ARE SAVESTATES CHEATING?

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It's cheating in the most technical terms, but considering that games are for personal enjoyment, who gives a shit, really. I'm totally for games having clearly defined rules and boundaries set by the maker for the sake of the game, but if the player can work his way around them, more power to him.

Just don't try to bring savestates into a discussion of your actual skill in the game, if such a discussion were to ever come up. Sure, I save stated my way through Mega Man 1, but as a result, I wouldn't argue to say I'm good at the game.
I would say the only time savestates are acceptable only when they are used strictly to pause a game and resume it at a later time. Basically, that means saving a particular state and loading a particular state once only, assuming your game has no real save system whatsoever. now if there are passwords involved, thats a little different. Basically, the save states would have to revolve around the password system more, or what I had mentioned above. I hope you'll forgive me for saying this craze, but given how lenient of a game super mario world is with saving, you're basically cheating. Good news? Super Mario World has high replay value, so I'd say keep playing it until youve gotten a good grasp of it.
I abuse the shit out of savestates and I don't care. They're there, so I might as well use them.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Emirpoen
I hope you'll forgive me for saying this craze, but given how lenient of a game super mario world is with saving, you're basically cheating.


I can't forgive you until you defend this ridiculous statement.
In my honest opinion...
Cheating would entail something like infinite lives, or cheating against others in an online game by using uberhax and whatnot.

Savestates are just a way to hone your skills.
;)
I think exploitation is a better word than cheating. And if you are not modifying hex-code then you are not exploiting anything.

Therefore, there's nothing wrong with savestates (just RAM-dumping). Plus how can this be defined in terms of "wrong"? Wrong as opposed to what?

As a game designer (who works with code) I can argue and say you can't really define games in terms of rules to follow. There would be too many of them: every switch, if-statement, and loop defines a behavior. A violation of that behavior would be considered the closest thing to cheating, and savestates definitely do not do this - at all, not one single bit.

Even if you use savestates to get better randomized loot or stave off your repair hammer (like how it can be done in Oblivion) is not cheating, keep in mind the randomization had absolutely nothing to do with the savestate, ergo fate is the verdict here, not the savestate.

To get into some technical stuff: A basic random number generator works by collecting garbage data stored in your memory. Reloading savestates will muck with this garbage data, as it dumps the previous memory right back into the RAM, and allocates a new portion for "heap" and "stack" space. Therefore, reloading a savestate can muck with these values and change the outcome of the randomizer by making things more random. This will probably hurt your chances of getting a predictable leniency. Good randomizers are seeded with clock/other values instead, but I'm not certain your emulator knows this, it depends on how it emulates random values (IE: what the emulated console used, that it tries to emulate).
I remember I abused it when playin' DQV with the monster fights, but the only other time I used them was when I was far away from a save point and didn't want to have to deal with going from one end to another again if I lost a fight or something, that's pretty much it.

(But I more abused the hell out of the super speed function though.)
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
Super speed/FPS unlimiter should be built-in to every game. =P
Savestates aren't cheats, its a form of time travel.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
(But I more abused the hell out of the super speed function though.)


The ` key is my best friend on ZSnes. I virtually Control + A every encounter I come across. Then again, I use save states to cheat in order to be powerful enough to do that...

Fun fact: Control + A was how I auto battled in Might and Magic. On the Commodore 64!
It is cheating, but people cheat at everything in life. It's human nature.

It's pretty harmless to cheat in this way. For some games it allows you to actually make it to the end and fully enjoy all the content. Otherwise you would have given up. It's kind of like illegal downloads. If you don't have the means to buy that CD or Wii game, then you at least get a chance to experience it. Although that can be a harmful way of cheating.
It's cheating depending on how you use it. If you use it to perfect something that occurs by chance or skill, then obviously it's cheating. If you aren't a hardcore gamer and you're playing a difficult old-school game, it's fine to use save states.
Honestly, I love save states because you can save anytime you want to. It's just too tedious to go back towards a save point and go back to where you were when you want to resume the game.
author=drgn_lord50
If you use it to perfect something that occurs by chance or skill, then obviously it's cheating.

Cheating, as in what? (I'm not just targeting you, but I keep seeing the word cheating as if it means something). I don't find it so obvious.

I mean, cheating, as in what?

Are you having a good time?
Are you able to complete the game/task/mission?

What's this "cheating" going on? What? Or is it guilt? I think it's guilt, everybody say it with me. You probably feel guilty for not trying to do it the right way and instead use save states as a means to an end. Then when you do finally get to that end you realize you've used save states and you feel guilty of the action, not "cheated".

There is no such thing as cheating in any games.

And if you don't feel guilt, then don't worry. Save states are okay. But if you do feel guilt, stop using them.
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