Mods and cheat engine

[Risvertasashi]

Speaking strictly from a standpoint of whether mods are cheating or not, and completely disregarding the morality of their use, I would like to see people who do not believe mods to be cheating to explain why, as it is always the people who think they are having to defend themself.

And I would like more reason that "because it doesn't affect anyone else". If you say that, I will completely disregard your opinion. You can cheat in a single player game. And it is still cheating despite it not "affecting anyone else".

I'm not being facetious, I would genuinely like to understand why modifying the game files and giving yourself an advantage over others is not cheating. You can't say mods don't give an advantage because otherwise there would be absolutely zero reason to use them. So, I ask, how are mods not considered cheating?

"Cheating" is subjective.

I mean if you want to go this route, there are people that will consider others to be cheaters even if they make zero modifications to the game, but do something that they perceive as unintended by the devs. For example, perhaps they find a way to solve or cancel a mechanic that a boss does in a way that the developers probably did not foresee (stuff like this happens not that uncommonly). More common terms might be "exploit" or "cheese" but there are those that will call it cheating.

And then some even consider it cheating to use a website that has a simulator or simply has in game information collected but perhaps presented more conveniently.

So, you can essentially draw the line wherever you want; some people consider certain things cheating even using nothing but what's available in game. Others for things that don't even interact with the game but provide a convenient source of information.

And we haven't even gotten to perhaps the most common tool yet: parsers. They don't change game files or anything about the game at all. They just read information, and are a calculator for that information. If you go by "modifies files" then it's not a cheat, but there are those that consider it cheating.

So, you can call someone's mod for better character eye graphics cheating if you want, since it modifies a file. You can call anything cheating really. Plenty of people do.

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And, finally, even in singleplayer games that have official mod support, there are those that consider using mods to be cheating.

So, ultimately, for more productive conversation I recommend more precise language. Because cheating pretty much always means "thing I don't like" and any more precise meaning changes wildly from person to person.