i wonder about this too
gold-plat works fine for accounts that are average performers, but complete noobs (in my experience) are not average performers, they are high bronze-low silver performers. *
they have a few options to go about it
for example they could reset the progression in regard to our levels - we already know they plan on overhauling it. maybe we can’t play comp immediately upon ow2 dropping? maybe we have to gain x amount of levels or experience in whatever their new system is. they could use this time to reassess old players and try to figure out if new accounts look like actual new players. or maybe they just bite the bullet and make the first week of comp super uncertain and do this literally in the competitive mode.
with an already existing image of what each tier’s performance looks like, you can get a pretty good picture of how someone’s gonna perform in just those first few 5-10 levels. i would wager that if someone’s playing honestly (trying their best consistently) and they’re not over 4k (an extreme outlier), they’re probably not “smurfing” anymore after 10 levels of qp.
once they hit comp is a different story, in my case it seems like it still starts my fresh lvl 25 accounts in dead center but with a very high uncertainty factor. i’ll have a solid gold lobby for my first game, then plat, then plat-dia, then dia, etc until it places at or above 3k (after only 5 games!). seems possible that you might see the opposite effect where a total noob might have a gold in their first game, but then place 1.5k
* a important caveat here is that if you’re grouped with the noob, i believe its gonna throw the matchmaker’s image of them completely out of wack as they level. i’ve had this happen with a few friends - one of them we helped level up and he ended up placing 2 games off of plat, then he lost every game to bottom 500. and it wasn’t a quick descent - it took LOTS of games. 