Please consider introducing a rating threshold for matchmaking in crystal

[Valence]

Wasn't this a thing already on JP in Endwalker or did I dream it? That above a certain crystal rating, players would not be teamed with the Diamond league anymore?

I think either way that it's worth considering. Diamond is essentially fodder to top rankers, and the skill gap between to players and high Diamond is already akin to what separates gold and diam. It's probably just frustrating and not enjoyable for either side, so if they made us combine datacenters for the precise reason to get a bigger pool of players, than please consider doing this, if it's not already the case.

[AlliciaCapulet]

Honestly, for every tier, there should be a threshold. Starting *** 1 with 2 star, you can start being matched with the upper league because you are close to get there and it's normal that you start playing vs the upper league. But before that, nope. And match with the bottom of the upper league, not the top. Seeing for exemple, a bronze 3 (the worsts players) with a silver 1 is stupid and will be an heavy weight for the person who is about to turn gold. And it's true for any ranking. With the current pool of player, it should be easily doable.

[Valence]

So it's been nothing new by now, but most players that reach low crystal tend to stop there and park their cars until the next season. Once they reach crystal I don't see them anymore in crystal games at all, except for rare exceptions. This may due to multiple reasons, like taking more time to get there since top rankers have to get out of diamond first to make room for others to move up more easily, but also because they're not playing for crystal rating and are just happy with going hard into the mode for a couple of weeks and then vanishing to do other things, which I totally respect too. This also lowers motivation for other players to keep going as well since the skill gap in games will just be atrocious and unattractive.

Either way, most crystal games in the first week end up being a gigantic mess mostly focused around Diamond since everybody that was crystal restarts on Diamond, and past a couple of weeks or less, we end up with crystal games where it's 1000 or 2000+ rating crystal players paired with diamond players to fill up the gaps, which is pretty terrible. This doesn't happen on JP since apparently they keep playing over and over and keep the mode active, but on EU, even after the DC merge, it continues happening, and I'm actually not convinced that there is much more activity than there was before the merge (if we look at the leaderboards).

The way the system is designed with platinum acting as a safety net and pairing players that have no right being there into Diam games and draining the player pool of Unranked-Gold out of their players over time once they're all in Plat if by sheer luck, and with players coasting until they reach crystal and stop playing but for the top crystal players which ends up with top rankers paired with players still in Diam trying to climb to crystal (and therefore peforming less well than actual low crystal players that vanished), is pretty terrible. Perhaps it works on JP, but I think it shows glaring problems here on EU. The sad part is that if SE did what I made the thread originally for, which is introducing the high crystal matchmaking threshold that JP has past crystal rating 1000+ (or something), top crystal games would probably not even pop, and worse, low crystal/diam games required to advanced to crystal would not pop at all due to the absence of low crystal players.

I do not know what the solutions for this are. Some have mentioned rank decay, but at the cost of feeling held hostage by the game. Perhaps there is something to be said on how the system push people to just reach for a league and then just stay parked there as well. Either way, I think it's a serious issue that should be looked into.