Openrct2: Make early scenario completion a cheat?

[Wuzzy2]

This issue is a discussion issue.
Recently #7187 was merged, which adds an option which allows you to win a scenario early by ignoring the time requirement. I don't like this.

I suggest this feature should be turned into a cheat because it directly affects the scenario goal by making it easier to win and it messes with the gameplay.

Rationale

This is an extreme change in gameplay.

This “early scenario completion” feature would break some scenarios as it messes with the intention of the scenario designer.
Imagine there's a scenario in which you already start with a lot of guests and you are close to the guest goal. But the scenario is made in such a way that the challenge is not to reach the target guests, but to sustain this amount of guests as well (hence the time requirement).
Also, in RCT, getting a lot of guests quickly is easy if you pour tons of money in marketing. But sustaining them is usually the tricky part.

Another problem I have is that high scores are not comparable with this anymore. A playthrough in which the player played through the whole time requirement is considered to be equally “valid” as a player who went the quick path, and both get a highscore entry.

Therefore, early scenario completion should be a cheat.

[IntelOrca]

Given cheats do not currently prevent highscores from being recorded, what difference does marking the early completion checkbox as a cheat make? It doesn't make it any harder to activate as cheats is also a checkbox on the options window.

[Wuzzy2]

This is more about semantics than anything else.
The point is not to make it harder to use but to make it clear that this is a cheat (and I explained above why I think that way).

[Wuzzy2]

Also, whether cheats do currently cause highscores to be recorded or not should not matter for this particular issue; I think this is a different topic to discuss elsewhere.

[deurklink]

Personally, I don't really see it as a cheat but more as a function to make speedrunning this game viable.