Avernum 5 - The Morality of Cheating

Rachel Presser asks herself the question about the morality of cheating when she felt it was the only thing left to do when she went through Avernum 5.

And it made me think. In a majority of video game worlds, you truly get ahead based on merit. You can grind your stats until you’re strong enough to get past a certain area or fight that boss battle, as well as do enough looting and questing to afford the supplies and training you need for these battles. That’s honestly how a lot of Spiderweb games are: you don’t need to cheat but it’s a lot harder if you don’t do it. In previous Avernum games, it was difficult to beat them but not totally undoable.

This time? This shit was straight up impossible. How was I supposed to both find the right route as well as clobber all these Darkside Loyalists plus all their warped wolves then eventually their wizard and worse yet, dervish, when I had but one potion left?!

There was no way I was going to get past this part of the game, let alone beat it, unless I typed in cheat commands to replenish my health and spell points and get 1337 powerups before battles, plus send me back to Blackchasm Outpost if I really got in a jam I where I couldn’t leave the workshop the way I came (barely doable in the sentinel workshop based on the layout, but literally impossible by design to do in the Anama Lands once the Darkside Loyalists invade.)

I could finally stop cheating when I made it to the Azure Gallery and was able to find potions plus go back and forth to town to heal between battles, but warily kept my fingers on Shift-D in case I needed it again just because I wanted to move forward with the story and not spend hours fighting when I have two businesses and a social life to get back to in the real world. While I did comment to myself numerous times that there were no way I could’ve won these battles without cheating, it didn’t diminish my enjoyment of Avernum 5.

But it begs the question: is it wrong to cheat when life gets hard? Or flat out impossible?

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More information.

In some games, one notices that on higher difficulty levels, the game itself stacks the cards against you and ends up cheating. I think this is actually a really, really good metaphor for privilege and establishment.

For my part, I'd say that we do what we have to to survive and to get ahead when the deck is stacked against us and when the system cheats. And if I end up in a totally impossible place in a game, I end up cheating, if I can, just enough to get by.

Article doesn't deliver. Also:

Virtually every guy I’ve ever dated or slept with has been drastically better-looking than me. I definitely feel like I’ve pressed buttons on a cheat menu somewhere.

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:lol:

That's a really curious and interesting article to read, thanks Myrthos.

Jeff even gives a response to Rachel in the first comment afterward which was nice.
Amusingly, he even apologies for making Avernum 5 and 6 too difficult!
My experiences with Avernum only go with the two reboots, so I haven't quite worked my way to Avernum 5 as yet. But Jeff's admission certainly makes me more fascinated to find out for myself. Indeed, I'd be interested in hearing some Watcher's viewpoints from those have played these two games. (HiddenX, Txa...?)

In the past, I've found that the open-world qualities of A: Escape From the Pit and AII: Crystal Souls have meant that one is able to return later if an encounter proves too difficult which is something I enjoy about the Avernum series generally. I recall having to do more side-quests in order to be more adequately leveled for the ending in Escape From the Pit, which made it more satisfying when I did finish it.

The closest I've come to "cheating" that I can remember was probably with the economy in Morrowind. I recall being annoyed that no vendor could afford to buy some of my most expensive treasures and very nearly installed a mod to alleviate this and naturally hasten my character's training. I'm glad that I didn't, for it would have quickly broken the game. All was well when I finally discovered "Creeper" in Caldera.

To be honest, I don't particularly like cheating in games. I mean, I still have my entire C64 collection with "unlimited lives" type cracks in some games that I don't utilize simply because I prefer attaining the classic "high score" on merit and effort alone.
As a consequence, there are still many endings of childhood classics that I still haven't seen.

I've played every Spiderweb game there is. None of them are that hard, not even close. Wizardry would send this person to the ER!

As for cheating, it used to really tick me off, now I don't care. If people want to devalue the game they bought, have at it....as long as it is a SOLO game. If it's an mmo, cheaters/exploiters need to get banned with no chance of ever returning. A major exploit/cheat was revealed in EQ2 this week and you would not believe the whining and crying from those that got banned. That stuff is just hilarious to me.

I personally never cheat. I just don't do it as it feels like it devalues the game. As a kid to see some "big head mode" or something, sure. But if I'm doing a serious playthrough of an RPG, I don't even like to look at a walkthrough or guide, let alone cheat. It's just not for me.

If you want to cheat in a Single Player game, it's up to yourself of course. But cheating in some games might make you more lenient with cheating in others. If you only want to see the story anyways, not a problem. But if you also want to enjoy game mechanics, then you might actually harm gameplay by having in mind "I could always cheat".

Now, personally, I never cheat in games (well, not otherwise either, but thats a different story). For me personally cheating only has two valid applications:
-If you are designing a game/ level and need to playtest it, cheating is necessary
-If the game bugs out and you need cheats to fix it (but even then I feel bad about using them).

I play everything on hardest and finished all the new Spiderwebgames (Avadon 1&2, Avernum 1&2) on Torment Difficulty. What I enjoy is the challenge. I think of these games I liked Avernum 1 Escape from the Pit the most, and that's also partially because of the difficulty which wasn't that high in the other games.
Cheating is the easy way out and to me, everyone who uses cheats in a game has almost completely lost his entitlement to talk about that game. Because if you needed cheats to beat an encounter you obviously didn't understand the game mechanics.

I've never cheated in combat, but I have looked up the answers to puzzles, because I just don't have enough patience for some of them. I don't mind leaving unanswered puzzles in optional areas, but I will get help if I'm totally stumped on a puzzle on a main quest line. I think the great thing about "true" crpgs is that they are a mix of dialogue, exploration, puzzles, and combat. Its the mix of elements that make them so engaging. Still if there is one part where I am weak its puzzles, and I'd hate to give up on a game just because I can't figure out what to do.

I suppose it depends on what's defined as cheating. Back when you used to roll characters I would reroll for hours to get that stats I wanted.In dark souls I shot manus in the DLC with arrows from a position where he couldn't reach me. I've done various stuff like that through out the years.

To me none of that is cheating. It's exploiting the game but within its rules. I've never installed cheats or god mode stuff though.

When I was much younger, I used to cheat when I saw no way out. That was the normal way for me to get a good gaming experience, after all.
I had been paying money, so I want to have fun. When my definition of "fun" differed drastically from the definition of the developer (making encounters so hard that it was simply insane), I'd cheat.

Later, as some kind of evolution from that, when I grew older, I just stopped at that point, and even uninstalled the game completely, to never touch it again.

I paid money for having a good time, if the developers wants me to have a different "good time" than I wanted to, well, then I'd just stop playing.

Cheating was in "Commander Keen" 4 & 5 on a completely different level : If you knew how, then you could see all of the hidden rooms you didn't even know they existed ! That was huge fun !

In AOW, I made challenges for myself : End a battle with as few troops lost as possible … I vaguely recollect having replayed a certain battle up to 10 ? times just to get a certain kind of troop alive out there.

In SWTOR I've made my personal challenge of sneaking past enemies without getting detected. This way I lose experience points, but this is HUGE fun to me !


These times, when I'm digging into the SWTOR MMORPG culture (or, in other words, I'm active in the forums there), I often find the culture of those who would carry on through all obstacles - often called "Nightmare Mode" - or in PvP that these people regard those who would not take these challenges because they believe they couldn't get through them as "whiners", "scrubs" and several other derogating words. The higher the self-esteem of the person, the more insulting the words. This is especially true for PvP, where some people even claim that insulting "bads" - how they call them - is actually part of the competition.
(Words used there are : Scrubs, window-lickers, mouth-breathers, bads, terribads and others.)

It seems that in MMOs, there are people who want to establish a kind of "layered society" with a few at the top, a lot in the middle, and the overwhelmingly big base meaning nothing. Like in RL.

sakichop said:

I suppose it depends on what's defined as cheating. Back when you used to roll characters I would reroll for hours to get that stats I wanted.In dark souls I shot manus in the DLC with arrows from a position where he couldn't reach me. I've done various stuff like that through out the years.

To me none of that is cheating. It's exploiting the game but within its rules. I've never installed cheats or god mode stuff though.

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Agree with that.
If the game obviosly offers to do something I use this option (like re-rolling).
Now with exploiting the system it's a little different. But there everyone needs to find his own balance.
What you described I would probably have done as well.

But I also remember that in the first Realms of Arkania I used 2 Exploits:
1. Unlimited Money: Buy herbs on one Phexcaer Market and sell them on the other
2. Unlimited XP: In Mine of Prem you got xp each time the mine collapsed and you received damage...so: Backward, Forward, Backward, Forward....

I think if I played it today I would not use both of these exploits.
What I would still do in this case is savescumming for better level ups. But when I see something like that these days I basically set my own "rules" like: "I savescum until I got at least 5 of the 6 possible HP for level up".

Then there are also clear bug exploits, and back in the days I used these as well.
For example: In Command and Conquer 1 you could sell a building and cancel it. You did not receive any money. But when a building was destroyed or sold there were a couple of soldiers coming out of it. So you could build a huge army for free.
->Wouldn't do that today

From the same game another example I would still use today:
In Command and Conquer you could only place buildings next to each other. However walls also count as buildings. So you could make connections with walls to where you want your next "real" building.

So yeah...there is a line somewhere. Guess this line is a little different for everyone.

I cheated in Dark Souls 2 because I'm just that bad at that kind of game (though I still had fun playing it).

I did all of Dark Souls 2 New Game without cheating. But from New Game1 To New Game3 I cheated by copying my save game file to my desktop just before tough fights. That way, if I died I could just swap my save game file with the backup copy and try again without all the time it would take to get back to that point. Honestly, if I didn't have that option to backup my save game file, I'd never have played any of the New Game+ content because it was too boring (to me) to keep repeating certain things over and over.

The best use of this cheat was with Dark Lurker who is a huge pain just to get to, let alone beat. But I'd backup my game file just before jumping down to him and give it a go. If I died, I'd just copy my backup file over my save game file and I could quickly try again. It was great.

As Aubrielle stated, cheating is often a part of the design of the game, from the AI's side. In fact, most of those older 'classic' pre-internet games deliberately put impossible things in their games in order to sell cheat telephone solutions and magazines which gave cheat codes.

So the AI cheats, the game is designed to desire you to cheat, but there you are as a normal person wanting to 'play fair', because that's how you prove to yourself that you're good at the game and get completion satisfaction. it's like feeling bad for stealing a biro from a known kleptomaniac in a town of kleptomaniacs who've structured their society to deem people who don't pinch things as 'weird'.

One of the benefits of 'dumbing down' of computer games is that there seems to be less cheating on the game's side, but the drawback is that most games are too easy. Like the man once said, if the game doesn't cheat then it'd be too easy...

I've had to cheat when that's the only work-around for a bug. On occasion I've lowered the difficulty when I hit a block and didn't want to start over with a new build--that kind of feels like cheating. Most of the time though it's more fun to accept the challenge and just try to advance through the game on its own terms.

I don't feel cheating devalues any of my single player games. Quite the opposite. Those that I cheat in usually get finished more than once, with the first time being cheat-free. By this measure, Ultima VII had incredible value because their cheat commands were basically a functional editor.

I must admit to cheating in games.... However I place very strict guidelines to the cheating!

I do live a very busy life, and sometimes I think I am ADHD. I don't have a huge amount of patience, and I have very little time. So sometimes cheating just makes things go smoother, when I Really couldn't be arsed doing grinding or some such similar thing.

But as I said... I set very strict limitations to what I cheat with. Cheating will completely destroy the enjoyment of the game if done to excess or unwisely!

Hogwash I cheat in most games I play with trainers so screw Morality .

Now I shall shamelessly advertise two sites for cheaters.

Link - http://www.cheathappens.com
Link - http://mrantifun.net

Fluent said:

I personally never cheat. I just don't do it as it feels like it devalues the game. As a kid to see some "big head mode" or something, sure. But if I'm doing a serious playthrough of an RPG, I don't even like to look at a walkthrough or guide, let alone cheat. It's just not for me.

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It has been awhile since I have totally agreed with anyone here. I do with this statement!!

To add to it, all games have flaws in them you just have to find them and use them to your advantage. To me that is part of the great fun in the game.

lackblogger said:

As Aubrielle stated, cheating is often a part of the design of the game, from the AI's side. In fact, most of those older 'classic' pre-internet games deliberately put impossible things in their games in order to sell cheat telephone solutions and magazines which gave cheat codes.…

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Laughable, sorry.

For people that can't think out of the box maybe, there is zero games I ever had to use a cheat.

Or when I get trapped in a 3d environment. The infamous "tcl" command in Bethesda games...