This is why ArmA has server enforced graphical settings on multiplayer. So everyone sees the same grass.
On CSGO and Titanfall going from Medium to high settings (7850k to 8320E/GTX770) the biggest difference was the other players faces'.
I thought this thread was about getting killed in the 1st minute in most games:)
I have heard a lot of pro gamesr actually intentionally lower the graphical settings so first to raise up the framerate and second to lower the amount of visual "distractions". Distractions is literally the word, that was used...
Yip. I do this all the time for CSGO and Insurgency. It's almost like wallhacks, seeing through smoke becomes possible and the HDR sun on maps like Panj in insurgency is no longer blinding. Also the foliage becomes stupid low polly so you can see right through it. Same goes for shadows, you can no longer hide well in them when they're off.
Games like verdun are particularly bad with low graphics vs high graphics player, you can snipe for miles because grass and lots of leaves arent rendered at long distance but players are.
I always found it funny when people spend thousands of dollars on a high end system and get angry because the extra foliage and other things are a hinderance. Even better when they refuse to turn down/off said setting because they spent thousands of dollars and that means everything should be on because it 'makes everything better'.
This Rant was pretty glorious. Near the end of the first page someone suggests turning off shadows if it is causing problems and it such a short and simple answer. The guy was too busy being furious to think logically.
Another huge advantage of being a poor gamer is not paying full price for games. Open source, bug sales (Steam or other), or nothing! New games and the cost of associated hardware is a tax on the impatient.
That's PC gaming true beauty. Nothing against consoles, but I have spend less money on games the last 12 months than a single full price console release...
Because everyone totally need motion blur and 16x MSAA, HBAO+ and 256 level of tessellation. Yeah...
Have volumetric lighting without actually having volumetric lighting...
I don't know how this isn't a standard yet.
Also what psycho said
is true, they lower graphics settings mostly cause they get in the way.
Main reason why I dropped Warthunder after a week or so.
For a while in the earlier days of Planetside 2, people realized that if you lowered your graphical settings to a certain point, infiltrators lit up like beacons when they were supposed to be cloaked.
I'm sorry, but if you are trying to make a competitive or tactical game that has multiplayer, you need a baseline "you can or can't run this" graphics setting.
People having the ability to adjust settings for advantages is dumb and shows a lack of forethought for a developer.
If your game's 2D grass sprites are burdening your GPU, you need to optimize the game more...
Half Dark Souls 1 is actually 2D sprites, and nobody have cared...
If you are making a competitive tactical game you need to make it run on everything...
Dark souls has grass?
Damn I haven't even noticed.
Well, this has been going on for a long time. ArmA is the first I ever heard of server enforced graphics settings.
Age long tricks in pvp 
dialing down the eye candy. How is this guy killing me through the wall of flames and smoke........... hackers.
I do this whenever I setup racing games, the only games I'm sometimes good at. When racing I only want to know where the curbs are and the cars I intend to pass. To minimize distractions and raise the frame rate I turn all graphics off or down except for the other cars. Also my monitor can do 75Hz at 1280x960, so I race at lo-res too. I find the pixels move so fast that I don't miss hi-res or AA. Trees and grandstands and scenery are eye candy that take my eyes off the road.
It's a necessity for this poor gamer that games poorly.
I started PC gaming with an ATi 9600 Pro and a 2.8 GHZ pentium 4.
In 2010.
Before that I had a pentium M laptop that could run games, but I never had time until 2010.
There are no advantages at that point.
The main advantage to being a poor gamer is you likely have more time to game. I have a 7700k, GTX1070, HTC Vive, Thrustmaster Hotas, Triple monitors, fairly decent steam collection...and I basically can only play on the weekends (maybe).
Even worse is I use all of this computing power I have to mostly get drunk and play LoL or KSP.
Unlikely, in fact, you probably have even less time. If you were unemployed, then yeah, you would definitely have more time...until you lose the roof over your head.