I've played the game for about 6 years yadayada... I stopped playing a few years ago when there wasn't an elo system yet and the role list included neutral benign and an "any" role. I had issues with that list but even more so with this ranked system since I restarted playing quite a few months ago. I'm going to list some of my likes and concerns with each system and in general review some changes that I think will make the game more balanced.
OLD RANKED SYSTEM:
I liked the fact that NB roles were included in this. It allowed some freedom and more mystery in determining the role list. It also added another way to weasle out of something as an evil role. I liked the length that games usually lasted. Games in new ranked rarely end up in plot-twisted showdowns. These are all stomps in one way or another. In general I felt like the game was relatively balanced. Evils and town I felt had an equal chance to win when played right.
However, there were some issues with the "any" role that I felt made it unbalanced. I never thought "any" was truely random. Many times I found it to be 4 Mafia with the 4th coming from "any". Which seemingly made the game unfair, especially if NB wasn't town sided. If the "any" really was random I think a lot more balanced games would have come of it. I also thought the lack of mystery in town roles made it harder on town back then actually. Less randomness I felt made it easier for evils to lie as a certain role but nowadays users are much better at determining roles, etc. Maybe 1 more RT slot would've been better than 2 TP slots. Finally, the NB spot did make games quite tipsy (ie. on a knifes edge) especially in 4 mafia games. Maybe if this had some slight adjustments to either an RT spot or another unique role, the games could be balanced and more interesting.
IN SUMMATION of OLD RANKED:
I thought I was much better than this current ranked. Maybe some slight tweaks in the form of another RT slot or 2 and true balancing of the "any" position and finally a balanced between having an "any" and the NB spot would've made the game quite fun and interesting.
NEW RANKED:
The only thing I like about new ranked is that there are more RT slots. These allow more freedom for evils to get things done at least. Oh and the ELO system is like...cool I guess and we have one now which is nice.
There are SO MANY things wrong with this new system. I do want to start by saying that Town roles themselves aren't OP. Sure some are pretty powerful but its the system itself that enables some of these roles to be so good. The meta that many ranked games have also allow good players to easily identify many of the roles without any disputes. I would suggest however, that maybe some more helpful Mafia roles be put into effect as some of the RM are absolutely useless like forger.
Now I'll get to gameplay. I find so many games have NUMEROUS requirements for evil roles to even have win-conditions. You need at least 2 if not 3 evils to have good claims and 3 or more to help shift towns focus. That alone is hard. You also need the neutral roles and mafia to help each other at least a little bit to have any chance at winning. Finally, even if all those happen, you need at least 1 member of town to "throw" the game by evil roles' confusion and misinformation, if not 2 townies to throw if not all evils do a good job. This is so rare now that games will end simply because evil roles don't have the resources or numbers to put up a fight. Sometimes of course, evils get lucky early on and steamroll the game, but this happens so much more often for town especially at higher ELO's. The winrates for mafia I believe are very low and for neutral evils it has to be astronomically low. What I'm saying here is the game is SO town sided and it takes a TON of win-conditions to occur for evil roles to win, especially arso/ww/sk. Like the town really has to be stupid and passive to not win.
To sum up: the role list heavily favours town and needs more freedom in the form of "any" or NB combination.
I would suggest a revert to old ranked, keeping the elo system but slightly modifying the role list to include NB again and truely making "any" fully random. That and adding in another RT.