So now that leves are more for solo play, I haven't seen many "Levelink Party Do you need it?" around lately. Which is not to say that it wouldn't be worth doing, but currently players are resorting to public area grinding.

The problem in this is the SP cap. Right now the SP cap is a 3.0 modifier at 10 ranks above the player's level. The major issue in this is that players (like myself) can solo monsters 10 ranks above. Now why would I want to join a party to fight something that I can fight by myself for high SP? Speed might be a good reason. However, if we kill all the mobs too fast, we're going to be standing around wasting time.

I basically don't even look for parties because I know that I won't see much better SP gains than I would if I was soloing. And I also think that a lot of players feel the same way.

There are 2 solutions here. The first is to raise the SP cap to a 6.0 mod at 25 ranks above. I'm sure that a good party can take on mobs that high, and have plenty of fun, plus a good SP reward for doing it. Also, those mobs already exist so why not give players a reason to fight them? The second solution would be to nerf soloing so that player's could only solo up to evenly matched mobs (which would upset me, but I would accept it) and leave the current SP cap as it is.

I understand that the dev team is constantly trying to maintain a balance in issues like this. So, I would like to know if this is an issue that is being addressed and worked on.