Just curious as to why there is an even lower tier. Is this going to cause players to start out even lower? Shouldn't the spread and addition of ranks be to encourage a push in the positive direction? Is this going to increase the grind even further? So far it does not feel like a solution, but a change again for the sake of change.
I believe the given answer if to help deal with the skill gaps between players. From low bronze to high bronze, there is a MAJOR difference in skill level. This occurs in Diamond as well, so Riot is trying to mitigate this.
It's to remove players from the bronze/silver category that is too full at the moment. It won't slow down progression because every divisions will only have 4 instead of 5 tiers also. Ranking up is only up to you also, it can be fast or slow, it's only your skills that matter. Good players will climb, bad players will go down.
I just started playing again and I'm bad now, stuck in gold, I watched my replays, stopped tilting and now I'm slowly climbing again as an example.
Some areas on the current ranked ladder are overcrowded with different levels of skill. Adding ranks to those particular areas is supposed to smooth out the ladder in those areas (Bronze 5 - Bronze 3, Pretty much all of silver) so that smaller differences in skill can actually be more notable by rank.
