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Hisymak

Did cheat codes ruin your experience of playing Doom?

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During my early childhood years, I was playing many computer games including Heretic, Duke Nukem 3D, or Doom. At that time I was absolutely not aware about something like cheat codes. I had no idea there was ever a possibility to be immortal, get all weapons and keys, walk through walls etc. I was not thinking much about this way of playing games and did not actively ask or look for cheats, as I did not know about this concept at all. I just played the games the way "how they were INTENDED to be played", including deaths, limited ammo, getting-stuck-on places and all these aspects. I was building my skills over time and improving myself, as I passed through the games several times and tried with harder difficulties. Playing like this was lot of fun, and the exploration factor was something I really loved - when playing a new game for first time I had no idea how later levels would look like, what kinds of monsters I would meet and what kinds of puzzles or battles I would encounter. Reaching next level felt as a great achievement, especially after finally passing a place where I got stuck.

But after several years of playing games the "proper" way, my life was changed forever. Once my family visited other family who had children, and they were playing computer games like me. I got to play with them, and they showed me what cheat codes were. I was totally mindblown. They gave me cheat codes for several games I played too, so I could use them myself. And a new era of "playing-games-with-cheats" started for me. I played with various cheats permanently on, and felt that playing like this was extreme fun. For example I had so much fun gibbing Doom monsters with unlimited BFG9000 ammo. This lasted for some time, and then I realized playing games like this got boring quite fast. I started to feel that I'm no longer having a good experience of playing games and no longer training my skills, gameplay just felt bland. But what was the worst thing, when I got some new games (most notably the Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders expansion pack) I completely lose the exploration factor. Nothing prevented me from starting playing the new games or new episodes with cheats on, making a quick tour through it or skipping levels and seeing what all next levels would look like. Finding secrets completely lose its charm and mysteriousness, as I could easily find all secrets and explore all parts of levels without obstacles.

And that's it! At first I loved cheats, but nowadays I hate them because they ruined my experience of playing games. I can be only very thankful I got to know about cheats so late and did not know them earlier by chance, so I could really enjoy the gold early times without cheats.

 

I'm writing this thread because in my other thread, I saw various people wrote that they played Doom with cheats from the very beginning or early childhood times. I must honestly admit that I feel very sorry for those people, because I know what experience they lose.

What is your opinion on cheats and do you think they destroyed your experience, skill, and exploration factor?

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Considering the first version of Doom I owned was the SNES version and that lacked cheat codes entirely, I pretty much didn't have a choice.

 

But either way, I'd doubt it. Did the Konami Code turn Contra into a wussy game? No, just made it more fun.

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No, they occasionally helped me going through some utterly absurd section where I would've canned the whole thing then and there.

 

So no, a little godmode or noclip doesn't ruin everything. Also don't affect my skills anyway since my ceiling is quite low anyway, despite playing video games since forever.

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I honestly never played it properly back in the day as I was only 6 years old and used God Mode all the time. Before I stopped playing it when I entered high school, I was still fucking around with cheat codes and skipping levels because I didn't know how to finish them properly because, let's face it, Doom 2's map progression could be especially cryptic at times. It probably helps that I've only recently come back to it, not having played it in 14 years. So, really, I've only been playing it properly and for the first time since May of this year. I don't think playing with cheat codes as a kid really "ruined" Doom in any capacity when it comes to my personal experience. I think I've honestly sunk a ridiculous amount of hours into Doom and building my skills at the game in the past 4 months than I ever did as a kid.

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I wasn't aware of the cheat codes when I first played through Doom, but I can't say that subsequently knowing about them has spoilt my experience in any way.  If I want to play through a map or mapset properly (I have recently been playing through Lost Civilization for instance) it's up to me to have the self-discipline not to keep using cheat codes.  In other situations, cheat codes are useful for debugging purposes, or for getting mapping inspiration from others' maps that I don't have the time to play through.  On occasion they are also useful e.g. for when having saved or autosaved with not enough health and being a nanosecond away from being killed, and being able to briefly put on God mode to avoid having to go back to the very beginning again.

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No. I only ever use cheats when testing things, never during serious play.

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What ruined my experience was the stupid existence of unescapable pits.

So, thanks god NoClip cheat existed, more so when you were just a few steps of completing the map and by chance you slip into the pit.

I'm looking to you fucking E3M7: Limbo!!! >:(

 

Aside from that, as a child no clipping was fun, i liked to attack the monsters and hide between the wall hahahah to sudenly appear out of nowhere and kick their arses.

And i jumped from my chair in panic when i saw the ghost bug exploit for the first time!

Love that experience while playing Hell2Pay back then.

 

What surprises me is that you didn't know about cheat.

I was the cheat guru when i was on school.

My family has a newspaper post and we sell newspapers and magazines. And i take note of every gaming magazine that appeared, and copy the tricks and cheats and a folder.

It had like 500 pages full of cheats from games of the consoles of the time.

But not only that, i writed in there my own strategies to beat games, and share it with my friends, and they wrote, sometimes their strategies, too.

Good times!

Really good times!

 

Unfortunately, my mother threw that folder long ago. :(

Edited by P41R47

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Doom II was utterly ruined for me because I looked in the "Official" DOOM FAQ for all the secrets. Seeing the intriguing level names in the FAQ before I got Doom II also gave me higher expectations.

 

Of course cheats didn't help. I especially thought that MAP15 was broken because I couldn't even access the red key, so I would just IDCLIP to get it. Even now I think the design there is totally obtuse. I think it's easier to use the teleporter from the lava which brings you to the centre of the diamond building.

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38 minutes ago, Hisymak said:

I saw various people wrote that they played Doom with cheats from the very beginning or early childhood times. I must honestly admit that I feel very sorry for those people, because I know what experience they lose.

 

Why? I don't get this. 

What you get out of the game or any experience depends solely on you. If you enjoyed your time with the game great.

 

Played games without cheats? Good for you, no need to patronized people who didn't. your experience is NOT better or worse than anyone else.

 

This is the same people who cry about people using the Master Key in Dark souls and how it will "ruin your game"

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It sounds like you've answered the question for me with a definitive "yes." Well, the past is the past, and I'll never know exactly what my experience with Doom would have been without cheating early. But here's what I do know:

 

When I played Doom in the 90s, I found it hard. I was young, using default controls, and not very experienced in video games in general. I played for several weeks or months (hard to remember) without knowledge of cheats. Then IDKFA saved Doom for me. It was the only cheat I knew early on. Without cheating, I probably never enjoy the game much. I most likely never buy Doom 2 or Final Doom. A few years later when those discs are lost, I probably don't buy Collector's Edition on a whim at the store and only then discover customizable controls.

 

And I'm probably not here today.

 

So cheat codes are most likely responsible for me having played any Doom beyond 1996. 

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cheat codes never ruined any game for me... quite the opposite actually

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Nah, found the game too boring with godmode. And rather than ruining, idspispopd enhanced my experience. No money for registered so I was stuck on shareware, and having played every E1 map to death, even tiny moments of novelty like looking inwards from areas that you couldn't normally access, or from atop high pillars, enlarged the game for me just a little more.

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This is a funny one because I was talking about it just the other day with some other Doomers. I knew the cheat codes for shareware Doom from the moment I got into the game as a bebe, I think they actually came in a text document on the floppy we had. IDSPISPOPD helped me learn the keyboard layout at a formative age..

 

Once my brother pirated Doom 2 for me a couple years later, I noticed all the codes worked except IDSPISPOPD. My kid brain just thought this was a design choice - as if the developers thought IDKFA and IDDQD were “good enough” and the other code was a little too OP. So, with iddqd on, I played through the whole of Doom 2 the “proper” way, by which I mean I navigated the whole game  without being able to skip whole chunks.

 

I was probably like 6 at the time, but I’ll never forget the rush when I discovered the Wolf3D secret (Wolf3D being one of my favourite games), when I first saw the epic Cyber VS Mastermind fight on Gotcha!, and when I first figured out rockets were the way to kill the Icon of Sin. Even with IDDQD I felt like I had truly kicked the game’s ass seeing that texture explode at the end of it all. I know many of you remember how incredible this game looked relative to other games at the time, so for me it was just love the whole way through. I spent at least 2 weeks on it from Entryway to IoS, or at least it felt that long.

 

Anyway, point of this ramble is, YES, I’m glad I didn’t know the no clipping code as a kid because being “forced” to navigate those maps just made me love them twice as much. I always loved Doom 1 too of course, but making my way through Doom 2 just felt so epic since it wasn’t just handed to me for free, unlike all of E1 had been. I didn’t explicitly realise it at the time, but it was an early lesson about how something always feels better when it’s earned.

 

As a side note, beating Doom 2 is what directly led me (with help from my dad) to hunting around for levels on the internet. A pastime I still enjoy just as much today as ever! Of course, looking online very quickly led to me discovering IDCLIP, and I remember being so annoyed that I didn’t know it when beating Doom 2, but in hindsight I’m so glad because I developed such a deep appreciation for Doom 2’s levels, as well as the general notion of cheating actually making something less fun. A baffling concept to a kid!

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My answer to that cheating question is a simple No.

The reason is simple. Discovering cheats after I played the game on consoles, later on PC, was fun and interesting.

For each game I played, I did it without help, THEN I applied cheats after the game was finished.

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Not exactly. When I started to play I didn't know that I can use cheat codes, not even the existence of they. So, I played legit most of the time, but when I discovered cheat codes, it was awesome and impressive, I had a lot of fun just messing with the map, with the enemies and "analyzing" the HOM effect with clipping mode.

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I first played Doom through GZDoom (well technically DOSBox) which allowed me the unholy cheat of resurrection. After around map 20 or so of Doom II, I felt like deaths were just getting cheap and unfair at some points. I typed in resurrect and boom, I was standing where I was when I died with full health. After that, the rest of the game was a complete joke. I regret it, your first playthrough of Doom II shouldn't just be pressing ` and the up arrow key every couple minutes or so. Now I only use it if I'm playing through a really bad first wad someone made and cannot be bothered to play through all of it again.

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30 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

IDSPISPOPD helped me learn the keyboard layout at a formative age..

Hah, that code is as unwieldy as it gets. First attempt success used to be a godsend...

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Nah, it didn't ruin mine. Back in the days when I was young and sucked at Doom, I used to run with cheats on. Game was still fun even that way.

 

There really isn't a "correct" way to play Doom. Just play how you want and have a blast. :P

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Everybody experiments around with cheat codes at some point in their life and recognizing eventually that some semblance of challenge is important to gameplay is common for most people. It's also one's own choice to use them so merely their existence shouldn't impact the overall view of the game; it's just a phase.

 

If somebody has more fun playing with cheat codes then at least they're having fun with the same old game we've made a hobby out of.

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When I was a kid, I played DOOM mostly USING cheats. I actually played a lot of games cheating (except UT99). It has only been not that long ago that I am re-visiting these games and playing them the proper way. I wouldn't say cheating ruined my experience at all. It was a lot of fun and just for a quick playthrough, and it's not like I memorized everything about these games (especially DOOM). Playing it the proper way now is a lot of fun and I feel more rewarded when I actually beat a level. I remember when I finally beat Unreal for the first time, all the way through, no cheating several years back... it was glorious. Someday, I will do the same for DOOM--I'm working on it. My rule now is to beat a game once without cheats before I will use cheats at all, if they exist.

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Hmm.... IIRC I was aware of Doom cheatcodes from very early on, certainly before IDCLIP was a thing (or until I found this easier variant? not sure if it was there all along) - needed to do idspispopd (and I STILL needed to look that up!). I did always feel like it was - er - cheating to use them though, so I guess the answer to the OP Is no. 

 

A caveat, I will fairly routinely use IDBEHOLDA though if I am stuck, and *sometimes* IDDT.

 

I do remember when I first got Heretic and tried IDKFA and it took away all your stuff!. That made me laugh very hard. I think IDDQD in Heretic also kills you. 

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I agree that cheats could "spoil" secrets or the solution to a puzzle. I wouldn't draw much distinction in that case between cheating or just finding out from external sources like the internet or even a magazine or something. Otherwise, I don't see how it would ruin the experience. Unless it actually teaches you something you wouldn't know otherwise, it wouldn't do much more than just give you practice that might help you if you choose to complete the game legitimately. Don't really see anything wrong with that.

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I also used cheats a lot as a kid on games that were too dense or difficult for me, and I wouldn't say it necessarily made my gaming experience worse as I loved to explore everything in a game with impunity, do whatever I want, try to get out of bounds and find weird obscure stuff and so on. It was just as much fun as playing the game properly, maybe more so. I didn't have Doom as a kid though so I can't say how it would have changed my approach to the game if I had. I remember playing a lot of Alien Trilogy and and Exhumed on PSX and enjoying both, mostly without cheats, so I guess it would have been the same if I had PSX Doom.

 

In the present day, in Doom the only cheats I use on a regular basis are iddt and rarely idclip to check level layout, alive monsters, key locations and secrets, and as someone with zero patience or sense of spatial orientation I love and appreciate them as dearly as my family.

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In my childhood times the IDDQD cheat was the reason to play the game. When I was playing Duke Nukem 3D (yeah, that was my first FPS experience in my life) I've asked my dad about similar games. Of course he said about the Doom. And after some discussion about the game he said that player can turn on God mode and the guy's eyes which was showed in HUD will become golden and the hero himself will turn into the Terminator. And I said "Whoah!".

 

So that means I didn't care about the hardcore experience. I just wanted to shoot demons on Phobos labs...as unstoppable killing machine.

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Nope, I used the cheat codes liberally 25 years ago and here I am, playing more Doom than I ever have. The first dozen times I went through Sunder and Deus Vult were with godmode and they are still my favourite wads, which I can now beat without cheats. Same with levels like Go2it when Final Doom came out. I did a UVmax of that last year.

Play Doom (and all games) in the way that gives you the most enjoyment. That is the only 'proper' way to play it. Anyone who says otherwise knows not what they speak of.

 

 

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I used cheat codes liberally when I very first started playing Doom, as it was the first real video game I had ever played. It did stunt me a bit but I learned to go without and have now gone through the first half of Sunder on ITYTD without cheats. (for the record, Sunder isn't difficulty balanced but ITYTD does half damage and double ammo by default). I'm definitely still an HNTR player and can use cheats every now and again but it doesn't necessarily ruin the experience. having fun is what matters.

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Thinking about it, I cheat a fair bit. Secret FOMO clenches me hard, so at the end of a map, if I've passed some by, I'll often give it another 5 minutes with idbeholda to check out what I missed.  I pistol start so I don't even get to keep the takings of my cheaty exploits.

 

On a bad day, I'm so anal I can barely resist opening up a map editor and chasing down the line triggers. Barely resist? That's a lie. I've done it multiple times.

 

Mappers, I really want to see everything you made. Especially that stuff you crafty secret stashers think I don't deserve to see. Jumping out of the game into a map editor is a, uh, form of devotion, not at all a bizarre compulsive personality disorder.

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No.

In fact when I am super frustrated trying to clear something legit I will start cheating. Singleplayer only, of course.

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