> Just because some new efficiency allows cheaters to break a system doesn't mean it was a bad system.
I must apologize, because my parent comment wasn't well thought out.
Rather than saying "wasn't reliable, fair or meaningful system in a first place" (which wasn't logical, sadly, I got carried on an emotion) I should've said that it has a limit to its usefulness. It probably was a meaningful system back in the day, just not future-proof. So it eroded over time and isn't a reliable or fair system anymore, with questionable meaningfulness when it comes to the new reality.
> Does that mean online gaming was never fun, valuable, or entertaining when it was just humans playing against each other? Of course not.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to disagree on this, hard. It happens that I'm a person who holds a very unpopular opinion on this matter.
Online games that competed on things like manual dexterity were and still are fun, valuable and entertaining. But it's also true that they're based on a fundamentally flawed principle (the existence of a "perfect shot", if we're talking about aimbots) that simply won't stand the progress.
As someone who believes in transhumanism, I perceive things like aimbots or wallhacks as aids, similar to glasses, exo suits or thermal googles. And I believe that tools are always "good" (if that's applicable term) as the very humanity has foundations in tool invention and use. It's only the consequences of their application (which are heavily context-dependent) have different moral values depending on the outcome.
The world is inherently unfair because everyone is born and raised in different conditions, gaining different bodily and mental capabilities. I despise the idea of leveling everyone down below any arbitrarily "acceptable" capability ceiling of what they can do with their "bare hands, eyes and minds" - in my book, this goes against the idea of progress. I rather wish to see the very opposite. Put bluntly, I want every single gamer to have the best aimbot there is, and the game mechanics is changed to keep things still competitive, challenging, engaging and fun. Which means some games (or possibly even genres) are going to die, but - hey - we aren't playing 3x3 tic-tac-toe anymore either, even though we used to do so when we were little kids with limited brainpower.
Last, but not least, I strongly suspect that the aspect we all hate is not some "cheating" (I believe it's a misdirection) but rather griefing - such as playing against the opponents of drastically different capabilities, aka punching the babies.
Heck, I want to live in a world, where someone making a good bot is celebrated, not stigmatized. Playing against bots can be made fun, too. I loathe the current trends of the industry towards tightening things down, with all the rootkits, and people hating others for something like having a programmable mouse.
I recognize it could be a very naive worldview, but that's what I currently believe in.
And, uh, sorry for a probable off-topic. It just happened that your comment tickled one of my pet peeves :-)