All of what's in OP's post can still be done, but it still requires a level of co-ordination or time dedication that most people simply do not have.

Your typical modern "live service" game does not allow dedicated player servers or even local network multiplayer. If you can hack together a workaround at all it will likely be incomplete, glitchy and poorly accommodated by the game's other systems.

You can argue that the lack of those original options is the true evil rather than the matchmaking itself, but the two coincided and it's understandable why people will conflate the two. Saying they can still do things they just can't anymore isn't exactly going to help anyone unconflate them.