It feels empty because there is no such thing as a ladder or competitiveness...aka Ranked.
It's just a cluster** of randoms and boosted players and dynamic groups who climb easier than solos.
DQ was meant for casuals to play with friends. They are trying to appeal for the new generation and kids. But the thing they don't see is the new player experience is MUCH worse than this dynamic Q problem. New players are decreasing rapidly...NA as a whole doesn't have a big player base hence why there problems with match making in high elo. There are just not enough challenger or master players for there to be Challenger only games...like there are on other servers. So DQ is just putting challenger 500 lp players with Diamond 2 0 lp players...because that's all they can find for them.
It doesn't really help either than a lot of high elo players stopped playing ranked to begin with when DQ came out and ruined everything. There is no incentive for people to improve anymore, there is no real 'goal' for players to get to...why would anyone wanna work hard to get to Diamond with a premade only to learn that you're going to most likely play against players who are 1500 LP on top of you?
I play for fun now, I don't give a damn about winning or losing anymore. Nor do I care about learning or improving. There is no real RANKED LADDER anymore to climb to and feel proud about it. Silvers now can easily obtain Plat Elo by dynamic que...do they really feel like they achieved something great? I highly doubt it. They are most likely just pushing the limit of DQ to see how far they can really get away with it. It's not fun anymore.
New players are leveling up to level 15 and leaving the game. It's awful for new players and it's awful for veterans now.
Hence why SoloQ will return come this season end or next preseason:
More about my thought on that at http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/Hs6bcjAP-solo-q-you-say-do-not-worry
