Do reaper enhancement trees make playing in reaper easier than it should be?

[Blu]

My dream Reaper Mode.

No trees, RP's
Increased chance to get named gear, bonuses on said gear or rare items (augments, filigrees, etc..)
With great risk should come greater reward.

Other than the loot and XP/levels nothing else should better you odd from reaper level to reaper level.

This would also mean those looking to run reaper, only have the past lives advantage over the first lifer.
This would be a much narrower gap and would more likely encourage grouping of the two player types.
There would be little need to shun a first lifer or see it as them bringing down the group because they do not have a couple hundred RP's to pump them up.

Not saying this is a dream that everyone has to agree with, only that it would be interesting.
Maybe do a no reaper tree guild. Not sure how you could really enforce it and you would not have the increase chance to item drops to make reaper worth doing in place of the RXP reward component.

I agree that I'd be happy with no reaper trees or the XP gained simply gave you a cosmetic ribbon/pin next to your name/above or on character that changed colour/style every 10 reaper points and capped at 100.

And again would love to see reaper give better chances at named loot and also increased chances of Mythic/reaper bonus on an item this should be all.

 

[noinfoavailable]

This came up in a different thread but so as not to derail it I have posed it here. My understanding is that reaper was supposed to be an greater challenge for experienced players, but I find it hard to understand how giving enhancements, that give progressively greater bonuses when playing in a particular mode, don't eventually make that mode easier and easier i.e. less of a challenge. What am I missing here?

Adding the trees gave purpose to actually progressing your character at end game instead of the TR runs that were the ONLY way to advance your character. If they were to remove the trees I would hope that they did the same for every past life and TR as well.