my thoughts - game has been out for 3.5 years almost. long ass time in general. especially since ranked has virtually no updates / balance changes, strat development will always be slower than it used to be, players will have less to learn, and the game will feel more and more repetitive. this seems like one of those natural ebb and flows with the communities ranked interest. its also in the middle of the season, not close to any playoffs. some top players also recently finished playing at lvlup / worlds, which was definitely a big peak in time for viewer and player activity - draftout, gridlock, lifesteal, msmp, etc, whatever. other events have taken the focus of some of rankeds top players and theres a cascading effect down the ladder and through viewers that lowers playercount a bit. i really dont think this is a massive part of it tho - phase point system is terrible (100% MY FAULT). phase points force playtime on players which is always bad. two years ago i saw it as the lesser of two evils to help player counts. but it should never be the final answer. players should never be incentivized to not queue - rather they should always serve to gain something while queuing. that could be through some sort of battle pass or in game currency for cosmetics. for top players it could be hosting multiple in client tournaments a month, so staying fresh is highly beneficial to those tournament performances. phase points as a system are horrendous and should be the playoffs team first focus in the future - sort of piggybacking the above point, basically nothing has ever changed in a large portion of the competitive scene for ranked. mss and lcq could use some format shakeups, and imo the entire playoffs circuit could get reworked into a better qualification system at the very least. players arent excited to play their 15th lcq style format anymore. they are excited for things like mcsr worlds lcq bracket and eg ffa. but those things arent happening now so people are less interested - as players approach their own personal skill ceiling the game gets more and more frustrating to play. we still dont have strays or woodlight standardization (THESE ARE HARD TO FIX. ITS OKAY). so lots of losses can be very tilting if they happen from those causes. also losing in general is basically always tilting. the game is so fragile, one blocks worth of a mistake can cost an entire seed. almost every mistake is very tilting. and theres not a very accomplishing feeling to winning to offset that so what should ranked do? imo for top players they should focus a ton on improving the competitive circuit system entirely. the current system has some large holes that have started to show themselves recently. improving these systems would motivate more top runners to play and queue which then motivates more viewers to follow the scene and more lower ranked players to try and improve to join the scene themselves for the rest of the ranked ecosystem it seems like theres kinda just been a lack of quality of life updates to ranked recently. i know the team has been really slammed with running both lans this year as well as dealing with the ludwig boom and said aftermath. and unfortunately a lot of simple updates to the mod (that would make the game much more fun!) have been overlooked. new advancement badges, chat emojis, any sort of cosmetic system, pronouns, name colors. so many small things that would go a long way but i have no doubt that ranked wont be going anywhere anytime soon. season 11 playoffs will be great. and hopefully the future will be even better