Do you consider it "cheating" if you use Save States just for convience?

I'm playing Final Fantasy 9 on an emulator for the first time, and I'm doing that "Excalibur II Perfect Game" challenge where I try to get absolutely everything in the whole game (including the Excalibur II) and it's pretty tempting to use the Save State functions.
However, I try to avoid saving between actual challenging parts, and only use it so that I won't need to go through tedious parts over and over everytime I retry something.
For example, if there is a hard part coming up right after some very long dialogue, I will Save State right after that dialogue part so I don't need to see it everytime.
Same with the Swordfight part right after the "Feel My Blade" battle in Alexandria - the battle is super-easy and hardly requires any skill at all, but the Swordfight tends to be really hard and frustrating on the NTSC version (and it's necessary to get a perfect score since you need the 10 000 Gil and the Moonstone for upcoming parts on the 1:st disc) - so instead of replaying the preceding battle I just Load State everytime I fail with the Swordfight.
Is this fair play, or does it count as "cheating"?

Not really. Save states are good for trying to speedrun individual zones in Sonic games.

Well on a basic level if you're using it to do something that someone not emulating it cannot do and then want to brag about how great you are at whichever game you savestated on - then, yes, it is "cheating."

Is it cheating? Under most people's definitions, probably. But I would argue that this discussion is pointless, and that the entire concept of "cheating" in a single-player video game needs to be eliminated.

Games are about fun, and you should play them in the way you find enjoyable. If that includes what most people would consider "cheating," why does that matter in the slightest? If you're playing a game to follow arbitrary standards in a way that makes the game less fun to you, you're doing it wrong. If using save states makes the game more enjoyable to you, then it is not "cheating" in any legitimate sense of the word.

The only way you can actually cheat in any real way is if the game involves other people, such as with a tournament where everyone agrees to follow certain rules. Violating those rules, then, would be cheating worth condemning. Otherwise, nobody should care.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb to call people out on cheating in a single player game. I've been known to go do replays of games and just use a Gameshark because I was just want to go through the story again.

Luckily I'm single, so it's impossible to cheat.

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Originally Posted by Raistlin

Is it cheating? Under most people's definitions, probably. But I would argue that this discussion is pointless, and that the entire concept of "cheating" in a single-player video game needs to be eliminated.

Games are about fun, and you should play them in the way you find enjoyable. If that includes what most people would consider "cheating," why does that matter in the slightest? If you're playing a game to follow arbitrary standards in a way that makes the game less fun to you, you're doing it wrong. If using save states makes the game more enjoyable to you, then it is not "cheating" in any legitimate sense of the word.

The only way you can actually cheat in any real way is if the game involves other people, such as with a tournament where everyone agrees to follow certain rules. Violating those rules, then, would be cheating worth condemning. Otherwise, nobody should care.

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This. I use save states all the time on old games and don't feel bad about it. A lot of what I play on emulator are difficult rom hacks that would probably be close to impossible to beat without heavy save state abuse anyway.

It's technically cheating, no way around that.

Who cares, though? It's a single player game. Play it whatever way you want.

Is it cheating if you use save states in a dream, but you still really love the game?

I don't considering it cheating. You are not really giving yourself a serious advantage by using save save states. Were you inputting an infinite gold, health, item code or what have you, or using the save state of another person to bypass significant portions of the game, then yea, that would probably be considered cheating.

>>> Satisfying a fan base.

It depends how much of a challenge you want.

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Originally Posted by Mirage

It's technically cheating, no way around that.

Who cares, though? It's a single player game. Play it whatever way you want.

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How do you define "cheating" in this case, then?
I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not using Save States just to save yourself from watching the same dialogue over and over can really be considered cheating.

Also this isn't really about whether or not one should feel ashamed of using States, but a question of what could technically count as "cheap".
I kind of agree with what Bunny said, it seems like "cheating" would require that you give yourself unfair advantages so that the actual battles become easier.

One aspect that I could understand would count as cheating in my case could of course be that saving and loading at convenient places makes the resets more bearable, and thus I won't lose patience as easily.

But yes it is still "cheating" - as an example say a racing driver took all his best split times and combined them all together and goes "this is my fastest time around the circuit" it's actually a lot different to the fastest time someone will actually get around the circuit first time around.

Now of course if the circuit had actual save/reload points you could say well this is my best time up to point A and this is my best time from point A to B etc etc so my best overall time is X.

With save stating you are effectively adding extra save/reload points inbetween save points A, B and C which would give you an unfair advantage as you can finetune things within that space that other people cannot.

At the end of the day save states can be used as a tool of convenience but if it's something outside of the game design itself (i.e. saving where you otherwise could not) then you are circumventing it and thus "cheating."

The real question at hand here is - why does it matter so much to you?

Technically yes. But I don't care. I will abuse them if I see fit. :3

Depends. I don't think using them in, say, a platformer, or an RPG, is cheating in any sense of the word. It's just a convenient save anywhere feature.

The only time it's really cheating is if you use them in a fighting game, middle of the match, so if you die you can just reload and have the same amount of energy taken away from your opponent. And yes, I've done that. :p

But like others have said, the whole concept of cheating in a single player game is kind of a moot point. Unless you're doing some sort of competition with other people online, or something.

At the same time I did think it was awesome when Blizzard started banning people from playing Starcraft II for cheating in the single player game. :p

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Originally Posted by DMKA

Depends. I don't think using them in, say, a platformer, or an RPG, is cheating in any sense of the word. It's just a convenient save anywhere feature.

The only time it's really cheating is if you use them in a fighting game, middle of the match, so if you die you can just reload and have the same amount of energy taken away from your opponent. And yes, I've done that. :p

But like others have said, the whole concept of cheating in a single player game is kind of a moot point. Unless you're doing some sort of competition with other people online, or something.

At the same time I did think it was awesome when Blizzard started banning people from playing Starcraft II for cheating in the single player game. :p

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Originally Posted by *Laurelindo*

How do you define "cheating" in this case, then?

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I define it as circumventing game mechanics by modifying the contents of the console's (or console emulation's) RAM.

Are you in a competition where the rules state that you cannot use save states? That is your answer there.

I used save states to avoid battles in FFI last night because I was deep in a dungeon with 2 characters incapacitated, 1 was nearly and the last wouldn't have made it out. Did I cheat? :-/

I used savestates when I was doing the MegaMan challenge with Levian and Del Murder because I was trout. Had I won, I would've happily disqualified myself because it was a breach of the official rules but generally it's not "cheating" insofar as it just removes the frustration factor.

I used savestates when I was going for 100% completion of Crash Bandicoot. You need to get all the boxes in a level - if you die and respawn at a checkpoint, you lose all previous boxes opened. Not dying ever is not that difficult (I managed the majority of the game), but I savestated at every checkpoint I came across just in case I died. There is nothing more frustrating than dying with the end of the level in sight and knowing that you're not gonna get the 100% level completion because your timing was very slightly off. ._.

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Originally Posted by Shauna

I used savestates when I was going for 100% completion of Crash Bandicoot. You need to get all the boxes in a level - if you die and respawn at a checkpoint, you lose all previous boxes opened. Not dying ever is not that difficult (I managed the majority of the game), but I savestated at every checkpoint I came across just in case I died. There is nothing more frustrating than dying with the end of the level in sight and knowing that you're not gonna get the 100% level completion because your timing was very slightly off. ._.

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Oh lordy that game caused me so much rage >>

It's just convenient. Especially for older technology where there were no saves or save spots were a huge pain. It used to be that your options were frequently 1) spend a good chunk of time getting back to a save area or 2) leave the game on and come back later. It was a tech limitation that devs tried to make the best of that we can now circumvent. If you wanna claim you're all hardcore then you can stick with the built-in save system but it's only if you care about self-imposed challenges.

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Originally Posted by Aulayna

But yes it is still "cheating" - as an example say a racing driver took all his best split times and combined them all together and goes "this is my fastest time around the circuit" it's actually a lot different to the fastest time someone will actually get around the circuit first time around.

Now of course if the circuit had actual save/reload points you could say well this is my best time up to point A and this is my best time from point A to B etc etc so my best overall time is X.

With save stating you are effectively adding extra save/reload points inbetween save points A, B and C which would give you an unfair advantage as you can finetune things within that space that other people cannot.

At the end of the day save states can be used as a tool of convenience but if it's something outside of the game design itself (i.e. saving where you otherwise could not) then you are circumventing it and thus "cheating."

The real question at hand here is - why does it matter so much to you?

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They're playing a FF game for the first time, I hardly think that they're going to go around bragging about anything.

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Originally Posted by Jiro

I used savestates when I was doing the MegaMan challenge with Levian and Del Murder because I was trout. Had I won, I would've happily disqualified myself because it was a breach of the official rules but generally it's not "cheating" insofar as it just removes the frustration factor.

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Oh god yes, that was terrible. I don't even remember if we gave up or finished it off.

I know I was very tempted to use save states when we raced in Sonic 2 at least. :p that was just terrible. Old games are so unforgiving.