Single Player RPG communication nowadays?

I have been playing for a few years now, and one thing that has always been an issue, has been the in-game communication systems.
--Fellowships: Nothing more than a roleplaying board or recruitment tool
--Linkshells and CWLS: Used for specific purposes (such as Hunts)
--FC Chat, Party Chat, Group Chat, etc.

Every single one of these systems, either had their limitations, or was useless to the point nobody used them.

Then, the introduction of Cross Data Center travel was introduced. Now, at this time, due to RL situation, i had to go completely offline (yes that means no internet), for a year and a half, but the game goes on.

When I finally get back online, DC travel is thriving, but i notice the trend seems to have gotten worse:

Fellowships are still just a rp and recruitment tool.
LS and CWLS are changed, because nobody is staying on the same DC anymore. All those on my server I used to use that were popular, are now just inactive.
The worst, is FC Chat. Our own FC. Cannot talk to your own FC members, when they are off playing on random DC's and other worlds.

Now, 1 answer could be, "Well, you could communicate via Discord". That would be a viable method, IF they all werent using voice chats in other discords for the reasons they were on those other worlds, whether it is a blue mage raid on 1 world, or a raid on another, or a RP event on another.

The dev team spent all this time and resources physically connecting the players, the worlds. Why cant they let us communicate? Here I am, progressing Dawntrail, and it feels like im playing Skyrim.

Unfortunately, this is just a side effect of the internet becoming so much easier to communicate over.

I remember reading/watching something a little bit ago that was interesting to me--World of Warcraft was known for being very social in its early days, as were most MMOs of the time, mainly because there weren't a ton of decent ways to 'hang out' with people online. You had AOL, and chatrooms, but not much else. MMOs were unique because they provided a great way to hang out and communicate with other people, and because of this huge emphasis on communication, early MMOs tended to have a lot of ways to communicate.

Now, we have good forums, Discord, streams, SMS/iMessage, etc., so people don't really need to engage with these systems anymore.

Party chat is useful for reporting the number of fates in an instance and directing the party if you are farming FATEs, be they in a new expansion or in Eureka/Bozja. It's not practical to use during combat like in FF11 because of how high APM FF14 is, with the player having to be constantly pressing buttons to deal damage and evading AoEs. No time to talk like in FF11 where you press an ability once every 10 to 30 seconds.

So im not the only one noticing the game is becoming more and more Antisocial. However, its not the playerbase, its the mechanics...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lilmeanie

So im not the only one noticing the game is becoming more and more Antisocial. However, its not the playerbase, its the mechanics...

---

I'm not antisocial, I just don't find a need to talk to strangers in shout chat. I'm very social with my fc and raid group.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Lilmeanie

So im not the only one noticing the game is becoming more and more Antisocial. However, its not the playerbase, its the mechanics...

---

Clearly you've never been in an instance with 450 players all waiting for a special fate to spawn, people get social, real social, and they share things you never wanted to know

last time that happened, was when Endwalker first launched. That was over 3 years ago