Here's one such lukewarm player for you, then. Procedural games have this certain risk to them... the risk that, precisely due to being procedurally generated, they may generate something that's close to impossible, or impossible, for the player to overcome. Usually, there are mechanics in place that are geared towards preventing a player becoming too strong or too weak due to randomness, but even those tend to be based on random factors. As such, it's possible for the best player, or even an AI that plays as close to perfect as possible, to have the worst possible luck streak and fail a run.
It's at this point where players either realize that this isn't the kind of gameplay they can get enjoyment out of, or that they'll be fine playing the game despite this. I'm the latter kind, but am still aware of the issues the core design has. But that's the point when I stop thinking of the game as something I have to win, and start thinking of it as something I
might win. Or maybe I'll only make it up to a certain point, and then lose. But I survived up to that point, with the few resources I had, which probably was comparably hard, or even harder, than winning a run where I was completely overpowered.
It's like this with many games - Spelunky, Rogue Legacy, FTL, The Binding of Isaac, just about any game that has Wanderer or Mystery Dungeon in its name... in a similar vein, games such as Mario Party, Monopoly or Ludo are essentially random in nature. Losing is a part of these games. If you play games solely to feel rewarded and like you accomplished something, then they're not the type of game you'd enjoy. If you enjoy playing games for the experience of playing them, including accepting any route the flow of the game could take at any given time, you'll likely get some form of enjoyment out of such games.
@angelwire
With that said, I believe precisely this phenomenon - playing games to achieve something - is a major reason why people cheat. Hitting a roadblock in a game for any reason, such as time gates, difficulty spikes or losing one too many runs to randomness, seems to be one of the main motivating factors that leads people to cheat according to my personal experience. For me, it was a similar one, namely game content being locked behind alternate reality games and region locks.
This was in Pokémon Emerald. Already having captured everything I could have in the game itself and having transferred everything I could from the older games, I ended up having captured all but a handful. The few missing ones were either exclusive to bonus disks of games that were distributed only in Japan, or were distributed during events that required you to physically move to one of a few select locations across the world to receive some special item in the game that was required to be granted access to some normally sealed-off region where you could capture exactly one Pokémon.
It was back when online trading wasn't even possible and I wasn't capable of moving out to any of the event locations on my own. I played those games day and night for as long as I could to get the most out of them. Unfortunately, it felt like I was the only person playing Pokémon (or any game whatsoever??) in a 30 kilometer radius. I made it my back-then life goal to, well, catch 'em all, because what else was I supposed to do before I discovered that I can just make my
own games, right?
Blatant exaggeration reserved, but suffice it to say that the only feasible way I had to obtain Pokémon that weren't available in the game I was currently playing was to buy two copies of each console, a link cable as well as all available games to then trade everything to one game.
Well, that's actually what I did. Notably, one of the games added a
single Pokémon to my collection (I went through Pokémon Channel
just to get Jirachi)... and after all that, I'm
still looking at an incomplete Pokédex because some dude in Japan decided that certain Pokémon are only available for people who either live somewhere nearby the handful of event spots, or annoy their parents for long enough until they cave in and take them on a five hour drive to stand in line for two minutes to get some virtual item in a matter of seconds, then drive back for five hours. This is probably one of the first things I looked up once I gained access to a computer and the internet... now imagine the look of horror on my face when I found out that all of the dedication I put into collecting everything was doomed to end in an incomplete collection. Absolutely unimaginable.
This arbitrary locking of game content behind what's essentially an alternate reality game is... not what made me cheat. It wasn't the main reason, at least. That was when I found out that out of the 386 Pokémon that existed back then, a
single one of them (Celebi) was available only to owners of the game Pokémon Colosseum...
in Japan. Even if I had personally attended all of the local events, there still wouldn't have been a way for me to get
one of them all
unless I either happen to know a Japanese person who moved to somewhere nearby where I live and had obtained one of them prior to moving (or someone who had one traded to them by someone else) or shell out a couple hundred for a Japanese console, game, bonus disc, and then play through the entire game...
in Japanese, which was not going to happen due to step 1 blowing my bank account balance that was already negative at the start of the month (I think you can guess why!). Oh, and then I'd also have to navigate the moon rune menu to choose "trade" instead of "release Celebi and save the game". Yeah, no.
That is what made me cheat. I added those event items to my inventory, captured two of the missing Pokémon (Mew can crawl back into its microtransaction lock in Pokémon Home and Deoxys can get oneshot by Mega Rayquaza's Dragon Ascent and retcon-punched through space into another dimension via a literal link cable 16 years in the future for all I care), saved both myself and whatever unfortunate soul would've had to endure a combined 10 hour drive with me otherwise (... twice) a bunch of trouble in the process, spawned a Celebi on the first route of the game, captured it in a Master Ball I added to my inventory, released the motherflipper and felt... not much better than before, really.
If anything, that experience turned me bitter towards any form of game design that even allows people to get into a spot where the game's advertised main goal (gotta catch 'em all) is literally impossible to achieve outside of regional circumstances, as it's what made an experience I had otherwise enjoyed for a decade end in frustration.
It also changed my perspective about games in general. I don't have to win to enjoy games. I don't have to complete absolutely everything to "win" the game or something. I don't even have to "win" the game at all. I can do all of that if I want to, of course, provided that the game lets me and I'm good and/or lucky enough to make it through everything. I still enjoy playing games even if I end up losing, or lose halfway through a run. It's what I did up until that point that makes it fun. I draw my enjoyment not out of winning, but out of the gameplay itself, which I'd assume is a major factor that quickly turned me away from cheating again.
Another thing that helps with it is that I mostly play games together with others nowadays, either co-op, against each other, sometimes in teams, or I just stream gameplay and others can watch me play. Cheating in the games we play together would probably not be very well received in the first place (and we would quickly lose reputation and/or get banned for it), and probably not very entertaining for anyone to watch outside of very specific target audiences that I don't want to attract anyway (although the occasional noclip can be somewhat entertaining and/or educational in regards to how the games are made).
In general... if I can't win a game, hey, let's just turn it into a challenge to see how long I can survive, or how much of it I can complete. If I can win it easily, let's make up additional rules to make it harder for me. If I still win, great! Let's add more rules, though. If I don't... well, I still had fun, and they had fun watching me play. I don't play games to win, but to have fun just by playing them. When there's no goal I feel I
need or
want to achieve, I have no reason to cheat, because I have nothing to gain from it.
So... this is why I did, and no longer do, cheat in games. The key was a change in mentality that not only made me stop cheating as quickly as I picked it up, but also enjoy playing games more in general.
Now excuse me while I get back to my Pokémon Shield Nuzlocke. After that's done, my Deoxys from Alpha Sapphire and Mew from Ranch are ready for transfer... and hey, I even picked up a Celebi at an event during the Diamond period. The world's balance has been restored.
(W-What the hell are "Arceus", "Hoopa", "Volcanion", "Zeraora" and "Zarude" and what do you mean there's no way for me to get them?!)