Quote Originally Posted by Februs View Post
Having played the first season, I can say with certainty that a player's rank is absolutely NOT a pure and unbiased representation of their skill. By the end of the first season, I've saw just as many platinum players get utterly stomped by lower ranked players as I saw lower ranked players get stomped by platinum players. This was especially apparent at the end of the season, when queues revived a short time after Shatter came out. I'll admit that a Platinum player is likely to be more experienced than a Bronze player, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're better, and it ABSOLUTELY does not mean that they'll win the match. The reason is that, no matter how good a player is, one player cannot carry an entire team. That's a fact. So, as much as skill is a factor (and it certainly is), it is not equally weighted in comparison to party composition, play time (opportunity), and just pure dumb luck. This is especially the case in solo-queue where the party composition is a roll of the dice, because even if you have a team of all platinum players, there is no guaranteed that they will work well together. I've seen enough crap-shoot matches with high ranked players to know that you should never, under any circumstances, assume that they'll win just because they have a respectable rank. It was pretty easy to see this in the rankings as well, as there were a ton of players who had some pretty shady win rates in the top 100.
No one is arguing the bolded parts. Classic strawman argument.

This is all I'm talking about:

You: A player at platinum is not somehow "better" than a bronze or un-ranked player just by the virtue of them sitting in the top ranks. They could be, but it's just as likely that they suck and simply had good luck with party compositions or had far more time to play.

Me: It is intellectually dishonest to assume that the Platinum player is not objectively better than the Bronze player, that winning is somehow determined equally by luck and skill.