There are less dumb ways to do this than the WoT spotting system.
WoT spotting system is an attempt to gamify the entire concept of spotting/situational awareness.
Does your client actually know that the enemy tank is there, but just does not let you the player see it, untill certain conditions are satisfied?
Presumably, the server knows where all players are at all times.
Does the server send other player locations out to other players... at all times? When they're in the view frustrum and view distance range of the player? That, but also only when the spotting system stats for your player tank/crew/profile says you are allowed to see them?
To what extent is it the client or server that is making decisions realtime as to if you player X can see player Y? What do the stages of decisions look like?
Like I am genuiely asking those questions. We can't really know for sure without the source code, so... ?
You can tweak a lot of how those kinds of systems work, and, you can make an enemy player view culling system work without an entire situstional awareness game mechanic.
You can just make it part of how networking and rendering work, and have that be the same for everyone... and if you do that well, people will not even realize you are doing it.