Not enough players are queueing for arenas - make them!

[Schaka]

Give them an initiative.
Create a 2s soloqueue that matches only for specific, good comps. There aren't that many to choose from.
Then make those people match with regular rated 2s until 1.8k, 2k or so. Get the bracket rolling.

If that's been effective and people are overall more willing to play arenas, you can start doing this to 3s. But you need to get people queueing! They need to be able to find a real challenge and have that feeling of success and accomplishment with someone in their own skill bracket.

The main reason to do this though:
Why not? People basically queue rated 2s with randoms anyway. That's basically how it is. The only good teams of people playing together above 1.8k are people who have known each other for a while. A closed, gated community, if you will. The rest already functions like a soloq. But you basically make them go through too much effort to start queueing.

People are fucking lazy as shit. Most come here to set up their characters before another server launches. But if you want them to get into the game, do it somehow. They will have fun and keep going, maybe stay in the long run. Lure them in with getting some play practise in preparation for whatever they're preparing for. Convince them they need to get better to compete, trigger their nostalgia to make them queue.

[Apuclevercow]

A good idea, not sure it'd be easy to implement this with all the limits the client has got.

[Schaka]

It would be all server side, either utilizing no or the 5s bracket. You could keep an "invisible" team on the server too, if you wanted. Use a command to check your stats etc.
Then you can just play and receive points, 5s is reserved for soloq.

[Henhouse]

This is incredibly similar to originally the ideas we had back in the summer before committing to the tournament-styled idea.

Our idea was simply to have a non-disbandable team for 2v2 and instead of a solo-queue system, you simply queue with any random partner that you are in a party with. That way if you want to change teammates, you can do so easily without worrying about teams. Additionally, your rating was like MMR -- you couldn't reset it, or disband it. The idea behind this was that it would create a more accurate representation of players' rating since they wouldn't be remaking teams over and over.

This is similar, I see.

[ZatYo]

This is incredibly similar to originally the ideas we had back in the summer before committing to the tournament-styled idea.

Our idea was simply to have a non-disbandable team for 2v2 and instead of a solo-queue system, you simply queue with any random partner that you are in a party with. That way if you want to change teammates, you can do so easily without worrying about teams. Additionally, your rating was like MMR -- you couldn't reset it, or disband it. The idea behind this was that it would create a more accurate representation of players' rating since they wouldn't be remaking teams over and over.

This is similar, I see.

Is the idea to make all of the teams this way or just make it an option

[Henhouse]

Is the idea to make all of the teams this way or just make it an option

It was the idea to make all 2v2 this way, but as I said, the plans were scrapped.