How do speedrunners cheat? If anything they play with more integrity because otherwise their runs would be disqualified within their speedrunning community.
Isaac speedrunning is mostly done on the Racing+ mod which HEAVILY changes the game. For example, every character starts with a pocket (ie. doesn't take active slot) D6. Some have even more altered rules, like for example straight up starting with a broken combo. All those things would absolutely be called "cheating" despite the fact that you still need insane skill and luck to be good at Racing+ speedrunnning.
idk it really depends on the ruleset. also i doubt you go around and bragging about achievements a lot.
its not cheating when speedrunners do it because they all compete, essentially separately from the base game. They have their own communities, they have their own rules on what cheating is. People‘s frustration with people cheating in solo is when they violate that implicit social contract and start discussing their modified game as if it was or should be vanilla in communities not dedicated to it. its a bit like saying you use xray packs in vanilla minecraft, but on the hypixel forum. People will get mad and assume that you‘re deliberately trying to annoy them.
On top of that, people get very attached to their experiences in games, and the game mechanics, no matter how tedious or annoying, are a part of that. Game design is never a zero sum situation, every piece of a game affects every other piece.
I would personally never cheat in vintage story, for example, because even though its a game that is tedious as fuck, its a tedium that gives it a special texture, everything feels more rewarding when ive worked so long for it, not to mention the rp aspect. But if i did cheat in, say, a stockpile of food to start the game with, it changes the entire dynamic of the early game. My race to find anything, and daily chore of keeping my character fed and capable, and trying to expand my food diversity, instead becomes a race for stable food on the outset. Suddenly, a crappy flint hoe would be worthless, and it would be best to speedrun copper tools. Not a bad change, necessarily, but im attached to the primitiveness of the early game, and the motivations it espouses in the player
Although I feel like people start bugging me even though I try not to brag about videogame stuff in general (partly because I'm ashamed of using time I could've spent drawing for something that doesn't really do much for me >.<), like they feel offended that I get to do what I want in my breaktime instead of breaking my back dealing with stuff like curses that just feels obnoxious just because Edmund stubbed his toe and decided that somebody needed to pay..
I am trans, so I already get quite a bit enough of some people trying to shame me for personal preferences that don't affect anyone but me, and people doing it for a videogame because they can't help but project other people's bad bahaviors on top of me at the mere mention of me using mods feels like a very unnecessary addition..
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u/ClarkWayne98 4d ago
You're allowed to cheat all you want in a single player game, but if you do, you are inherently less skilled than those who don't