Soloed to masters! No voice chat! Overhaul rank! Care about solo players!

@AIItheRageGreat suggestions. You're post is quite refreshing on this site and your solutions are well thought out.
I would add to the list that players should be able to stay in bronze if they are bad. Right now there is no ante up for bronze meaning that hitting matchmake enough times will make them silver. Admittedly this doesn't affect higher skills.
Matchmaking and lag seem to be my biggest hurdle in this game. Enemy teams are almost always competant and yet my team will be new players or players with bad mentality. How many of my teammates are going to solo charge into a 3v1 then ping furiously when they die? How are players so ignorant of their surroundings? Losing an honest fight is one thing, but charging in alone is another.
I tend to stay loyal to my team even at cost to me, so I don't ever make it to high ranks. The above changes would be very welcome, though I don't think they would be enough to keep me playing. Lag and hitreg cause more trouble.
All in all, the game is demonstrably dying and players are abandoning it. Low player counts are going to remain a problem.

I'm a D4 so don't have the comparison's but the one thing you said that is brilliant and I think applies on the way up is it is silly to take streamer advice and think you should play like them.  First off, probably few of us have the ability of a streamer.  Second and more importantly, what it takes to get through low ranks is not nearly the same as what it takes as you advance.  Diving stupidly for kills still happens in D4 and I honestly thought it would be gone by then.  You STILL have people getting themselves in way over their heads, charging stupidly for kills, and then getting mad when you don't follow. 

In fact, I got kind of bored of D4.  If I want to advance to Masters, I'll focus on it another season.  The penalty in D4 is too harsh right now for me to suffer through when I watch a team mate suicide push.

@AIItheRage 

Great effort and congratulations, its not easy to get to master rank as a solo Q'er.

I really do like your post here. It is quite refreshing, well written and best of all not full of whining complaints but rather quite a bit of good constructive criticism. 

I especially liked and I quote you here " What it means to be a team player

Not focused on damage. Doesn't matter who get's the kill. Provide cover fire, be a decoy. Look out for 3rd parties.

Don't fight over loot. The amount of people getting toxic over loot is childish. I want everyone geared for success.

Pings good weapons early game! Anyone who does not do this is simply a bad player". I live by this mantra with my set team and also when I play with Randoms.

I have to agree with @hayhor getting rid of voice chat would not be a good thing. I have won many a game with a few good Randoms that used the voice chat coupled with the ping system to great effect. For those toxic Randoms or those that are just chit chatting or have to much going on in their background just mute them. 

A way to match like minded players would be great.

Pre selecting up to three Legends would also be good but not necessary.

De-ranking or the removal of Rank protection, I am all for it but it could bring about some crazy kill farmers, IDK but would be worth a try to see if it fixes some things.

New scoring system, I think the current system is very good as it puts an emphasis on the actual goal of the game, winning and placement, however I do think some changes to improve it could be made like incorporating some sort of small RP gain for revives and respawns to incentivize team play by getting your teammates back into the game.  

Ranked matchmaking this such a hard thing to balance for the player experience and Que times: My suggestion would be as follows:

For Bronze to Platinum ranks players play vs their current rank and up to three divisions up or down from their rank. Premade squads use the highest players rank as the base for this. 

Diamond 4 vs Plat 2-1 and D4-3

D2-1 vs D2-1 and Masters

Masters vs D2-1 and Pred.

Pred vs Masters and D2-1

"My worst matching was a P1 and G1 duo when I was D1. They instantly died on their first push. I'm not even sure you can call it push, the second they saw a team they died. Just mowed down instantly". This should absolutely never happen I can see where a Plat 1 player is in a diamond lobby but a Gold player should never have to be pitted against diamond ranked players and diamond ranked players should never be paired with gold the skill gaps are just way to much and is no fun for the gold or diamond players.

This is all just my honest opinion feel free to constructively point out the flaws in my thinking. 

@AIItheRage once again thanks for a great post.

Congratos on soloing to master, its a proper feat :D

I agree with some of yours but no voicechat im not agreeing on this would pretty much create virtually 2 different ranked segments so on rank is not comparable, if you tried playing premade you'll see that you mostly play other premades as is - its far harder and it requires that one more dimension is master, just having voice wont help you, using it efficiently will.

Same I do not agree on the down-rank, however not matching 1,2,3 with 4 I strongly agree on as it fix so the climbers that is meant to be hard-stuck at a different 4 gets to go there to work on their progression. The down-rank would only make it even harder to progress your skill level as you dont regularly meet people better then you so you can gradually progress, same as pubs it takes forever to progress skills there compared to ranked. I see some flagging down-rank as the solution, it would only secure the people who already progressed to stay there alone and make it much harder for the people who is progressing to get up there to challenge them. Current system when you're hard-stuck at play you still play plat level and if you wish to get better you get to work to get better at that level, but making it so you can get out of the 4 and start climbing is an awesome idea :D