The new ranked system will not improve gameplay in "diamond 5/4," or any lower tier level.

The new ranked system seems to solve some of the problems that have surrounded the rank system ever since Riot went from the elo system at the beginning of season 3 to the LP/Tier system early/mid season 3 and beyond. Since then, Riot has made a lot of adaptations to address some of the shortfalls of the LP/Tier system but major issues have slipped through the cracks. I want to address what I liked in this video before I elaborate on my feelings some more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxt2Z4hEjwE

1. I love the transparency of the promotional series. Everyone hates this experience because a bad start makes you regret playing. Knowing what you'll be dealing with at worst from the get-go is a nice addition. I don't think there's anything wrong with transparency in ranked systems, the more the player knows and the less they have to sift through foreign sites that inaccurate predict their MMR, the better.

2. Since you're adding new tiers, which I am not a fan of, I will admit that removing a division from every tier is at least a decent compromise so people don't feel like all you've done is added more grinding (you'll be hearing several iterations of this word soon).

3. Never can go wrong with aesthetic updates and honestly your departments concerning you art(s) and music have always been top notch. I expect nothing less than greatness from them as per usual.

Now it's time for me to be a negative nancy and address quite a few issues with the ranked system that you haven't addressed ever. I honestly don't feel like this changes anything. You've just added two new tiers that are going to more or less realign where the "cut-off point" is for bad players to grind their way to ranks they don't deserve. This doesn't address anything other than making people "feel good." I'll explain:

Please note: you're going to hear the term "grinders" quite a bit. I am operationally defining grinders as players who simply play a lot of games but do not truly improve much, if at all, but climb by means of simply playing tons of games (usually within the 2k+ games each season).

The biggest problem your ranked system has right now is that people are able to climb with a sub 50% winrate (I've seen people climb with 47% winrates, which is absurd honestly). Let me be clear, it is easier said than done to do this but you'll find that it is not very unusual to encounter people who've played 3k+ ranked games by the end of a season. And it is not unusual to have a game with 2-3 of these players in each game, which makes the quality of matches suffer because at least 30% of the players in that game have a rank that isn't truly indicative of their skill; it's inflated. The current system rewards these players and it shouldn't. That sounds harsh for a few reasons:

a) it sounds like I'm shitting on grinders, which I'm not trying to but I kind of am. b) it seems as though I am suggesting not to reward them for being willing to play that many games - you're absolutely right. You can receive different rewards for loyally playing that many games. However, your rank is representative of both your skill and your grind. Grinding alone should not be a means for climbing.

Let's be honest: from an anecdotal point, we've all op.gg'd a game and have seen that guy with 2k games played this season with a 50% winrate and cringed because we know he's likely going to feed. This, in addition to soft resets, is a huge problem that waters down some of the highest level games because it is too easy to climb because the system isn't punishing enough to grinders who are simply willing to spam 3k+ games to achieve a rank they likely do not deserve. Again, harsh, but likely true.

Previous seasons had some capabilities of preventing these players from climbing. It's no secret why season 3 saw the best game play: clamping existed. Clamping sucked and frankly the clamping was way too extreme. However, it prevented grinders from inflating their ranks because grinders don't typically win a bunch of games in a row - they'll win be consistently inconsistent (something you'd expect from a player in a ranked/mmr range that he doesn't belong in). When you got to gold 1/plat 1/diamond 1, getting LP and climbing up to the next tier was incredibly challenging and only the best of the best climbed. That's why Diamond 5 in season 3, even season 4 before the grinders took over this elo ranged by the end of season 4/season 5, was still a respected rank because it was legitimately hard to get. I'm not suggesting we revert back to that kind of clamping, but some modest clamping would go a long way to restore the purity of the bottom tiers so that people don't simply have to, metaphorically speaking, throw a line out to the water and eventually catch something because they've been willing to wait long enough.

In addition, you've also basically made it incredibly easy for players to get plat with all the safety nets you've instituted into gold and below. You've spent too much time trying to make people feel good about ranked when ranked is competition, not a lover's circle. It's frustrating. It's a grind. That's what competition is. If you don't like it, don't play ranked. And frankly, most people probably do not even notice or care about the safety nets in gold so removing them wouldn't really amount to any real backlash anyway (sure, boards/reddit would complain for a week and get over it when you release your next Yasuo skin).

Lastly, and I touched on this a bit earlier, you need to hard reset everyone's MMR. That is harsh and that will make some games unfun initially until the top players have climbed, but pretty much everything diamond 3 and below needs to be flushed. It has corroded overtime with the lingering and lasting stain of a plethora of unaddressed issues that have led to watered down games and ranks. This will certainly force grinders with inflated ranks to actually earn their rank. Even I am guilty of this, too. It's because a soft reset doesn't really make achieving diamond 5 hard. You get diamond 5, avoid decay, and get a soft reset; at worst, you place plat 4 or 5 and you have the next 9 months to climb 5 divisions. Even a silver player would be placed here and accomplish that if they're willing to play enough games. A hard reset now and a more stern reset from thereon after each season (not as hard as this one but not as soft as previous resets before) will go a long way in preventing this from happening. In accordance with some actual clamping (very modest, let's say when people get within 75LP range, they only gain 5LP a win and 4 a loss but if they manage to get to promos and lose, they will no longer be clamped), I think these two things would fix a lot of the problems you have in ranked with watered down games and "diamond 5 memes."

And one small request: I think players should be able to see what their MMR is. Only the player can see their own MMR, something that is private to them. This way, I know what I can actually expect both in my games and what I'll be consistently earning for LP. There is really no reason to keep this from players and I feel as though keeping this secret from them serves as a point of more anxiety to the players than it would if you showed the players.

TL;DR: Ranked needs to be harder. Climbing with a sub 50% winrate shouldn't be a real option. Grinders climb by means of spamming games and are rewarded for it, which in turn waters down the skill of the game and creates more frustrating matches. You can fix this by reintroducing a very modest clamp at the top of each tier and hard resetting MMR at the end of this season and introducing stricter resets in the future to prevent players from soft resetting into ranks that are only 2-3 divisions below where they began (this only impacts diamond 5 and below but this obviously isn't a problem in higher diamond/masters/challenger anyway). The current additions do not address that and only create more divisions to redefine where the new "diamond 5 meme" division will be.