Throw into this, that smurfing was incredibly prevalent in Halo 3. If someone was lvl 20 they were as likely to be a brand new account as they were to smoke everyone on the server without trying. As soon as you cracked into the 20s and higher, you couldn't avoid this experience of artificially low-skill-rank accounts piloted by literal terminators.

The smurfs were extremely toxic as a rule, because they only existed to maintain their rank with equal wins and losses so they could continue to beat up on players worse than them. They had to let you know they were better by pulling psychic shenanigans only someone with 1000s of hours would be able to do reliably before putting down the controller to let you catch up and beat them. Their intentional losses were where they'd shit talk the most because they had to make DAMN sure you didn't think they couldn't beat you.

A special kind of egomaniac was born in that environment, and it did the most to kill that game. I have a strong feeling that was not in this study's accounting.