My own introduction to Cyberpunk was in 1988 or 89. At the time I was a senior NCO in the USMC working in Intelligence (counter terrorism). Needless to say most of the friends I played with had similar military and job type backgrounds (yeah, a bunch of military geeks). We LOVED the "realistic" combat system (compared to almost all other RPGs) and the way the skill system allowed us to replicate real people (with diverse skill sets, no one-trick ponies).
Needless to say we didn't approach the game with a "how big a gun can I have ... how many people can I kill" attitude, after all we used real guns and understood how they worked ... and how damn heavy some of them are! Our GM didn't run NPCs as suicidal morons, if you hurt them they fled; if you got the drop on them they surrendered rather then dieing pointlessly.
My experience with Cyberpunk was VASTLY different from that of 95% of players.