How about they just do a better job matching people of equal skill, so that people like me who are new to the game aren't regularly encountering people with vastly better decks and strategies even while both being on level 20. That seems like a better idea than all this card limitation mumbo jumbo. Not that they couldn't do this also, but I'd prefer to just have a better ranking system.

SecondPrize:

Soak:
snip

The standard format is meant to ease entry for newcomers, not make it easy. Yes, newcomers won't be able to match the level older players are at in terms of having all of the viable cards in the standard legal sets but that level is being capped. They're lowering the ceiling rather than raising the floor.

Yes and exactly that is part of the problem. It caps the ceiling for standart, but doesn't really do anything else. It doesn't actually address the entry for newcomers at all and makes nothing "easier". The way, or method to get from floor to ceiling doesn't change, the ceiling is still too high for newcomers, when they get halfway there it'll usually be a few months, maybe even a year into the game and they aren't newcomers anymore and if you think about wild, it'll probably actually make it more difficult. And that's the reason why the argument of addressing new players is bogus.

And that's why this

Olas:
How about they just do a better job matching people of equal skill, so that people like me who are new to the game aren't regularly encountering people with vastly better decks and strategies even while both being on *rank* (edit) 20. That seems like a better idea than all this card limitation mumbo jumbo. Not that they couldn't do this also, but I'd prefer to just have a better ranking system.

still accounts to pretty much all new players.

The way it is now, new players enter the game, do a couple of games in solo, then probably go over to normal play, where they soon get smashed by players with mutiple epics and legendaries or full fledged concept decks, which it is simply impossible to deal with if you have the limited pool of a newcomer, then switch over to ranked to hit a wall around rank 20, where the same problem of card access makes and breaks most plays, which they'll have to endure until they have access to more cards themselves to eventually get to the point that strategy and skill starts to overweight card access, which is way into the game. Nothing of this will actually change with the standart format and a year into the game, when standart rotates, players aren't newcomers anymore.

As said, Brawl depends, in my opinion the lvl 20 entry for that is kind of dumb as well, because if players get a deck of some sorts, it doesn't matter, while for some brawls card access is all that matters.

Arena is actually the only way to play to avoid all of this, as everyone has the "same" access and players have to learn the value of each card individually and in small combos to play well - and i am really wondering what the changes will do to that!

I'm still not against the new format, on the contrary, as i said, because it makes total sense from a design perspective.
But if they wanted to do something to ease in newcomers better, they'd have to do something else in addition, like a better matching system or an even slimmer format, what something like pauper would be, it also doesn't raise the floor, but lowers the ceiling so much it actually matters for newcomers. Sure, there'd still be a gap between newcommers and more advanced players playing the format with more card access, but it'd be way smaller, would be less intimidating for more casual players and still push dedicated newcomers forward, they'd be able to jump this gap sooner and naturally progress and when they hit that ceiling, they can better progress to standart.

Olas:
How about they just do a better job matching people of equal skill, so that people like me who are new to the game aren't regularly encountering people with vastly better decks and strategies even while both being on level 20. That seems like a better idea than all this card limitation mumbo jumbo. Not that they couldn't do this also, but I'd prefer to just have a better ranking system.

A big factor with their matchmaking is what time of the month you are playing. At the start of each month, it seems like everyone gets ranks reset to ~20, and it takes a few weeks for most to get ranked back up to where they were. Just in time for a new reset.

OT: As others have said, this isn't going to drastically affect the new player experience. I think it has more to do with shaking up the meta and giving the card designers more room by taking out some of the strongest cards at each mana cost.

Not sure how I feel about those cards being dropped. I spent a couple months saving up dust to get Dr. Boom and now that is going away. GvG and Naxx had some clearly OP cards but I did like that having even just the common mechs or the deathrattle naxx cards gave a neutral baseline for making a playable deck for classes that you don't have that many cards for.