why isnt there a way to easily chat wth party members?

[Assirra]

The reason for this is because combat is so fast paced, there simply isn't time to spend chatting about random stuff - unlike FFXI where combat was so slow you could easily get away with chatting while fighting. It's the price that had to be paid for having more faster combat (which players actually requested in 1.0 by the way - players wanted flashy, fast-paced battles like were shown in the original opening movie).

Nah, the far bigger cause is the whole duty finder system. Not only it queues you up with random people from god knows where, it is also cross world which would making friend totally useless.

It was the same in wow. Back pre dungeon finder you had people asking in chat in the big cities and the zones where the dungeon was. So you already were forced to talk to just join a dungeon run to begin with. If it was a good run you asked if you could x person on your friendlist for a later run since they are on the same server and you can always ask them again.
Once lfd came out it is exactly the same as in FFXIV. People click the button, wait till the window pops up and join. Then at best we got a hi/hello and then silent for the rest of the dungeon since you will most likely never see these people again.
So far i got 1 group in 3weeks of playing where it went further and it was my most enjoyable run yet and if i could added them to my friendlist i would have done it in a heartbeat.