I think there's two things being conflated here – 1. the pre-queueing in the station vs going directly to the platform and 2. if they also check tickets during that stage.

In my experience 1 is very consistent – NYC and Philly at least. 2 I'm not sure about. But 1 is imo the big issue. The pre-queue wastes time and clogs up the station and we hate it.