>>717586789
Incessant metagayming and matchmaking completely and utterly destroyed multiplayer. If you never experienced multiplayer where you had community driven servers or when you had to hop on IRC, custom sites etc to find another team for a little comp match, you just don't know what was lost. It was something special but streamlining it all ruined the communities that would form around games.

Back in the day
>hop on one of your favourite servers
>"Hi anon, welcome back, let's pwn these n00bs"
>All sorts of assorted but friendly banter, people having a good time
>Try do to some new tactic or setup
>People are impressed if it works
>Even if it fails, people would discuss it and maybe try again with alterations
>Play for hours, able to activate roll votes on maps/mechanics
>Plenty of admins swing by, occasionaly do some wacky shit with them like low grav etc

Nowadays
>Click matchmaking
>nobody says anything
>match starts
>barking commands
>do this meta, do that meta thing
>Try do something new
>people rage at you for not doing the metathing
>people rage at you even if you do the metathing but the other team is slightly better
>salt everywhere because of rating and faux progression systems (no more the player gets better, not the character)
>nobody really communicates outside of the bare necessity (there's that one fun guy in 1 out of a 1000 matches that actually banters)
>game ends, everybody fucks off with or without a salty GG