solo queue rewards risky play too much, punishes cautious play

In lower elo at least.

So I'll open by saying I have no solution to this.

I've noticed in my normal Draft matches, where i've had a few bad losing streaks and am currently playing with much lower caliber players than I'm used to, that the overall "better" strategy of playing cautiously and consciously making good and safe decisions, results in less success than just going in fearlessly and trying to snowball hard by taking unnecessary risks.

First, by better I mean the strategy that would win if each team stuck to a strategy collectively. The strategy that's used in higher elo and especially competitive play.

So, why do I think this is the case? Inevitably, in lower elo play, there will be a large variety in skill level. If you have each team with one person who is clearly better than the rest and they are in different lanes, the two lanes are going to be very uneven.
The difference is that, a good player who should be climbing who plays more risky will get kills over their Lane opponent and snowball an early lead. Their unskilled opponent won't back off and will end up feeding. A good player who uses the strategy of steadily building up a lead by harassing effectively and dominating in cs will build up a good lead as well, but their opponent won't be made irrelevant and their opponent's allies won't be too far behind you to fight you.

I guess what I'm saying is: A player who should be climbing and plays aggressively wins or loses based on their plays. If their risks work out they'll carry, if they don't work out they'll feed and lose the game for their team. Since they should be climbing, they'll carry more often than they feed and hence will climb quickly. A player who should be climbing and plays cautiously wins or loses based on their teammates play. They'll play well every game and will always have strong KDAs, good map control, good defense, etc... But if their teammates play aggressive and lose (due to not deserving to climb) they'll be unable to carry. I'd their teammates play aggressive and win, they'll win the game very convincingly. It results in all of their wins being 20 min slaughters and all of their losses being 40+ min close matches, but they only win about half of their games because the end result is mostly independent of their good play (their cautious play will only make the difference in close matches) but dependent on how their allies do. I.e. They will carry as long as none of their allies feed, but at low elo someone will always end up feeding (on one of the two teams).

So, to anyone who's bothered to read this far - I'm not complaining so much as I'm making an observation. If you're finding that you're playing cautiously and not climbing despite playing very well in every game, perhaps the secret to climbing elo is to just go HAM and accept that you'll feed sometimes and cause your team to lose, but you'll carry more often. Be selfish and don't care when you feed and mess over your cautious allies, because if your cautious someone else is going to carry. Consistent play isn't important for climbing, consistent wins are.