Well, I tried to get some friends into RO2 and I can tell by my experience doing this that people who play "normal" FPS such as BF3/CoD/CounterStrike have a bad steep learning curve in Red Orchestra 2.
The Relaxed Realism mode wasn't friendly enough for most of them. So most of them abandoned RO2 when BF3 (that is a piece of sh...) launched. Maybe if they had more time to get used to RO2, they would try and adapt better to Realism.
I don't think that cross-hair is the key here for easy accessibility. One of my friends is one of the best Insurgency players that I've met here in Brazil... yet, he couldn't adapt to RO2. And in Insurgency there is free-aim and no cross-hair.
Other friend loved Killing Floor, that doesn't have cross-hair also, but also couldn't adapt.
I think that the main problem isn't the cross-hair, the damage model or the free-aim, but maybe they can fix or mitigate some problems. What keep people out is the "speed" of the game and some maps design decision that simply doesn't go well with gameplay elements... c'mon, Rainbow Six in "realistic" didn't had cross-hair and had a high-letality, but it was pretty much accessible. Same thing with Call of Duty:Modern Warfare in Hardcore Mode. (Yes, those last examples don't have free-aim, I know)
Problem is... I think that in RO2 everything is too fast. You die too fast, you run too fast (not anymore in RO Classic), you lose too fast. When I play, the expected time of survival is barely 10 minutes, but when my friends play, I think that this goes to 1 or 2 minutes and this can be frustrating. I mean... how are you supposed to know the map if you are killed in 1-2 minutes? Oh, you mean that I'm supposed to know the maps playing the horrible campaign with bots, isn't it?
If the campaign was good and motivating, I would say that this is fair enough, but why on hell would I play a boring campaign that is just the same maps with bots if I can play online that is the real deal and the main purpose of this game? And even if I play the campaign, how I'm supposed to know if I'm playing right or wrong or know the good hiding spots and the hot zones?
And I'm not bashing TWI. I love RO2, but the single player campaign is a bad joke. Maybe with an online campaign I can help my friends, but even so... do most people have someone to help them getting in the game? If most gamers need to do this by themselves, how they are supposed to enjoy getting killed 10, 20 or more times and not managing to even play. It's hard to convince people who passed more time watching the "spawn selection" screen than playing that RO2 is fun.
Actually, I think that ARMA 2 is more accessible than RO2, even being more focussed in simulation. It's less punishing.
That being said, I must say that I don't liked RO2's Realism setting before, but I think that it's getting better. Some options such as increase sway when out of stamina or after running is great to slow down the game and help it's tactical nature. Classic mode is really what I wanted Realism to be, but again, I'm not the typical FPS player.
Tactical shooter is different from competitive shooter and simulation. I expect RO to be a tactical shooter with realistic elements. I think that most players see the game on this perspective... so what makes a shooter to be a TACTICAL shooter? For me, a tactical shooter is defined by it's gameplay - it's focussed on positioning, played with intelligence, it's slower and it's not the player with more reflexes or pin-point accuracy that wins, but the player that positions himself better, that stops to shoot instead of gunning and running and so on.
This is what TWI needs to answer. I'm not against cross-hair or whatever... what I want is to TWI to give RO2 a soul, an essence. Is RO2 a competitive shooter, a realistic simulation or a tactical shooter?
Just my 2 cents. Sorry for my bad english.
PS: Talking about Insurgency - the one thing I loved about Insurgency is how it didn't show in its score tab the kills, deaths or the K/D ratio. I think that this has a bad effect on players psychology and need to be removed or let only on the "arcade"/action mode. For me even the "death message" is useless... you can earn points by killing, this is obvious, but it shouldn't focus on this and capturing a point or winning the game should be a lot more rewarding than killing. I don't think that it is really more rewarding right now, specially because you can get killed more easily capturing cap zones and it's easier and less dangerous to just... keep killing people away from the cap zone - that is a common problem in a lot of matches. If I were one of the devs I would take the kills, deaths and K/D ratio out of the score tab and even modify the stats so ommit that this kind of information. This doesn't need to appear - it's not a measure of how good tactical player you are, so it's useless and even dangerous for nurturing a wrong psychology on players.