First of all, I hereby apologize for not having read the entire thread's six pages, instead only the OP, so if I make any redundant points that have been discussed to death already, my bad, sorry.
Secondly, long post ahead. Tl;dr at the end of the post.
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I see you obviously play on a console, so my own experience is hardly compatible as I play on PC, but I would nontheless like to give a rundown on how I percieve random match-ups and what my personal history with them have been.
Generally spoken, I am flat out amazed how good the quality of Gold random matches are on my platform, considering how very outspoken most forumites in here are about the apparent inabilities of their randoms. And for one, even though it would be quite comfortable falling for the fallacy to assume those that have negative experiences simply play more or less exclusively on consoles, I've had my share of lobbies and games where'd I came to doubt my teammates ability for reasoning, or for straight thinking at its most basic form, that ridiculous setups and horrid (abso-freakin'-lutely terribad) consecutive matches that followed or took place even though the team's loadout looked well enough or outright seemingly optimized for synergy when I checked in the lobby.
Therefore, I very much KNOW that the kind of unfathomable nonsense gaming actually does exist crossplatform, so any PC vs console platitudes some people might have been spouted around in this topic (as I've said in the disclaimer, I haven't read it, so on the (sadly unlikely) chance no one did any such thing, I apologize for this assumption) are simply wrong, color-glassed perspectives of some people's warped perceptions.
That said, as I've already written, the overall decency of public games is more than sufficing to achieve regular, if not constant victorious matches, with most of them concluding in full extractions (or at least trying for it plus the occasional bad luck with sync- or last second kills) as opposed to the infamous "we gotz teh moneyz, let's just die naow" attitude some people have reflected in the history of discussing PUGs.
The most relevant aspect to that history however is that I almost exclusively play U/U lobbies, be that in Silver for levelling my classes for a decent PUG level (usually around level ten to twelve before I get to public Gold lobbies, so usually two Silver matches after a promotion) and corolarry almost never the typical farming setups like FBW/G or FB:Gl/whatever faction. My assumption therefore is that most "bad" (everything in here is relatively, I've been a horrid MP player at the start of the demo and was only average at best at the start of the fullgame MP since this was effectively my very first shooter online experience) players are located around those settings, because they are either easier to complete or because those are simply the fastest/least troublesome ways of quickly getting your credits if that's all one cares for.
That means that the utmost amount of people that play U/U settings are the ones that genuinely want to play the game for itself, for the fun, maybe the challenge, just as a game is meant to be played "properly" (if I may give such a biased opinion here).
And why does that make the games better/more fun?
Because people that genuinely just want to play the game have a completely different attitude towards, duh, playing the game! They don't really care for the credits (I mean, of course they do, hell, I do!), but more the sake of simply doing it. Or at the other hand, they genuinely want to learn how to play higher difficulties when they first venture into Silver or Gold games respectively. Those are the kind of players that take advices for they are, helpful tips and do not look upon them as some kind of veiled bragging as I've found to be the reason for some downright insulting reactions I've got when trying to tell people that for example the SMG ULMs are still bugged when I entered a farming lobby because I wasn't getting a lobby together and just wanted to play something. Those people, provided they have access to microphones and/or feel like using them usually are in a very jovially mood, eager to talk about the game, or other topics in simple, little chats, joking here and there or exchanging something that can sometimes amount to months worth of player experience to someone that appears to be a new player (for the respective difficulty) and for the most part, it is well, if not outspokenly thankfully received.
And of course, then there are the genuinely "bad" players (those without the necessary skill AND the lack of proper attitude to taking advice, learning how to play better, etc.). And occasionally I get a full lobby of them.
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But like the soft-masochist I am, I mostly go "the hell with it, let's see how good I can do with them". Mostly of course it ends with the whole team thrashed and me expending all my consumables to prolong our suffering (sometimes NOT to the amusements of my teammates that would simply want to play another round, most presumably with another team too). And even those games can be fun, in a very impish, utterly humiliating wa of course. But hey, fun is fun.
And then, there's the seemingly bad players. People that run a Drell Vanguard with a Javelin II and a Claymore V, no or little equipment to speak of and sometimes untterly nonsensical gear (like an Operative Gear on said Drellguard). But those do definately NOT always belong to the above category of simply "bad" players. Some of those are the kind of people like a Ziegrif (
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), that just play a specific setup for the hell of it, maybe even to specifically gauge on with what they can come across without getting kicked headfirst from a lobby. And even though such bad setups usually perform just like that, as in ... bad, the players themselves are still a great deal skilled and on some rare instances, some of the presumably suboptimal if not outright terrible seeming builds can actually be very, VERY effective if played in a specific way and you most probably wouldn't have found that out, ever, because even if someone might mention it in this very forum, the idea would possibly sound so ridiculous no one would take it seriously.
So, what it all comes down to, as you might have guessed as my long exposition in here isn't really that coherent an argument to make any specific point clear, in my opinion it's not the other players that make the fun in PUGs. It's only you and you're ability, or intention to actually have fun with whatever comes to be. I know it's not easy to laugh your ass off whilst miserably failing a match with team of raging people shouting abusive language in their microphone blaming you and basically everyone but them for the disaster after they that ran around like lunatic, beheaded mooses and then actually try to get a rematch with the same team only for the self-imposed challenge of making it past wave six this time (extreme example, I know, but I had those too). There you have it.
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Tl;dr - Hah, just kidding, there is no real tl;dr for you people (well, technically there is, but I won't tell you and if you can't find it yourself ... -> Nelson.gif). Frankly, if you wouldn't be the kind of person to read a post like that, you are most probably not the kind of person for whom my opinion would by anything useful either (no offense meant, that's simply the truth as I came to experience).
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