Cheating for trophies

[Lonemankane]

Not sure if there is a topic for it but wanted to ask about cheating for trophies. As in using either a ingame cheat for them, or glitches or even some of that good old save cheating. (As in save the game back the save up, and then, once you got the trophy with that one on the system you reupload the save to the system and then get the other trophies and so on. kind of like choices in games.) Or just getting people to help get it as in say the little big planet trophy with the 50 hearts and likes and so on. you need a lot of people to like and so on.

 

Want to know what you think of them. are they bad in your eyes or good and so on.

Edited March 5, 2019 by KANERKB

[AvariceInc]

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted." Learned that while going for my first platinum back in 2010. ?

[BlackJudas]

You do realize what site you're on right?  We call it boosting.  Not cheating.

[Lonemankane]

6 minutes ago, BlackJudas said:

You do realize what site you're on right?  We call it boosting.  Not cheating.

oh I know but just wondering what people think of it

[Kishnabe]

 

[Lordguwa]

imo it's fair. even backing up saves to get the other ending saves time.

only thing that isn't fair is using CFW setup which leads to out of place trophy's or impossible time stamps/trophies.

Edited March 5, 2019 by kingdrake2

[BrettyBoy]

Nothing wrong with in-game cheating. Hacking trophies however is really dumb.

[Lava_Yuki]

As long as it's not hacking, using glitches and saves seems ok with me. For trophy hunters, it's best make life easy 

[Deceptrox]

As long as the games allow everyone to earn trophies) due to glitches or in-game exploits, it shouldn't be considered cheating. Only if someone alters/manipulates the game or the console in any way that it allows him/her to earn trophies unfairly, he/she is cheating.

[Cobby]

I struggle to see who cares about a leaderboard that isn't official and anything to do with Sony. But you do you.. 

[DreddPirateRobb]

I would never have gotten the Far Cry 2 plat without boosting. Those servers are ancient and unstable and getting someone to finish an entire match is near impossible. I have never used a hack for a trophy, I've been in lobbies with hackers and seen it first hand (Red Dead 1 and GTA 4)

[Lonemankane]

5 minutes ago, freaky_45 said:

I would never have gotten the Far Cry 2 plat without boosting. Those servers are ancient and unstable and getting someone to finish an entire match is near impossible. I have never used a hack for a trophy, I've been in lobbies with hackers and seen it first hand (Red Dead 1 and GTA 4)

Yeah I know what you mean but I meant for stuff like that most people would take forever and so on and yeah.

[damon8r351]

You know how you were a kid, and your parents told you that it's wrong to lie? Then you get into a situation where your parents tell someone a small lie to, maybe, not hurt someone's feelings or something similar? Then you ask something like, "Mommy, I thought you said it was wrong to lie," and your mother tells that some times, in certain cases, it's better to lie if telling the truth causes more harm than good. Then, bam, you've unlocked "The Little White Lie"?

 

That's what boosting is like. Objectively, boosting is cheating because it's a competitive trophy earned in an artificially created non-competitive environment. That's cheating, cheating we've all agreed is okay by signing up to a boosting website. Boosting is the little white lie of the trophy hunting world: "Yeah, I've earned this in a competitive environment...*wink*"

[kraven_15]

23 minutes ago, damon8r351 said:

You know how you were a kid, and your parents told you that it's wrong to lie? Then you get into a situation where your parents tell someone a small lie to, maybe, not hurt someone's feelings or something similar? Then you ask something like, "Mommy, I thought you said it was wrong to lie," and your mother tells that some times, in certain cases, it's better to lie if telling the truth causes more harm than good. Then, bam, you've unlocked "The Little White Lie"?

 

That's what boosting is like. Objectively, boosting is cheating because it's a competitive trophy earned in an artificially created non-competitive environment. That's cheating, cheating we've all agreed is okay by signing up to a boosting website. Boosting is the little white lie of the trophy hunting world: "Yeah, I've earned this in a competitive environment...*wink*"

This is probably the best analogy for boosting I think I've seen

[Lonemankane]

1 minute ago, kraven_15 said:

This is probably the best analogy for boosting I think I've seen

lol I agree

[thepeaguy83]

Enjoying a game > fast platting.

It's pretty sad when players just buy shitty games to increase their plat count.

Edited March 5, 2019 by thepeaguy

[AJ_Radio]

4 hours ago, damon8r351 said:

That's what boosting is like. Objectively, boosting is cheating because it's a competitive trophy earned in an artificially created non-competitive environment. That's cheating, cheating we've all agreed is okay by signing up to a boosting website. Boosting is the little white lie of the trophy hunting world: "Yeah, I've earned this in a competitive environment...*wink*"

 

Yep. We cheated at getting the orbs in Jak 2 and Jak 3. We cheated at getting 1 million bolts in Ratchet and Clank because getting them the normal way was far too time consuming. We cheated at getting the online trophies in Assassins Creed games because they would of been too painfully slow to get otherwise.

 

The point is, everybody on this website has glitched, abused an exploit or "cheated" at some point to get trophies. If we all had to play completely legit and get our trophies naturally and without any help, I guarantee you we would have a lot less trophies and a lot less platinums.

 

I got the Posse Up trophy legit in Red Dead Redemption, without boosting. That was a royal pain in the ass and I considered myself lucky. Now imagine doing that for all the other online trophies in that game. The only feasible way would of been right when the game came out, when a lot more people were playing it.

 

With older games with online it's basically a requirement that you have to boost. They're next to impossible to get done otherwise.

[mattveego]

Speed runners use glitches and exploits to get better times constantly. If it is in the game, it is part of the game in my eyes.

 

Now if you are manually configuring data within the game somehow (ie some kind of hacking) then that is cheating

[HellMoodCole]

deleted

Edited April 4 by HellMoodCole

[Midnightwards666]

Cheating is a very difficult word to define. What is cheating and what isn't I won't try to answer, but here is a small insight as to what I think is okay to use, and what I like to avoid. 

 

 

What I use:

• Boosting: I rarely have anything against this one. Trophies that require online boosting are often stupid trophies anyway, and playing online can be more fun than playing alone. That particular LBP trophy you mentioned, I have that trophy and have helped many others get it. That trophy just seemed designed for nothing other than boosting, to be honest. 
• Anything that cuts out tedious level replaying: I hate replaying the same early easy boring levels just because I fail at the later harder levels and lose all lives. Another example is if you just need to go back a short distance to unlock a different ending in a game... I use USB saves in those cases. If there are ways to avoid such tediousness, I usually use it, no matter how... whether it's an in-game exploit or involves a USB, whether it gives me infinite lives or extra checkpoints. 
• I use guides if I need a bit of extra clarity on a trophy requirement - I'd rather live with that small amount of guilt than spend several tedious hours/days trying to guess. I also hate secret trophies - I don't see how I'm supposed to know a trophy requirement if the game doesn't tell me what it is. I'm not psychic. I always look them up.

 

What I don't use/avoid using:

• Shareplay. As someone without a PS4 I don't really have that choice... but let's say I did, and there was a trophy that was either beyond my capabilities or a grindy trophy which I simply didn't want... Shareplay is something I would never ever use. Grindy trophies are nothing but boredom and show nothing in the collection, thus I don't bother with them anymore. A hard trophy also means nothing to me if I didn't have the skills to earn it myself. 
• Any exploit that allows me to go out of bounds, theoretically allowing me to get an infinite score or skip huge chunks of the game instead of playing properly. This completely kills the game, and I don't know what the point in playing it is if one is going to do that. Such an exploit exists in Race the Sun, which I obviously didn't use.
• YouTube in puzzle games. If you look up the solution to a puzzle before attempting to solve it yourself... then what's the point of even playing? If I get really really stuck and am absolutely hopeless about solving it myself, I might use YouTube... but I always feel ashamed and defeated when I have to do that, and avoid it as much as possible. 

 

Whether or not I use an exploit entirely depends on the type: if it makes the game more enjoyable (not having to replay same levels over and over), I'll use it. If it just kills the game and turns it into an easy trophy earner (example above), I won't. 

[AJ_Radio]

1 hour ago, Midnightwards666 said:

Cheating is a very difficult word to define. What is cheating and what isn't I won't try to answer, but here is a small insight as to what I think is okay to use, and what I like to avoid. 

 

 

What I use:

• Boosting: I rarely have anything against this one. Trophies that require online boosting are often stupid trophies anyway, and playing online can be more fun than playing alone. That particular LBP trophy you mentioned, I have that trophy and have helped many others get it. That trophy just seemed designed for nothing other than boosting, to be honest. 
• Anything that cuts out tedious level replaying: I hate replaying the same early easy boring levels just because I fail at the later harder levels and lose all lives. Another example is if you just need to go back a short distance to unlock a different ending in a game... I use USB saves in those cases. If there are ways to avoid such tediousness, I usually use it, no matter how... whether it's an in-game exploit or involves a USB, whether it gives me infinite lives or extra checkpoints. 
• I use guides if I need a bit of extra clarity on a trophy requirement - I'd rather live with that small amount of guilt than spend several tedious hours/days trying to guess. I also hate secret trophies - I don't see how I'm supposed to know a trophy requirement if the game doesn't tell me what it is. I'm not psychic. I always look them up.

 

What I don't use/avoid using:

• Shareplay. As someone without a PS4 I don't really have that choice... but let's say I did, and there was a trophy that was either beyond my capabilities or a grindy trophy which I simply didn't want... Shareplay is something I would never ever use. Grindy trophies are nothing but boredom and show nothing in the collection, thus I don't bother with them anymore. A hard trophy also means nothing to me if I didn't have the skills to earn it myself. 
• Any exploit that allows me to go out of bounds, theoretically allowing me to get an infinite score or skip huge chunks of the game instead of playing properly. This completely kills the game, and I don't know what the point in playing it is if one is going to do that. Such an exploit exists in Race the Sun, which I obviously didn't use.
• YouTube in puzzle games. If you look up the solution to a puzzle before attempting to solve it yourself... then what's the point of even playing? If I get really really stuck and am absolutely hopeless about solving it myself, I might use YouTube... but I always feel ashamed and defeated when I have to do that, and avoid it as much as possible. 

 

Whether or not I use an exploit entirely depends on the type: if it makes the game more enjoyable (not having to replay same levels over and over), I'll use it. If it just kills the game and turns it into an easy trophy earner (example above), I won't. 

 

Let me help break this down for you.

 

Boosting - It depends. Regardless of how many people on this website claim that boosting is cheating because you're getting help from your online friends and other fellow players, you still have to put in the work and time to get the trophies.

 

I enjoy online the most when I can get the trophies naturally, or I'm just on to have some fun with friends while eating pizza and drinking beer.

 

Tedious Level Replaying - A few people can argue whether or not this borders on using an exploit, but I think it's perfectly fine because you're replaying the same sections over and over. If you were to use a USB save that was right before the ending, and reaching the ending unlocks the trophy, I think that's cheating. You skipped an entire playthrough just to use a USB save to save yourself hours.

 

That's only if you got somebody else's save, so that is cheating regardless.

 

Guides - Guides have been around for decades. I used a guide to help me when I got stuck in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and later on, Metal Gear Solid 2. I don't think you're cheating by using a guide, but you can and often will spoil many of the challenges and the story if you consort a guide from the very beginning.

 

What I do is I play through the story completely blind unless there's a missable trophy. Anything that is missable and is something I can screw myself on I consort a guide for those trophies. Otherwise I only use a guide if I am completely stuck on a certain section, my breaking limit is around 1 to 2 hours.

 

====

 

Shareplay - This one is controversial. I will never use Shareplay not only because I live with shitty internet, but it completely destroys the purpose of working towards a hard trophy and finally earning it. If a guy was carried through all of Batman: Arkham Knight's difficult trophies like Brutality 101, what does that say about the player?

 

I think it's cheating.

 

Exploits - This can greatly vary. I used the Bolt glitch exploit in the original Ratchet and Clank because otherwise I would of had to play through the game three - four more times before I would of had enough bolts.

 

Jak 2 and Jak 3 are interesting. I think most of us can safely say we abused the orb glitch in both games, because getting those orbs naturally is extremely difficult and aggravating. However, somebody around two years ago discovered a debug option that unlocks ALL TROPHIES without even having to play the game once. I think that is outright cheating.

 

At least with the orb glitch, we still had to play through the game from start to finish. People still think autopopping Sound Shapes platinums and Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time is cheap, but you still have to play through those games at least once before such an option is available.

 

YouTube - We've been using YouTube since video guides became a thing. This is nothing new. But like you I like to at least try for a bit myself before I consort a video guide for help.

 

People are doing this now with The Witness, this month's PS Plus game.

[Midnightwards666]

21 hours ago, Spaz said:

Somebody around two years ago discovered a debug option that unlocks ALL TROPHIES without even having to play the game once. I think that is outright cheating.

Yeah, it is. Anyone who does that is only playing for the trophies and not for the game. I don't know what the point is in even playing games if one is going to do that. Not sure if I'm 100% qualified to pass too much comment though, given that I'm not a full-on trophy hunter... I never ever bother with grinds, don't really care about completion and play many hard long games with not many trophies. I avoid anything that kills satisfaction and pride, which is why there are many types of ''cheats'' I never use. 

[foreverkurome]

I have extremely strong views on cheating

 

How do I classify something as cheating:

• Weigh up what the requirements actually are for the trophy, does it require a lot of skill to obtain or is it just going to take a long time to achieve
• Consider the tier and rarity of the trophy as to what kind of level of play should be required
• What is my Initial reaction to viewing the requirements, do I think "oh this isn't going to be challenging" "well this one may be a little tricky" or "wow this is going to take some getting!

If the strategy you are going to use makes you feel like "ok this will mean that a 3 day task is going to take me 40 minutes" or "well this is a really hard trophy but using this little trick I can do it easy then in my book you are a cheat if you then go ahead and use it, unless you are some kind of entitled teen it should be intuitive that you shouldn't find a really difficult task really easy and if you do then you're probably cheating in some way.

 

{if you haven't played super meat boy, do not read below this as you will likely have no clue what on earth I am on about}

 

To give an example of how picky I am about it:

 

I woludn't even switch characters from meat boy on no death runs of super meat boy because some characters allowed you to complete some of the harder levels of each chapter with very little effort, one such level being on rapture dark world where you can use the kid to jump inside of the zombie boy machine and collect all the keys without having to worry about getting rid of the zombie boys using the middle saw.

 

Most people are not quite that picky but there you go.

Edited March 20, 2019 by KuromeIsWaifuJ

[ArmoredSnowman]

On 3/5/2019 at 1:49 PM, KANERKB said:

Not sure if there is a topic for it but wanted to ask about cheating for trophies. As in using either a ingame cheat for them, or glitches or even some of that good old save cheating. (As in save the game back the save up, and then, once you got the trophy with that one on the system you reupload the save to the system and then get the other trophies and so on. kind of like choices in games.) Or just getting people to help get it as in say the little big planet trophy with the 50 hearts and likes and so on. you need a lot of people to like and so on.

 

Want to know what you think of them. are they bad in your eyes or good and so on.

If there's a glitch in the game, and not by external modifications, then I consider it fair play, since the developers didn't feel it necessary to patch it beforehand. So things like the tweak exploit in Uncharted, custom mutations, debug menus (that are included in-game, not having to use mods to launch) are fair. I consider it then a feature of the game. I'm sure people hate on save scumming as well, but still. 

[Upendo_Vitani]

You bet I'm taking measures to shorten the time it takes to get certain trophies. That's my main issue; some of these things take way too long the way they are set up. Some of them are just plain stupid. So if there is a glitch, exploit, boost method, etc. I will use it. I really don't care if other people do, because how did I find out about these things? I probably saw something on YouTube, or read something in a guide. So obviously other people are using them too. I'm finding that in gaming, as well as real life, why should I be such a goody-two-shoes if I know the majority of other people, especially on this site, are doing the exact same thing.

In fact, I'm going to be playing Apotheon later this week and I'm going to be using the Olympian glitch so sue me.

Edited March 21, 2019 by coldsphinx93