The feeling of improving and then ranking up, then staying at the rank, then attempting promotions, etc is something I will never be able to have with MK11.
I feel you're looking at it wrong.
The goal is to see how high on the ladder you can climb in a season. The feeling of improvement comes from reaching a higher point on the ladder than you did last season.
Saying "I'll never be able to play a Street Fighter ranked system in MK11" isn't really saying much.
I play quite a few fighting games. I wish every game adopted the MK11 style with banners/cards/icons as rewards for each ranked season to show off your accomplishments. So many games have no real incentive to play ranked besides the rank itself.