Not sure if this is my shard or not, but sounds a lot like it.
One day I looked at current arena rank of the fleet arena top 50. The average arena rank was 7 (remember this was a snapshot, not looking at best finish but where they currently we at one moment). The mode was 1. Standard deviation was around 5.
Basically that means the most common rank was 1st and 95% were under 20 at that moment.
My fleet is better than most in my guild, yet I struggle to finish below 500. Zeta is essentially an unattainable material dependent 100% on the fickle RNG of the ship challenge 3x per week. The now added crystal bonus is even more of a slap in the face.