Quote Originally Posted by jameseoakes View Post
Wouldn't this make the problem worse? With Newer ad less geared players would get paired with with the lower ranked players so we'd have most the players playing at a fairly low level together not being able to learn better practise from the more skilled and experienced players and the better players being in there own bubble
Not necessarily.

When the first group took on Sastasha, they were ALL newbies. They eventually became the salty vet hardcore raiders the OP speaks of.

Newbies can learn from one another. I'd dare say (as the existence of veterans is testament to this) its the best way for them to learn. They can actually learn from real mistakes. Come up with plans, and overcome the challenges seeing with their own eyes what works and what doesn't.

Right now they can't, they queue up, see a dungeon vaporize before their eyes. And don't really learn much.

The OP's Idea is a bit more.. effort than mine. My idea for a similar issue is to segregate the playerbase based on content. Let vets do vet stuff and average do average stuff. Basically take a page from WoW's current handbook and have the normal content as is. Then challenge mode versions that cannot be accessed through the normal DF. Same dungeon but HP and Damage are scaled up. Rewards are slightly better.

The average player will stick to the duty finder and do the roulette as normal. The veteran will naturally want a challenge (and the slightly better reward for it), and grab some buddies and tackle the hard stuff.

People will still complain because they'll see a player getting +5 item level gear higher than theirs in content they can't simply press a button to form the group for them. But you can't make everyone happy. With that said.. the forums DO exaggerate the issues put forth in the OP. They're not quite as bad as all that. So no change at the end of the day maybe needed.