current flashpoint design stifles community

[loudent]

In the initial release days the servers were overflowing with people. I ran so many flashpoints that my class quests were turning grey. It was a great time and I met a lot of people and eventually joined the guild I'm in now.

 

However, that was a unique time that won't easily be replicated.

 

Today (at least on my faction/server) is a very different story. I see people sitting in fleet for hours trying to form a group for a flashpoint. In some cases, hours a day for days in a row.

 

In the last couple of weeks every flashpoint I've run was either completely or predominatly guild runs. Which is fine, except that running with the same people doesn't build community. It just divies up the player base into completely seperate groups.

 

All that aside, I can't honestly believe that sitting in fleet doing nothing but spamming general chat is how bioware wants us to spend our time in game.

 

 

If they're really opposed to a matchmaking system (which I think would be ideal) at least consider some of these:

 

1) Make people more aware of the LFG flag. At any one time there are very few people using it.

2) Expand the social window so the LFG comment can be seen

3) Fix the LFG comment "reset" bug (moving from location to location will reset the comment to a plain "LFG"

4) create long quest chains on planets that culminate in the flashpoints

5) Put launch points to level appropriate flashpoints on the planets

6) Allow people that haven't completed some of the "gating" quests/flashpoitns to run them anyway as long as someone has (e.g. let someone run maelstrom even if they've not taken Jedi Prisoner/Taral V as long as someon in the group has)

 

I *DO* like the heroic quest implementation on planets. Getting groups is easy because everyone is on the planet doing the same thing and, even if you don't gert a group right away, you can continue questing.