It's important to realize the statistical difference in seasons over time, especially Season 16 which was far bigger than our previous ones.
Season 15:
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848 players played about
97,710 matches.
Season 16:
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1290 players played about
173,380 matches.
This is a 52% gain in players and a 77% gain in games played. Great numbers!
The misconception we see is that Bedrock, Netherite are supposed to be some ultra-rare rank that extremely few players get and yet in both season they represent less than 1.5% of the entire players in the ladder, and less than 0.5% for Bedrock (The bedrock players from s15 that win traded had their stats wiped so don't appear on the graph).
When there are more players in the ladder and more games being played at high levels, this simply allows for more players to climb to higher ranks. This is not a flaw in the system; it's how any competitive ladder system with rankings works. We don't find it problematic that there are more Netherites and Bedrocks this season because there are both more players playing, and the skill of our playerbase is increasing. They still represent an extremely small, top % of the playerbase.
Now we're not saying we
never need to consider adding more ranks but we don't see any reason to at this time. It's possible there is too much emphasis being placed on "Netherite players" as a whole when there is a clear difference between Netherite I and II/III (though this could be explained by people just going for the Netherite title, locking that in and then letting that be their rank for the season).
It's also worth remembering that the more ranks you add, the more the "difference" between ranks becomes devalued. If there are so many ranks then really what's the difference between a Gold, Amethyst, and then a Emerald? Ranks are meant to mean something and you risk ruining the ability to delineate between ranks by having so many that "the middle ranks" are all considered similar.
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