Seriously, the halo 2 and 3 ranking systems weren’t perfect. They drew in a large croud and kept the majority of competitive players happy for a long time. I played halo 2 and halo 3 almost religiously. Halo reach, well… i played that until they removed slayer pro and team doubles form the arena (a system even further flawed than the 1-50).
That being said, why has frankie decided to deny the 1-50 outright? You keep broken game mechanics such as armor abilities, unlockable weapons, instant respawn, join in session and character enhancements. You can compromise and “balance” these silly additions to please the casual gamer that’s going to drop the game 2 weeks after release but you can’t implement some simple fixes into a system that’s proven to keep the community fairly happy? Ranked vs. Social was about 40% ranked 60% social on your average day as far as i can remember it. Why shun such a large portion of the community simply because you thought the boosting and account selling was much worse than it actually was. You said it yourself, you couldn’t even get into the high 40’s. No offense, but you wouldn’t even know?
I just don’t see how you can compromise for something as silly as a jetpack off spawn but you can’t patch a great system that will only help the community. 
/endrant