[LordDragon13]

I think you make the mistake of equating raiders with people who play a lot, and groupers as casuals, who don't play as much. I don't think anyone sane suggests that someone that plays twice as much shouldn't have better stuff, but just that the game shouldn't so heavily reward one chosen playstyle over another, raiding/grouping for instance.

I knew people in EQ1 who played half as much as I did, but they liked to raid. I spent far more time grouping than they did on raids, but they had far better gear. I think that is the key imbalance.

While you make some arguments for raids being more difficult, many would argue the opposite. Unless you are the MT, puller, or some very crucial position, what you do will probably not screw up the raid(unless you go pull a train on the raid or something, lol).

However, in many truly nasty group encounters, every single member has to be at the top of their game, there is no leeway or the group dies.

So why could a game not be designed with group encounters that provide raid level loot, provided that;
1) The group encounter is of comparable difficult
2) It rewards loot at a similar rate per player (So a 4 hour raid for 54 people would reward 9 times the loot of a 4 hour group encounter for 6)
3) The group encounter entails similar risks

You could even give the raid somewhat more loot per time investment to account for organizational issues.

Giving players that raid vastly better gear(and its always hugely better, not just a decent improvement) just rewards one particular playstyle while shutting out others. I know lots of people that left EQ1 at the end game because they wanted to improve their characters still, but didn't like raiding. Eventually, I was one of them.

A system like I have described would allow hardcore players of all types to keep some loot parity, and might actually ease up some of the annoyances of heavy raid guilds (heavy mandatory attendance etc) by providing an equally challenging alternative.