I blame matchmaking and the death of the server browser. Having a regular server you'd join to play for fun, rather than every game being an arranged esports sweat fest really, was the peak of FPS multiplayer.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Yep. Joining your favorite TF2 server on a Saturday afternoon and seeing that half of the server playing sandvich heavies, doing a conga line, having a full on philosophical discussion in the spectator chat, or annoying the engineers as a group of spycrabs was peak gaming

Edit : also trying to make the highest tower of players by jumping on each other (until some guy inevitably pulls up with a ulapool caber and blows up everyone)

[–] FordBeeblebrox@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Being able to host your own game and tweak the rules however you like is a feature that’s sadly lacking from most console games nowadays, Halo 3 was the peak with Forge