i loved morrowind how you had to go through your journal to find out were to go and that there was no fast travel

Don't consider restore health enchants an exploit(it was good but you could be killed through it and alchemy allowed more health per second when it mattered anyway), but don't want to see the others.

Heartily Agreed

I can't really take the people who claim that certain features aren't exploits seriously. Of course, everything in the game counts as a feature of the game, insofar as they are in the game. However, the developers obviously did not intend certain situations to be present. When you use 100% chameleon you are making yourself invincible in a manner that goes against the intent of the game. Freedom of choice is not equivalent to freedom of opportunity. When creating a world, developers create a set of rules by which the world functions. This is why when you create a character you aren't immediately given the choice of whether you want to be invincible. The developers establish that you are not supposed to be invincible. However, given the boundaries imposed by the game, they then allow you to choose between many different options. The freedom Beth tries to give you is not the freedom of a God, but rather the freedom that we have in our own lives. We aren't invincible, but we have many choices to deal with our problems. Beth shouldn't try to keep exploits in the game to protect the "freedom" of ability. They create a world and the rules that govern it. If you want to exploit those rules, you are doing so against the intent of the makers. That isn't wrong, but don't try to say that is how the game should be made. Conflating the two types of freedoms is a mistake we should avoid.

This poll doesn't even make any sense. If I'm strongly opposed to having exploits, then obviously I would choose the "None at all" option in the second part, but it doesn't exist.

There is a clear difference between a feature that was deliberately put in the game (like chameleon or spell reflect), and something that only exists because of bugs or glitches. The developers did not "intend" for a bug to exist and be used. They did "intend" for the spell effects to be used.


Additionally, unless one has some kind of mental compulsion that forces them to do things you don't like (because they "must" always do the most effective thing, for instance), then 100% chameleon shouldn't bother you - you think it's overpowered, you don't like it, so you don't use it.


(And if you do have that powergaming compulsion that forces you to do things you profess to dislike? Sorry to say, but I've got no sympathy. The point of games with many choices and options is to feel free to pick any of them. Not just do the min/max best and then complain that it's too easy and that doing anything less is "self nerfing". Not singling out you, just reacting to similar sentiments I've seen in threads over the past months.)

You know what the funny thing is though?It's always something incredibly useful.In Morrowind you could reduce your wanted level to 0 from the thieves guild without carrying any gold,effectively making it a free service.

In Oblivion you could duplicate items,which wasn't fixed with the goty version.

Like others have said.


Exploits are unintented bugs that are in games after release.

Exploits are Manual, you either use them or you don't...this is probably one of the few arguments were "Don't like it, don't use it" applies whole heartedly


and I rather the features are thought out and intricate rather than cut and butchered out of fear of exploits, this is a singleplayer game, if the exploit isnt apparent (and most of them aren't they take SEARCHING) then leave them be if addressing them will harm -intended- features of the game.

The spell effects were put into the game to make use of them, but I doubt Bethesda thought about what would happen if you got them to 100% (or close). They didn't even think that something as simple as back stepping could be used as an 'exploit' (I think broken game mechanic fits much better - the duplicate item thing is an exploit/glitch) until now. A game without challenge is no game, it's a toy. Period. 100% chameleon or reflect spell/damage makes you invincible and that should never happen in a game unless you use cheats.

The 'don't like it, don't use it' argument in regards to broken game mechanics is so incredibly silly that it's driving me nuts whenever I read it in this context. I seriously can't understand how someone can come up with this. It doesn't make any sense at all. Bethesda, please clutter the world with enchanted Daedric armors and swords and put 1000000 gold in every chest. And to those who don't like it: don't use it! No one needs to 'powergame' after all, so just pick the lonely iron dagger that is lying between the Daedric swords and have fun with it. Eh...right. And before someone accuses me of exaggerating - spell stacking for example is just as easy to use as a bunch of Daedric swords lying in the middle of the IC Market District. Why even have game mechanics at all? With the incredible 'don't like it, don't use it' rule as your guide you can play the game you want even if there are no rules.

Im not talking about cheating.
Cheating is the free restore of health/ magicka/ fatigue on the console for Morrowind.
Cheating is scroll duping or the guy whos corpse has infinite money.

When I take the time and effort to fully utilise intended game mechanics such as chameleon, then I do so by choice.
It takes intimate knowledge of the game and hours of effort to get a 100% chameleon suit before level 17.
If I know the game that well, why shouldnt I be rewarded for it?

There is no such thing as overpowered in a TES game. This is not an MMORPG and there is no PvP.
If I choose to use things like a dagger enchanted to take full advantage of the spell system so it can kill anything in 5 quick, consecutive hits then this is a choice.
Personally I prefer a plain unenchanted daedric longsword.
I play with that even though it isnt the best weapon in the game. Why?
Because I choose to.

Im talking about choice, you are talking about the denial of choice.
I think its clear whats favourable.

http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=2702

http://iggychaos.blogspot.com/2011/04/here-have-sword-sandwich.html

Two great reads on the subject.

Phitt I love you, I love your Mods but Almightyness I cannot agree with your argument when the difference between Obscure exploits like Duping (found completely by accident and wasn't put there intentionally) and your exaggeration, yes I agree where you say here and the last thread you responded to me about beth probably not putting thought in some of the more pervasive exploits, which I stated if its not obsure/ breaks the game or ruins the experience beyond the players control then address it otherwise yes the don't like it don't use it works, I rather that then Beth trying to address concerns and trunicating the game further I.E Multiple armor pieces(multiple "overpowering" enchantments) low enchantment threshold (ditto) Spears (overpowered, backpedaling and thrusting = god mode) and the various other horse crap people complained about that was purely under their control to utilize.

Strongly Opposed.


99% of the time these are not intentional and only reflect poorly on the Developer in review publications. Furthermore, they trivialize the game and make everyone roll the same skills.


Fortunately, they seemed to reduce these exploits, cheats, cheese-fests in Fallout3 and are likely continuing the trend in Skyrim if you listen to interviews. :celebration:

They should add the console commands or something like them on the Xbox 360 and PS3 but have them disable Achievements/Thophies when active.

Hyperbole ftl. :shakehead:

Yes, it is exaggerating to a large extent, to make 100% chameleon (have to collect a set of gear, have to collect a full set of charged greater/grand soulstones, have to go to a enchanting altar and apply all those stones as Chameleon to all those armor pieces) to "hey, let's just throw 100k gold in every chest".

The game does not hand you 100% chameleon armor. You have to go out of your way and work at it, to get such a thing. If you go through all that trouble, you must have wanted to do it. It didn't just happen by chance.

(And then there's the effort I'm not counting - joining the mage guild and going through all the recommendation quests in order to even gain access to enchanting. That's a further level of separation from "oh, hey, just spawn a pile of awesome gear in the center of the Market District.")

I'm pretty indifferent. Would I prefer a game free of glitches like that? Certainly, but whenever a glitch/exploit like that is found I simply avoid performing it. Given the choice, I'd prefer Bethesda focused most of their bugfixes on gamebreaking stuff like crashes, broken quests, etc.

Even if theres exploits in the game, You dont after use them.

I know i wont.

Op: your line about being someone worthy of saving the world from a god struck me pretty good.
Thats something that I think a lot of ppl with the
"we need balance " argument forget. Its a god thats screwing with the world not some band of merry men in tights.

Dont like them, dont use them. Not to mention you could use duping to balance as much as you could to exploit in Oblivion.

I'm more in favor of removing engine/A.I. exploits. Making a 100% chameleon spell is a conscious decision you come to and it might take a lot of work. Exploits like that are a bit far removed from the game, enough so in my opinion to not too much trouble. In fact, they might be fun if you are getting bored.

What I am concerned about more are the simple things: such as backing up and shooting repeatedly, jumping on a three foot rock where enemies can't follow, enemies not running a way when they have no way to win, etc.

Conscious exploits are one thing and they are regrettable, but not nearly as bad as the flaws in regular all-the-time game play that ruin the balance of the game.

I often use exploits to fix my broken game. Like when I spent several hours hoarding tons of gold legitimately, only to have my XBox freeze mid-save and corrupt it. I use that Orc-saleswoman glitch to regain my money.

Hey, I love you too. It's nothing personal, just a discussion about exploits in a computer game.

First of all I think it should be clear that there is a difference between exploits/glitches and broken game mechanics. The item duplicate thing for example is an exploit because it is something that Bethesda never wanted in the game at all while 100% chameleon is a broken game mechanic because it is a legit game mechanic that was so poorly balanced that it's possible to get to the point where it is the same as the console command 'toggle AI' (which would be considered a cheat). Enemies can't see you and don't react even if you hit them with your sword or cast spells on them. The same thing happens if you toggle their AI off. It is god mode and nothing else.

I simply don't understand why people want broken game mechanics in their game. I like powerful end-game characters and I certainly don't want to get rid of the 'special' feeling that you may experience when your character gets close to the highest level possible. But why do you need broken game mechanics for that? And why do you want game mechanics that are easily accessible for lower level characters and put them into god mode? If you don't use them because you don't like them then you don't need them either. If you do use them, why don't you simply use cheats?

Did anyone feel that Bethesda catered to the crowd of 'selfish' players and that Oblivion was less interesting because they removed the intelligence potion stacking game mechanic that allowed you to create potions with unlimited magnitude and duration in Morrowind? It was exactly the same as spell stacking, 100% chameleon or many other things in Oblivion. It would put you into god mode with very little effort. I've never heard a single complaint about that. Yet every 'broken game mechanic supporter' screams 'I want all options I can have, every option less makes the game worse!'. So I guess when they found out they can't do that anymore in Oblivion it was a major disappointment? Seriously? If that was true then no game with a sequel should ever change, they should only add more options and not remove or change anything, no matter how badly it was implemented. We'd still play Arena now with some new things added.

It's so easy to create mods that allow you to become a demi-god (you can even use cheats or simply the difficulty slider for that), but it's so damn hard and time consuming to balance broken game mechanics. So why are the people selfish who want a balanced game while the people who like a completely unbalanced game where you can become superhuman anytime you want are not selfish? Makes no sense to me.

I can accept that for some people the 'don't like it, don't use it' argument is valid. Fine for them. But many people (probably most, see poll results) play games for a challenge. That has nothing to do with the so called 'powergaming'. It means that you use everything at your disposal apart from obvious glitches/exploits to reach your goals. If that is powergaming then almost every gamer is a 'powergamer'. If I play a 3D shooter and find a cool new weapon then I will use it. If I play poker and draw four aces then I won't discard them. It's the most obvious thing to do, at least I thought that until I visited the Skyrim forum. If I constantly have to restrict myself from doing things that would make 'winning' easier then it's annoying and kills the fun for me. It's like arm wrestling with a 5 year old boy. I pretend I lose, but if I really wanted I would never ever lose. There is no satisfaction in that - if I lose I only lose because I want to, if I win it was no challenge at all. If I defeat the dragon king (lol...) in Skyrim I want it to be challenging. I don't want to run around in my 100% chameleon suit and stack a million damage spell on him while I run backwards and jump on a rock so he can't hit me (even though he can't see me anyway...).

Apart from all that it is also an immersion killer. Is your RPG character a [censored] (only talking about the RPG character here )? He's a mage, so why doesn't he use spell stacking? Because he's not smart enough to figure out how it works with his intelligence value of 87? Because he has suicidal tendencies and rather gets killed before he uses something as lame as spell stacking?

EDIT: At least no one can say I'm trying to get my post count up...hope at least one person reads this wall of text

I agree with you Phitt, and your six foot high wall of text.

I'm mainly in agreement on the idea that it is easier to build a balanced game and use intentional cheats (developer console) or mods to bring what a player wants than it is to build a game with little balance and ask the players to regulate themselves or use balance mods. I like challenge, as I imagine most gamers do, but part of the sense of challenge is not being able to meta-game. Easily available exploits, for "freedom" or whatever other reason someone may have, strip a portion of immersion from the game.

Ah. By game exploit, I meant an exploit of the game mechanic. Not a bug, not a cheat. Duplication glitch was included when because I was tired and stupid. 100% Chameleon in theory would allow you to be completely invisible but people would still react to things you do (so if you hit someone, they would panic and run, the guards would search for the invisible thief who kept on stealing their food off their plates, etc.), but in practice is just like toggling the AI off. The example of 100% Fire resistance is much better (Hey, you've got a character invulnerable to fire. You can't say that's cheating in any way, you've developed your character to be some kind of lava monster)

The word exploit was completely misleading, I apologize.



So as long as the mechanic isn't broken, its all good with you? If you can stack a million damage spell on him, but he eats you just the same, then you have to kill him all over again. The development of your character to be able to use the spell stacking is pretty ingenuitive. On the other hand, restricting it so that "weakness to magic" is "Weakness to the negative effects of magic, but not the postive ones because that will make your character the powerful mage you are roleplaying and we can't have that, can we" is kind of stupid. The game designers restricting us to not being able to outplay the game is the same as arm wrestling with a 5 year old boy, but in this case we're the 5 year old boy.

Don't get me wrong, I hate broken game mechanics with a passion. On the other hand, I remember I used the duplication glitch the first time I played through Oblivion after accidentally discovering it in the first 5 hours of play, but then got tactically [censored] because I used it to level up my alchemy skill, which just so happened to be a major skill after using it heavily in the tutorial. Oh yes, I could create AMAZING potions, but that didn't mean squat because even with them I couldn't kill 3 clanfear. In that case, exploiting the broken game mechanic actually made the game harder.

Getting 100% resistance to fire as a dark elf didn't save me from the shock and frost spells in the Oblivion realm. Learning to get 100% resistance to EVERYTHING just makes the game very boring very quickly, and I imagine a lot of people would put up the "difficulty" by taking off the 100% Resistance to Everything Suit.

Spell stacking is pretty revolutionary. I never thought about using it in Oblivion until I read the UESP wiki three or four years after playing through the game, and I never thought about using a constant effect restore health enchantment. The entire human race wasn't smart enough to work out that gravity exists until an apple fell on Newton's head...



They weren't exactly easily available. To discover them by yourself took inventiveness and a certain degree of skill/luck. Then you had to work out how to make them work. Realising that I could be invisible if I had 100% chameleon took a bit of imagination, finding a chameleon spell, leveling up the skill related to that, and finally finding enough enchanted items with chameleon took a heck of a lot of effort.
Then when I got there, the mechanic was broken, and I stripped my suit off again in favor of legitimate achievements.

even tho i have spent over 200 hours of my life on oblivion, i want the dupe cheat in, because on different playthroughs i dont want to be wasting my time mining for hours....sorry if the hardcoe disagree

You can't really say 100% spell absorb/resistance/reflect or damage return is an exploit.What if I make a mage character with that an on self spell that lasts 1 second so it effectively eats 1 spell?You may as well say that blocking is an exploit.

I don't see how people can really complain about these things.

If you don't want the game to be easy then don't spend an hour farming soul gems so you can make an exploitative armor set.This kind of exploiting takes a certain amount of diligence achieve.