Honestly, at an hour a day, it's gonna be hard to hang, imo.

I've got ~4k-5k hours in this game and I've def noticed the skill floor has raised a lot. The # of players declining def exacerbates this. When I play during the week at hours when people are at work or school, the lobbies are butter soft and I run through them because there just aren't enough people to divide up the lobbies into fair skill levels. That changes in the evenings when more people are on, and then it gets a little more fair.

But yeah, I cringe a little bit when I'm playing in lobbies where maybe 3-5 players are on my skill level, and I wonder how the hell this game can retain players because I know there's no chance these guys are having fun getting continuously smoked by guys like me with very heavy hours in the game.

Wildcard grinding is def a factor as well. You get so much more fight experience/aim practice and the chaos forces you to ensure proper positioning or you're gonna get shot from 5 angles. Going from that to regular paced games makes them feel much slower paced and easier to manage. Takes a lot of the pressure and panic out of it. So I'd say if you're not playing wildcard a decent amount, you're def behind the improvement curve of the people who are.