Difficulty is insane sometimes. I think players became so good at the game that every patch passively increases difficulty ^^. I'm gonna wild guess here and say difficulty also scales with levels. Playing local in medias res is like a death sentence. Any mook looks at you the wrong way and you are dead. Shotgunners 1hit you from across the map(not even kidding here), assaults down you while they run to cover, and if you are wounded you will die before you even finish your strike animation. I'm fine with hard games but you need to reward people for it.  Don't hide difficulty from players, instead reward them for hard games, hell, even give them some mercury points(like 3-5) for insane games. Instead you just gate the progression of players(like there isn't enough already). You know what players will do? They will drop MMR either by afk antaging or fucking their team over. Either way you just make players frustrated by spending like 1-2 hours just to drop MMR where they can play normally.