Quote Originally Posted by RiyahArp View Post
The difference in the older games was that you didn't have these tools, but the games themselves forced social connections through gameplay. Here, you have some tools, but you could theorectically do the game entirely solo apart from anonymous pickup groups and not miss a thing.

And the tools have gotten worse. One of the reasons I hate Discord is that it removes social interaction completely from the game onto other mediums. Yeah, they did have teamspeak in the old days, but it generally was limited to raid nights. But Discord is everything now; every FC has one where half the members chat in, and things like pvp no longer use linkshells or fcs, but discord instead. A lot of old MMO socialization was done in game in event hubs.

The games have changed a lot to be much more antisocial in gameplay, and tools tend to take people out of the game to socialize.
No the games are fine. Chats, linkshells, grouping, and FCs are all the basic tools any MMO probably had back in the old day that you loved. It's not the games. It's Discord and 3rd party media. You said it yourself and you have a point.

Because we have things like Discord, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and many more, there is no reason for a player to use the world chats, linkshells, or FCs like they would have probably 14 years ago. Back then they were forced to use the in-game tools. Because there was no Discord for example. Now it exists, and FFXIV's tools are outshined. I mean heck, we even have the Marriage Hookup Thread set up like a dating app so people can quick meet instead of just finding partners out and about in the game. Again, another 3rd party source of contact.

This isn't FFXIV's fault. This isn't Yoshi's fault. Blame social media and future times.