That oft quoted advice re the unnecessary weight of full suspension is still to be found on here. It's a bit anachronistic now, especially as the majority of the posters were advising people who wanted to buy a "do it all " bike rather than a bike for riding off road as a leisure pursuit. In those heady days you were able to buy a mid price hardtail for £500 or so, with decent components, and only had to spend s few hundred more to get XC race bikes with air forks and decent running kit.
Back in 2009 or so whe I first started reading this forum I found a lot of people wanting a MTB as a commuter, or to ride it on canal towpaths/easy wooded trails and so on. The advice to get a rigid or hybrid was valid then, and is still valid now. Very few people on here in particular thought it necessary to get a bike specifically designed to be ridden fast and hard on technical trails. I even remember people telling punters to spend no more than £300 and spend the rest of the budget on a rack.
MountainBiking has developed massively since then. There are far more readily accessible off road trails and loads of guide books pointing riders towards fun bridleways and other routes, and the UK scene is pretty much unique in many ways. One big change has come in the form of the bikes available. European riders, especially Ze Germans tend to love their trekking bikes, what we would consider to be XC style machines, and you'll see them refer to them as Marathon Bikes. Designed for long comfy days riding fire roads and easy trails, they produce, and pretty well flooded the market with that type of bike. The proliferation of 29ers are no surprise....they still fill that niche superbly, and continue to hog the lions share of the mass market for new bikes. There are a good number of full suss bikes there too, shortish travel faster XC oriented bikes with light alu or Carbon frames, but still,with faster, longer distance geometry.
The European full suss market in long-travel mode is a bit like the American market. Days spent on alpine uplift days, where the bikes' ability to climb is absolutely secondary to its downhill prowess means that Euro and US style long travel bikes have heavy duty long travel forks, bomproof wheelset and tyres, slack, long and low bikes that descend like sledges. An absolute hoot to pin down a ski run in the summer having been winched up by truck or ski lift, but a pig to live with on a day out in Derbyshire or the Lakes.
UK riders tend to follow a slightly different market pattern. UK riding tends to based on short ups followed by short downs, especially in the trail centre world. A fast climbing short travel bike is limited in its descending ability, so would limit a rider wanting fast downs after their fast ups. The long travel hardtail is pretty unique to the UK, but has a massive following amongst those who consider themselves to be the hardcore of riders. Forks offering 120,140,150,160 mm of travel mated with slack angled frames capable of taking moderate to massive abuse on heavy duty wheels and tyres, ideal for those trail centre reds and
blacks. Wide bars, steel frames, double or single chainsets offering little by way of flat out speed, but capable of big drops and jumps.... simple stuff, but ideally suited to our riding conditions. More often than not these tend to be custom, boutique or niche brands, but not necessarily all that expensive.