If you go back to something as recent as COD Vanguard, you will find the gunplay is likely closer to what you recall. I play in lobbies like Ship Haus 24/7 to get myself warmed up. It is really hard to feel competent dropping straight into a gigantic campaign-style map with skilled players scattered throughout.
The developer of action quake 2, Gooseman, went on to create CS as a mod for half-life.
Urban terror is the Q3 port of action quake 2.
AQ2 still has a small community of players. I get on occasionally for the nostalgia hit. I’ve never found an FPS that’s as fast paced and difficult to master (movement primarily).
Either make an arena shooter or make a BR. Trying to make a game that fits both genres at the same time is what is probably ruining everything. Gameplay that feels good and balanced on a 100m^2 map is not going to feel the same on a 100km^2 map.
The pandemic had some really good times.
"Oh, you think social distancing is your ally. But you merely adopted social distancing; I was born in it, moulded by it. I didn't socialise until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but BLINDING!"
It's not without its warts and faults, but after not having played any serious WW2 shooters since Day of Defeat, I now have around 400 hours into this game, and am still having a ton of fun.
I was the original mapper for the Day of Defeat team. It was quite a ride to go from a bunch of strangers making a mod for fun to working with Valve.
I haven't played it in ages, but do sometimes think about going back into map making just for fun and maybe more as artistic expression. Always that temptation to make something neat looking, but not very performant.
DoD started as a community project, most of the famous maps are from amateur contributors (anzio, caen, harrington, chemille, etc).
I loved Overwatch for the first few years.
Valorant initially disappointed me because I wanted a better Overwatch, but Valorant was a better Counter-Strike mixed with Overwatch. CS:GOverwatch, if you will.
I rapidly fell in love with it and had lots of fun. Unfortunately an IRL injury to my wrist stopped me enjoying it for a while, until I started playing with a vertical gaming mouse. I still have less mechanical skill than I started with, but it was really fun.
Valorant is Free-to-Play (with no pay-to-win crap or loot boxes). Very much worth giving a try.
Current games control severs, pre 2010 games gave users control.
I tried this web CS1.6 and was immediately greeted with "your skill level is too low for this server" :/
Counter to others I'm actually surprised by how little I enjoyed it. I used to play a ton of FPSes back in the day (CS betas to 1.6 heyday) then stopped for well over a decade. Picked up Call of Duty during the pandemic as a means to stay social with friends and told myself barely anything had changed. Boy was this a great lesson that things have, in fact, changed a lot.