In the last couple of weeks, I’ve made what amounts to a Herculean effort in terms of my gaming backlog. That means that I’ve utilized the strength of ten mortal men to play lots and lots of video games, and the pile of judgmental game titles, physical and hypothetical, have lessened their gaze of fury, demanding to be played.
Basically, I’m having fun.
The most recent target of my gaming swathe has been Borderlands 2, the ludicrous FPS action RPG that can barely support any more capital letter descriptors. Nick and myself have been tearing through this game like nobody’s business, and just this past weekend managed to smite the Warrior, the game’s final fiery boss (with some help, of course). Naturally, one of the biggest draws of any dungeon crawler like Borderlands happens to be the massive amount of loot that you have access to, and according to legend, the Warrior drops some mighty fine bonuses.
But unfortunately for us, no Conference Call shotgun landed at our pixelated feet. In fact, there was only one legendary item, which Nick promptly swooped up, and it turns out it’s one of the worst legendary drops in the game. During all of this commotion about loot drops, the folks watching us in the stream were encouraging us to duplicate Nick’s legendary item through some well known glitches, effectively giving us as many of them as we wanted.
Which brings up an interesting quandary. Aside from the fact that it would make for a pretty lame stream if we were signing in and out of Borderlands 2 constantly, I have a bit of a moral qualm with glitching in games to get big ticket items or victories. Am I above abusing the occasional bug to get some money or to perhaps make a boss fight simpler? Heavens no. But I am opposed to fundamentally altering the game through the use of a glitch or an item dupe (although I did this with the W Summon in Final Fantasy VII to make Emerald Weapon more palatable).
I don’t think it’s actually wrong per se, to use a glitch or a cheat to your advantage in a single player game, but I do think it tarnishes the experience for me somewhat. That doesn’t mean I have a problem with other people doing it in their own games, I just don’t see the point myself. Then again, I’ve probably bounced back and forth on this issue to suit my own needs at a particular time over the years.
So what do you guys think? Do you engage in things like item duping and glitches to make a game easier, or to get what you want from a game faster? Do you have an issue with these kinds of tactics? Should me and Nick have just duped as many items as we wanted and ran amok with all of the mad lootz? Go!
I’d very much so agree.
Another great example in Borderlands 2 is on the second playthrough with True Vault Hunter mode enabled. I find myself too easily overwhelmed by the enemies. I’m in the Torque DLC and in this DLC you get the chance to “farm” Torque Tokens, the currency you can use in this little world in the game to purchase weapons.
I’ve found myeslf resorting to farming one of the quests you’re ALLOWED to repeat so I can get more Torque Tokens. It feels a bit counter intuitive to the game to have to repeat the same missions over and over. I realize certain bosses being repeated over and over are intentionally more difficult the third time around. However players should already be rewarded for accomplishing something.
So much loot I’ve gained at the ending of the first game is already abandoned.
I have never done it. It just doesn’t feel right to me.
I dont feel its right when it comes to multiplayer games it just makes it unfair. But the only time I have really done it is in a single player game after I already beat the game once through, then I go back and just mess around with all the extra glitches and whatnot.
On the whole, I just feel it’s not very kosher to do that sort of thing. Even though it’s a single player experience, it feels kind of dirty to pull those sort of glitches and stuff because I feel that I didn’t really “earn” that treasure/loot/weapon. Though I don’t think any of us were immune to the bizarre intrigue that is missingno in Pokemon. Many a good save file were corrupted that day.
Only ever did it in Oblivion. Any other time I have had no knowledge or interest in how to do it. The grind is one of the factors I enjoy about games, why would I take away one of the core gameplay mechanics I enjoy? 🙂
Sounds like we’re all on the same page here. Duping immediately changes the character of the game for me from something structured to more of a sandbox feel, as it completely breaks the balance/economy. I can’t take it at all serously afterwards, or place any real value in progressing after that point. I too did it in Oblivion, only once I reached the point where I knew that the only way I was going to wring any more enjoyment out of it was to inundate the land with volleys of gems, cabbages, and human skulls.