June 2020
I can’t talk for some of the lower ranks however I feel like there aren’t enough lobbies or that the game forces players to stack in ranked way too hard. From what I’ve found there are 4 main lobbies in ranked; bronze to silver, silver to gold, plat to diamond4 and diamond3 to pred. Personally I experience the huge jump in skill between ranks, from w-keying plats in d4 and getting stomped by full pre mades in pred lobbies when hitting d3, the skill disparity between the 2 lobbies feels too great, professional players are struggling to get even 2 sub ranks below masters when they solo q as their diamond team mates don’t stand a chance against a full team of predators. I fell like the problem wouldn’t be as great if the mm took into account if you’re stacking or not as the only solo q players in the d3+ lobbies are d3 players who as I’ve mentioned aren’t going to stand a chance when put against a pre made of masters players and above. I don’t know if this would kill q times or not for masters players but another suggestion would be to make more lobbies, isolating the masters and the diamond lobbies having one for d4-d1 and a separate set of lobbies for the masters players.
I understand encouraging finding people to q with however I don’t think that making it a necessity in the higher rank bracket is healthy for the games ladder system.
I can’t say for sure that tightening the lobbies will fix the ranked matchmaking system but I hope that the idea gets built upon as being able to solo q and hold a rank above d3 for an extended period of time is borderline impossible. d2 and d1 are just filler ranks as preds get back to their actual rank.after the season reset.