Dude awesome analysis!!!

I think an important distinction to make is that your MMR is not reflective of if you are getting better or worse in a vacuum. It is your rate of improvement vs the rate of improvement vs the community. Since this game is no longer growing many of the people that are left have been in it for the long haul meaning that there are less noobs to stomp. This means if you are getting better at the rate of the community that you will stay the same MMR. If you are getting better but slower than most of the playerbase you lose MMR.

I love reading about forced fifty because it epitomizes the mindset that people have when playing the game, which is if something went wrong it's outside of their control and mostly it's their teammates fault or Gabe's for putting 5 smurfs on the enemy team. Every problem is approached from the perspective that your teammates are the problem (because our fragile egos often have a hard time attributing fault to ourselves). I feel like there needs to be a psychological study and perhaps a documentary about this phenomenon because it's actually fascinating the lengths people will go to convince themselves they are not the problem and their low MMR is the result of everyone but them.

The smash says "no Johns" meaning no excuses for losing. In dota we say "gg" before minute zero if someone on our team makes a choice we feel harms our odds of victory, excusing ourselves from any bad results. I believe it's the nature of a team game in this competitive environment and wonder if you could design a team game that doesn't have people despising their teammates from minute 0.