Is this game going down the drain or what?

I think the matchmaking is pretty good in casual. I find that I get significantly better games if I don't join a queue in the last minute. You avoid the games with a 4 man party and the horribly mismatched games like that. It still happens in MoTD and other modes where there aren't enough people playing, but making the matchmaking restrictions more exclusive wouldn't help that.

The overall level of play on the other hand... Really, things just get much better once you accept it's casual and move on.

Does anyone know how the matchmaking actually works as is?

I would post a screen of the second match, in response to whoever asked earlier, but I don't want to out any names or clan names for noob bashing randoms. Also, their tag might be offensive to some because it's a racial slur. There were three from that clan and one other who said he was grouped with their party, so a 4 premade + 1 random vs 5 randoms.

I just got out of another conquest match where I am almost positive the enemy team was a premade, or at least 4 of them were. Their composition was Cupid, Ymir, Ao Kuang, and Thanatos, who all synergize very well. Around the time people were getting level 10-12, they suddenly started to stay together completely, only moving as an entire team except when the fifth guy (assuming not in the premade), who was also much lower level, would go to a lane by himself to kill minions. Even leaving mid unoccupied, they'd have literally their whole team go gank a lane for one kill and then trade off laning positions based on who on our team was in what lane. Their coordination was far too good to simply be randoms.

It's really getting irritating though. I just want to play a match against a bunch of uncoordinated randoms, like the team I'm solo-queuing on obviously is. Not queue with a bad/random god makeup and then have to facedown clan UBERL33TPR0TRYH4RD2013. You might say, "well pick better gods", it doesn't matter what god a player is using if they're bad, and trust me, I have seen some bad randoms. I don't want to have to roll Mercury or Ao Kuang or Zeus or Thor every match so I can carry my team or whatever else, I only want to play the game with a god that's different and can still fill his role, instead of something blatantly overpowered to the point of almost being broken just so I can squeeze out a win every once in a while. That's now how the game should be.

We need a match queue that specifically has the requirement "must not be in a party" or maybe "must not be in a party of more than two" two queue into it. So at least there it's a player's skill that determines if he's going to do well for his team, rather than being good with a fully derp team vs an entire team of good + coordinating/strategizing enemies.