This is not a place to complain about enemies that have skills you don't have, or about how unlucky you are and how many times you missed, or about how hard That One Boss is, or how the computer is actually half decent at some of the game's more advanced maneuvers that one might happen to suck at. The phenomenon making you feel that way is almost definitely Confirmation Bias, as any of the various people who have done actual testing with hundreds of data points can tell you. Note: when adding examples here, please make sure whatever you're planning to claim is actually true, meaning you have hard data saying there is cheating going on, not just some vague feeling that you always hurt yourself in confusion and the AI never does. When In-Universe AIs have these justified abilities, see The Singularity. See also The Computer Is a Lying Bastard, Computers Are Fast, Gameplay and Story Segregation, The GM Is a Cheating Bastard, Nintendo Hard, Random Number God, and Redemption Demotion. On the other hand, some cheats can actually work to the player's advantage, such as with the Rubberband AI or plain old cheat codes.Ĭompare Gang Up on the Human, Rubberband AI, and Spiteful A.I. Consistent bad luck, however, may be a sign that the computer is using the RNG to cheat.

Likewise, one should not accuse the computer of cheating simply because it plays to a computer's natural strengths ( lightning reflexes, omniscient knowledge of the game rules, and so forth), or because you have a single streak of bad luck. This trope does not include 'fair challenges' of the game (wide pits, powerful / numerous enemies, etc.) those are Real Difficulty. Known side effects include thrown controllers, frothing at the mouth, F-Bombs, and the worst case scenario: Explaining to your parents just why their new television is pulverized. Where a character (generally in a Fighting Game) has some crazy move when played by the computer which human players can't do.Ī boss who actively breaks the established rules and mechanics of a competitive game just to be more challenging.

In strategy games, the game compensates for the player's intelligence by giving enemies unfair abilities to gain or gather resources. Where the AI players break the explicitly laid-out rules of the game. Naturally, this is not cheating in games that also give the player ways to attain immunity to such attacks. If the game looks at the way your characters have been customized and the AI is then given strategies or abilities specifically designed to counter yours, that's not impossible, per se (it's entirely possible that you could encounter a human player with a team that counters yours perfectly!), but it's something that was specifically given to the computer as an advantage over the player, rather than random chance.Īny overpowered, One-Hit Kill, or potent ailment-inflicting skill will be useless on big bosses. Though this trope generally applies to impossibilities (things that the player literally cannot do no matter how well they play and no matter how many things they've unlocked in the game at that point, the computer will just have extra resources or abilities), it can also just apply to more conventional cheating. Conversely, arcade versions of games ('quarter munchers') often cheat more than home console versions. Some games have even used the fact that their AI is not a cheating bastard as a selling point. In ZX Spectrum forums such as, this phenomenon (real or imagined) is known as 'cheatingbastness'.

This can be a quick-and-dirty method of achieving a 'level' playing field against a skilled human player (especially in older games, where hardware and AI capabilities were limited and prone to Artificial Stupidity), but can also create Fake Difficulty when the computer has access to moves that a human player (in the same context) clearly does not. The computer player is a cheating bastard whenever the 'rules' differ between you and Video Game A.I.-controlled opponents.

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