Totally agree with you.
I love decorating my strongholds, so I often play flashpoints by myself or with guildmates just to get decos. The newest flashpoints have lots of cool stuff, but so far I only got skulls, a boulder and some rubble... so I'm not as inclined to keep playing them again and again just to try to get some new decos and end up having another incredibly fancy rock from Dantooine.
In contrast, I play A Traitor Among The Chiss and other older FPs a lot, wether alone or with friends to get some nice decorations and outfits. Unlike the SoV and SotE FPs, these runs are very rewarding since you get tons of cool drops, so it pays the effort and time you dedicate to these runs. So I'm more inclined to keep replaying these older FPs rather than spending too much time in the new ones just to get some scraps.
Most of the players I know have not played the new FPs aside from the storyline mission, and I would say that making each boss drop decorations will increase the interest overall in playing these FPs, both solo and in group. Especially, since the new FPs are really nice and well designed and decorated, and it's a shame that players don't feel like playing them more because it's not worth the effort.
I don't agree. People has not stopped playing the previous flashpoints in group just because there's loot in story mode. In fact, there might be more people farming them in group just because it's faster and more entertaining than doing it solo again and again, but you should not remove the option to play by yourself if you want to have a chill run or do it at your own pace.
Forcing people who don't want to do group content into Group Finder always ends up in tedious encounters and arguments between players who want to go easy and players who just want to farm. It's good to have options for everyone. Besides, if you only play the FPs to get decos, playing in group decreases your chances to get the drop thus having to farm a lot more.
Each difficulty having different rewards already forces players to group up to do the FPs and get the fancy loot, so I really don't get why removing solo mode will improve anything.