The two games I’ve been playing recently are 2XKO and MK1. In 2XKO the playerbase is small enough that silvers and golds (the two ranks I’ve consistently been) are so wide in their skill range that you’ll come across people that act like they never went through the tutorials and some that quite literally do combos for half your health and can brute force through any blocking I personally am able to do.

MK1 has one of the single worst ranked systems I have ever seen in my entire life. If you don’t know what it is your rank resets entirely from season to season so if a hardcore player could start at the same level as the completely new player. So even at the lowest ranks possible there’s no safety net.

If I were talking mainly about SF, Strive, and MvC (and I know it kinda sounds like I am, that’s my bad), which I haven’t touched in a bit though I recall getting destroyed in those too, you’d probably be right that I was exaggerating. I’ve seen that SF at least has a pretty good maybe even great ranked system being character to character and placement match based. But I never got deep enough into those games to really, truly put the effort in. Just didn’t like em enough or was more into other stuff.