I feel so infuriated, I wanna give up

The past few days I have made multiple attempts to just try a simple task, take the burning blade, get a few rituals, and then sell it. I just wanted to do it once, and I've spent late nights staying up late just for a random boat who scours servers to take down every burning blade. I'm on console so I use controller, I'm just someone who has less than 60 hours on the game. I want to get better but it seems impossible going against people who have the best possible skill I've seen. It's so frustrating how much time I've spent just to be denied for what, a laugh on the ship while I'm here struggling to get a fraction of what they have. I get I could go on the safe sea but I don't see how fun that is, I still want to go against other ships. I enjoy having good battles and meeting random friendly people and the random events. How do beginners play this game, am I just bad?