It’s not balanced when your mmr is average 1000 and you tag conqueror’s premade and lost anyway 24elo points. There is a huge mess in calculation in ranked. However, personal score should impact the up and loss of elo. Because a game where you carry your all team is not the same as a game where you made 2000pts at 30min.
I mostly play multiplayer ranked pick up game and the disbalance is colossal in this bracket. This is some statement from all 5 season of ranked matchs.
You have :
-premade of good teams (>diamond/conq +) which destroy easily random teams (plat<), but however the difference of elo is, you keep winning or losing the same amount of points
-people who don’t know how their civ works but keep coming to try them in ranked
-your elo directly linked to the civ you play (if you’re conq with mongol, you’re not with other you never play), and it’s extremely difficult to train in QM because you have everything in this mode (from player who want to chill to people who come to destroy everything without stake, try cheesy strategies or troll)
-leavers after loading screen (without rematch this is the worst feeling, when you hardly win 25pts and lost them after for just a moron who instant left)
-when you reach a good mmr or win streak you are often placed as the “motor” of your team and have to carry them to continue progress. I made this statement because when i’m on a lose streak, i keep getting low game easy to win until i take back some of the loss previously made.
-the game is not very highly selective in its elo calculation. I saw many games where the level of the player did not correspond to his rank. I think the biggest gap is between gold3 and diamond 1, because you have the core of the players here and it’s a huge circus. You have plat 2/3 better than diamond 2/3 sometimes and it feels very weird. When these guys are sometimes 3 or 4 division higher on their ATH you understand the problem in this game. There is no stabilization (a game like SC2 or WOW in arena is way better in his elo system). While people keep grinding and next straight falling down when they reach their ath, you can’t have homogeneous games.
- mostly the problem is the low number of players in each division and the low number of division.
As i said, there is a huge gap between a plat 1 and 3 but the game keep mixing gold with diamond in v2/v3/v4 bracket. The result is there is no progression possible with a 50/50 win rate.
Solutions :
-Stop sanction players when they lost to a much higher elo team in a no match (150+ elo diff should not give you a loss of 25pts while a balanced game give you 20).
-Increase the amount of points to get the second and third tier of each division (100pts between plat2 and diamond 1 for example, is too tight).
-while the number of players is too low to divide random ranked match (soloQ/duoQ) and premade ranked match (like League of Legend), a system of clan should be implemented in game to facilitate people and encourage them to come in premade. Atm, nobody use the in game voice in pickup matches.
I consider the 2v2 bracket as the most competitive in multiplayer ranked and it’s quite easy to found someone, but for the others bracket from 3v3 which is a mix and 4v4 which is the most casual, the problem is evident.
-The progression in ranked is essential but the game feels very chopped. You can get a big rank a season and slack in a lower division one or two season after. You can also rush a rank and stop playing (that was the main problem of the past 5 season without the ATH reward system). But when i reach a rank and go down 2 or 3 divisions after and keep playing against people with plus 200elo difference (because the game is empty), i don’t feel inferior as them.
Hope my ideas are understandable, 
edit : I forgot to talk about the many smurfs accounts and foreigner from EU servers but there are enough problems in the first post
