GTA5 cheats, for example, have led to more unexpected sandbox fun than I could ever have imagined over the years.

Not using cheats in single player grindfests is like having a first class ticket on a plane but choosing to travel economy. I think it's basically that I don't like being told to grind for the sake of it or for some "moral" reason.

I love a FUN grind though. I've spent days in games like My Time At Portia just fishing for example. It comes down to this: If a grind is fun, I'll happily do it but if it's just like I'm a mouse being toyed with by some cat then hello God mode lol

I only use things like console commands in case I get softlocked or similar. When playing Bethesda games, especially modded, this will come up sooner or later. Apart from that, it would ruin the fun, so no point in doing it.

When I'm spinning up the n-hundredth skyrim run I cheat my stats up a bit to skip the early game tedium, but otherwise I tend not to unless I'm getting bored of a game and want to sample endgame content to see if I wanna keep with the grind

i cheat by practicing

Never in PVP or competitive type games.

I've used 'cheat codes' and mods on single player or teamwork vs environment games for decades after playing a game long enough to want a different experience. Depends on what kind of fun I'm looking for.

I used to be like you. Way back when, I would love to cheat currency into single player games with a little help from cheat engine. The biggest culprits were BTD5 and PvZ1/2, and it'd give me a kick just being able to go through and buy everything before using it all while feeling unstoppable

Since then, I've gone back and replayed the games without cheating, and I honestly regret using cheat engine. It felt way more rewarding getting everything at a more sustainable rate, like I really earned the item

You also talk about feeling like you earn the ability to cheat, but, looking back on my own experience, I can safely say that I was terrible at gauging whether or not I should use a hack. Turns out, when you have a shiny item in a shop that you could come back in a few hours for or get instantly now for free, more often than not we'll choose the latter

I had to cheat to get any fun at all out of Far Cry 6. Piece of shit game.

If save scumming counts as cheating, then yes. But otherwise, I've only ever used cheats in single player games and I really only use cheats if either the game sucks or the cheats I used didn't effect gameplay. Some of the times I remember using cheats are:

Using the "fixme" command in Morrowind because I got stuck somewhere.

Using various cheats in the GTA games, after I had already beaten the main story, just so I can cause some mayhem.

Using the "giveall" command in Doom because I installed a weapon mod that required it.

Using the free cam that built into some emulators.

I used to use save states in old video games that didn't have saving systems but I don't do this anymore. I just only play them until I get to a point I can't progress.

I think I remember using a cheat code to access unused content in at least one game, but I can't remember what game that was.

While I haven't played it yet, there is a PS2 (I think) game that requires using a cheat code to enable widescreen (or was it 720i, or maybe there was more than one game that did this, I can't actually remember now).

Years ago - I did cheat in many single player games. For example, I am extremely bad at RTS. Couldn't beat computer on easy in WC3, even today. I was cheating during campaign just to go thought the story of the game.

I did cheat in WoW pirate server but not in the way of malice. I only did use flight cheat to travel quickly and a small teleport 1m ahead because sometimes quests or dungeons were broken and this was the only way to deal with that. I never used cheats in BGs or against other players but one of my friends did and got banned many times for that.

I have never cheated in any PvP games like CSGO, LoL, HOTS, L4D2, PUBG, COD, Town of Salem. I hate when cheaters ruin my game. I would not want to ruin anyone else's game.

General rule: single-player cheats are ok. Multiplayer cheats - not ok.

Finding cheat codes for Sega Genesis games was my introduction to the internet. It was so fun getting to tell other kids at school about cheat codes that you knew about for their games.

These days I don't, mainly because they don't seem to have them anymore, and also because if I'm not enjoying the game with its base mechanics I have plenty of other games in my backlog that I can check out instead.

Never. I never used cheat codes in the 90s. I always felt being OP in games made them boring

in single player, always. I don't even pretend I'm going to be fair about it.

In single-player games only, and when I'm done with the main game as a way of enjoying the game a bit more on my own terms.

Absolutely. I usually do some gameplay straight to experience the game as intended and add cheats gradually to see how much difference they actually make but cheats are just part of customizing your experience to make the game as enjoyable for you as possible.

You're younger than me, cheats weren't stigmatized when I was young. Warpzones in SMBros were basically required to call yourself an experienced player and mastering the Konami code was a basic gaming achievement. I've always viewed learning to use cheats and exploits to be one of the things that transitioned someone from a casual player to a gamer.

Never in multi-player.

Single player very rarely. I dont like looking up guides either unless im absolutely stuck and ready to quit the game over it.

Im absolutely a person who does everything the hard way and looks down on anyone taking an easy road. To me it devalues people who actually do work hard (example, using auto tune/melodyne vs actually learning to sing. I dont care how transparent it is, its cheating and waters down the real talented singers out there).

I don't mind cheating in video games as long as it's never against other players. Single player games or PVE games go ahead and cheat your ass off. As long as everyone involved with it is cool with it. The moment there is another human player on the other side of things NEVER cheat. Video games or otherwise.

Many moons ago I would to cheat in payday 2. Not because I cared about getting super rich but because I thought it was funny to make it rain duffle bags of gold bars that instantly kill anyone who isn't hiding under something. Or just watching the absurdity of the AI trying to fight hundreds of little turrets. The people I was playing with were just messing around for a laugh at this point. We had beaten all the maps on all the difficulties and now we just wanted to break the game.

In single player games where there's fall damage, I always mod out fall damage and carry weight limits. I don't care about realism especially when it's selective realism like in video games. So in that sense, in single player games I'm cheating all the time

I never played the Sims or GTA 3 without them.

If a game setting or mod does not do what I want, sometimes cheats can do the trick to tweak the balance of hp, stamina, enemy health, etc.

For multiplayer games to, fuck anyone that does!

Only if I've already beaten the game legitimately before, and usually only to skip something that's tedious.

I played Saint's Row 4, does that count?