I don't play a lot of games but one thing I've noticed over the years is that the best games with the best communities are more niche. Like Xonotic for instance. It has a fair number of players; there's always at least one or two servers going in the evening. Everyone is friendly to each other. I've never seen any kind of trash talking in there. Same with other games like Quake etc which are long past their heyday. Wherever the masses are, that's where the toxic assholes are. When they move on, things just get a lot better.

quake series has way more players than xonotic, interesting framing