From my experience with several game classes: if people without any game dev related knowledge try to use UDK or UE4, they are simply overwhelmed by all that fancy functionality and features they get at their finger tip. For a starter such an engine is probabyl too powerful. Lack of knowledge paired with high expectations is a deadly cocktail killing very fast any motivation - and then people start to blame others for their own failure. So the first engine we work with is Unity which has a flat lerning curve compared to the Unreal engine. And only after several weeks we proceed to UDK (and in the future: UE4). From my experience, then, I would not recommend a bloody noob to start with Unreal.
However, there seems to be a somewhat simpler approach to learn Unreal: take a game done in UE3 and built levels with its level editor. This is the way I did learn much about Unreal (I used Unreal 2, a game I loved and a level editor I hated because it crashed on a daily basis). Yes, even if the features in the editor of your choice and in UDK/UE4 are mostly the same, its easier to work with a level editor for some psychological reason: the game does frame your work, its like a guide, you have a solid starting base and your level is just a modification of something that does already work. After gaining some experience, proceed to UE4.
UT3 comes to my mind: I recommend my students to buy this game, study maps in the editor and play around with the editor. Even nowadays UT3 is imo a good starting point.
What can Epic do about this?
UDK headed into the right direction. It came with a nice assortment of meshes, effects etc as a solid starting point for a custom map. And since the meshes were used in an actual AAA-game (UT3) noobs could get an idea of how to use them in their own levels/maps by looking at actual UT3 maps. The only problem was the extremely arbitrary selection of meshes - a few meshes out of every package made it difficult to combine them because of the different styles/themes.
I think that the UT3 meshes still could help people learn Unreal, again for a psychological reason. Since I have many years of experience it is no problem for me to use placeholders in my maps. Without that experience, a noob focuses too much on the visual appearence of his map. He can’t abstract from what he does see. This is something you need to learn and it comes with experience. Since a map filled with placeholders necessarily lacks visual appeal a noob will loose motivation. So maybe to make the UT3 meshes available (at the marketplace for a reasonable fee?) could help noobs. In 2014, the meshes probably are no longer state of the art but they still look great enough to motivate people working with Unreal especially since UT3 was a milestone in game history.
Another way to make learning Unreal easier would be to give the many features of that engine a purpose. I.e. don’t talk too much about the different nodes inside blueprint. Instead focus on how to use a combination of nodes to open a door, create a lift, build traps etc. Show how to build a small level with typical gameplay elements.
Sorry for the very long post.