For any great game, there are sweats and there are casuals. It's a specific difference not just in gaming styles but personalities itself. The sweats need PvP. The casuals need PvE.
Let me preface this by saying that I want you to have a single player mode available where you can play solo vs bots if possible. I'd even want you to be able to access a completely separate copy of the progression system that allows you to progress in single player as if this were a multiplayer game. I am not going to tell you how to enjoy your game and if playing against bots is what you enjoy then don't think I'm trying to prevent that.
Having said that, let me also share my opinion why I believe you're not helping yourself. This idea that you can only play against real players if you're sweaty is in my opinion damaging to enjoying the game to the fullest. Because you've convinced yourself that multiplayer can't be played casually.
Telling the casuls to "level up" is not the solution. Needing to retrain our nervous systems shouldn't be a requirement to enjoy a game.
You may not like it as a solution, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with a game requiring you to learn its rules. That's a fundamental prerequisite to pretty much any game, especially when it's a team sport or hobby that involves some form of competition. While it certainly helps to have good hand-eye coordination as well as the necessary experience with using peripherals such as a mouse and keyboard, this idea that you need to retrain your nervous system, sounds so incredibly dramatic. In reality the largest difference between experienced players and casual players is not the speed at which they respond, but the steps they take so that they don't need to rely on response time.
A good example of this would be to position yourself in a location where you minimize the angles the enemy can see you, as well as making sure your crosshair is aimed at the location the enemy is likely to come from. You don't need to aim fast if you're already aiming where you're supposed to be aiming. Zero response time required. It's mastering skills like these that make the game feel slower, because you're not as easily being caught out of position, or in a situation where you have to make wide flicks to aim.
On the contrary if this Casual Breakthrough was supposed to help people like me train for more intense PvP, again, it's a failure.
It's not meant to help people train for PvP. Playing against bots can help you partially grasp the basics of the game, but it also gives you a false sense of security. The kind of skills you need to perform well against bots, aren't the same as performing well against humans. You're essentially training yourself to learn bad habits. The only way to learn to play against people, is to play against people.
Practicing to shoot a bot doesn't enable anyone to shoot a sweat who slides, dives, jumps and finishes you in a fraction of a second after they show up on your screen.
Let me make this clear. You don't need slides, dives, jumps or fast response times. Those are all situational skills that you can add into your repertoire if you already understand the basics. Yes, they help and they certainly can give you an advantage, but they aren't what makes a player good at the game. Your decision making, your situational awareness and your basic first person shooter fundamentals are way more important.
The most important aspect of playing against other players is your mentality. It fundamentally comes down to two simple steps.
You know what happens if you make that shift in mentality? The game will start to feel different. You'll feel like the multiplayer game is pretty casual and you don't actually need to try that hard. You'll be frustrated less and you'll enjoy the game more.
