... the goal of the game is to score the most frags (kills) on your opponents. The more and faster you can kill, the better you are at the game.

Newbies give you same bang-for-blood as untouchable experts of the game. So why make things hard? You plow through the n00bs!

This means that unskilled players are the primary target. Just by joining a server where nobody knows you, and showing little skill paints a huge bulls' eye on your back...

Things are about to get SO much worse for you ...

@unfa Maybe my experience of these games was different, but it was much less common to be playing with people you didn't know than it is today. When you have social context for the people you play with, those dynamics carry different weight/have different meaning. At my LANs, picking on newbies wasn't seen as a fun or rewarding experience.

I'd suggest that these things feel more brutal in today's online matchmaking dominated world than they were at the time when it comes to skill differentials

@SonnyBonds @unfa I totally agree! IMO, the hyperfixation on global matchmaking is probably the biggest misstep the industry has made in the past decade or two. It's led to a lot of cultural shifts that I don't think are healthy for developers and definitely not for users.

It comes back to that whole modern day tragedy of just how much we (culturally speaking) sacrifice at the altar of perceived "convenience"

@SonnyBonds @unfa My perspective is that the shift to focus on matchmaking is what reduced player-hosted server player counts, and led to many developers not supporting player-hosted servers.

I think when you're playing in a developer-hosted space, it's easy to see that as part of the game, part of what you've paid for. Playing on a player-hosted server feels more like you're a guest in someone else's space. The sense of entitlement is different, and there are social consequences for behaviour.