That’s a fair question.
There’s a longer term goal to provide a more diverse opportunity of experiences. This will expand the game’s reach but also give existing players recourse in the scenarios where they feel like the game is pointless. This happens far more frequently than is apparent at a casual glance and is a huge factor for player churn.
Addressing this is one of the driving factors behind things like Achievements, or alternate galaxy win conditions. Both of those, together with more ranking metrics, will all serve to expand the experience and retain more players.
Providing more reasons to play will solve 2 problems:
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It will make the game more open-ended for new players, casual players, and bottom-ranked players.
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It will prevent players from giving up in frustration when they realize they can’t win size or nw.
Both of these things have always been huge problems. Pop ranking by itself won’t fix this entirely, but it’s a first step in a much larger approach.