Most people don’t want to spend large amounts of time “getting good” and don’t enjoy getting matched up against players that absolutely destroy them, but instead prefer more casual games against other players with middling skills. The thing is though, even if highly competitive games include an unranked queue intended for casuals, it ends up being filled with smurfs[0] and the like looking to smash lower skilled players, which drains the fun from the game for those players. Thinking about it that way, it’d make perfect sense if the most popular PvP games would be those that are shunned by the highly competitive - a lack of “pro” players might be considered a feature rather than a bug.
[0]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/17209/where-does...
Normal players would like to participate in the progression systems you design! Having a ranked queue that is uninviting to normal players due to skill, and an unranked queue that is uninviting to everyone due to progression design, but less uninviting to normal players than the ranked queue, is a pretty suboptimal result.
It's lately become a lot more popular to just secretly (or at least stealthily) put people in with bots. Marvel Snap was really successful at emulating opponents at low ranks and gradually increasing real opponent density the higher you are. Battle Royale games with 100 players per game can easily add a bunch of bots so you aren't at the bottom and can even win. I noticed Mario Kart World also has bots in most knockout matches (and I highly appreciate that it is transparent about this fact.)
This is to say nothing of the rampant cheating in the game, which if a person ever gets banned for, there is nothing stopping them from just spending 10$ on a replacement account.
It’s rare for any product to have more success in later invocations than the first edition, that is where the narrative is fresh and strong- and even in the event sequels are stronger, they tend to increase sales of the first season/movie/etc; because people want the whole experience.
Story-based content is what struggles with sequels because it's really hard to both capture the feeling of the original sufficiently to satisfy existing fans while also telling a new story that's interesting in its own right. Being derivative without being too derivative.
I don't think it's ever really been true that video game sequels sucked. Maybe Zelda 2 and to a lesser extent Mario 2 - but game developers seem to break new ground on sequels a lot. In fact I think sequels have been better than originals more often than not throughout game history.
For one thing it may just be more common for the first to not reach its full audience.
But my experience as a game developer is also that, when you start out making a new game, you probably kinda suck at making that game. Games sometimes suck for most of their development until they suddenly get good near the end.
And by the end, you get really good at making that specific game. A lot of game design has to come together to enlighten further game design decisions, and you really come to know what's fun by the end of it. Not to mention the technology you build for it!
A sequel allows the same team to build on the shoulders of the first game, keeping what worked, adding features that players missed and refining those that didn’t work. It’s seen as a safer investment, with an existing fan base to leverage, and so this often leads to larger development and marketing budgets with a focus on growth.