I remember those times. They were awful. I had no fun if the people I started the match with weren't the same I ended it with. What was the point? It's not fun if I can't even tell if I'm getting better at the game. I didn't need to be the best Counter-Strike player, but I wanted to play actual Counter-Strike.

However, while this isn't necessarily mutually exclusive, those games that let you run your own servers will actually survive to be seen by future generations, unlike just about every game with matchmaking these days that won't let you run the game in LAN or on a private server. It's possible to have both, but devs don't want to.

I was also there but it's not a really good system when scale up. If you are from the same era, and if you did not own a clan server, they can kick you out for whatever reason. (Like killing a mod one too many times.) And for competitive games that really doesn't work well, that's why old server has that after round auto balancing mod, it shuffles player around base on how they performed. A fake way to try balance the team. Ie. I was kinda decent capper for 3wave ctf, grenade rocket jump and all that. So if opponent doesn't have a good sniper or also decent enough capper, I can usually win the game even when our team is a bit short on players. Then when auto balancing come around to balance players, it actually make it less balance.(you also can't dial it too much that you got spawn camped and thus one side of player just quit to find another server.)

And it also not helping if you go to a clan server and the clan all want to stay on the same team. Which often leads to players go in/out frequently.(that's why later on GameSpy can even show match status so you can choose to join or not.)

A well managed server pool and MMR system helps resolve all those issues, and scale up really well.

I was there. I would prefer to go back to that. At least you'd be able to find communities that have the same idea of what makes the game fun. Random matchmaking sucks donkey dick for making friends.

There's a customs browser in Halo MCC that is essentially that. There are a lot of fun game modes to be found on there.

The problem with non balanced lobbies is that they can be completely wrecked by someone who is more skilled.

I think there is an issue with saying that ranked is "playing to win" though, since people in non-ranked games are still trying to win

And also people in ranked may still be having fun

I play LeagueOfLegends and play exclusively Normal Draft only. The pressure and toxicity is just to much.

Aside from that, don’t care much about the rank. It’s just more that people expect and force you to play ‘at your best’ and if you don’t. Well expect to be spam pinged, insulted and even trolled because “you died once because you played bad”.

Something that really doesn’t help is that although I am a gamer, I hear about how toxic many multiplayer environments are, so I never join them. I’ll only play with my real life friends, who aren’t going to call me a racial slur if I make a mistake or am honest-to-goodness bad at the game.

A toxic environment leads to droves of people who won’t tolerate it fleeing. Most people who won’t tolerate toxicity also would not perpetuate a toxic environment themselves—in other words, the toxicity drives out lots of non-toxic people. Now the proportion of toxic to non-toxic people is much more slanted towards the toxic.

Do you still have fun when you lose?

Completely agreed with this! I actually avoid competitive elements in games, such as PVP in MMOs, because they almost exclusively have a hugely toxic community.

The one and only time I've enjoyed PVP is when an MMO was testing it on the public test server, and offered a reward for players who did at least one match. Because it didn't matter if you won or lost, you got the reward for playing either way, it was just a bunch of people having a really chill time. If it was like that all the time, I'd do it more often.

It makes me wonder if the easiest way to get rid of the toxicity in online gaming is to get rid of all the points, scores, and prizes, so the only reason to play is because you enjoy it.

What counts as a "competitive game" - is it anything where there are winners and losers or something more specific?

There's different levels of playing to win though. I play a lot of R6 Siege. In the evenings I mostly play casual with my friends. I'm either using the random button to pick my operator for variety, or I'm playing all shotguns for a battle pass challenge or I'm trying to find ridiculous places to put a frost mat.

Within that structure I'm trying to win the rounds, but it doesn't matter if we lose. I'm just having fun in a game with my friends.

FOR GLORY vs FOR FUN