User blog:Sonnet73/Thoughts on Making the Most of the Party Feature

I enjoy looking through the party-specific wiki pages in the parties category -- it's interesting to see how other parties might do things a little differently from yours, especially since you can only be in one party at a time. I thought it might be useful to start a conversation about different approaches to being in a party and how to make the most of the experience.

Our party doesn't have any hard-and-fast rules, but our party description in the sidebar contains the following reminders: I think these guidelines have worked well for us so far and have helped foster a caring, supportive, positive, and productive environment. However, as a party leader, I always wonder if there's anything I could do to improve the experience for my fellow party members.
 * Quests begin 36 hours after invites are sent out, so please check your notifications regularly. (Exceptions: if everyone accepts before then, or if the quest owner cannot access a computer at the 36-hour mark.)
 * Do your best to complete all your dailies to avoid damaging your health, as well as your party's health if we're fighting a boss. If you know in advance that it'll be difficult for you to check off your dailies, you can rest in the Inn to avoid damage.
 * If you do miss some dailies, remember that your party will support you no matter what -- this is a learning experience for all of us and, additionally, we all sometimes go through rough patches or face circumstances beyond our control. However, if your missed dailies result in boss damage, consider (as a courtesy to your fellow party members) posting a quick message in the chat to explain the situation and/or casting a few skills to help the party.
 * Feel free to express yourself in the party's chat -- questions, feedback, requests for future quests, words of encouragement, fun/helpful links, exciting news, and/or random thoughts are always welcome and encouraged.
 * You are awesome!

One area that I've identified for improvement is how active (or inactive) the chat is. While our party's chat was initially very active, over time, the frequency of posts in our party's chat has diminished rather noticeably. To address this, I've considered starting a challenge within the party to encourage party members to post more often.

However, there's an obstacle to increased party chat participation I'm not sure how to deal with, which is that our party casts skills extremely often -- to the point where actual chats get buried very quickly by skill use notices; the 200-chat limit doesn't help, either. I'm curious to know if other users have noticed the same thing in their parties; if so, it might be worth considering changing the way these notices are displayed so that they don't take up space that could be devoted to actual discussion.

Another area I'm somewhat concerned about is what to do after we've completed all available quests. Pretty much since the beginning, our party has been questing (or accepting invites to quests) just about non-stop. For those of you who have reached this stage, how have you addressed this? Have you re-done quests and, if so, did you find them to have good replay value? Are there any non-quest activities that you've enjoyed doing with your party?

Please feel free to comment with any party-related thoughts!