How was /v/ when L4D 1 and 2 were released? Any actual oldfag here?

Did anyone go from prefering longer open world games to prefering shorter, but fully fleshed out shorter games with linear campaigns that you can finish in 7-8 hours?
Any game that is longer than 20 hours has a ton of low effort padding and most games fall off a cliff halfway through the story. I guess this also goes back to what /v/ discussed recently about "frontloaded games".