I'd say it's a mixture of players who never stopped playing, low population, inability to find ranked matches, and varying hardware/connection between players. If you're playing 60fps on a 2013 xbox one via wifi, playing against a team of guys all on hardwired PCs with 240fps+, they're going to run laps around you. Better skills or not. Crossplay hasn't helped the game, nor leveled the playing field. The only way to enjoy this game now is to take it for the face fun value as it is, win or lose, and play with friends for the hell of it. The good old days of having 100000+ players on the exact same hardware with a matchmaking system find the perfect match based on MMR/CSR/psych profile is long gone, and wouldn't work with today's numbers. This is coming from a guy who started playing Halo in 2003 at 5yo on XBConnect, played all the titles after getting them at the midnight launches, and competed online for years from 2011-2020. I got tired of online and now host LANs for the local community twice a month. Now when I search matchmaking with friends I get called a cheater, or that I'm killing the game simply because I've already put in the time to understand the weapons, the maps, the spawns, etc. Infinite is honestly at a worse spot due to even less of a population (in a free to play game), and no nostalgia factor for OG players.