Solo Q in a nutshell

Far from it.

I would say around season 10 give or take a season or two game felt more competitive. Yes "bad soloq teammates" have been there forever, no teamworking, pinging, comms has been the case 99.99% of a time yet the part about 3 stacking and cheating has basically flipped around = 3 stack players used to be so much better (talking about me teaming with other diamonds/masters) and you instantly felt competitive in Diamond2+ lobbies while cheating was more in a form of no-recoil and radars, less likely wallhacks. Now even when you find people on LFG they are far from committed and nowhere near can keep up with "master diamond" lobbies, at best you get somewhat of an advantage in Diamond 4/3 lobbies. And cheating...honestly I record most of my games and if people would care I would provide clear cut video proof of how many bluntly cheat.

Imo all because:

a) since early days old timers have quit the game as 7+ years have passed, people move on
b) Respawn haven't unfortunately shown any signs of stopping cheaters...ALGS is no longer being hacked but unfortunately season after season cheats have become more sophisticated while anti-cheat team has done close to nothing...at least I have felt worse and worse in Diamond+ hell even Plat lobbies while reaching new top scores in aim training, improving my gear, reaching new highest ranks in games like Valorant and Deadlock (compared to 2025/2026)

Sure no doubt about the fact that 3stacking - be it top 1 / 2 / 3 Preds grinding ranked or cheater/booster teaming up with some other 2 players but rage hacking - has made lobbies past Diamond4 a bit more manageable that way but:
1. I have seen at least 3 clear cases where people have somehow abused the system and teamed up past D4 -> created tickets, awaiting EA's response even though I know they will 99.999% do nothing about it :(
2. In this context we are talking about bizarre comparison of not being overrun by top players (assumingly) in the game while being Plat / low Diamond (thanks to matchmaking) or hacker 3stacks (thanks to lack of anti-cheat abilities)...basically comparing bad and worse :)

To sum up while in seasons <13 I did reach D1 falling a bit short of 10000 RP and Masters, before that and shortly after I did get to D2 regularly = I had respect to Masters level players as I clearly saw some of them being close to amazing and clean of cheats as well plus super coordinated.
Past 5 seasons I have had it and quit 3 times while not even reaching D4 because Plat lobbies are just littered with blunt cheaters, yes you can still win vs them / gain RP but for me quality of the games matter so much more than rank...I just can't entertain some loser with software over and over again.
And adding to that insult there was that famous change after Streamer/Pro outcry about lobbies when now Preds/Masters got spread into multiple Diamond and lower lobbies and now you faced major uphill battle already from D4/P1.
I do not really have any respect left for Masters players not to talk about most Preds, nor I have even close hope that I can battle through all this bs...I reached D2 with 3stack last split but it was pain in the **bleep** and we argued so much because of matchmaking and cheating that at the end people just gave up, felt drained, felt like losers not realizing / able to spectate (as hackers crash their games) how many fights were lost because of our skill gap and how much of that was just burst fire rage cheats.