[General Discussion] Game breaking - Do you?

Despite the mammouth amount of testing that goes into game development these days, there's always a risk that the is something in the game that can be exploited to remove all the challenge. Be that a glitch to be exploited, an item that worked out a lot more powerful than was intended or even a built in cheat, these game breakers can provide a very quick route to the end of a single player game or completely unbalance the multiplayer mode, at least until a patch is released to negate them.

So are you someone who uses game-breaking exploits? Do you seek them out actively? If not, when you come across one will you exploit it or do you steadfastly ignore it so as to retain the experience of a game? In multi-player games have you ever been put off and stopped playing because of all the glitching or unbalance or are you the first in line to set your modem to standby and get a total team kill?

The reason I ask is that I've been playing through Oblivion recently and once you pick up the Ring of Khajit (It turns you partially invisible, Predator style) the thieves guild quests become really, really easy. Having picked up Sacred 2, I had planned to just rock through the story quests and finish the game quickly. I've got the wizard's tower add on though which allows you to craft your own magic items and it occured to me that you could use this to create more items to turn you invisible, going from 35% invisibilty up to 100%. I gave it a go and it worked, my character is now completely invisible, the upshot of which is that even when you hit someone, they can't see you and just stand there looking confused. You can kill anything in the game with no risk and nobody ever sees you stealing or stops you in dungeons.

As such, it took me about 3 hours to complete the Arena and Mages guild quest lines. I no longer need potions as I never get hurt and don't need magic items or weapons as I can kill anything eventually. The game has lost any challenge it might once have had and is well and truly broken. Of course I could just not use that stuff and play it properly but to be honest, it's getting a bit repetitive now and I just want to know what happens in the story and move on. I can't even be arsed to play through the Fighter's guild for the achievements so for me, this exploit has provided a quick way to finish the game which I would otherwise have just abandoned and never picked up again.

Other game breakers I've come across in the past are the Chissagrim (Sp?) sword in Castlevania SotN, which makes killing anything in the game insanely easy which I used a lot the first time I played it but have avoided on subsequent play throughs. The automatic sentry guns in Frontlines were rather unbalanced when the game first came out as there was no invulnerability on re-spawn and they had a ton of ammo, meaning if you and a couple of other people all dropped one next to a spawn point, you'd rack up hundreds of kills, especially if it was the last spawn the opponents had. Whilst this was unbalanced to some extent, it wasn't an insurmountable difference as if you were sensible you'd join a squad and respawn on a squad member rather than a spawn point and the sentry guns were rather fragile. I didn't really consider this game breaking but a lot of people did spam them annoyingly to the extent they were nerfed in a patch soon after release. The level of cheating in Halo 2 and 3 is just ridiculous and I know it put a lot of people off playing.

So yeah, what are some examples of game breakers you've found and how do you feel about them?

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Originally Posted by Bath House Pang House

The use of the term "break" to describe something as mundane as difficulty reduction is such a waste when so many games are full of things which are truly breakable.

Oh I quite agree, trying to jump out of the levels in Halo is often more fun than staying in them for example and Ultima VII is the perfect example of a game where you can really upset the AI using resurrect spells and doing things earlier than you're supposed to. In terms of console gaming though, you're generally a bit more limited in the destruction you can cause to a game's physics and I think game breakers is the widely accepted term for anything that destroys the challenge, as much as destroying the engine itself.

That said, there was never much more annoying than people exploiting some dodgy building work in Battlefield 2 on the Xbox and glitching themselves inside the scenery, allowing them to shoot out whilst remaining entirely impervious to incoming fire.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I don't really consider early levelling opportunities to be game breakers as you still have to spend hours of your life doing the actual fights and if your boredom threshold is that high then fair play to you. I did after all near-max all my character's stats in Last Remnant by building a 6,000 chain of bugs in the Robelia Ruins which itself requires a bit of glitch abuse (Moving to the next area, saving, quitting, reloading which respawns all the monsters, allowing you to carry on your chain) but it did take literally a month of doing the same fight over and over again and even then some of the optional bosses were tough fights.

I remember saving and reloading while doing the betting game in San Andreas to win several billion dollars but then giving it all away again shortly afterwards as it made the game kinda pointless. I mean, the whole point of doing the missions is to get money and if you have a limitless supply there's effectively no reward and as such, no point. Also most of the missions are piss-easy when you can afford thousands of guided missiles.

I'm certainly in the camp of not doing these things until a second playthrough. If nothing else, over-powering your character just tends to make a game boring and if it's a lengthy process to achieve that brokenness then it's doubly boring. FFVIII if you really want you can draw enough magic and use GFF abilities to give everyone 100 firaga spells straight after the first dungeon which when you junction them to strength make every fight until about disk 4 very, very short. It takes hours to collect all the spells though and makes the rest of the game even more boring than it normally is.

I'll also admit to having won the Gran Turismo test circuit endurance race using teh Escudo Pike's Peak and a couple of rubber bands but only because I really, really couldn't be arsed to sit and drive in a circle for a couple of hours. It's not even driving in a circle as you barely need to turn for the corners. There's no chance you're going to lose because you have the fastest car but still they make the race like 1,000 km or some shit like that. Far better to just let it play itself and bounce off the walls all the way round. I suppose that's why the introduced having an AI team mate in GT4, nobody in their right minds would actually drive the entire 24 hour Le Mans race (Woudl they?).

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Originally Posted by Vemp

Although bug exploits are a lot of fun. It does eat up a lot of time, and I get tired or bored looking for them. So if I encounter one, I try it out, but don't really use it throughout the game. It's cheating. And cheating is a big no-no in my gamer bible. (well, unless I finished the game on the first playthrough).

I remember the FFVII glitch where you need to pop open the disc cover after casting Regen and you can just wait until your HP is full without being attacked.

The glitch where you can duplicate items using the two items materia thingy and thereby give yourself 99 megaelixers was much more effective...

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I never really used that combo as with the Crissaegrim (However the fuck you spell it) you could keep a wall of attacks in front of you whilst moving just by tapping the attack button. It doesn't heal you but you don't have to get quite so close to things to kill them and your other hand is still free for a shield if you want. It also made every boss fight laughably easy.

I was speaking idiomatically.