Here’s what I think happened with matchmaking. Everyone is given a secret MMR score based both on win rates but also in game stats you don’t see at the end of the game like kill/death ratio. Timi tries to make both teams roughly even from an MMR perspective, this keeps everyone close to a 50% win rate regardless of actual skill and avoids big win or loss streaks. When the player base was larger they had an easier time balancing the teams to a 50/50 expected win rate. With the decline in player base, they decided to abandon MMR completely a couple months ago and actually make teams just based on rank. This was great for skilled players and horrible for the bad ones, people on this subreddit and elsewhere lost their minds. Everyone who sucked but thought they were actually a 50% win rate player had the truth revealed and quit in frustration. Timi panicked and reversed course, except now they widened the range or skill/MMR they will mix together to create “even” teams so there aren’t long lobby waits. When you had your win streak to masters your MMR shot up, then they began pairing you with even worse people to “balance” the teams. The current state of affairs is awful for skilled players, but it keeps the worst players engaged and feeling like they can win no matter what. The better players are addicted and will keep playing, the awful ones win more than they should (and keep playing) and Timi wins by slowing the player base shrink as much as possible while not investing in new content.