The way I see it, the only problem with the old system was that people expected it to be an accurate representation of skill.
I always just saw the ELO as a competition with myself. If I wanted to, I could get up to 1700 and that made me happy and certainly kept me playing on the occasions that I saw I was high at around 1680.
It didn't matter that someone could just get global rank 1 through farming, because everybody knows that player is shit anyway. It doesn't help your recognition to be a well ranked player.
If you just play good and avoid making an ass out of yourself, people will respect that. It also seemed to me like it was always the same people complaining about ranks not working, it was certainly not everybody, or the vast majority.
Perhaps there was a half of Toribash that saw the system for how it actually worked, and felt just fine with that? It's at least worth considering.

With the system removed though, there's no incentive to play those extra matches or even try playing good, unless you're in the right server/mod. All the things we've built up around the old system are also gone, such as losing ELO for rage quitting.