Is it considered “cheating” to use Player Levitation?

Question

In Trine 2, when you host a game, you have options for Player Levitation:

With it Off, it means that a player can't jump on an item (eg. a conjured box) and then be levitated by Amadeus. With that consideration in mind, it seems like turning this option on would make puzzles considerably easier.

Me and my friend played through with this option off, making use of mid-air boxes that he would quickly hop onto and jump off of in order to grab difficult-to-reach experience items. We did so with the notion that levitation would make it too easy (we used the same logic for choosing Classic over Unlimited).

However, every public game I've played has had Player Levitation turned on to Friend. This made things considerably easier when, for example, a player's foot was barely on an object that I wanted to lift. It also allowed us to grab experience orbs that I didn't even know existed.

Were we just making it too hard on ourselves?

Answer 1

Is it considered “cheating” to use Player Levitation?

I doubt it, it's just another a way of tuning the game's difficulty.

... it seems like turning this option on would make puzzles considerably easier.

It definitely can make many puzzles easier, grabbing the hardest of the hard-to-reach orbs being a prime example (why solve a puzzle when you can just levitate your friend up there, etc).

This is especially true if you're playing Unlimited, because in this case Player 1 can levitate Player 2 & 3 over a gap, then Player 2 can switch to Amadeus and levitate Player 1 over too - then everyone is safe - instead of puzzling out how to solve the puzzle so the three characters can each individually pass.

While this might be too 'easy' for some people, at other times it's what is needed - for example, this combination of settings is perfect when I'm playing the game with my daughter.

However, every public game I've played has had Player Levitation turned on to Friend.

I believe the reason you probably see this is because it was the default when the game was released, with the option to change this setting only being added in a later patch.

Also, it's probably more of a pain to have to communicate these things to other random people in Public games, so simplifying things slightly is going to be a welcome addition to many players.

Were we just making it too hard on ourselves?

Did you finished the game and have fun doing so?
If so, then it sounds like it might have been the right amount of hard for you group.

Answer 2

No, it is not considered cheating. This kind of setting should be considered a difficulty setting, it will have to be off if you want to achieve beating the game on the hardest mode.

People play games for different reasons, some wan't an interactive story, others want to collect everything you can and others might want to beat the game the hardest way possible, this is just a way of letting people choose the difficulty that fits there game play style.