That matchmaking implementation is the lynchpin to the entire thing. The two are inseparable, each has to be taken with the other. It has never worked in Call of Duty games (from which they drew this entire progression system nearly whole-hog, even down to Spartan Points being an analog to COD Points), it certainly doesn't work here. If that had been nailed, yeah, the problems wouldn't be as big of a deal. But I think to assume that it would work ideally (or even close to ideally), as they would have in order to confidently institute something like this, is incredibly foolish in the same way designing a game entirely around honor rules would be. Things don't work as planned and that needs to be anticipated in the design.
When they talk about new players, I'm imagining people who went into matchmaking before, got destroyed, and then just left. How would locking options behind more frustration help them stick around? They aren't the kind of people that were ever intending to invest that time before, why would they start now? Maybe they say "oh, that one item might be the key to the whole thing!" and end up sticking around - I'm sure that's what 343 would like to see happen. But I suspect that instead they say "oh no, it's still not fun for me," because the mechanics and skill matching, which were the real barrier to entry, still exist behind the artificial wall of progression.
