Ranked Rewards

[DrWho2010]

There was also rampant cheating/hacking/smurfing/alt boosting etc going on that gave the top 100 a bad stigma. Generally it was seen or perceived to be if you got a top 100 reward, you had cheated to get there, and also meant less spots available at the top 100 for actual players to reach. As well, since rank decay isn't a thing here that also dis-incentivized people to populate queues.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

There was also rampant cheating/hacking/smurfing/alt boosting etc going on that gave the top 100 a bad stigma. Generally it was seen or perceived to be if you got a top 100 reward, you had cheated to get there, and also meant less spots available at the top 100 for actual players to reach. As well, since rank decay isn't a thing here that also dis-incentivized people to populate queues.

There is definitely a lot of merit on that statement, sadly. The stigma is quite real. Partially though if we simply had a bigger playerbase to dilute the relative amount of cheaters to legit players it might've helped, but the old role system made Feast extremely inaccessible on multiple fronts. Rank decay for Top 100 days (maybe in conjunction with making it based on current rating rather than highest, or maybe decay highest rating first?) could've definitely helped.