Hello everyone. Speaking from a perspective of a new player who only few months ago found this game, and started playing.
Been browsing topic, and common problem I`ve found is kinda stagnation of the community, especially on higher level ratings, but such problems can quickly move to other brackets fast.
So, hope my perspective can give you some insight how you can retain new players in greater numbers, and have them be a bit competitive. Best motivator when gaining any new knowledge is confidence you will not be wasting your time, when you finally get it.
First feeling you get when you join custom lobby is, you are not welcome there. No greys etc. makes it hard to get out of grey phase. Ok, lets try ranked than, and get spanked in 10ish mins, just feeling overwhelmed. I can watch the replays and maybe figure out something, but most ppl and players dont have that kind of time and dedication, and will just quit there.
So, having some easy to see ladder or bracket would be great, especialy if you can provide some guidance.
This is just a rough idea, and welcome further discussion on it, but here it is in short version.
Have dedicated volountier instructors, who can guide new players by for exsample playing against them, while being on discord. So you can communicate misstakes he makes. If you are droping him, and see no reaction, tell him that. Hey man, just droped ya there, its 15 mins in the game, expect such things, and you can counter by placing radar there or something along those lines.
And added benefit, those players will have a proper grasp of the game, and its mechanics, not only know how to play 1 map. People like to stay in their confidance zone, so if they learned from custom games to play on 1 or 2 maps, they will only stay there, its scary to get outside. So that is another number of players who can be infused on global population of the game.
Hope this made any sense