My suggestions for grouping

[Bonulino]

Since we don't know how and when the devs will make changes to the game to make grouping more desirable, I suggest we as players do a few things to get more people grouping.

> Post some of your LFM's as normal or hard difficulty. There are some players who are not interested in reaper, and the only way you can get them to join is by posting a quest at a difficulty at which they want to run it.

> Be willing to join quests that are posted at normal or hard, and don't pressure the group leader to switch to reaper once you have joined.

> Be willing to take the quest at a slower pace if that is what the leader wants. For some of us, the goal is not XP/min, but enjoying each quest for what it is and socializing with the other party members.

[Seph1roth5]

Some of my older guys I haven't played in years definitely aren't reaper ready. Even elite might be iffy for sharn and such heh. It is a bit annoying to join a dailies group and have people join and want to run elite/reaper. Sometimes I want to just casual my way through some quests while watching tv or something.

[Clemeit]

> Post some of your LFM's as normal or hard difficulty. There are some players who are not interested in reaper, and the only way you can get them to join is by posting a quest at a difficulty at which they want to run it.

For those interested in running reaper, why should they run Normal or Hard when those difficulties might not be fun for them? When you can steamroll r5s, running a quest on Normal is exceptionally boring. It's simply not engaging when you have absolutely no chance of failing and you can 1-shot every mob, boss included. For those looking to run Normal or Hard, they should be responsible for posting their own LFMs. That's the great thing about being the leader of a group. If the demand for Normal and Hard runs is truly there, those groups will fill just fine.

> Be willing to join quests that are posted at normal or hard, and don't pressure the group leader to switch to reaper once you have joined.

I can't speak for others, so I'll share my own experience. I'm never willing to join a Normal or Hard run. Heck, I'm not even willing to join Elite runs. Is that a problem? Yeah, absolutely! But it's unlikely to change. As someone who has made a significant investment in Reaper, I have enough points that running r1 is not only easier than Elite, but also more lucrative, e.g. more base XP and some Reaper XP to boot. I would never advocated pressuring players into running Reaper, however.

> Be willing to take the quest at a slower pace if that is what the leader wants. For some of us, the goal is not XP/min, but enjoying each quest for what it is and socializing with the other party members.

Anyone running an expensive XP pot is going to disagree. Deliberately running quests slowly is nothing short of a waste of money. Perhaps XP pots should be good for a certain amount of gained XP, rather than being good for a certain amount of time. That would discourage zerging for the sake of saving money.

I'm not dismissing your suggestions, and I'm sure we'd agree that an environment that so heavily encourages Reaper difficulty isn't healthy, especially when it alienates players who are incapable or unwilling to run it. And yes, something seriously needs to be done about it. The gap between veteran and novice players has grown to an unhealthy level.

[Chai]

Reaper serves to obsolete runs below reaper through its progression system by making it as easy/easier to run reaper.

Also, asking THIS particular market audience to forgo an entire progression system to run a difficulty which makes zero progress in that progression system makes zero sense to that market audience.