I will never understand the psychology of cheating. I guess it is just a shortcut to a sense of power?
You guys who have tanks and Havocs, WTF did you do to grind those? Looking at my own rate of progress, it looks like it would take some serious poopsocking logistics to get the high end stuff as fast as people did. Personally, I can't hit shit with the minigun littlebird.
I've told this story before, but I'll repeat cause its relevant.
I played a horribly grinding Asian MMO with a guy from Singapore back in the day (Blade and Soul) and he played both the EN and the CN servers and he explained in CN, cheating and whaling were considered favorably. In the West be view pay to power, buying levels etc as not earning it, cheating essentially. They view it with a bit of pride, dunking on the poors. You are rich enough you can afford to spend money and it also has the added statement of "I am important enough that my time saved to skip ahead is worth more than the money I spent to get ahead." You are worth more per hour than cost to skip the grind. It was broader and more nuanced than that, but whaling was considered smart and savvy.
This also extends to cheating. Cheating is accepted, and even expected in the culture. Everyone else is expected to be cheating at some level, and only an idiot wouldn't cheat as well. You'd be playing at a disadvantage if you didn't cheat, so cheat to keep up. Also, we view skill in game as the best expression of competence. To them, it goes a step outside of that. Skill at cheating is also skill at the game. Its more meta, but being good and cheating just means you are better at the 'meta of the game' (which includes the cheating) than all the others who are out there cheating and losing too you and the poor fools not smart enough to cheat, or cheat and get caught. Cheating isn't bad culturally so much as getting caught is.
Anyway, that is how he's explained it to me and some of my overseas travels for work etc have indicated this is, broadly speaking, true. In business for example in the West, we start with the assumption we're trying to make a mostly good faith deal where both sides profit. The assumption in a lot of overseas and Asian countries is we're both trying to screw each other from the outset and trust is only gained over time of good faith interactions.
Then you have the simple griefers etc, but those are usually a lil more blatant in their cheating. I've gathered as I've gotten older, that the whole 'Earning it in game through your own skill' is falling out of favor with some of the younger generations and my guess its the exposure to playing against other countries were cheating is more prevalent, combined with games not having a 'community' where your reputation matters, like a lot of the older games where you knew by reputation a lot of the people on your server.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my brief cultural awareness symposium
In pure Wardogs stuff, cheating is getting pretty questionable. I've seen a number of people who I had a total drop on do insta turns to gib me. Tagging and the thermals always leave the question of being spotted on the table, but if I was spotted they wouldn't have walked past me so casually before I stepped out to shoot them. Also, last game we had a guy meshed into the environment shooting people. Bug or hack? Who knows, but the game is having a lot of buggyness lately with netcode and positioning.
This also leads into the gear unlock system and how just broken some of the armor is. Hitting the same guy in the head with the Mosin's 7.62FMJ three times and him not dying is... questionable. I generally avoid playing milsim games cause having deployed many times the 'unrealism' just pisses me off. But taking three hits to the cranium. Even if you had armor thick enough to stop it the kinetic force would have that guy living in fucking Lala land and not running around like nothing happened.
Is there a game out there where getting hit with a round staggers someone, even if they live? The kinetic force of getting hit, you're going to stagger and stumble as it snaps your head around or throws you off balance while you are running. Anyway...
