Are we gatekeeping?

[alj99]

Just to be clear, I'm not saying this like a blame game, or that anyone specific is at fault.
I'm talking more so to the environment we collectively created and how we play the game compared to coming new players, if there are.



So let me make you this scenario:
Let's say you're a new player because you heard from your friend about this game. You made a guest account, set your name.
This game isn't the most alive, but you see one relatively full match, stryde-snipers. You played the game and 10 minutes in, you're already 6-37, losing. You have to swear to god they're cheating, literally flying, and shooting over corners. So ya quit.
Then you tried to play again after that shit you saw 4 hours later. This time, it's either inolupp or 0wned-towers3, thanks to god, lms or Not Ar Ji! set up a healer at spawn and you immediately started to play. And you're already dead withing the first platform. You tried a bunch of times and kept dying, whatever motivation you have is not going to be enough for an Advance or Expert level obstacle course from the get go.

By now, no public matches are even remotely compatible for you're skill level. But there is still one more option left, make you're own matches.
Barring the fact that you don't even know what maps are even playable for you, maybe you somehow knew about Paul base, or really, that's probably about the only map you know can play casually and chit chat with players.
But little do you know, not a single soul will join, as funny as it is to say because it's paul-base, it's probably because you have 0 rep, the match requires 0 rep, and 0 rep maps are hidden by default.
A soul crushing 10 minute wait for no one to play your match.




There are guest that obviously show more skill that they're obviously return players, but there are also those that actually are new players or just players that knew the game but weren't remotely hardcore and just played more casual or arcade games.
And these types of people don't have the environment for the current status quo of the game.

[alj99]

Additionally, we don't really teach self boost anymore, we just expect to know them.
They probably could have asked but I don't know what is going on through their heads, are they thinking self boost as some expert level trick they can't pull? Who knows?

At least some maps tell you that this needs self boost but telling them they should leave because it needs it is also somewhat gate keeping.
Instead of that, maybe tell them how to perform a self boost first, maybe slowly increase the difficulty to at least give this player the difficulty ramp that they need. But this is an entry level map, introducing intermediate mechanics. Maps that people don't even know of anymore. But tommy-selfboost did this ramping well, at the cost of large map length.

And mechanics that don't even know of, there is still a few of them that even more obscure ones than self boost, particularly for precision platforming like 0wned-towers3, with sections that need jumps lowe than defib jumps, how many people are even aware of that? I never even need to ask a mechanic like that until I played that map. And I'm lucky to have lms to tell me how to jump that low. But you know how to circumvent the issue of just expecting people to known mechanics? Just tell them, like, spell it out on your map.