There's different levels of community servers. The way you're describing it, I haven't played on anything like that in years (likely decades). Playing on private servers with friends, do that a bunch. Limit access to people you know and people they trust, if someone starts being a douche then boot (which I've really only had come up once).
That said, I will acknowledge that I pretty much never do PvP stuff, just co-op/PvE. So, if you're looking for constant PvP matches with something then, yeah, inviting in a half dozen or less friends to the server will probably not work out too well.
There's different levels of community servers. The way you're describing it, I haven't played on anything like that in years (likely decades). Playing on private servers with friends, do that a bunch. Limit access to people you know and people they trust, if someone starts being a douche then boot (which I've really only had come up once).
That said, I will acknowledge that I pretty much never do PvP stuff, just co-op/PvE. So, if you're looking for constant PvP matches with something then, yeah, inviting in a half dozen or less friends to the server will probably not work out too well.
PvP is pretty much the only place anticheat matters. If you are doing co-op with friends and there are cheaters, you just need new friends.