bullying, harassing, or even "criticizing" them is an entirely pointless endeavor that does nothing but make you feel superior to another person. having a "minimum standard" for random matchmaking is OK i guess, but not having that standard met is the developer's fault for not having proper matchmaking, not the random shitty player just trying to play the game.
and it's a game. it fundamentally does not matter if someone is so bad you can't get your +0.2 second record or whatever. it does not matter if you can't win the difficulty you chose. everyone starts somewhere, and in games where different difficulties tend to be almost like entirely different games, this is even more true. if you want a game where you have an 100% chance of everyone involved being at the correct skill level you want, than don't play with explicitly random players. no one cares if you want to feel special because you can win more at some fictional game than other people. I respect skill, but if you think that's a reason to bully people than you should leave every game scene ever to save people from your presence
if a player stumbles into something but doesn't understand it it's the developer's fault 90% of the time. if a player doesn't want to "git gud" it's the developer's fault 90% of the time. every single genuine criticism made about a game's difficulty is inherently valid. every game should have an easy mode. players should default to helping new players rather than dismissing them. learning a game by playing it is always more intuitive than using google or reading blog posts.
every souls game should absolutely have an easy mode. yes, even if that means having options that make the game 'play itself', the last of us 2 has such systems, stop gatekeeping the intellectually disabled from your precious safe space, fucking
weirdos. for example having to trek back through an area every time i lose to a boss fight (often with intentionally misleading attack animations and patterns) adds absolutely nothing to the game and only serves to gatekeep people with ADHD and the like from learning attack patterns or practising other gameplay maneuvers, and letting me chose to restart a boss fight instead of losing all my XP and having to restart the area (with equipment damage slowly accumulating) takes nothing away from the ''''aesthetic'''' and ''''mystery'''' and ''''atmosphere''''. the enemy ambushes and traps are cute the first time encountered, but become mere drudgery the 12th or 30th time.
g*mers have gatekept elden ring by vehemently defending its inability to pause. it's so weird
Catch me over here using the steam deck suspend feature as a pause.
I always hated when gamers would point to a person with a disability being able to beat Dark Souls or Sekiro or whatever and go "See, this disabled person could beat the game, therefore the accusations of ableism are invalid!"
i am lucky enough to have never encountered that particular brand of idiocy, its like arguing that we don't need any public support at all for disabled people because some of them are world class athletes.