I regularly dipped into a Half-Life 2: Deathmatch server that disabled everything but the Gravity Gun-forcing players to fling toilets, radiators and circular saws at each other. Just double-click on a map you'd never heard of before and you'd be transported into a brand new world. A new map, a new mode, a new chance to see something you'd never seen before, and, sometimes, would never see again. The server browser became a shop window into an infinite number of candy stores, promising everything from the mundane-24/7 de_dust-to the sublime. As someone who'd spent the late-'90s sampling every Tiberian Sun mod I could get my hands on, it was beautiful to see, and it was all made easy thanks to PC gaming's support for custom servers. The FPS scene was a hotbed of creativity, as modders and mappers filled the most popular games of the day with strange, delightful curios. I arrived late, but it didn't matter-the party was still raging. In doing so, I fell in love with the wild and chaotic world of first-person multiplayer shooters. When I returned around 2007, I had almost a decade of 3D gaming to catch up on. I took an unintended break from PC gaming in the early 2000s, during a period when I could only afford a laptop that threatened to go nuclear if I so much as looked at C&C Generals. The downside, for me at least, is that matchmaking misses out on a key component of what felt like such an important part of the PC gaming ecosystem throughout the '90s and '00s. It's a relatively benign way to keep a game feeling populated, even after its initial popularity has waned. Matchmaking also lets developers tailor playlists based on the size of the playerbase. Stomping newbies may be fun for a while, but it's destructive to the long term health of a game. It's easier for new players to get to grips with a game, for one, but also gives those with more experience a more interesting challenge. There are obvious benefits to matching players based on their level of skill. The systems designed to keep players coming back into multiplayer-many of which were popularised in the early 2010s in response to the perceived threat of pre-owned sales of console games-don't work if players have all the control. And it's hard to make players care about your persistent progression system if player-run servers can offer decentralised leaderboards. After all, it's harder to sell map packs when players can download an endless stream of player-made alternatives. Perhaps this sidelining of custom servers was inevitable. Where once the server browser was front-and-centre, now it's buried below a suite of matchmaking options. You just need to look at Team Fortress 2's menu to see how much things have changed. With only limited configuration options, it exists simply as lip service to player expectations. Battlefield 5 is perhaps the only game I've played this year that offers one, and it's a shadow of what was once a major feature of of the series. Gradually, over the last 10 years, the server browser has fallen out of fashion. Today, a game releasing without custom server support is just business as usual. To help avoid picking overly frustrating golf courses, here is a list of incredible workshop maps that rival the official courses.Back in 2015, the announcement that Star Wars: Battlefront would launch with skill-based matchmaking instead of a server browser felt newsworthy. Of course, as with all community-based content, some maps are far better than others. Only the host must have downloaded the map, and you're set to go. You simply need to subscribe to the map, which will be added to the game for you to play next. Each workshop map is entirely free to play online. When playing on Steam, you have access to countless community-created maps to try. RELATED: Things We Wish We Knew Before Starting Smoots Golf However, if you have already played through every course, there is much more content for you to enjoy next. You can enjoy thirteen unique official maps and the latest DLC release. You can have a lot of silly fun with this game, and it will have you repeatedly returning for more chaos. Not only can you play a standard round of golf, but you can add in different abilities, such as being able to make the ball jump or perhaps playing with randomized objects from acorns to cylinders. Golf With Your Friends is a fantastic, chaotic game to play.
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