I am not necessarily going to say this is true for all players for all games. I myself recently got into playing Hearthstone seriously. Now I have been playing it on and off sparingly over the last few years, but this year I started to build up my collection for one purpose, to play Ranked. Sure the game has a lot of fun ways to be enjoyed through Solo Adventures, Tavern Brawl, etc. but I get my thrill through Ranked and it took a lot of effort to prepare myself to be ready, but I might have been discouraged if there was even bigger barriers.
I like playing Heroes of the Storm on occasion, but I am still not qualified to play its ranked mode but I don’t have enough heroes leveled up. I think they have a far more serious curve to reach the ranked ladder in that game, and it leaves me somewhat discouraged to try.
I agree there are problems to be fixed, but I think it is important to challenge does a solution to make another problem worse. One could argue that Role Queue is such an example, it’s a great way to guarantee a stable 2-2-2 team comp, but now queue times for the preferred role of damage is through the roof.
Don’t get me wrong, they see deliberate tanking a problem and they work to stop that behavior. They just don’t see an issue if someone starts a new account and tries their best to play at their true skill.
I maintain an archive of all developer statements. This is done to help guide conversations here on the forums and work to deliver a stronger discussion that can generate the best ideas that can improve the game.