Ratings are down because people simply aren’t pressing Q. Personally I hope this is the new norm and Blizzard stops with this season-to-season mmr inconsistency that frustrates so many people. If people really do get upset about bracket threshholds without inflation in play, then all that proves is that we really should go back to % titles.
Artificial MMR inflation is a plague. I would even go so far as to say they intended this to happen, since they dropped enchant to 1950 and weapons to 2100.