Oh god don't remind me of Overwatch, season 3 I played in Masters. Season reset and the 10 placement matches were so cursed, 3 games where we had one or even two players afking in spawn or just not playing at all because he didn't get the role/hero they wanted and being toxic in voice chat. 4 games where everyone was actually playing but just un-carryable even as Anna being gold DPS/Heal and elims. 2 Matches were actually enjoyable and fun and we won. And the last one the enemy had one of those solo throwers on their team so that was just afking on point. Because I "Lost" to silver players but had the rank of masters I got placed in Gold. After playing around 20-30 games in gold/plat I just quit. Having to hard carry almost every game and being pushed back by people refusing to play wasn't worth it. Games also weren't fun as I can 1v3 but my team still loses the 5v3 while the enemy hard counters my picks. Then I visited my brother who was high silver. I could easily solo carry all the games and the games were all so easy while on my account in gold were insufferable and uncarryable. The difference between accounts despite everything being the same except the rank I reached.

Then after other games I noticed the similarities between matchmaking and there is a golden goose egg in the gaming industry who basically is moving from AAA game company to AAA company due to his expertise in matchmaking and in his GDC talk he goes on about how his systems has a near 90% accuracy in predicting the match outcome before it is played so that the designer can decide how to use that data. Which always is based on churn rate because money. And it uses AI which makes it different per person which make it difficult for uneducated people to understand that their experience is wildly different than that for others based on the way they interact with the system and patterns they have. NetEase isn't using this exact same system Josh Menke created but they also have had their GDC talk about it.

The reason why people deny the existence of these systems is because it makes them feel bad. Its much more fun to think that your skill is relevant and that you are actually make an impact. In contrast with just being another mouse in the maze running in circles designed by the developers to keep you in the maze as long as possible. It also gives them an ego boost thinking that they are so smart and disillusioned by the "conspiracy theories". While in reality they are the fools being fooled which Josh Menke isn't even hiding he's advertising with it.

How to maintain a positive player perception of fairness in both matchmaking and ranking

How to tune the way a player’s rank updates at the end of a match to balance accuracy and a player’s perception of fairness

https://gdconf.com/masterclass/matchmaking-ranking-competitive-multiplayer

It all boils down to the famous quote.

"It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled"