No it’s not. It’s about winning and losing to people at your skill level. That’s how you improve. Improvement is a gradual thing.
There is a massive difference between R1 players and 2700 players. There’s a massive difference between 2700 players and 2400 players. There’s a massive difference between 2400 players and 2100 players and so on. If this weren’t true, then you wouldn’t see the same 8 teams advance on initial tournament day in AWC every season since 64 teams compete every cup.
For someone who is a 2400 player to be fighting a R1 player is like me playing basketball against Giannis 1v1. I’m not going to get better, I’m going to get stomped on. And then lose rating for it, which is a numerical value associated with improvement. The value gives instant gratification for improving. Or like me as an adult playing basketball against a 7 year old kid. If I go 100% there is nothing that kid can do, I’m going to win, but that kid is going to be miserable, not enjoy the game, not improve from the experience, and end stop playing.
Same thing in wow. It’s not like Whaaz, who is a blizzcon champion forever R1 player, is doing 1 or 2 things differently than a 2400 player. Then fighting him a light goes on and it’s like “ohh that’s two things I need to do to improve 700 rating”. He’s doing 100 things differently. You’re only going to see a few things fighting him, and understand why he does them even less.
There’s also regression. If you were 2400 last season and hard stuck 2k it implies that you regressed. In actuality, you may not have but the game has artificially hard capped the best players creating a trickle down effect that is not letting them progress because they are playing against players they have no business playing against.
I played 2s the other night at 1700 mmr against a R1 MW. I’m not a R1 player, 3k to 1700. I have no business playing against that guy. I did marvel at the plays he made, but it wasn’t fun at all.
So why in theory, yeah for 99.9% there’s always room to improve. In practice improvement doesn’t come at getting your face stomped in over and over.
Here’s the bigger picture you were asking for.