Exploiting and taking advantage of game mechanics isn't cheating. It's "exploiting and taking advantage of game mechanics".

Was it cheating to drink 40 Sujamma in Morrowind and then one shot Vivec at level 1? No. Not in the slightest.

Was it cheating to enter the Xbox button code for unlimited Health/Fatigue/Magicka, or to use the PC console to enable god mode? Absolutely.

Haha, what is funny about Pickpocketing is that the amount of XP earned depends on sucess rate and the value of the stolen item. Steal a 500 gold jewel with Pickpocket at 20 and rise to 23 instantly. Seriously, and at the bar for leveling up to get a perk it only counts as one.
Damned annoying.

I don't think it can even be called cheating. It's entirely up to you whether you do it or not. In Oblivion after I had a few playthroughs and got some new mods or something and didn't feel like leveling all the way back up I'd just use the console. Did it ruin your game for you? I'd think not.

All that matters is what YOU think about it. IF you feel something is an exploit, then it's simple enough to not use it, and if that ISN'T simple enough for you, then mods are common and fairly easy to make. svcks if you play on a console, though.

For example, i feel that changing the difficulty to beat a tough boss is cheating. The option exists right in front of me, but i've never done it because...i think it's cheating. Never, even though some fights have taken me literally hours if not days to beat, and sometimes are only finally beaten through a combination of insane luck and lucky insanity.

A good guideline that's more general than overall that i try to follow is the availability of items. For example, if I go into a ruin and find a pair of boots that have 40% lightning resistance, I can safely assume that i can enchant my own gear for that quantity without breaking the game. If a store starts selling ebony ingots, i can safely assume that i can create ebony armor and weapons without breaking the game. If you feel weak before then, go nuts(of course), but otherwise, waiting until then works wonders.



People keep saying that if you find yourself to be overpowered, dont use your gear. I find that to be a bit unfair, since once you start artificially raising the difficulty how far are you supposed to go? And even if you do have a hard time, you always keep thinking about how easy it would be with your daedric set or whatever. What I do instead is think about whether it will make me overpowered BEFORE i make the gear. "How hard have my fights been recently?" "Well, i've been killing them alright, but they've really been taking a hit on my health!" "Okay, I'll upgrade my armor to ebony but keep my current weapons"

Beholde! Le Balanced Experience!

And your point is ? They're obviously different from each other, hence the different names. All I said was that bugs and exploits are always part of the game, and need to be fixed. Cheating is a different matter, since it's the player's choice.
And I mean a fair choice as in choosing to cheat or not. Having to choose the weaker armor or the overpowered one is as stupid as having to choose between fun or not fun.

Getting the best possible gear is expected from the player, it shouldn't remove challenge, that's the job of the difficulty setting. There's even a level scaling to ensure that, though it fails at some point.

Maybe if you're already feeling balanced you should not try to get even stronger? "Oh, well the last battle was really easy, but i kinda felt it a little bit when the giant hit me on the head just before I kicked him into the stratosphere, time to upgrade!"

Becoming overpowered is, as always, a choice.

As for stealth, well...it's literally one way or another. How do you expect to balance it? There's either "SEE YA!" or "OMG WHERE IS HE!?"

There is no middle ground that matters.

People that exploit iron daggers to powerlevel smithing ruin the game for themselves. If you dont do that, smithing is fine.

Again with this wrong answer : do you realize how that stupid choice make another one, more interesting, impossible ?
I want to get the best gear I can to defeat my enemies (because it's fun for obvious reasons) AND I want to have some challenge with it, assuming I set the difficulty accordingly.

Why would you still play whith sword for example when its at 100. I am level 65 and I just level every perktree to 100 and trust me, you won't be that OP when playing as something that does not benefit from smithing/enchanting/alchemy like stealth classes.

The point is, the game shouldn't even allow that. I don't play Skyrim to train self-control.

They should have just included a limit somehow, that you can't just go to the forge and smith 100 pieces in one go.

Its not technically cheating, do what you consider is most fun. Doesn't matter.

100 blacksmithing alone is powerful but not "godmode", you'd need to power cycle mix it with enchanting and/or alchemy to achieve a "cheat" like state.



People always tell me otherwise in Destro threads

No, the point is, some people enjoy doing that. If you don't, then don't do it, leave the others who do enjoy doing it alone. It's not rocket science. It can't be removed just because your opinion on it differs. Everyone seems to forget that there are people out there who enjoy being OP and walking around in Godmode. It doesn't jive with you, then don't do it, but don't try to have it taken away from everyone else who might. Some of you like to pretend you somehow accidentally grinded alchemy until you could make +enchanting and +blacksmithing potions, then accidentally made 400 iron daggers then accidentally made Daedric armor while using the potion, and then accidentally enchanted it while using a potion. It's really not that hard to avoid being an OCD blacksmith.

Stupid solution really, to avoid good gear, avoid enchanting/smithing. It's better to enable godmode via cheats IMO. That way you have your way, and we can have a challenge even when we try our best.
If you don't get that it is absurd to have godmode by default without mods, even on master, well then we're wasting our time.

No.

You CHOOSE to level Smithing with iron daggers. I didn't. You aren't FORCED to. You have a choice. If you choose to make iron daggers to cheat your way up, that's your problem, and your cheating, not anybody else's.

How do ever plan on making anything more than iron?

You'll never NEED enough items to get to even the 2nd perk in smithing if you only craft items you need.

Oh ... but because YOU think it's cool the way it is, all other people, who don't think so, have to suffer?

As already explained, "if you don't like it, don't do it" is not a valid argument.
I don't buy a game only to adjust its rules and artificially make up game mechanics, which should have been in there in the first place. It's like buying a game, and then having to develop it while playing
I don't play a game to train self control.

Being able to max out a skill within the first few minutes/hours is already bad. But getting access to endgame content that way (as it's the case with smithing) is actually game breaking.
If people actually want to do that, they should have to use a cheat. The whole purpose of exploring and getting better stuff gets defeated by it.
It's actually really bad game design.

You dont avoid it, you just dont abuse it. Its not that hard to make the distinction, as has been said before when your gear ceases to cut the mustard, THAT is when you grind out a few levels and invest in the next set of gear. I've found that by doing this, my equipment remains in balance with what I am fighting, I just got my ebony armour and weapons and to be quite honest they'll last me a good while. When I start to struggle, thats when I'll make my Daedric stuff. I am more or less ready to do so at the moment, but I see no need to when what I have is getting the job done.

What is so hard about taking this approach? Its not hard to, y'know, NOT buy all the iron ingots and leather and spunk them into the forge. Put em in your chest for when you NEED to upgrade.

Or, conversely, take the old-skool approach and find/buy your gear. :whisper:

I dont consider them cheating but they are easy to abuse and ruin your own fun and you are less likely to enjoy the game for as long.

Should bethesda hold every players hand and stop them from abusing a combination of skills? I dont think so and some of the posters here saying there should be restrictions would be complaining if they were actually put in game. Nearly every skill can be abused to the point that the game isnt a challenge and its not just the crafting system. x30 damage on daggers with a perk and a pair of gloves is pretty insane as a dual wield sneak power attack kills max level creatures on master difficulty. All stealth is insane especially when combined with muffle and invisibility whether it be daggers bows or even magic.

Recruiting an invulnerable daedra prince/ dog as a companion makes the game easy as you can just follow him and loot. A questline even hands you a horse that cant be killed. Open console and type 3 little letters to become god. They even have a console command so that you still consume magicka and stamina but never drop below 1 hp if the player wants to use it and still feel you are playing an interactive movie. All of this bethesda is giving you as an option and some will see as cheating, some will demand the ability to use these options and some will never care and not use them and play the damn game.

I was dissapointed with smithing personally but tried to raise every skill to 100 on at least one toon.

Can it make you powerful - Yes.
Is it cheating - Purely personal opinion but I think not.
Do you have to use smithing - Its a feature in the game not a requirement.

It's only cheating if your against/playing with people online~ But a single player game? Play it whatever damn way you want too :vaultboy:

The skills aren't cheating, using them as OP apparently does, I think is. I skilled up quickly in smithing too, although my goals was affording training rather than skilling up smithing, so I always tried to craft the better things to get better yield (moneywise). If you want to exploit the system, nobody is stopping you, but I still call it bad design to have low level crafting affect high level skilling - just because it doesn't make sense logically. You don't advance to master chef by heating up frozen pizza if you know what I mean...

Edit: Oh, and if me saturating the market with my crafts drives the price down, I'd be happy with that too. I just realized that I've been exploiting the economy system, without attempting to do so. That's why I call these things bad game design.

Oh yeah ... you are totally right. There is no cheating in single player games ...
*FACEPALM*

I think what they mean by this is, your not hurting anyone by using these skills and if you dont want to use them then dont use them.