I'm sure this has been discussed somewhere, but I feel the need to state the obvious.

I see a lot of people having complained about lack of challenge, and then complaining about the natural consequences of the devs having finally taken steps in that direction.

You cannot talk about wanting challenge, and better xp/min in the same breath. I'm sorry. It's just contradictory.

You cannot ask for more challenge, and then complain that there are exclusionary LFMs popping up. I don't care about xp/min, but for the many people that do, actually having to work at a quest means that they're going to want to stack the deck in their favor. The lack of exclusionary LFMs was due to utter lack of challenge, and any party of gimps being able to blast through any content at roughly the same speed as an uber party.

And about the trees, while it may not be what I personally would have done, the intent seems clear. The devs do not WANT the average player doing 10 skull runs any time soon. They want it to be nigh impossible. Otherwise, everyone does them a week in, the intended challenge isn't there, the intended expansion of playability isn't there, and the whole thing was futile. They intend it to be a process. You get your skills and gear up a bit. You start tackling the low skulls. You build up your reaper power, and you move up. Only with the best gear, good skills, and full reaper trees do the devs want people completing 10 skull quests at any reasonable frequency. And they intend to make you work to get there.

If you can't do ten skull reapers on your uber-completionist toon with amazing gear on the first day, that's BY DESIGN. If running reaper then makes running the same reaper content easier, that's BY DESIGN, with the intent that you will eventually move up to higher skull levels.

In the meantime, they have expanded content across all levels, actually provided the ability to encounter challenge, at all levels, by choosing an appropriate skull level, given people something to work towards, with reaper trees, and reaper gear, and generally provided a long arc for people to work on, while being able to do so via whatever quests suit their personal tastes.

A master-stroke. Let's stop whinging and give them the praise they deserve, even if there are details that still need tuning.