All good thoughts, and here's why sever browsing doesn't happen like that with modern FPS:
Population: The issue with classic/hosted servers is they can die very quickly and don't account for single player skill level gains etc. people don't want to get raided, so then they need password protection, which means you can only have so many people on, so you may be waiting even longer, thats also a whole lot of extra work in the backend to develop and maintain, vs a menu feature that keeps people playing.
ELO/STMAU: Normally on the backend there are a ton of different algorithms that determine how an FPS player is matchmade. This can be anything from development of skills, number of hits, or if its a group game, some variation on
ELO:
According to this algorithm (there are others based on half matches and shots) performance rating for an event is calculated in the following way:
- For each win, add your opponent's rating plus 400,
- For each loss, add your opponent's rating minus 400,
- And divide this sum by the number of played games.
Example: 2 Wins, 2 Losses
This can be expressed by the following formula:
Essentially, if you don't apply ELO or something like that (especially in something like League where they want to get you into ranked ASAP), the low level players/teams have a bad time and continue to loose, and the high level players have a bad time because there is no challenge, and they don't develop their skills and grow.
Skill: It's been proven (deep breath) that a lot of gamers
think they are more skilled then they are... (don't hate me, sorry ) so for your new player, you end up with an unpleasant jarring user journey when you choose a high skill level server and need to move down after getting pugstomped. The matchmaking system is also part of your NPE, which for difficult games you need.
Single player: A lot of Developers want this to be more seamless for the single player (single players still do account for most of the population due to casual length of games)and many get intimidated by having to choose servers, find friends, change and adapt etc. Instead of an MMORPG where you have users who have been playing for decades, raiding with the same 20 friends who have developed their own needs and wants from a map, server or fight style. You want this process to be as easy as possible. Download game, load game, wait in line, GAME. The allure of a shooter is very different to the allure of an MMORPG.
Hi I'm Stevie from marketing: They also don't want you spending time between matches on choosing matches, servers or looking for people. They want you looking at cosmetics, customising your character, chatting with online people, flossing, talking to your viewers and grabbing that quick drink. Mainly they want you looking at the loading screen so you can see what you can buy, or what event you can take part in, or what DLC is coming next. They have limited time to convert you to the paywall, so that's where they do it.
Lazy and they know it: What makes netflix more appealing then other services? It auto loads the next episode for you. In essence consumers of entertainment are lazy and we want it spoon fed. I just want my next match, to play it and to come out the other side. I don't want to build the same friendship circle I have in WoW. I want to play a quick good game, get my dopamine and if it wasn't a good game, play the next one as fast as possible. If I'm playing games, I'm making the studio money.
I want friends: I definitely don't think you are alone in wanting to develop buddies for playing FPS games with, and it's really difficult to have meaningful conversations due to how fast the games load. (Unlike me in EVE Online that sits spinning my ship talking to my friends on teamspeak). For a lot of new games, the ability to moderate chat, duty of care for that chat and hold responsibility for what happens on team speak can be a lot to handle for a dev team. Voice and chat servers are expensive, rarely cross platform and when you're dealing with a quick 15 minute shooter, those connections are harder to make.
Like and Subscribe: To that end, I think modern shooter communities have really utilised the streaming and youtuber communities. You can't make friends during a match, but you can watch a streamer play the game you like, talk to them in twitch chat, add them to your discord, make friends with their viewers and play with the people you want to play with. In essence we do a lot more of our socialising and relationship building outside of the games then we did back in '07. Then if I want to play with those people, we squad up and sit back and relax and let the game do the hard work for us.
Hope this makes sense, some of it is a generalisation, but its the reasoning behind why what you pitched doesn't tend to happen.
Stevie