It's not that they are madmen. The game was much more addictive before they added in the edars, the quarterpounds, rage spawn, and other things.

The subsection of the community with played hours exceeding multiples of thousands of hours, have been playing a modified version of the game called Controlled Difficulty (CD) for short. This mode removes all of the annoying mechanics that Tripwire introduced, and the style of play relies heavily on team work, and trust.

It's not boring in the slightest, when you are playing at an ultra max difficulty, with competent players. It always ends up being a challenge.