I'm still going to put my vote in the "just remove points losses entirely" camp. Add in some hidden tiers to Crystal to improve matchmaking, that'd work fine. But I think we're always going to be dissatisfied with a system that is solo queue only, and "punishes" us when our losses may not be our fault at all. Everyone's had games where your teammates are running off to die like fucking lemmings, or refusing to focus fire, or whatever, and it costs your team the game. Due to the way the system tries to balance teams, it feels like those games are more common the higher your CR is - certainly, the closer I got to top 100 and the higher I went inside top 100, the more likely it seemed I'd be "trapped" with bad players repeatedly if I just kept queuing instead of dodging queues.

I don't think any system whereby the highest-rated players are very directly encouraged to *not play the game* is a broken system and should be reviewed. Simply removing points losses from game losses would eliminate that issue entirely. You could add diminishing returns to keep keep ratings from blasting into the stratosphere (10% fewer points per tier, etc), but ultimately it would just simply be about total games played and total wins. Obviously, "teammate RNG" would still be frustrating, but I think it would be *far* less frustrating if there was no perceived loss for failure. I suppose that runs the risk of *increasing* "lol idc" behavior... but, let's be honest - you actually think those people are *ever* going to actually try to win?