"Cheating" - Walkthroughs on Solo Game vs MMOs

[Gothicshark]

I get that. But the question is still. Doesn't that still count as cheating?

No never was either.

This game is story based. Using a wiki to find all the aethercurrents is the same as using a strategy guide to find all the hidden weapons (FF9).
Using a video/guide to know the mechanics of a fight and how to do it is the same as using a strategy guide to know the best tactic and buildup for a boss in the old FF games.

There are 3 aether currents you won't be able to get to with using aid from a wiki, well unless you are a really lucky person or the type whose not afraid of wall walking. Also, the dev team designs these things with the knowledge that people share information on wikis. So occasionally they intentionally make things harder to get to knowing full well you need the wiki or luck to find them.

In the past you weren't considered a real gamer if you cheated and looked everything up. People would say 'git gud' and say you didn't do it yourself.

Ego, but self-delusional ego, and most people who said it had the Prima Guide right next to the controller. I had this friend, I'll call him Mark, he would buy the guide with every game, he wouldn't buy the game if the guide wasn't there. Yet he would always brag how he never used the guides to clear the game. Trust me, I eye-rolled hard at him often. But then I was a girl, so I didn't have to brag about not using a guide, I enjoyed the game, looked up the hidden stuff in the guides, and had fun.

Now, if you DON'T cheat, you're not a real gamer because you died and people still say 'git gud'.

A: Not cheating never was
B: Are you mixing up games a bit, FFXIV players tend to be more Passive Aggressive than "Git Gud", they usually say something snarky, or like healers and their rez macros, extra saucy snark.

[Gothicshark]

I don't consider it cheating but I do consider it as a way to experience the game the devs did not intend. If the devs intended players to have a walkthrough,

Um back in the day Prima Guides were not only included in distribution packing, and sometimes with collectors version, but many of the hints were placed by the dev team, with the intention you couldn't pass the challenge without the tip. Many MMOs include a Wiki with guides, in fact back years ago WOW use to include item likes to several user/fansites which contained guides. (I think they stopped doing this, but not sure)

This game specifically encourages the fansites, as it has a bunch of back end tools that allow fans to directly link info from the Lodestone, specifically for use with wikis and character tracking.

Had someone tell our party 'videos exist' on normal non-savage Deltascape 2 raid after going back and doing it. (I neglected it my playthrough and now at endgame bored going back and doing things I didn't do.)
But that's not the first time. I've seen on the forum people try to hammer guides down peoples throats and not waste their time because they want to roulette and get things done as fast as possible. Even if it's new to the player.

Honestly I wish there was a Dutyfinder option like Party Finder to set it to just people who haven't done that fight yet. The first time around. Then open it to roulettes after.

Well honestly, that person was an Axolotl, but it's also a bit obtuse to not at least use the wiki guide on an actual raid which Deltascape is.

[Gemina]

For Ffxiv, no it's not cheating to look at a guide prior to entering the encounter. It's kind of like how sports coordinators will review film of the team they are playing prior to actually playing them, and they are allowed to do this.

Fact of the matter is, when you go into an encounter blind, the chances of you failing mechanics are very high. Looking at a guide may help with this, so at least when you die, you know what the hell did you in.

As another example plenty of guides still left me scratching my noggin when the mechanic is explained. Sharp Turn from the second boss in Puppets Bunker is a great example. None of the guides helped me figure out if the formation is on the outside or inside. If I dodged it, it was because I followed everyone (which also resulted in getting hit by it), or just got lucky. I didn't fully understand it until I recorded the encounter and figured it out for myself.

Even looking at guides for single player games requires that you execute the playtips. This will take practice, and some players can't figure out certain things on their own.

Cheating to me involves using things that give you an edge that is clearly not the intention of how to handle the encounter. An old school gameshark, cheat codes, or some of the third party tools players use for this game easily qualify. Another thing I highly consider cheating is cheese. Sure, some type of edge has been exploited, so all is fair in love and war, yes? Yeah right. Take your No-skill cheesehead arse to another arcade.

[linayar]

As someone who used gamefaq walkthroughs a lot on single player games, no I don't consider using those cheating.

Cheating is gaining an illegal advantage at the cost of another party. So, first of all, anything that is not illegal is not cheating. Second, anything that does not affect another party is also not cheating.

PVE is about multiplayer cooperation against the game environment, so it cannot negatively affect another player (world first race is not part of the game, so it's irrelevant whether something can help you beat a fight faster than other players). So the only thing that is relevant is whether something is legal. Watching a guide is legal, using addon is not. Addons can be considered cheating if they help you gain an advantage in combat because the official stance of the game dev is that you're not supposed to use it, but if the devs were to say yes on addons, it will not be cheating, it's as simple as that.

[VirusOnline]

This game is story based. Using a wiki to find all the aethercurrents is the same as using a strategy guide to find all the hidden weapons (FF9).

These type of things are what SE would see as not just an individual gameplay mechanic, but also as a source of community knowledge. Aethercurrents. Hunts. Fates. Party Finder. Quest locations. Treasure Hunting. General loot table information.

Using a video/guide to know the mechanics of a fight and how to do it is the same as using a strategy guide to know the best tactic and buildup for a boss in the old FF games.

In the past you weren't considered a real gamer if you cheated and looked everything up. People would say 'git gud' and say you didn't do it yourself. Now, if you DON'T cheat, you're not a real gamer because you died and people still say 'git gud'.

MMOs are a different breed

Cheating ? Or community knowledge ? Or is it simply others telling others how they should experience a game ?

In my experience with WoW for nearly 8 years since BC and now FFXIV for 5 years since HW, this mentality of git gud is incredibly rare. I've done it all from casual to savage raiding in both games. It's generally understood that there is a difference between single player games and games which at some point require you to work with other people towards a common goal. Remember, kicking someone for how they play in a group content like for leveling roulette is considered legitimate. SE has literally given us the tools to reinforce the very idea of working towards a common goal that the majority desire.

On the other hand, in single player games we the player can control everything that happens: how we want to approach fights, what paths we want to travel, how we respond in and to that world given to us. But single player games today are often linear with a "unique once run through". Knowing this, in single player games I might want to know all about the hidden or easily missed content I might miss on my one and only runthrough.

After more than a decade playing MMOs, the biggest lesson I've gleaned is that MMOs thrive on it's main gameplay element: multiplayer interaction. It is the community itself who will always desire not just for more knowledge about content in the game, but to want to share knowledge for the sake of sharing knowledge to a plethora of people with different goals. Raiders of all levels, crafters from casual to pure gil dumping pentamelds, the one guy who runs into the hunt target by accident to the server's lead Hunt Masters, the FC that just wants to have a good night treasure hunting, or me who just wants to find the perfect glam and be able to search what dungeons drop what.


The Experts

And I won't forget to mention theory crafting. It is a hobby for some, and a proud stand for the masters of those classes. If WoW or FFXIV decided to tell players how to play and their optimized rotation off the bat, you'd be cutting off an entire community who like to theorycraft. This includes the crafting, class optimizing communities, and savage fight optimizations. It can be incredibly rewarding for a gamer in any game to create a build, theme it, name it, gear it, optimize it, and present their findings. As a gamer and dev, one thing you want is your community to be able to this. Theorycraft.

You have people on the front page creating classes that don't yet exist or modify them to be better balanced/played.

StormBlood NINs and those have mastered it and wrote the guides were truly impressive people to me because NIN was jank towards the end of SB and yet they wanted to find a way to make it good. And those who were good were good. My goal was to become better and see if there was simply a better way of doing things and I simply don't have the knowledge, skill, or whatever tools they use to have been able to theorycraft a SB NIN. In retrospect, look at WoW. They have addons to tell you how to even think. How boring. I remember the days you had to read the quest text to find out how to do anything. But even then, you'd have to google because it's vague. And that's what the community is for, and the community desires to share it.


TLDR

You call it cheating ? I call it community knowledge.
Use it, or don't, but I wouldn't call it cheating for something so simple as seeking knowledge.