- If you were too good on some server, you'd get banned.
- If the admin doesn't know well cheating, he could tolerate something that was obvious cheating.
- Cheaters could just change server often.
It used to be easy to just ban peoples yes, and it was as easy to switch servers.
Plus on most competitive game today, you have custom lobbies, which do exactly what you want, and there is a reason why only a minority of players uses it.
Yes, sometimes you run into power-tripping moderators. That comes with the territory of having moderators. But the upsides, of being embedded in a usefully-sized community, and having nearly constant human moderation, not to mention the whole "stop killing games" of it all, far outweigh the need to shop around a bit for a good server.
I think the ideal middle ground is something like Squad's server system: The developers offer a contract to server owners, establishing basic standards that must be met to be a recommended server. Rules forbidding the crazy bigotry that milsims tend to attract, minimum server specs to ensure smooth gameplay, an effective appeals process. If a server meets those requirements, and signs the agreement to keep meeting those standards, they get put on a "recommended" server list (which 90%+ of the playerbase exclusively use). Other servers go on the "custom" server list, which can be modded, or spun up for certain events, or whatever.
That's the kind of things that were common too, maybe you forgot about it.
My negative experiences with community servers represent a pretty short list. Sometimes servers die, but games die sometimes, too. That's obviously only an issue with persistent-state games, like Minecraft, but it's unfortunate when it happens. Can't say it was so frequent that it impacted my enjoyment of any games as a whole.
Private games (now called "custom lobbies") were available back then too, they're not equivalent to a public server browser.
Edit to add: I'm not disputing that kernel-level anticheat is bad; I agree that it is. I don't think it helps to try and hearken back to a golden age of PC gaming that didn't really exist. Maybe it was easier for server admins to manage because player populations were smaller back then, but that's about all that would have made things "better."
Believe it or not us old folks who played during this time had ways to address these issues.
was my favorite in the Quake3A mod I played.
Back then, the most common option taken was leaving the server to find another one.
Not everyone is interested in a "fair and balanced competitive match" where you're guaranteed to win no more and no less than 50% of the time. I actually find that intolerably boring.
Lots of the mosts played competitive games have that, or third party websites/discords that have links to custom lobbies.
I have to conclude you're unfamiliar with what multiplayer gaming was like when servers were the norm.
Did you even played a single game competitively ? The fact you keep pushing for server browser tell me that no, you need communities on something else. You likely forgot the hassle that server browser were, and forgot that lots of games didn't had a server browser.
LFG communities were important and excluding this shows you were only playing casually, forgot all the problems servers browser had.
Do you even remember, that you could get malware by joining servers in a server list ?!?
99% of people who played CS1.x/tf/Q3A/bf1942/cod/etc booted up the game, found a server in the browser with low ping to play on, and if they liked it they favorited it. They came back the next day, and the next, and started to recognized other players. That is the server browser experience.
If you were in the tiny minority of players trying to be "competitive" back then, you're right I don't know what it looked like for you. Sounds like it sucked, honestly, and maybe competitive matchmaking solved some of those problems, but in the bargain we lost a lot of what made those games fun for "casuals" as you smugly call us.
Your favorite server was not always online
Some people were too good on the server you like and it wasn't fun.
Countless other problems, and you needed to sink in a lot of time to get the few quality time you wrote about.
Sounds like you've got a skill issue. That doesn't match my experience, like, at all.
But a really, really easy shortcut was to find servers that indicated that they were furry-friendly. This all but guaranteed that
1) The folks on there would be fairly even-keeled and reasonable, and folks who weren't would be rapidly banned forever.
2) The folks on there would generally be good at the game. [0]
3) If you're lucky -and the game is one that permits custom "sprays" (as HL1 and Source engine did)- you might get to see some high-quality-but-thumbnail-sized furry porn.
[0] Seriously, at least back when both server browsers and user-hosted game servers were commonplace, I found a 1:1 correlation between "Are they a furry?" and "Are they particularly good at the game?". It was wild.
Playing against overwhelming odds has its own kind of charm. I once spend days just sabotaging the top players on some gun game servers, only wining myself once or twice. Games against friends with various fun handicaps and flat out abuse of any knowledge you could gain from playing against the same people repeatedly - what good is a hidding spot when everyone knows you will be there 50% of the time.
"Fair and balanced" games against completely random people are just missing something for me.
Of course, classic competitive institutions had problems as well (“he’s very competitive” is not necessarily a nice description of a person!), but they seemed more enjoyable that this matchmaking stuff.
Yes, there were poorly moderated servers, but you could simply leave and try a different community until you found one that clicked for you. When you require equal moderation everywhere, you throw the baby out with the bath water.