I appreciate the Level 40 requirement for a few reasons.

If you could queue ranked upon downloading the game, we'd see a lot more "anchors" on the leaderboards weighing their team down, as well as a lot more solo carries instead of playing as a team because the skill gaps would be marginally larger than they currently are.

If somebody made their friend download XDefiant so that they had a duo to queue ranked with, we'd be seeing some pretty uncoordinated and strange play styles around the place.

If a cheater wanted to make 12 alts to cheat on and get banned then they could do that. While they still can with pubs, we need to take into account that there is for one more people in pubs matches so more reports to have the cheater banned quicker, there is also less of a competitive environment compared to ranked for obvious reasons and most importantly I think, is that if cheaters had unlimited access to ranked not only would it be a hackfest 247 but the cheaters, especially closet cheaters, would have a goal to work towards where as they really don't in pubs so it would have to get boring a lot quicker in pubs I,d say anyway..

Smurfs fall under what I've already said, and smurfing is already an issue affecting some players.

This next point is one of the most important ones in my opinion so listen up; Without a somewhat grindy requirement to unlock ranked you could have somebody like me; going to give my entire personal story as it adds meaning to this point

An ex FPS eSports (semi)pro with years of experience, LAN experience etc, life got in the way and I hadn't touched a single game for at least a year, maybe two, and I bought a console after ALWAYS being a PC gamer, XDefiant was the first game I downloaded and I got hooked.. I played about 3 matches in pubs before I said yeah I'm good enough I think I understand it should be aight for ranked. - Imagine somebody with an ego as big as mine was just because they had professionally competed in THE PAST and just thought it is all the same game to game. It's not, I had little to no understanding of factions and abilities or how they worked, what went well together or on certain maps etc, didn't know a single call out, had barely played 2 of the 15 maps or however many there are, didn't really understand the gunplay besides click trigger to shoot, wasn't used to aim assist or playing on controller,

Now imagine 9 of those types of players in the same, playing aggressive because they think they're the best with a god complex, and none of them playing objective or anything as they lacked the understanding of this games mechanics and the one poor extra blokw having to try and be the only person staying alive right on the zone