I just bought (pre-ordered) the
new laptop (Windows 8) that will be released for MSI just to play/play testing D:OS. Since my old laptop is 4 years old, it is time for an upgrade to a better one. Hopefully, I could also get my hands on the DC beta keys.
Cheat codes are not necessary in beta testing from our end. We should first focus on how the game is meant to be played. That is the primary concern, it will limit on what Larian needs to fix. Larian is still expected to release the game towards the end of the year or early next year. If all the bugs are some-how discovered and fixed, then they might have time to fix bugs that appear only when cheats are enabled.
Larian can always release an update to enable cheats at a later date.
Cheat codes are
optional and it is being done already by Forktong (David) when he was introducing the game to some youtube personality. I believe cheat codes can be put to use when testing the balance of the game and should be available from the start of the testing. What is the most powerful build, will it destroy the game, will it make the game easier or will enemies be too hardcore like the final boss of ego draconis as some people complained. Also, if you've watched the youtube presentation of quill, you'll notice that David killed off two guards with cheat due to path finding issues of the guards. With cheat, we could kill some game crashing issues such as the one I've just stated inside the game and continue on with bug hunting.
Imo cheats are a minefield for testing especially for "unexperienced" testers. Example: you die and cheat yourself back. What happens? Enemies won't recognize you because the believe you are still dead. People could report that as a bug. But is it?
I don't think cheats should be available for beta. But perhaps some "controlled" trainer program from Larian with which you could change settings for a new game (like your starting level/stats).
Let's limit the cheat function to game crashing issues like I've stated before such as killing an NPC because it got in the way and you will probably restart the whole game because of that issue. Also, with the instant kill, you can focus on hunting bug issues outside of battle (doing quests, getting combinations, bugged UI, bugged skills such as the sixth sense) as most bugs can be found outside of battle and with Turn based system, it could take a while to explore everything.
What you've said could be a bug IMO if death is substituted by faint as what the game system does. Since a character "faints" when dying, and the enemies does not recognize a "resurrected" character, it's a bug. If you also accounted for the story, one of the protagonist got resurrected from the dead. It is possible that a resurrection spell is available in the game, and probably, the resurrection cheat got the same attribute with the skill.
I don't know about logs, but it should tell whether or not the player did some cheats so they could narrow it down if the player's claim is true or not.
