Welp, want to share my expirience with you. I just got plat 4. at the very beggining of season it(ranked system) was cool for me, because in previous rank system in diamond 1 i`ve met players that dont deserve it, and now, it happend along the way to play. In previous system the most cursed rank was play, but now its gold, cuz u can get rookies with lvl 30 in ur team, and preds as enemts in same match. As i can see they(devs) tried to make smooth transition along the ranks, like u constanly feel player quality improvement, but it went horribly wrong because u either got teamed up with someone who either know how to play properly or dont know how 2 shoot before plat. and from 10 play matches i can see thta here is WAY more competetive level of gameplay. I dont want to cry about facing way more stronger enemys than me, cuz i can learn how 2 play better because of it, but i dont want 10 hours into apex players here as well. This almost imposible now for solo que(non of my friends like apex, and finding someone throught discords, etc. havent succseed.)
In my opinion they should do smth with messed gold lobby, in plat u already need to w8 for lobby to fill, so i think that more players now in gold, but in gold instead of gold teammates u got rookie/bronze/silver. But i`m good with plat being sweaty now, i really do enjoy it, before first pre-made TTV/pro/sweaty squads face mine somehow idk how they got this rank teammates.
Conclusion; everything from rookie to gold 1 is a pit that sucking you down ranks, so you must put huge amount of effort to get out. As a reward in more higher ranks chance to meet more skilled randoms in ur team is high, and overall quality of games are more competetive and challenging, and its slightly easier to rank up there since ur teammates somehow got there too, so they know how to play this game.
P.S. Sorry for my english. And this reply in general, didnt find better way to exrpess my expirience