While I made the original post suggesting that the game does in fact have a sizable player count, I did not mean to suggest that because of this playerbase, that means that splitting the playlists into solo and party based queues is a good idea. At the moment the game does have an underlying orientation to place parties against parties, and solo queuers against solo queuers, the majority of my ranked games when with a full party, have been against another full party. People saying that the system 'worked well' in TLOU, must have been playing a different game to me. While the lone wolf playlist in TLOU worked perfectly well if that was all that you played, the binary system made the game incredibly punishing if you played with party sizes smaller than 5.
Significantly, if you played with a party of 4 the matchmaking would be dependent on finding a lone solo queuer in the 'party' playlist. In many cases this lead to excessive matchmaking times, or unresolved imbalances between the number of players on each team. Meanwhile, if you were playing in smaller parties, such as parties of two, the binary system, which treated all parties as equal, would regularly throw party compositions such as two parties of two, plus one solo queuer against a fully party of 5 players.
The matchmaking as a whole between the segmented playlists was invariably worse than it is in UC4, as each of the two segregated playlists was split between two pools. Therefore the games connection filtering systems had less options when trying to group players with similar connection qualities between one another. Sometimes this lead to lag, but most often it just lead to extremely long matchmaking times. Matchmaking quality was as a whole, considerably worse than it was in Uncharted 4 . If you were a solo queuer, the lone wolf playlist worked fine, but if you were a team, unless you found another team of five, the matchmaking would take an incredible amount of time to fill the lobby.
The largest issue is that even a party playlist is dependent on solo querers, unless it enforces that all parties are full parties (like Rocket League does). Otherwise, whom do you think is going to fill the empty slots in matches where there are parties of two, or four?
The only system that can work here are either a) a split system where the 'party' playlist demands that a full party is present before beginning a match, or b) an adaptive system where the game attempts to appropriately filter players into evenly matched games, with party composition as one of a number of considerations. At the moment we have the latter, where the matchmaking is trying to fit parties against parties, and solo's against solo's, but there are other factors it considers too, like connection quality and skill. So inevitably, you are not always going to get a match that's perfect on all fronts - for instance I would rather the game place me into a lobby with a good connection, but against a party, than a match that placed me into a game of solo queuers where I didn't have a good connection. Filling the empty slots is also a necessity of the current system, so you're going to be thrown against parties as a solo queuer quite often when that occurs, but your team is also likely to be a party themselves, so it's not exactly unfair.
I think it's also true that for many people the issues also relate to a external locus of control - where certain people like to externalize their issues to something beyond their control, or beyond the control of their associated team mates. Players often see an opposing team that are performing slightly better, coordinating a little better as a team, and then it's automatically assumed that they're a complete party of 5, because it's easier to place responsibility for your loses on matchmaking, your team mates, or the opposition, than it is on you and your team as a collective. In many instances I have joined a random group of players who ended up being co-operative, following one another around as a team, and I imagine to the other team, it would have looked like we were a pre-made party.
For the most part however, the matches I get when I solo queue, are the easiest I've ever had. Matches where one team of uncooperative rabble faces off against another team of uncooperative rabble. I often lose this games even when finishing with scores like 20-1, but at the same time one has to accept that their influence on a team is only 20%, so I understand when losses occur as my team as a collective, was not as good as the opposition. That's the inevitable consequence of not hand selecting your team mates. That's for unranked however, as for ranked, of course, if you solo queue you will get matched against parties. Because most people that want to perform well are going to intentionally form a group of coordinating players to do so, therefore it's quite likely that some form of party outweighs the solo queue population in this playlist.
However, that doesn't mean that splitting ranked between parties and solo's is a good option. As I say, that would mean that all parties would need to go into a match with a fully stocked team, otherwise the singular empty slots would not be filled. At the same time, it would most likely see a return of the extreme matchmaking times that featured in TLOU. Instead, I would suggest that if you want to be competitive in a team based game, you either accept the fact that you only influence a fraction of performance outcome of your individual team and therefore, will inevitably lose frequently against better performing teams, or you make an effort to control that variance by intentionally grouping and cooperating with like-minded team mates.
In the end, it is a team game, so you shouldn't come across as shocked that your team of uncoordinated randoms are losing a larger proportion of games than coordinated teams, whether that's the result of those team being pre-made or otherwise. If it were easy to simply solo queue and obtain master rank then what would be the point in the party playlist where the level of play would be inevitably higher? Either way, I do think it's likely that we will see any changes in the party or solo restrictions, and I think some people asking for those changes neglect some practical considerations. It's my opinion that if you feel that the game is miss-matching you into too many unbalanced games then you should be calling for better filtering of the matchmaking algorithms, and not a binary segregation of parties, and solo players.
If you have been suffering with ranked solo queue and are confident in your abilities on the game, then I'd be happy to team up and help anyone progress with their ranking.