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.
It doesn’t bother me personally as I’m used to carrying. I’m max level in Gears 5 and carry brand new players on the max level Horde matchmaking all the time. It bothers me at a systemic level that they’re allowed to queue for it because they’re clearly having a miserable time, a minimum level requirement is all I ask for but I guess that would be too much to ask and instead those newbies should just keep suffering while unintentionally ruining the experience for everybody else. It would be bullying to ask them to queue for a lower difficulty after all.
I’ve had people send me hate mail and death threats for just suggesting they play a lower difficulty or even just the tutorial but that’s OK because it’s actually the developer who’s in the wrong. Silly me.
If they could just go away and take the time to learn in the queue clearly marked “beginner” that would be better for everybody involved. My skill can only carry the game so far when they’re running into no-man’s land and unintentionally sabotaging the game for everybody else.
But asking them to learn the game would be criticising them and might feed my god complex so that’s out of the question apparently.
How does this work for free to play games like Halo Infinite where I get brand new accounts queueing for Legendary firefight who stare at weapon pickups trying to figure out which button to press?
you literally just said you wanted a minimum level requirement, that is literally just what I'm talking about with taking the issue to the developers, you aren't even disagreeing with me
people giving death threats is shitty, yeah, not going to defend that shit