It's true about the density of players during the first days, but also hard to play with gold limitations when you rely on fully upgraded cards. If you drop into gold from diamond, it's getting harder and harder to escape, unless you get a streak of luck. I'm still trapped in Gold 1 (borderline Gold 2 actually) and by now I should normally be attacking Diamond 2. Yeah, frustrating to say the least...
It's kind of "dangerous" to drop too much because the way back is long and frustrating. At the moment I try to avoid to play too much. I play my quests and then I wait until 5 days before the end of the season to get up in the ranking.
Maybe that's a better strategy. I dropped from diamond 3 to gold 2 in the first day of the season and I'm struggling since.
There's also the mirage of higher DEC rewards during the first two days of the season which makes top players play or rentals extended passed the end of season.
Yes I think the higher DEC rewards have this effect. I ended in diamond 1 and dropped to gold 1 at the beggining of the season. But after playing I droped into gold 2 almost to gold 3. So I kind of avoid playing early in :-)
No, I ended the season in CL 3, so I started in diamond 3. Then dropped to gold 2. That's painful.