Epic has added things like the Sawed Off Shotgun, The Casual Arena (should add that to the OP), spotting, Retro charging and the mantle kick to help new players online.
The learning curve is much steeper since Gears is much different than most games. Plus, you have to remember, people like me have been tearing shit up since 2006. Finally, true skill will finally shine since Epic has pretty much eliminated every networking issue that has plagued the series.
Now we have stable netcode, dedicated servers and host migration. If you played the beta, you should know very well how smooth the performance is.