People don’t know how to shoot their guns.
I don’t mean they’re just bad shots, which they definitely are, I mean they literally just don’t shoot most of the time. I look at damage dealt and I literally have 10,000+ more damage in most matches. What are people doing? Are they just running around not even trying to fight back? I’m certain bots would have a higher damage output.
Engagement rate could also heavily effect that.
I know you’ve been around the franchise for a very long time, so you have that experience based instinct for quickly finding enemy players and getting into engagements.
One thing less skilled or experienced players have, is a lack of that sense of direction. That compass in your head that knows where to go to find an enemy to engage, even if you can’t see them on your radar. So they spend large amounts of time just aimlessly wandering about.
I often find my combined kills, assist, and deaths to be higher than my less experienced friends in almost every game I play with them for that exact reason. I just get into way more fights than they do. I’m often looking at about 30-40 engagements to their 15-20. I’d be willing to bet that’s what you’re experiencing.
This^ many times I watch a player get an objective and panic or panic when faced with 2+ opponents. This is the reality of F2P. Great that it brought more players in. Bad in all the MTX and taken customization etc. But more on point bad by new players inbalancing teams. This is likely something that will lessen but never go away.
They’re just casual players with little shooter experience, young children maybe. That’s just what you get when you go free to play, you make the game more accessible, and all kinds of people with barely any gaming experience can just play.
People who’ve never even played a game before are pitched against players who’ve been playing Halo for over 20 years.
There’s nothing that can be done other than adjusting matchmaking systems, you have to ask yourself if that’s what you want.