Why the ranking system is flawed.
I just wanna start off by saying that I love the idea of rankings in Overwatch, and I'm really glad Blizzard has tried to create a system to show off the best players, and even for average players to see how they match up. It really encourages communication and team work (in theory), and it creates friendly rivalry and competition with players and their friends.
However, the system as it stands is HUGELY flawed. There are many reasons for this, but the first thing I want to point out is that YOUR SKILL RATING DOES NOT MATTER. If you're part of the majority of players who aren't insanely good at this game, but play decent to a level, then your rating means NOTHING. Now the reason for this is because regardless of how well you play in a single game, if your team doesn't win, your rating goes down. Period. No matter how many kills you get, objective time you have, or healing you've done, if you lose, you go down.
Now, you may be thinking "if I play well I'll just naturally win more games and my skill rating will go up". The unfortunate part is that you can lose for a number of reasons that you have NO control over. Even if you get career bests in Kills, Objective time, etc, if someone leaves on your team, you've lost. If you're trying to communicate with your team and they just aren't listening, you've lost. Or maybe you're trying to tell someone that maybe Mei and Symertra on attack isn't the best idea. If they don't switch? You've lost.
Now, how do we fix this issue? It makes no sense for your rating to go down if you play really really well in a game. How does it make sense that I'm now LESS skilled if I get the highest eliminations I've ever got? This is why you can't base skill ratings on whether you win or lose, because frankly its out of your control for the most part. I'm fine with it playing a factor in how much my skill rating goes up or down, but everything hinges on whether you win or lose.
So what should your rating be based on? A very simple solution is to base your rating on what the average is on that particular hero on that particular map. Take for example a player rated 50 playing Solider 76 on King's Row Attack. Lets say for arguments sake that the average for Solider 76 on this map at this rating is 20 eliminations, 2000 Healing, and 1min objective time. Unfortunately Solider 76 loses, however it was a very close game and he got 30 eliminations, he healed for 2000, and had 1min objective time. For his rating, he played very well, so his rating should go up, even though he lost. He's playing at a higher skill cap than that of what is average on this map.
Now there are some definite flaws in this new rating system, because averages can be bias towards how long the games is actually played. For instance a Lucio on Nepal is going to get far higher stats if there's 5 rounds compared to another Lucio player who only plays 3 rounds, which again isn't really in your control, so averages should take this into account. Maybe just count the averages for how far a team gets on a certain map. Take King's row attack again for instance. If they don't capture the first point, lets say the average is now 7 eliminations. If the player reaches above average, then that player should move up in rating.
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Another big flaw with the competitive scene is Leavers. Now Blizzard have of course stated that they are going to punish constant leavers, which is very very fair. However, when a player leaves a game, regardless whether they disconnected, or just rage quit, if they don't re connect, that team has lost. What I think would make sense for Blizzard to implement would be an option for players to join competitive games mid way through if someone has left. That would at least give players a reason to not give up this game, because they can still win this game.
Now you may be thinking "I don't want to join competitive games mid way through, why would anyone want to do that? Chances are you're joining a losing team and you're rating is going to go down". The first thing to point out is this should be an OPTION for players. If you don't want to join a game mid way through that's fine, you won't. Just tick that little box and you won't join games mid way through, nothing changes. Well that's fine and all now there's an option for players to join, but why would they? There's no incentive for players to join a game mid through, which is why players should be REWARDED for joining a game mid way through. Think about it, you're helping a losing team, and you're making the game more fair and enjoyable for everyone. As far as rewards go that's easy, just give players more EXP, loot boxes, or other benefits to joining games.