Haven't seen much of fighting game ranking mechanics in general but it would seem logical to award players rather than punishing them. Hell, just hand them 1-10 points even when losing, it's not like it would matter much. It would, however, help to keep them motivated. Or atleast keep it at zero instead of robbing them of their hard-earned points.
Both of those ranking methods don't really work. Give someone no deduction for a loss, and inevitably everyone will reach max rank and it becomes more about who can spend the most time playing (SF 30th anniversary did this and it's silly). You could try having a limitless rank, but good luck making a matching algorithm for that. Gaining points even upon a loss is actually just cruel. That means that person with a lot of free time, who isn't the best, and loses most of his games is eventually going to rank up, and then he's going to lose even harder, rinse repeat. Then he also ceases to have any means to face people of his skill level in ranked, as he can't derank himself.
Ranking modes at their best are trying to categorize people into progressive-based categories, in the hopes of pitting you with people of the same skill level. In an ideal ranking system, once you exceed 51% winrate in your rank, you will steadily climb out of that rank and onto the next. This inevitably requires a loss in points for a loss. Negative reinforcement is just as requires as positive reinforcement, and wins and losses should be treated as such.
Fighting games as a whole are built around this concept. If you're using a move poorly, and you get punished over and over for it, that's negative reinforcement to get you to stop. Negative reinforcement is great for getting people to stop doing something, unfortunately, yes, that also means it is more likely for people to stop playing altogether because of it. Competitive games require critical thinking, and no game design can make a player who can't take losses think critically about them. Games like Overwatch are popular based solely on the fact that people can blame others instead of themselves, which gives them a means to keep playing despite the loss. However, this is what creates the horrible community surrounding games of that sort.
Sadly, there is not some guy at the entrance of the FGC telling players to play to learn, not to play to win. Oh well...
I dont understand why people place any emphasis on rankings at all. The game can not accurately measure a player's skill. Only a very flawed scoring system would even be possible and that is exactly what the game does. Understand that a player's goal and general attitude in a match may not even revolve around securing wins in the first place. If they prioritize learning the system, matchups, strategies, etc, or omit spamming particular moves because they know "it will win", that could heavily affect their win/loss ratio.
I much prefer playing sets myself, but ranking systems when done correctly are mildly effective for putting people in a loose area of where they should be skill-wise. This becomes more true the larger the rank disparity. Most games tend to have a rank people point to where they say you will generally start fighting better players at. I would say C rank and up is probably where SCVI's is.
There's always exceptions, where someone who really shouldn't be at a certain rank manages to get there. Characters are actually an easy thing to point at. If you look at like... Maxi or Voldo, those characters both are overwhelming if you don't know how to deal with them. So it's just a knowledge check, and you can climb really high in ranks by abusing that lack of knowledge as a result. 95% of the Voldos I've faced only know how to run around in Mantis stance, and that's it. Beyond that they know nothing, yet they are still ranked up there.
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Ranks use for me has always been about fortifying my consistency and encountering oddball methods of play and learning to deal with them. Cause as you said, people will do stupid shit in ranked. You need to be able to learn how to deal with it all, cause ya never know when a tournie player might just go crazy on you.
Learning matchups are best left to sets.
