Why do people party so rarely with randoms in SH?

[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.