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.
i always hated those shit-ass attitudes.
I don’t play them anymore but I had runs in team fighting games where randoms were a regular feature, and the skill level could be all over the place, and I never had someone who was bad at the game respond to advice and coaching badly - at worst they ignore it, but I remember winning games in dota 2 by just telling whichever loser was losing his shit on the newbie to shut the fuck up and advise the newbie to do as i say.
Like, if you decide that a skill gap is both a liability to play and potentially gonna make the game worse for you subjectively, first remember yourself and when you started, then fucking HELP THEM WHILE BEING NICE it’s so easy and i don’t get why people can’t just lean into it, it’s consistently productive of making a rough time into a fun time IME
You physically cannot get better at games without challenging yourself to harder situations you might not be fully prepared for! Being a shit player in a higher difficulty for a cooperative game is literally how everyone HAS to start for those games. Wiki trawling doesn’t cut it. You can’t adjust to new game mechanics just by doing math!