Social points....

People arent QQing they are saying that the system doesnt work very well, and I tend to agree. I am social enough to earn some points but I have yet to reach social II, and not everyone's times coincide with thier friends so perfectly all the time to be on at the same times and do all the same quests, if you can then good for you, you are a minority trust me.
Most of us have schedules and stuff that do not coincide perfectly with friends and so they decide to play and quest solo when they can actually play the game. Doesnt mean these people dont try to be social and stuff its just that the system in place to earn social points or the rate with which the points are earned is not a good one.

Step 1: find a friend
Step 2: level up with friend
Step 3: gain social points for each conversation choice 4 for wins 2 for loses
step 4: ????
Step 5: profit

i did this and am sitting at social V i could easily hit 7 or 8 if i did all quests in game i still have quite a few remaining.

I realise that it's difficult to come up with another metric for social activity that wouldn't get abused. Rewarding chat would, like you point out, encourage spam. A slow tic while grouped would just mean people always stayed grouped, no matter what they were doing. But that doesn't mean that the game needs to spread the rewards for social levels all over the place.

What should the rewards be? To be honest, absolutely a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g except orange gear.

Valor is granted by participating in PvP and can be used to obtain the best PvP gear available. Social points are granted by participating in grouped PvE, so why not let the rewards be some awesome raid gear? Mods, epic armor and epic weapons, geared towards flashpoints and heroics.

Just as an example, I'll bring up the pilot uniforms again. They are orange, but unless I slot them with great mods, they are useless in PvE. They are clearly meant to be used for RP purposes and for a specific look. And I'm not asking to get them for free. In fact, I think they cost waaaaaay too little. Up the fleet com cost ten times and I'm still fine with it, because it's pilot uniforms and it makes sense to have to do a ton of space missions to get them. But social points? Why? What does PvE have to do with piloting?

I don't have the lifestyle that lets me do flashpoints or a lot of grouping. I have a newborn kid, and I always need to be able to quit the game in an instant. If that were to cut me off from some awesome PvE gear, I'd be fine with that. But the fact that it cuts me off from some of the best looking RP clothing is absolute nonsense.

You can't PvP, you don't get the best PvP rewards. You can't grind very fats, you don't get to hit lvl 50 in no time. It makes sense to me. But if you can't group a lot, you don't get nice looking costumes? Nope, does not compute.

The worst thing is, fleet commendations are earned through the most antisocial action in the game: space combat where you can't even have chat on while playing


Social rank 3 you can get in an afternoon doing Esseles/Black Talon over and over with friends. That is unless you are lvl 50 apparently. I hear you can't get social points then

Not everyone's times coincide with thier friends so perfectly all the time to be on at the same times and do all the same quests, if you can then good for you, you are a minority trust me. Not everyone is as ****** and awesome as you. For those of us who are social, but not amazing as you should get at least something, but thats not how the system works, you gotta be hardcore like this bone-head to get anywhere with it and I really dont think thats what they intended.

Social points are not targeted towards flashpoints, sure they are a way to grind them but they aren't the focus.

They are there to give those people who level and quest together a reward. I do agree though that the pilot gear should not require social points.

Sorry people but its really easy to farm BT/Esseles for a day (5-6 hours) and have rank 3 social.

In just a single day of trying

I think the social system is there to promote group leveling. Ive been leveling my second toon with a friend after hitting 50 with my trooper. And the amount of social points you get from group questing is massive. Im not even level 50 on this toon and i have social II already.

But yeh, there needs to be more ways after hitting 50. But group questing and FP are fine for the leveling process.

The thing is, some rewards for other components of the game, like Space Combat, also require SOCIAL points. What's the connection between those two? Uhmmm, right, there's absolutely nothing social about Space Combat. If you're going to type in chat during Space Combat, your ship will be in red while you'll also have missed two out of the eight shield generators for your bonus objective.

Next part, the social vendors. The gear obtained from those basically require you to be constantly grouped with other players, not only on flashpoints, but also during world arcs and class-missions. As someone pointed out already: nice way to spoil the story for eachothers' class, effectively reducing the thing that gives this game such a high replayability value over other MMO's.

And you thought Social II was a pain to achieve for that Space Combat Pilot suit or the slave outfit on Nar Shaddaa (worth about 8 Esseles/Black Talon runs) ? Try the social gear on Hoth, which requires Rank IV. More Esseles/Black Talon grinding.

So yes, alternative methods of obtaining SP should exist.
Kill 100 mobs while grouped for 1 SP maybe?
A guildbuff, giving members 1 SP/hour while logged in for a day after the guild cleared some operation or world boss?
1 SP for every player you give your classbuff, provided he/she doesn't have it yet?

Good suggestions here. ^