Is over-leveling your character cheating in your opinion?

Absolutely not. If it's a feature, it's not cheating.

I love being all powerful in gaming and going all Rambo tactics so it's Nah man, have a blast!! lol :D

Hell no..lol I still remember grinding in Lost Odyssey, it was a long PITA process, but the end game I was unstoppable :D Same with Skyrim!

Isn't that the point of the game where your mind starts zoning off? :p

Nah, nothing I love more than getting overpowered in From games and just facetanking hits while crushing the boss like a bug.

It's not cheating. But games that focus on skill points, skill trees and levels to artificially pad the progression of a game is lazy game design. Me getting better at the game is far more compelling and fulfilling than grinding XP to make my numbers go up. Y'all might as well be playing those clicker games at this point...

It's how you're supposed to play Souls' games properly.

Nah man, happy gaming. I love over leveling myself. Am currently at least 15 levels above story bosses in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and having a great time.

How is it cheating if you're using the systems the game gives you?

I love doing side content in games because it often includes quests and items you would t have otherwise.

As a side effect, you're normally over leveled for the main quest.

I'd take that over forced grinding any day

100% play the game as you like if you can over level go for it .

Yea, I do a lot of side content too.

That's why I don't like leveling based games/RPGs. It's just useless grind.

Not cheating, but being a cheap shit. Doing it, tells me that you're one of those people that doesn't like to play with their food, and wants to faceroll everything and wants to be done with his $60 game as quickly as possible. Very maindenless behavior tbh.

You two are disgusting.🤮🤮🤮🤮

Not at all and not sure why this is even a question.

@SolidGame_basic: only if the game is cheating when you accidently enter an area with NPC's who are far above your level and they kill you :D

heck no, I love going OP on these fools. I remember in p4g theres this one mini boss early on, that kept rekking me. The team was aroudn level 10 or so which is normal for this point in the game. I tried a bunch of stuff, lowered his hit rate, increased team evasion rate, increased team defense. About 2 turns in this boss would start spamming this skill called "rampage" and one hit KO everyone on the team. After the 3rd attempt and getting rekkd, I was like fuk this. I came back 15 levels higher and bodies his ass.

It was terrible game design anyway.

No, not just because of the obvious reason most have mentioned, but because I feel JRPGs are designed to sort of have the player be overleveled to progress. Ever since these games "clicked" for me, it is what I start off doing the second I am able to and it has gotten me through many JRPGs.

This is like asking if playing on Easy is cheating. 😅

Difficulty isn’t the same for everyone. What one may consider to be difficult another may consider to be easy. Also odd that some may think that over leveling means the person wants to be done with the game sooner. Typically to get over leveled means one needs to spend more time playing the game.

I personally like to push the edge of my capabilities, and then adjust accordingly. If a boss is repeatedly destroying me, and I'm not making crazy mistakes, I'll go grind a couple levels and try again. I'm not looking to level myself out of all "challenge"... that's half the reason I'm playing. It's one of the things I love about Souls games, and why they don't need a difficulty setting; you can find that line for yourself.

It makes games pretty boring, but no its not cheating.

I usually try to be the at/just under the suggested level in RPG type games for maximum fun but a lot of the time if you are a completionist you end up being over-leveled for a lot of stuff anyways

I don't see anything wrong with it. Id prefer it to alternative systems like Oblivion/Skyrim where enemies level with you (that was just functionally broken in oblivion).

I unintentionally did the same thing in XC3. Went off to do some side content. I had a bit of a struggle with a particular Mobius but i think i got so much XP and CP from beating him that i managed to jump above the difficulty curve.

There is so much side content in XC3 that, thankfully, its not a grind (as in literally just wondering around aimlessly killing enemies type grinding). More of a happy side affect of just completing side quests.

there's a line of acceptability before it becomes a hollow victory. ott farming is like a sugar high. a brief moment of pleasure and then the cheater's remorse

Agree I miss when games didn't have a leveling up system.

It's ridiculous in alot of ways too. For example in the game Mirror's Edge Catalyst you had to unlock moves that you could already do in the first game which didn't even have a leveling up system.

Not really.

In many cases it is impossible to avoid if you want to aim for 100% completion.

However, I would appreciate it if games allowed you to sync down your level. Like in The World Ends With You or FF14.

If the game allows it. It's part of the mechanics. So no.

It's not cheating, but even if it was, I don't think anyone should care about single player cheating.

Having said so, i don't personally like grinding.

Nah, just boring. Kinda sucks when games make it too easy to be OP. By simply playing the content thoroughly, not even replaying or intentionally grinding/farming. Happens a lot though. Played the content as it becomes available? Explored thoroughly? Sorry guy, back half of this game is now trivialized.

Don't really care if it's post game shit or replays, but kinda sucks doing self imposed limitations on a first play just to keep things interesting.

Kinda crazy how so many people are OK with it, and are actually doing it if possible. The hour i feel like the game is becoming easy mode, is the hour i begin to lose interest, and if it doesn't pick up, that's where i stop playing the game.

That is the best thing about GoW2018 that i found. Usually, in a game where you level up, even if you begin your playthrough on the highest difficulty, you will overpower everything, and sooner or later, you will be facerolling everything (every Bethesda game for example) without ever finding any kind of challenge. But in GoW2018, if you're playing on gmgow, its hard from the very beginning until the very end, and that's rare in these kind of games. Really hope they didn't drop the ball in Ragnarok, and its at least on par when it comes to the difficulty.

Depends on game. In jrpg I love it cause later last half of jrpg tend to be a slog so I just power through story skipping all encounters, kill last boss.

Of course not lol. Not even in From Software games.

Using crap like mimic tears (Elden Ring) is cheating though. Training wheels

The only levelling slystems I like are those that involve horizontal progression. But even those can be really badly made, such as when basic features are locked at the start of a game.

Because it is a single player game and RPGs are kinda lulzy for challenge anyways. RPGs are the scrub genre. Way too abstract to allow for a high degree of skill. The only RPGs that allow for a degree of skill are the more tactical RPGs like Jagged Alliance and Divinity Original Sin, maybe Fire Emblem goes there too.

When it comes to multiplayer games with levelling, such as retail WoW and FF14 apply some form of level scaling so you cant really overlevel anything. In WoW, things scale to your level. In FF14, you are scaled down to the dungeon's level.

GMGOW was more tedious than difficult. It doesnt make the AI play better, parrying doesnt get any harder, it turns enemies into health sponges and enemies hit so hard it heavily encourages defensive play. Making the the slogginess of combat even worse. Games like Doom Eternal handle difficulty soooo much better. Also, the GMGoW gets easier as you progress.

I cheat always , overlevel characters by using trainers , cheat engine. It's fun being OP and one shotting enemies lol

No, but it's lame. If I want to make the game a cakewalk (which I never do), I might as well cheat to save me the time and boredom it takes to grind. If I become overpowered just by playing naturally, then so be it. It's not like I'd unequip all my armor or ban buttons to make it harder or something.

Overcoming hard challenges in videogames is like my favorite thing with videogames. Wouldn't want that gone.

Subverting rules in order to obtain an unfair advantage. Anyone who selected Yes doesn't know what cheating means. Words get thrown out flippantly these days. :/

Because over-leveling doesn't even come close to cheating, my answer is obviously no. If I used a GameShark to gain XP faster, then that's cheating. But if I'm going through side-missions in order to level up my character, I'm doing exactly what the developers intended for me to do; sink hours in side quests to keep their game longer.

I never do side-quests in order to be overpowered in games, I do them because I don't like leaving things incomplete. I can't go the whole game knowing there are hundreds of side quests just gaining in number as I reach the end of the game.

@SolidGame_basic: Honestly if its a game mechanic and there is no modding going on its legit. It's always really laughable to me when people play fighting games but complain about throws "its not playing with hOnoR" and other nonsense people say after losing a match. In COD its "quick scoping is unfair" or "camping is .. (whatever were calling it this week)" .. yet all of those are things you can do within the game per game mechanics and things other players can fully counter if they try. Someone throws all the time? Figure out a counter. Someone camps all the time? Figure out where they are camping and destroy them.

It happens in nearly every game -- some minority of the player base hates tactic "A" and complains about it all over the internet or some Twitch streamer has attached themselves to complaining about it and now all their fanboys repeat it, often without even really thinking about it or understanding the argument against it. Honestly, its pretty scrubby and next to accusing everyone that beats you of being a h4x0r, its a ready made excuse. Old faithful right there, just break the glass.

However, actual cheating/"modding" hurts game play ability and player bases. It ruins the experience for everyone who is not doing it and makes you a knob.

The f*ck. There is a difference between high degree of skill and challenge🤡How many singleplayer games have a high degree of skill?🤡Yea, like one out of ten, and you bother mention rpg's being the scrub genre when it applies to most games that's coming out lmao. I don't think you understand what you're saying lol.

GMGOW wasn't tedious at all. You found it too difficult for you, so that's why you're bitching, and that fine, its not for you, stick to Normal mode. When you get Ragnarok, and YOU WILL, don't you dare to play it on gmgow.

I agree that Eternal on Nightmare was better difficulty wise, but you get an Eternal-like game once per century, so i can't even take it as a good example. And yes, gmgow gets a bit easier, primarily because you have more HP, but the difference isn't massive like in every other game with a leveling system, and there's always places later in the game that can get as challenging as in the beginning (or even much more difficult with sigrun and other valks). Its the only game with a leveling system that offers this.

Games that have a high skill ceiling are capable of being difficult without being tedious. Plenty of SP games have reasonable levels of depth and skill ceilings. That includes Bayonetta, where in the latest entry released today. There is so much more as well, but I would derail the thread if I brought everything up. Point is. RPGs, due to how abstract, and poorly tuned they tend to be, do not lend themselves to high skill gameplay. Would you argue that a game like Horizon tests a player anywhere near to the same extent as Bayonetta 1 does?

Plenty of games do difficulty right. Most Strategy games and fighting games improve their AI on higher difficulties. Ring Fit Adventure makes the exercises longer and more demanding. Bullet Hells put more crap on the screen. Mount and Blade and Fell Seal allow you to do various stuff (custom difficulty settings). MMOs like FF14 and WoW add more complex mechanics on higher difficulties. Kid Icarus Uprising makes the enemies faster, more numerous, adds to the enemy compositions and makes every enemy more aggressive.

Bloating everyone's HP Oblivion Style like what Dad of War did does not make a good challenge. It makes the game longer, nothing more. Parrying in GoW was just as easy on the hardest difficulty as it was on Give me a challenge.

But again, this is stuff you would know if you actually played real games.

Edit: If you look at the list of random games I brought up that did difficulty right, you will notice that all of these games increase difficulty in areas where the player is expected to get better. In Doom, enemies get more evasive and aggressive, to counter the players increased accuracy and mobility, in Ring Fit exercises get more intense and longer to counter the players increased strength and stamina.

Nobody cares about your Byonetta. DMC would've been a better example, and that's a beat em up, so what you're pretty much implying is that only this genre can have a high skill ceiling and "take skill". But then you talk about rpg's being a scrub genre. Smart. Only one singpleplayer genre, which isn't even that pupular these days, can take skill, but lets call rpg's that can be very challenging (like Divinity 1 and 2) as a scrub genre. You're surprising Mr Maroxad. Very surprising.

Bullet hell is a genre that nobody on SW cares about. Why do you even mention it? Then i see you talk about Ring Fit? Buddy, nobody cares about your excercise apps. We're talking about actual video games, games that are made by known developers. I can't think of a single game with a leveling up system (actual rpg mechanics with stats on armors and weapons) that did it better than GoW2018 for making the game challenging from the beginning until the very end.

Mobs HP was high like it is in every game when playing on higher difficulties. We are not at a stage of offering much better AI when playing max difficulties, so HP is what you get, no matter if you like it or not. With the stagger system GoW2018 did it perfectly fine, even with mobs having high HP pools.

You know your argument is weak when your rebuttal to my fact based statements is "Who cares?". And GMGoW was not well done at all. Difficulty was mostly frontloaded with the game getting easier the more your progressed.

Your third paragraph... is refuted by the post you are trying to refute. I explicitly mentioned games that added good ammounts of challenge on higher difficulty settings in ways that dont involve bumping up HP (some of them do to a lesser extent). And while I am at it. AAA video game AI is crap compared to Rain World, an indie game that was released in 2017 and can even be played on the Switch (so there is no technological excuse).

All in all. There is nothing wrong with overlevelling in a game where challenge, depth and mastery was never the point to begin with. Many RPGs even discourage or prevent you from utilizing your entire toolkit due to the prevalence of skill trees. It does make them lame and dull to play. But I wouldnt judge anyone for doing so. If people enjoy the power fantasy RPGs can provide, so be it.

If you want rare drops you have to overlevel. Its that simple

...or play monster hunter and there are no levels

Play the way you want. As long as you aren't playing online against other people who cares?

To me it goes like this:

Cheating would be if you used means outside the game ruleset and options to have an advantage or win. 3rd party programs, or having a player play for you then you take the credit, that would be cheating.

Cheesing is using the mechanics given to you but in a clearly unintended way. Exploiting a glitch, a misplaced statistical value, or a farm option that wasn't meant to be used, would be cheesing.

Using the tools given to you in their intended way to beat the game more effectively, is just playing the game.

If they give you the option and ability to have a higher level than necessary to accomplish a goal, that's just how you chose to beat it. Others might beat their head against it for hours or maybe they are the fabled ones that git gud. Any of these are legitimate.

No, it's what helped me love Elden Ring far more than the other Souls games. I was able to enjoy it more "casually" without sweat lording.

Yeah I never understood the whole "You're an elite badass soldier that's part of a really cool squad of epic badasses...now go play the game so you can unlock really basic skills like accuracy and stamina"

I think for RPG's it's fine because you're often starting from scratch as an initiate or whatever, but in action games I never really understood it.

You're such a casual. You don't even deserve your NASA computer. No wonder you're bitchin' about controllers lol you're simply incapable of learning how to use them.

See you in Ragnarok, and if you don't start on gmgow, i will call you casual, and this might hurt you.

Shut it kid.

Casual 30 fps for a casual movie gamer confirmed.

You can't even learn how to use a controller, your fingers are fumbling, and you don't understand how to press buttons, and you're the one calling me casual?🤡