From my limited understanding, it seems like it’s dependent on the anti-cheat itself. Riot Vanguard is pretty much the gold standard and it does deter cheating significantly more than others I’ve seen. Like I think I’ve seen 2 or 3 cheaters total in 200ish hours of Valorant. Compare that with BattleEye or EAC (Siege and Apex respectively) and you see enough cheaters that it feels like they’re cheating every time you lose a fight. These are all kernel-level so it seems that kernel access is required but it also matters how good the actual anti-cheat is.
Edit: It’s a bit weird with Apex thkugh because it could just as easily be the broken controller aim assist
Yes! It really was a second job! When it’s good, it’s REALLY good but it gets to the point where you’re playing because you feel you have to, not because you want to. You’re constantly grinding mindless crap so you’ll be ready for that next content drop that hits as hard as the last thing you actually enjoyed over a year ago (spoiler alert: it won’t).
I was lucky. I came to that realization at 1.1k hrs and it still took another 100 to quit. Afterwards, and I am dead serious about this, it took a bit more time before I could enjoy single player games I used to love again.
D2 is a pit that can and will suck you in. It’s digital crack.