a way to remove unranked and "bogus" ranked players

Problem 1: MMR converges very slowly in a 5v5 game, because we don't know who contributed to game outcomes. Excellent players carrying 1v9 inaccurately boost the MMR of their teammates, and players ranked too high inaccurately drop the MMR of their teammates when they heavily contribute to losses.

Problem 2: In the lower tiers (bronze-silver) there are a significant number of unranked players and players with inaccurate (too high) MMR. For example, a player who is ranked S1 or G4, but who plays 1-4 games a season at an iron/bronze level -- not enough games to even get demoted. This adds even more randomness, inaccuracy, frustration, and toxicity into a ranked MMR system that already has to deal with the challenges of 5v5 MMR converging very slowly.

I think the matchmaking would be substantially better, and toxicity substantially lower, if something were done to get these unranked and inaccurate-MMR players out of the ranked queues... and come up with a system to try to make MMR more accurate before allowing players into the ranked queues.

Of course I understand if one is good enough, one can carry 1v9 when playing substantially below their actual rank. There are many examples of such players. However, this stops working near one's actual rank. And also, this argument doesn't justify the above ranked MMR randomness being a good thing, it just says one can overcome it. Sure. one can overcome it. lets see if we can change the system so overcoming it isn't quite as necessary.

Here is my idea to do this:

Require players to "qualify" into ranked but using the normal queues, if they have not played an average of 3 ranked games a week in the previous season.

This is not like the old placement system, because the old placement system put people into the ranked queues during placement. The intent of this system is to intentionally get them out of the ranked queues during placement.

This would be like a promotion round, where they have to win 3-out-of-5 games, but they can only queue solo.. and the games they play are actually match made in the normal queue (using their ranked MMR). Their matchmaking MMR is frozen during the qualification. Only after the qualification is decided, their MMR is adjusted based on the game results. If they failed, their MMR is lower, and they only have to win 2-of-5 games.

When this special qualification-normal matchmaking is done, the matchmaker should attempt to use players who have ranked MMR, and to use their ranked MMR.. even though this is a normal game. In many cases this won't be possible, and it'll just be a regular normal with normal MMR. These games would not affect the ranked MMR of any of those players, regardless of the outcome - which is fine, because to those players it's a normal game.

My hope is that this would solve a few problems:

(1) players who only play 1-5 "ranked" games a month or season will never actually finish the qualification system, and so they will never play any games in the actual ranked queue... which means their MMR randomness will never be injected into ranked games.

(2) players will have to play at least 3, more likely 5, and maybe even 7 "ranked qualifier" games before they are let into the ranked queues for the first-time. This will further improve the accuracy of MMRs of players entering the ranked queues.

(3) high randomness games with unranked or inaccurately ranked players will not affect the ranked MMR of all the other players in the game.. because they will be played in the normal queues...

No changes will ever make the MMR system perfect, or remove all toxcitity.. but I think something like this would go a long way to improving the feel of the queues....

Happy Climbing!