The "bad feats are bad on purpose" statement was from Monte Cook, who really has a talent for talking out of his ass. When he joined the 5th Edition design team, he immediately started to make statements that sounded rather implausible, which then were usually followed by a "clarification" by Mike Mearls that often came down to "No, we're not planning to do anything like you thought Cook said yesterday".
And thankfully Cook left the team after just a few weeks of this and it immediately stopped.

Don't listen to anyting Monte Cook says, it's usually garbage.