Let me preface this with - I dont intend for this post to be super negative (although it may seem like it a bit further down the line)
Firstly, the recent change with the priority pass system has made queue times faster across the board (as far as playing in OCE and not only while using a priority pass) so thats a massive positive, prior to the change I could expect queue times to average about 30-50 mins for damage (playing later in the evening as I work long hours and don’t get home until late - so between around 10pm and 3am ish), and after the change im averaging somewhere in the realm of 5-15 minutes for damage at the same times. This is excellent for the health of the game as it reduces the impact of negative experiences as you get pushed into a new game quickly.
Secondly, OCE server ping seems to be very stable (speaking for the last 3 months or so) prior to that I was experiencing badly fluctuating ping but it seems to be much more stable now. Not sure why this is but it is what it is…
Finally, I think that the queue time reduction I mentioned earlier is still not enough to persuade higher ranked players to play on their “main” account - im talking about smurfs - this issue has been persistent for the last year or more where I notice in if not every game every other game at least one exceedingly low level account - i think that this behaviour is becoming more understandable to me now that I have had experience with those 30-50 minute or more queue times. Players must be frustrated at the underpopulated higher ranks and are seeking to get more games faster by playing on a lower ranked account, but they find themselves needing to hard throw or what I see more frequently is soft throwing, I also see that usually players on these low level accounts only really put effort in when they are on the damage role. I believe that this is one of the major causes for the low population at higher ranks, ill explain; the obvious reasons are a loss due to a higher skilled player on the enemy team or someone throwing on your own team to maintain a lower skill rating. The less obvious but equally valid reasons are; higher ranked players are playing on low ranked accounts rather than their higher ranked accounts… if you think about that it makes sense, if all the smurfs stopped smurfing and started playing on their mains, wouldn’t the queue times be reduced as the higher ranks would be more populated? The other less obvious reason being that; players who are trying to hone their skills and may be of high enough skill to rank up are getting tired of losing games to this bad behaviour so they stop caring, this is where a lot of the soft throwing starts to become apparent, people get tired of smurfs so they stop caring so they just autopilot through their games, or they get toxic towards their team mates for not being able to deal with the enemy smurf which causes team discourse and inevitably leads to a loss…
Im not sure how this situation can be resolved. Perhaps region locking OCE players in some way so that VPN use to other servers doesn’t work which could bring back players who have decided to leave the OCE environment altogether in an effort to repopulate the higher ranks. Increasing the level requirement for competitive play is also a possible solution, but mostly I think there needs to be more incentive for players to use higher level accounts (im unsure of where that incentive would come from).
Im hoping someone who has the influence to make the changes needed sees this so new life can come back to this great game as on the OCE servers its getting pretty stale.
Had to google what OCE stands for, the Oceania region? 
