This is getting on my nerves a little.

P.S. I LOVE the game and will continue to play regardless, this isn't a hate thread, but I need to put this forward to the community as an idea.

Why is it that Co-Op games that are invite/friends only are counted as a Public Game? (talking about Freeplay)
Private Game is limited to Solo/Versus, so to get just your friends in a game you go to Public and select Friends Only, for example. Easy, right?

... however, there is a downside to this. It means that now you are limited by your Rank.

Multiple times now I've been able to join a friends game once, leave (admittedly after ranking up) or get disconnected and then when I return to Join Session in Progress, it tells me my rank is too high.
So why was I allowed to play in the first place?

I believe that if your game is set to Friends/Invite only this type of restriction should be removed, effectively because it is a Private Game on Co-Op, there isn't going to be any new player stomping which this feature was probably designed to stop (which I agree with).

This has probably already been discussed at least once so forgive my dead horse beating.

Has anyone else had any serious problems with this feature?

I have had that problem before. It happened to me only once though, and i thought maybe it was a little error.
I didnt think much of it but i do agree with you.

I agree completely, my friend bought the game about a week after I did and we can't play together without starting a new character for Campaign co-op or certain public matches.

It is just confusing giving an option to play with "My rank or higher" which doesn't let you play with people of a higher rank.

Hopefully something can be done to change this. I still love and play the game but in a bid to make things as fair as possible, it has become too restrictive.

agreed cause you can join rank 5s at rank 1 and get walked all over but the opposite cant happen? whats the differance really