Why cheat? I think theres some basic concepts here I would look at
Morales. This is a very complex one. People have a basic desire to win, and being online with your own online persona can allow people to behave in ways that irl society or etiquette would not allow. Theres more to this but basically not everyone feels that games actually exist in reality, or even see people they interact with online as just a bunch of pixels.
Attention seeking. These guys generally don't care that you know they are cheating, in fact they want you to notice. They want some reaction from you, either to feel they affected you IRL, or to even feel like they're on a moral high ground over you ("its just a game, why you so mad etc"). They feed their ego in one way or another
Gaming culture. This is the hardest one to change, but this is probably the most important to combat cheating/exploiting. This is shaped by the players attitudes on the server and what people deem culturally acceptable/normal behaviour. Every player has the opportunity to affect this in their own small way, just with their basic attitude on the server but the main contributing factor to this is..
Rules and consequences for breaking them. You need first simple clear rules. Then you need a good bunch of admins that enforce them (and they must be accountable to higher ups that take responsibility for them too). We have the good admins for the most part but for enforcement of rules, and being clear with rules can be a bit sketchy in cRPG imo
Grey area between exploit and cheat. This is partly culture, partly being clear with rules and enforcing them, and partly "morales". We all use some form of exploit in most games without actually thinking of it or being aware of it. Every game has bugs that might not be intended but players might generally culturally accept them as normality. In cRPG i'd say we have a lack of enforcement of some rules, and a lack of a clear definition in some cases (like stripping out map assets like bushes for eg) that opens the gate for exploiting being more culturally accepted. This is a very important one to tackle because not everyone considers exploits to be cheats, it all depends on what people deem OK, and especially what the powers that be state is OK, and then they must follow through with real repercussions. Culturally though I think most people are against the obvious negative exploits so we're not so bad in that regard I think. Repercussions for breaking rules, and even having clear rules in the first place could be worked on though imo
Theres probably more to it thats how I see it
