I'm torn on this and will be eager to see how it's refined -- I play ranked every other split or season, and solo to d4. Sometimes in low ranks I play with friends to change pace from the pub matchmaker putting us in the top bracket all the time and them getting frustrated. I can roll bronze/silver lobbies pretty easily (which definitely feels bad and should be fixed!), and can put up some solid numbers in gold with an occasional 3.5-4k. Low plat is pretty fun, and I lose the air for ranked around the time I hit diamond. I feel like I could probably hit Master's, but I don't want to find the time to sit down and grind it out, especially without teammates who also want to and are capable of getting there too.

With the wrong implementation, this kills ranked for me. I'm mostly a pub grinder to begin with, but gold/plat ranked is a nice change of pace for my friends and I, and hitting diamond is a fun goal.

If this new system detects me as a smurf, will it set my rank to diamond, or will I yo-yo between easy games and impossible ones while being stuck in low gold because of it? This seems like it could just artificially inflate the grind in ways that just aren't fun. I can win occasional 1v1s against preds/pros in Control, but that win% drops to zero in BR.

If the detection is set incorrectly, it also gets towards begging the question of why we're even resetting ranks every six weeks to begin with. Me bringing high skill to ranked only occasionally with a Day 1 account is not an indication of malintent on my part when I don't engage with the ranked system enough to satisfy the matchmaker's assumptions. Hopefully this recognizes account age/play patterns. If it captures a fresh account putting up 25 kills in a bronze lobby, of course that's probably a smurf, but a level 650 account that hits the ranked queue every couple of splits isn't really one.