First off. Thanks so much for the new ranked seasons. They have improved the experience for me and am sure a lot of others considerably. I think due to the considerable prize fund and prestige behind winning it could be finalized a little better and fairer. My proposal would be an end of season tournament between the top x amount of players. This season I feel that 4 players have stood head and shoulders above the rest but top 8/16 for tournaments sake seems fair. I understand my biggest arguement for this can also be an arguement against; and that is timezones. Top 4 at the moment are two players in Europe, one American timezone and also kiwi timezone (New Zealand most likely). The most competitive/stacked timezone is European zone, which leaves less competitive games for other timezones and also the difference is kiwi and others usually don't get top games without playing outside their prime time. Other pros to consider are making a pr event for the end of season ladder before winter and summer Steam sales. Mid season can easily stay as is. It could have been easy for NikolAdmx to avoid AndreasG to avoid losing top spot and now for it to be the other way around. So this can also help alleviate concerns about dodging certain players and making sure we have a deserved winner.
I'm American, clopse! Kiwifruit grows in a lot of places It's true that players can grind up ranks without playing people of similar or better skill levels. This hopefully can be fixed by adjusting the algorithm, since I don't see ranked gaining any massive playerbase increase any time soon.
We already have something planned for the end of January 2020. It's still relatively difficult to grind up ranks especially once you have played a reasonable number of games. You need to consistently win against similar or better players. Wins against lower ranked players may result in no points gain while loses to lower ranked players may result in a significant points loss.
