Everyone here could have attended (and probably won) world championships, but they all got realllllly unlucky or personally screwed by Konami with disconnects

False; you can't stack your/the opponent's deck, mark cards, rule shark, or countless other things pro players do irl. That's what separates a good player/1 time YCS winner from those who top and have won multiple times. Watching these "pro" players with judges up their arse in top 8 on stream lets you see just how much they misplay when they can't get away with it.

It's incredibly hard to determine the "skill" a player has, good indicators would probably be "Numbers of wins needed for KoG"

In addition to time of season, time of day (geography), etc. CA "catching" you early is not an excuse, but it's funny that when something affects a player, complaining about it is justified but if someone is affected by a different circumstance it's them not being "gud." Either you don't bitch about anything or you don't judge when others do as well.

You could also go by personal achievements in events like the upcoming KC cup or bigger community tournament results, but all of that is pretty hard to track and none of that is really usefull

KC Cup is about win counts iirc, so it's an even worse indicator than the ladder which at least promotes arbitrary win streaks, even if your win ratio can be low and you still rank up.