Erm...someone who is Gold V has accomplished more in the season than someone who is Silver II, so it does mean something.

I think the trouble here is people assumed that being 10-20 ELO over someone else was a strong, significant statement of superiority. ELO/MMR has a wide variability, and only really makes sense broken into a few large discrete chunks...y'know, kinda like the tier and division system...

Someone who is gold V IS in all likelihood a more skilled player than a silver II. Sure there are going to be some that got carried there, but that was true of old elo ranking too. In general it means that they have either 1.) Played more games than you(and as we know from statistics, a larger sample brings you closer to the true number. In this case, your "True rating). or have 2.) played fewer games more skillfully than you. If you are "just as good as them" the basic math says you will at some point or another reach the same league as them, just like old elo worked.

"But we're sorted byMMR, not LP.". Yes, we are sorted by mmr, but we are rewarded with LP . If you are near where you should be, your mmr will sort you well and you will lose and gain roughly the same amount. If you got carried somewhere, or there is some sort of weird discrepancy in your MMR, you will lose a lot of LP per loss until you either get smacked down to where you belong, or prove by repeated winning that you do indeed belong where you are.

For the two right above, if you don't know, Gold V is the lowest you can fall if placed in gold automatically by the system, and I have seen some people that has lost all their games since the new league system has placed them there. How can you truly say they are better than the Silver II? We can't. We can say he accomplished a higher achievement, but skill-wise, we will never know.