Win\lose elo system was designed to express a skill of individual in a 1 vs 1 game - chess.
But the task at hand is to evaluate a skill of different individuals who are randomly assigned together into a team.
Elo system is misapplied to this task. It was not designed for it. It treats the team as individual which is fine in premades, but it is not fine in solo queue matchmaking. There is petabytes of copium and or rage discussions over this, people who come out on top of the system say its fair and it "averages out over time", people who come out on bottom weep, whatever. Simple fact is that if I'm on your team and I play bad and we lose, you yourself did not become a worse player. But your rank would drop. Same as if you carry me repeatedly, I did not become a better player. But my rank would go up.
Bottom line a functioning "True skill" system as you called it is needed, and just because it has not yet been invented does not mean that it is impossible or that it should not be attempted. Best case scenario it should be resistant to gross stat optimization abuse, but even if its not, stat optimization will still force players to perform better in games. And if it's not 100% resistant then I'd still rather it was there but not transparent.
Ehhhh, it's a combo of both. Someone finding a way to game the stats required to be seen as "good" doesn't mean those stats directly contribute to winning.
A true skill system based on individual performance is arguably more flawed than the one that relies strictly on a W/L record. Bad players can be carried by good teams to wins they didn't deserve, but overall that should be an outlier that is flattened over time. Someone focusing on say a KD:R could just take no risks and play safe just to ensure they don't die a lot despite, at best, doing nothing to contribute to a win, or at worst actively contributing to a loss.
Sometimes a death is absolutely worth the outcome, rush into mid, steal the rejuve and die? That is unequivocally a net positive for the team and their chance to win. Die trying to back cap the patron, or last hit a walker/shrine to get a flex spot, in most cases that is definitely worth the death.
Someone split pushes most of the game consistently taking objectives, but then gets rolled by the enemy team defending, still a net positive. Definitely better if they didn't die, but overall it's usually more worth it than the death.
The game is WAY too contextual and nuanced to be based entirely on a "True skill" system. Those can be abused, wins and losses cannot. A "True skill" system
can contribute to wins if abused, but not always. But a W/L system
always contributes to wins, if the only thing being rewarded is a binary win = true/false, then you give players the freedom to do anything necessary to win the game, which is precisely what you want to be incentivized in a ranked/competitive environment.
Humans are incentive based creatures, if you incentivize them to do
anything else that doesn't directly contribute to winning, then the entire system fails. I think we have all seen more than enough Haze (no offence Haze mains lol) players farm 70k souls get a bunch of kills and then still die at the absolute worst times leading to a loss late game. Poor habits and behaviours centred around stat stuffing
should be rewarded with losses, as any rational person would notice they keep losing rank because they keep losing games, and maybe put 2+2 together.
This is a team based game, you have to reward teamwork, otherwise, what's the point?
