I play a lot of Verdun and almost no one talks/has headsets on during it, in either the US or EU regions. Very few people talked when I played Titanfall 2 either. Granted that's way different than a LAN party I'm sure.

I can't believe people are still playing Counter Strike. We had servers for the original version (Half Life 1 based) way back in the dorms in like 2000/2001.

You know, I have some theories about that, based on my experience with SC:BW, WC3, HoN, DotA, CS and a couple of other online commmunities.

In short, I think it comes down to the fact that people do not have to maintain a social persona when going through the match making queue. I think people are default assholes and don't behave nicely unless they know they'll see you again/you become familiar.

A lot of the communities I've seen start off super friendly and fun when they're small (because you're playing the same small pool of people) and then reach a tipping point when toxicity takes over because you rarely bump into the same people over and over again.

I think that could be solved by modifying match making to preferntially rematch you with the same people over and over again, in effect simulating a smaller world.

Separately, toxicity is contagious, which also agrees with my observation that larger communities are more toxic. I wonder if Valve has done any analysis on how behaviour is affected after interacting with tilted/toxic players.

Of course, but I haven't seen it that bad before at an event IRL.

I've found players in Battlefield generally way more mature and calmer than CS an COD. Recently Apex Legends generally also tends to be much more saner than the rest.

CS has gotten much more toxic since CS:GO's focus on 5v5 ranked matchmaking.