Carlsen is hard to beat, no one gives Carlsen nothing. He is a very talented chess player, a super GM no doubt. What I'm saying is that in his last tournaments he is drawing a lot.
maybe he is just using this tournament to prepare for the WCC. He does not want to stress himself out, or reveal any novelties. He is staying active, but not wearing himself out. We will have to see what happens in the wcc. i dont think he has any incentive to win this tournement.
Maybe you're right. Anand and Carlsen don't want to show their tricks before the show...
If you just use ratings, there are ways to manipulate that. Draws, ducking certain competitors, playing in weaker events, changing how active you are, etc. Having some tournaments where the prize is entry to the candidates is a good idea. Another idea is name some top tournaments for the year like maybe 4-8 events and then use an average performance rating (or combined score) for those events. Personally I like the idea of a large tournament, but you break the field into matches. For example the tournament could have 50 people, but then the top 16 go into a series of elimination matchs of maybe 5-7 games each. That is a lot of chess but it would be hard to argue the results.