Cheats or no Cheats

[huzman 445]

A curious situation happened to me with a given city. It was (is) a losing situation : high unemployment, dwindling funds, no growth, etc... So I though to nuke the city. If I choose the option from the main Region map to delete the city, everything gets erased including the topographical map. I didn't want that, of course. So I decide(d) to erase everything with the B/V options. Once that done, I reset my Moolah back to 500 000§. That's when I asked myself "Am I cheating or not". On this case, I didn't think so.

But then, changing the city/region/mayor's name, is it cheating ? I don't think so.

Using Ctlr+x to have all the techniques, then yes that's cheating. So there is a subtle from cheating or not. What do you think ?

(BTW, I think that outright cheating is a way of showing a very low opinion of yourself)

[APSMS 1,892]

I don't think this game is serious enough or difficult enough to label the game's "cheat" codes and debugging tools as cheating and not being true to yourself. There isn't an adventure or story to discover, no gates to pass through. No monsters to block your path. You may not get the intended experience in other games if you cheat, but SimCity doesn't work that way.

Generally speaking I wouldn't worry about it.

[Silur 3,301]

I only work with real tools without the wild money. Sometimes the tool "Cheats" helps me to solve problems that do not wanted to solve in the original MAXIS SC4 !

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

We use the term 'cheat' more so innocently with a sense of humor.  Its not really a cheat if you declare you are using a cheat.  

In competitive games if someone uses a cheat, conceals that they are using a cheat, and then apparantly expects others to be convinced that they have some kind of advanced skill over them, then yes, that could be frowned upon by others, or maybe not. 

In the Gamer world, your peers more often would likely figure out the cheat and enjoy informing you that they did, the Gamer world is somewhat more generally civilized than the real world. 

City-Builder games are not competitive, they engage individuals in a simulation, and individuals share their experience using the simulation.  We often share our knowledge of how to cheat, in non-competitive games, 'cheating' becomes somewhat part of the game itself.

Of course I use cheats, I cheat everyday, sometimes I cheat all day...  Its extremely rare I don't cheat, but if I'm actually not cheating, I'll probably tell you, or maybe not.  

[Silur 3,301]

SC4 from Maxis was done in a very crude ( and BAT Bldgs and other Addons) , and they wanted to go very fast for the money. Very soon they left us. Only Simtropolis and SC4Devotion to keep the boat on the surface. A huge thank you to them. Huge work has been done in Japan, South America, France, even PR Korea and Pegasus (but that's another planet). But today there is only Devotion and Simtropolis with hundreds of fans to keep the SC4 world. That's life. 

Today I look at SC2013 and Skylines and I only see the cartoons that will not enter my heart.

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

For me, I decide when I start a city what my goal and constraints are going to be.

When I first started playing that goal was to create a successful single city tile with 100k Sims using only the ingame tools and not the cheat console. While I never went bankrupt, I was having lots of difficulties so then I did use a few cheats to play sandbox-like for practice and I learned a bit. Then I started over on my original mission. It took me several months, but I did finally achieve my goal and I was satisfied that I could do it.

After that I then decided what parts did I want to be a challenge and which parts don't I really care about. For me that was then the money part that I could toss out. I got the Money Park Gnome Towers and placed the 5k per month one in my next city. I added a 2nd when that wasn't enough. At this point the fun challenge to me was the traffic and beauty of my city. Much later I've learned to make some simple mods and the two I use in my farm region is that the Ag pays 5x the amount of the tax rate they are assigned in game and I made the open grass area park to cost negative one per month maintenance. That's sufficient for my current play style.

For a non-competitive game whatever you do is only cheating if you get that funny, icky feeling in your tummy when you do something. You are your own best judge of that.

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I play Minecraft on servers where I can enter creative mode at any time and change the world. I've learned from experience that doing so indiscriminately wipes away all of the "game" tasks of a world. It's like basketball with the basket moved to the floor: Putting something in the basket is no longer a game but a chore.

Like CM, I choose which features of SC4 I want to wrestle with, and which are "bugs" to be worked around. I want to build cities where traffic flows through reasonable networks, and I even want my budget to make a profit (I must be a black-hearted capitalist). However, I do not want to pay for all of the glitches where tricky draggable mods create rats' nests of unexpected overrides / intersections. I also do not want to pay for bridges that promised to be high enough for ferries but weren't.

Whenever some part of the game temps me to tear my hair out, even after saving something I thought was right, I just demolish the mistake and pay myself moolah to do it over until I learn how to control the tools well enough to build what I asked for. I treat the game as if it had a planning mode, an undo button, and/or a rollback feature.

BTW, It would be really nice if I could commit rights-of-way to highways, interchanges, rails etc without actually building them and owing maintenance. Then I could drag out certain networks long before my cities needed them or could afford them, helping me to build my early-days towns around their future needs.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

Indeed, with a video game, cheating would involve gaining an advantage towards fixed objectives. As SC4 has no end goals, these should really be considered standard tools of the trade. It's completely your choice how to play, whether in sandbox style or managing city finances and trying to maintain a surplus profit. Also since the game is clearly single player, without online leaderboards or achievements, this means no one else is affected by your choices.

If using the Extra DLL, some of the commands still have unknown functionality. They were apparently used by Maxis for debugging purposes prior to the game's release. There's also a few new codes @simmaster07 added in an Extra (Extra) DLL. So really, dev tools they are just that.

The same thing could be applied to 'radical' mods/lots. Things like money trees, mega power stations, and garbage reducers. There are no limits in SC4.

All these are simply additional tools to use at your mayoral discretion, so don't worry about it.

[Fantozzi 4,067]

Well games are done for fun and to fail in a game - other than in real life - shouldn't cause much worries. If you knew Major Fantozzi - his prefered game strategy is bulldozing. One could say, he zones and bulldozes until a short amount is left over he is satisfied with. 

On cheats in my opinion the rule is simple: if they break your gaming fun, they are bad cheats. Everything that enhances the fun is good.

Take CJ artists f.e. they plop and replop and all this costs money. So to get the look they want - why not use a money cheat to have endless plopping possibilites?

Me, I play a little bit a mixture of all the possibilites the community gave through the years. I can spent a lot of money creating interchanges and destroy them - and then I use moolah for this. On the other hand I want to have finances/growth and desire in balance - as without challenge it would be less fun to me.

So even if the challenge is your fun - you didn't kill the fun - you just settled the conditions you want to play with. You know, you can mod content in both ways - to make things harder and to make things easier. Most of the downloads make things easier but you could mod your game also to make it ultra difficult.

Not shure how to name that - would it be cheating too? The umbrella term is 'manipulation'. And that's what you might consider - not every manipulation is cheating.

Manipulating the game - well, that's what offers the possibilities to have new experiences. And that's a great part of the fun, imho.

[huzman 445]

I love the feedback. But I'm talking about morality. This is a personally personal attitude . It shows the author's personality.

6 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

cheating would involve gaining an advantage towards fixed objectives

But there are objectives ! "The biggest Region/City, The most amount of money, etc...", again the morality is not about obtaining those goals, but how YOU feel about it and how other people perceive you.

 

5 hours ago, Fantozzi said:

On cheats in my opinion the rule is simple: if they break your gaming fun, they are bad cheats. Everything that enhances the fun is good.

Thus there's a difference between good and bad cheats. That's my whole point.

[SecretMbr_735754 2,157]

To Cheat, or Not to Cheat, that is the Question.   In the simulator we are playing a role of Mayor, and how we play that role could be pure fun, it could be a form of therapy, it could be mostly educational, artistic or technical, and what role or different roles the individual chooses reflect their personality and character, their experiences and dreams. 

In terms of SC4 as an example, the game also already has its own ethics and morals, personality and character established by Maxis and the programmers who designed the game, as well the game is a family-friendly game with a mostly positive view of life and the world, so it allows us to take a break from the real world that can sometimes be a constant negative.

I use SC4 for all the above, so I can flip through all the files and CJs on Simtropolis and relate to most of the material generated by others, sometimes I'm challenged by others to evaluate myself in how I respond, and as I go along I become a better human being by learning more social skill and experience.    I thoroughly enjoy the city builder/simulator and all what we can do with it, and as well enjoy participating socially in the community.   

From a psychology point of view, yes, to some degree what we project onto a fantasy can say a lot about our personal condition, but human beings can be far more complex.   I think the answers given here have a clear consensus that its all about free choice and personal enjoyment.   

What I have are several different Plugins folder setups, each with a different approach and design of the simulator.  I can do different things, explore, practice, express, learn different things or play different roles.  The community provides many examples to take from...  As the banner at the top of the front page of Simtropolis says...

Many Cities, One Community.

[huzman 445]

19 hours ago, RandyE said:

To Cheat, or Not to Cheat, that is the Question.

@RandyE: That's what I am asking about. To use a certain "cheat" and feel a little disturbed, then that's one answer. Just like I said in the first post, those are another answer. I loved your post.

Well, I have learned a lot and a little about morality. But these are wonderful insights about SimCity and its players. So thanks for all the input.

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

On 21/03/2017 at 5:40 PM, huzman said:

But there are objectives ! "The biggest Region/City, The most amount of money, etc...", again the morality is not about obtaining those goals, but how YOU feel about it and how other people perceive you.

Sure, I guess it can be viewed either way.

Just like there's numerous play styles, there's also various mindsets. You can define your own objectives and no one is there to dictate the path you take to reach them. It's great there is this freedom, without being judged on every step you take. SC4 is a creative process. Being such an open-ended game means others are more likely interested seeing how your city turns out, rather than precisely how you get from A to B. As you're the mayor, you decide the rulebook.

Well, maybe Neil Fairbanks and co. would have another opinion.

From this statement it sounds like they prefer slightly different financial strategies...

Spoiler

Quote

"Last time I was in such a tight budget situation, I shredded my socks - just to ease the tension!"

So whatever works I suppose...