How exactly do placement matches work?

Placements are trash when they are not even placements when you continue there where you left from previous season (not really placements if you know your rank already). Why put seasons anyway on this game when it’s not hard reset? Why Blizzard can put some rewards based on that how many games you have been playing on that month or something like that…

even if so the rank variance from where you left off would be minimal

if you were say Plat 1 at the end of last season you might break into Diamond if you play like a God, or you might drop to Plat 2 or 3 if you throw every game

Microsoft bought OW and they have the “TrueSkill” ranking system they can replace their current garbage with. They based their current garbage system on Elo and that’s been scientifically proven to be random. There are numerous academic papers about this.

TrueSkill can quickly sort the problem of carried 5 yr olds and grandmaster level smurfs creating chaos in lower ranks. The method can do real placement that relies on and uses way more valuable data from placement than just some old garbage weights on your account, or just a few games. The system learns cand compares all players at the same time, not just the one in the few matches, but all matches played.

It’s an actual possibility they will do this to please new corporate overlords and players at the same time. Focus on repeatedly telling everyone about it and we might get a playable game.