But yes, avoiding arcaneness for the sake of arcaneness will earn you more users.
A big success of Rust has nothing to do with systems programming or the borrow checker.
But just that it brings ML ideas to the masses without having to learn a completely new syntax and fight with idiosyncratic toolchains and design decisions.
It is kind of interesting that packaging the same ideas with a C like syntax suddenly makes them "cool", 40 years later.