What seems to add the variance to the drops is having one of each basic class in the group. When we ran with no smuggler (was Vanguard/Sentinel/Sage/Commando) we saw ZERO trooper gear over a several week span. When we run with one of each class we see drops that we've never seen before AS WELL as differing drops on each of the same instances with that same group.

16 per server would be awesome... Playing light/dark side of each class on each storyline is too much fun. Taking away my ability to gear up my alts/companions is not fun.

Since we know Social Points are currently being very difficult to fix in terms of getting what you actually earned out of instancing/grouping with other players, I thought I'd suggest something that rewards players for being grouped and killing things. I'm not sure if this is harder or easier to code, but it does seem like a fair solution to all involved. Its a fairly simple idea really, for each kill you make in a group or operation you have a % chance to earn a social point on that kill. Arbitrary numbers here since I don't know what your intended rate of gaining Social Levels are, but I figured I'd through it out to give an example of what I'm proposing. Group of 2: 25% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Group of 3: 37.5% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Group of 4: 50% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Operation of 5: 62.5% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Operation of 6: 75% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Operation of 7: 87.5% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Operation of 8: 100% chance to gain ONE social point per kill Anything above 100% chance means guaranteed 1 point per kill with a chance at a 2nd point (being the percentage after the 1, so 1xx, xx = percentage of drop rate) Operation of 9: 112.5% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 10: 125% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 11: 137.5% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 12: 150% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 13: 162.5% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 14: 175% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 15: 187.5% chance to gain TWO social points per kill Operation of 16: 200% chance to gain TWO social points per kill At this point you can choose to cap it to prevent kill trading if you opened up these options for PvP and random mobbing of higher-level areas to gain social points. You could also tag some mobs of having a maximum chance of 50% to get social points(being they were designed at most to be killed by a group of 4). Obviously make these only applicable to mobs that would grant experience to those in the group, possibly making a tighter level gap than that if necessary. My suggestion would also to be having these points hardwired to be received immediately upon the death of an enemy rather than getting a token to drop, but a token could work as well if implemented correctly and then be able to be turned in for social points at a vendor or right-clicked to be used up and given social points. Benefits: 1. Instantaneous Social Point gain, which seems to be a major factor in what is making the conversation logs difficult to assign the correct amount of points AFTER an flashpoint. 2. Gives Social Points to players who group but don't participate in the conversations together as well as flashpoints and operations which do not have ANY conversation in them yet require major work on the social front to get a run started. 3. Possible band-aid until the conversation bugs not rewarding social points is fixed. Hindrances: 1. Could be harder to code, not sure how difficult it is to add something akin to experience to a mob kill on percentage. 2. Could upset the expected rate at which we are supposed to gain Social Levels 3. Could inflict more bugs on sensitive items such as experience gain and legacy gain. 4. Calculation could increase server load. 5. I'm not a programmer of any kind, many other issues I may not even know to think about.

We've done the Esseles and half of Taral V (ran out of time) and every drop we saw was a smuggler drop but one... and we had no smugglers in the group. Most of the other flashpoints are tuned to drop gear specifically for your group, why not the hard modes?