@redx said in How exactly do we expect low rated players to play the game?:
How are people going to get better when they're lucky to get 1 or 2 decent games in a night?
Your mistake is assuming that you get better by playing matches, or by playing matches with higher-rated players.
The truth is: you get better either with coaching from a better player, or by being your own coach. Which means understanding why you lost a match (it's usually not "unit composition" or "strategy," usually it is ECONOMY, raiding and being raided, expanding, gathering and spending resources). It means accepting responsibility for every loss as your own fault and your own lack of skill. It means watching replays and being critical of bad decisions you made and opportunities you missed.
Unfortunately, just hanging out with higher rated players doesn't transfer skill to you by osmosis. Usually you just end up being carried by them, they scout for you, they overflow energy to you, they beat the other team for you, you're just going along for the ride.
If you really want to get better, you could start by reading my guide. (Not the whole thing--just read until you've absorbed a few new ideas, practice them, then you can go back and read more of it.) If you really want to get better, it means playing lots of 1v1 matches and getting advice from higher-rated players (ask them to watch a replay and tell you what you should do better). You have to git gud at 1v1 before you can be good in team games. Even just trying to get in to team games means you're not understanding how to get better.
By the way, no one is obligated to get better. Some people might be different and learn in different ways. But I think this is the only viable path to improving rating for 95% of FAF players.