Going Solo

[Zanriel]

This pretty much sums up 99% of my grouping efforts in SWTOR so far:

 

http://i.imgur.com/u1nbv.jpg

 

I have several ideas to fix it.

 

One would be for social vendors to actually carry meaningful, and highly desirable loot, like rare or interesting color crystals, blue/purple item mods, crafting recipes, etc.

 

Another would be for no quest to ever penalize players for being in a group. For example, quests that require you to collect X amount of Y should give add up all the X's across the group.

 

Sending companions to do crafting missions could be cheaper and/or take less time while grouped.

 

Planetary Commendation medal drop rate increased while in a group. There could be other benefits too, like XP bonuses, better loot drops, etc.

 

Being able to see if others in the area are on the same quest(s) as you before grouping, possibly even being presented with a small window along the side or on the quest log showing other players in the area who are on a similar quest, allowing you to easily join groups.

 

Public quests - automatically shared objectives. (I read in an interview that this is actually planned for future updates.)

 

Group level scaling (similar to City of Heroes), and automatic quest sharing. If you're higher and you've already done the same quests, you can repeat them with the group, with rewards scaled to your level. If you're lower, the rewards scale down. This system works even better in COH because different people might be on completely different quest lines and have different quest givers, because there are just so many paths defined by earlier choices, the chances of two people being on different story arcs is pretty significant.

 

Then, when you're in a group, perhaps while fighting enemies, there could be a chance for elite or strong versions of the enemies you're fighting to randomly spawn during combat, to increase the risk/reward factor. This would make even normal missions more "heroic". The more people in the group, the higher the chance of "heroic" random spawns... but only during combat, and immediately aggroed on the group member highest on the aggro table.

 

Finally, a social matchmaking and networking system, that helps players find others with similar interests using a combination of systems from dating and social networking websites such as Facebook, eHarmony, Match.com, etc. Friends are recommended based on personality, playstyle, and social connections (friends of friends). After all, often times the worst thing about MMO's are the other players. So why not put in systems and tools to help like minded players find one another?

Edited January 24, 2012 by Zanriel

[Kaffebryggaren]

Why bother grp.

Only time its needed is ehn doing a heroic quest. Or u need to kill a grp of elit mobbs.

Everything is so darn easy. And most mobs ka nbe avoided. At leas at lvl 18-.

Make game harder, then shall u see people want to grp.