Why do people party so rarely with randoms in SH?

[Achelousaurus]

I never get that.
Are they so antisocial?

I always see solo parties for EQs and a few 2 player parties but very rarely 3 or god forbid 4 player parties.

In the end you will play with randoms anyway, so what is wrong with partying up, making it easier to coordinate and communicate, maybe even making friends?

[Stealthcmc1974]

I always group up with friends myself. I sometimes make a party with randoms but most people don't speak up for invites. No idea why.

[UnLucky]

Why the guides section..?

Anyway, it's much easier to run to the counter right when you want to play and quick start.

Otherwise you have to form the party beforehand, then wait around for a while and you never know if someone will go AFK or take too long doing whatever else. They also likely wouldn't want to risk being a minute late to the EQ if you wanted to pop by Forest for a sec to clear a CO or something first.

Or you try to join someone else's party but the MPA is full, so you join someone else's party but the quest already started, or it's full or locked or friends only or 2/12.

Also you're more likely to squeeze into the last few slots while solo as opposed to being in a full party. The MPA is 9/12? Well, looks like you're gonna start your own little 4/12 group while all the others fill up first!

But if it's not even an EQ or anything special, there won't be any parties running the same thing you want. So you have no choice but to solo everything. Then the habit sets in. There's no functional difference besides a 5% exp bonus per party member, so people do what they're used to even when it's no longer necessary.

[Evangelion X.XX]

Well, I've never been in any team (don't want to and have denied repeated invitations) nor do I ever join any random player. Sometimes, a random player, usually lower leveled, would party with me and that's cool... I don't mind.

Why don't I party up with randoms? It's simply because I prefer the freedom of doing whatever I want, when I want without having to deal with other people; it's easier this way. I'm not the type of person who needs constant interaction with others as it drains me. Yes, I'm an introvert. That's not to say that I don't enjoy conversing with others should the opportunity arises however. But yeah... I prefer to do my own thing.

[Uchouten]

People would much rather play with their friends because it's easier to be coordinated.

[Gama]

if i dont form a party before the eq starts, ill join the mpa alone, because i got kicked of eq's a couple of times because they didnt want a force/techer.

i dont know whats their problem since my gear is pretty good, and i do allot of damage/raise everyone's survival with support.

[keywen]

I'd rather run solo or with friends/teammates than with randoms. I just hate dealing with butthole players, so I don't even bother trying. It also doesn't help that I'm one of 2 or 3 decently leveled/geared players on my team <_> otherwise I'd do stuff with people much more often.

[Sizustar]

if i dont form a party before the eq starts, ill join the mpa alone, because i got kicked of eq's a couple of times because they didnt want a force/techer.

i dont know whats their problem since my gear is pretty good, and i do allot of damage/raise everyone's survival with support.

Probabely they are waiting for a friend/guild and forgot to set a password.
We had to kick some people for our guild EQ before, due to this.

[Gama]

Probabely they are waiting for a friend/guild and forgot to set a password.
We had to kick some people for our guild EQ before, due to this.

oh if only, 2 of the simtes it happened, i got a We dont need/want a fo.

Focism!

[SakoHaruo]

I see people in the lobby spamming "LFP [difficult] EQ" all the time. either they get invited to a party or form a new party and look for more players. I see it everyday during EQ, sometimes it's the JP players. Hell, go to the vita blocks [208], it's literally the B20: Japan Edition during prime time.

[Achelousaurus]

if i dont form a party before the eq starts, ill join the mpa alone, because i got kicked of eq's a couple of times because they didnt want a force/techer.

i dont know whats their problem since my gear is pretty good, and i do allot of damage/raise everyone's survival with support.
WTF?
Why wouldn't anyone want a Fo/Te?
I got a few bad experiences with randoms (like last night, again proving the rudest people by a good margin are the elitists) but mostly it's nice and 90% of my friends I met this way.

After all, how else do you make friends?

But yeah, I understand the reasoning that solo you will always be able to fit into an MPA that isn't full but with 3-4 you may get shoved into one half full or less.

[Edson Drake]

WTF?
Why wouldn't anyone want a Fo/Te?
I got a few bad experiences with randoms (like last night, again proving the rudest people by a good margin are the elitists) but mostly it's nice and 90% of my friends I met this way.

After all, how else do you make friends?

But yeah, I understand the reasoning that solo you will always be able to fit into an MPA that isn't full but with 3-4 you may get shoved into one half full or less.

There was a time, people rejected FO/TE, it was before the Il Megid introduction. Nowadays it's acceptable, unless there's pseudo-elitists that think Il Megid disrupts their runs(if the Il Megid is weak it's kinda true).

[LordKaiser]

If the EQ auto-match you then what's the benefit of forming a party other than IO's COs?

[pkemr4]

i just make a sub due za odaon N quest and then put EQ in the title and JP's join my party

[Achelousaurus]

XD
5 chars.

[TaigaUC]

Not very guidesy.

I don't party with randoms because humans are evil.
Anyway, been trying to do party stuff with JP friends lately and it's such a pain up the butt.
Blocks filling up, if someone gets disconnected or shows up late, or doesn't meet the EQ requirements, we're basically screwed.
Then there's the 4 person limit. Too many situations where we have to go "sorry, can't play together". And I think that's just shit.

I've been saying that games should do away with all these arbitrary limits that prevent friends doing beneficial stuff together.
I like games where everyone can just hop in and play at any time, without needing special gear or level or what nonsense.
And this game really needs a better party/block system.

[Gama]

I don't party with randoms because humans are evil.


this.

[Achelousaurus]

I had intended to post on the general board, but derped out.

Anyway, PSO2 is so good cause of the limits.
MPs already cause a sense of anonymity I despise but if you remove the 12 people limit and go the real mmorpg way with (almost) no limits peolpe won't play with each other anymore.
They will only ever play silently along side each other and the social side with wither and become negligible.
I tried upward of 20 free mmorpgs and this is what they are like, you see 30+ others at all times and the chat is cluttered with people talking and mostly spamming trade stuff.
No intimacy whatsoever, no one you have any reason to interact with at all.
I always try to play with others and not just as along them but only maybe 2% of the time I talked to others in mmorpgs they bothered replying.

It's empty and dead and very lonely and boring.
Not to mention coordination and strategy outside of organized raids is pretty much nonexistent.

Also, 12 people is quite a few. I got about 20 active friends and 6 active team members, quite obviously the more people are playing at the same time, the harder something needs to be to not get roflstomped within literally seconds.
But that also means it will be unapproachable for people who only play in small groups or alone.
Especially now there are frequent times when only a few friends / team mates will be online so this would instantly backfire.
Also think of all the balancing required to make it work, Sega wouldn't bother unless it would get them a guaranteed massive profit and even then it's wasted time, money, effort cause they could have put all of that into more new content.

...yeah I did get kinda verbose and sorta sidetracked there >_>

Also, event though about 2/3 of the randoms I play with are fun and most of my friends I met like this, another 29% are alright / mostly silent and only 5% tend to be jerks, it really can be jarring.
Recently I played with someone that didn't like me wearing Sexy Bikini Wear and since the 10 seconds he was constantly insulting me.
Completely unrelated to gameplay (TD1 and I regularly finished several places above him), he just was rude for the sake of it.

Also, as all real jerks I met in the game, it was on b10-12 and one of the elitist "B20 is trash" crowd.

[Shiyo]

You tried free MMO's, that's your problem.

They attract the worst type of people and are generally full of anti-social rejects.

MMO's in general do now, you can thank the casulization of MMO's

[Flaoc]

i fail to see the issue of not wanting to talk to people you do not know

[landman]

The EQ puts you with 11 other players, there is not really a point other than the Exp bonus, you are in either case, playing with 11 randoms, which can go wrong, or right. If it goes very wrong, and the party is just you and a friend, no randoms, both can agree to leave and try again starting a new one before the time limit.

[Lostbob117]

There's plenty of reasons:

1) I don't feel like talking to anyone, really I don't feel like having the extra text on my screen. It's already annoying when someone is saying useless crap in all chat. If you want to chat with someone, then make a party or whisper the person.

2) I don't want to see autowords of a random person, really those are annoying. The worst thing people do is use them in all chat. This implys to symbol arts too!

3) "Make new friends" No, I don't need anymore friends than the number I already have.

[wohdin]

There are a vast number of ways that Sega could significantly improve the party matching in this game, but since that would require actual work, it won't happen. Plenty of other games make it very easy and well organized to form a party of randoms on the fly, and in PSO2 it's such a hassle to find people to play with, since you're pretty much stuck with spamming LFG SH EQ in the lobby until someone adds you, or looking for other players doing the same thing. Occasionally you'll see someone actually using party descriptions and stuff to specify that they're waiting on the EQ, but this rarely happens on a good block for some reason (I personally always try to do this, in Japanese specifically, but I rarely have anyone actually join).

tl;dr party matching sucks in PSO2 and Sega isn't going to fix it.

[Lostbob117]

There are a vast number of ways that Sega could significantly improve the party matching in this game, but since that would require actual work, it won't happen. Plenty of other games make it very easy and well organized to form a party of randoms on the fly, and in PSO2 it's such a hassle to find people to play with, since you're pretty much stuck with spamming LFG SH EQ in the lobby until someone adds you, or looking for other players doing the same thing. Occasionally you'll see someone actually using party descriptions and stuff to specify that they're waiting on the EQ, but this rarely happens on a good block for some reason (I personally always try to do this, in Japanese specifically, but I rarely have anyone actually join).

tl;dr party matching sucks in PSO2 and Sega isn't going to fix it.

Or you could just use the thing that puts "Looking for Party" over your head.