Disappointed With XIV Direction

[Jeeqbit]

it feels more anti-social than ever

I agree that finding social interaction in FFXIV is hard at first. It was for me when I started. But once you find the social spaces you realize it's massive.

• RP FCs, linkshells and CWLS. There are places listing RP events too.
• Venues (I separate these from RP, despite being connected, because some people enjoy these without necessarily being RPers).
• FCs that run events like map parties and extreme farms (but as you said these are a needle in a haystack). Like in any MMORPG, if everyone you see on the server is in that FC almost, it's probably the FC to be in for noise and activity. Often a good way to get an Eternal Bonding invite which are also community events.
• Hunt spawning and conducting communities are often small, close-knit and social on all worlds.
• Joining map parties in PF tends to be pretty social, since maps themselves are boring so you spend time just talking.
• Joining unsync farms is similarly social if the content is braindead to farm at that point, because all you have left is to talk while taking 2% damage.
• Really even content that requires focus in PF like Blue Mage clears or high-end raids can be social, depending on the party, because of talking while waiting for people to join, sometimes getting into discord and laughing together.
• Despite people's disdain for FATEs, completing Shared FATE ranks in PF is often social as well - being easy to fight them lends itself to just chatting with eachother between FATEs.
• Any large-scale content can feel social if people are chatting - Frontline, Field Operation shout chats, Alliance Raid chats, hunt train and S rank shout chats, occasionally city state shouts.
• To help people find social circles, SE created Fellowships. Despite the memes, people often advertise CWLS or discords for likeminded people in there - such as people who speak the same language, people from a certain region, people who want to do specific content (deep dungeons, MINE content, raids, etc), to advertise RP groups and events. Just got to scroll past the memes in there.
• A bit niche, but there is social interaction in Novice Networks too for those in there.
• Outside of the game, discord is massive for FFXIV. I'd say the easiest ways to find small FFXIV discord servers is to PUG raids or other content and you end up in small friend servers over time. Same if you join FCs - you end up in FC discord servers that way. But there are also hundreds of large FFXIV discord servers with social channels you can hang in.
• Another social area outside of the game is youtube and twitch. Lots of small and medium youtubers and twitch streamers grow from nothing if you look at the FFXIV categories or your homepage to see recommendations, and they create discords that grow over time and, often, people make friends in those. The FFXIV community team also stream sometimes or do PvP events.
• Though I don't use it myself, social media is also rather big outside of the game for FFXIV - reddit, ex-twitter, blogs, because people like to post their screenshots, art and crafts. The game is full of creative types so art and crafts are absolutely everywhere and etsy is full of people's FFXIV-inspired creations. Though it's not personally my thing it seems a very social space to me overall.

Party Finder is overrun with what can only be described as businesses masquerading as community activities

Only if you look at the Other category. I ignore that part of PF so I don't notice it.

Social platforms like Twitter/X and Reddit don't help either. Instead of fostering discussion, they're dominated by echo chambers where you're either fully aligned with the hive mind or silenced for fear of stepping out of line.

I suppose that can feel the case there, but fortunately it's not your only option.

Statics fall apart when content is cleared, leaving behind a trail of burned bridges.

I'm not gonna disagree that statics often fall apart. It's part of human social interaction, unfortunately. Even in real life you can burn bridges with people you worked with, get fired or fall out with friends and this is far more common when you do something that "relies on eachother" such as forming a band (I was in a few and fell out with all of them, despite being friends with them for years prior). It tests to the limit if you're really, emotionally, on the same page.

But when you find a team that doesn't fall out, it's great. Alternatively, it can be great in the time before it falls apart. If you all had a blast for a year, or a few years, before it went south, then at least you had a few years of joy?

story, once the game's crown jewel, is starting to falter

To me personally, it feels like what we've always got, it's just not my thing... this whole cyberpunk thing isn't really hitting for me. I do hope it'll move a bit back from the technology to traditional fantasy. The whole thing was great until Heritage Found where the technology just overdid it for me.

Jobs? They're being gutted and oversimplified, stripping away the depth and complexity that once made them engaging to master. This isn't just a gameplay issue; it's an identity crisis.

I don't particularly disagree with their identity crisis and uniqueness issue. My hope is they'll address this in 8.0 as promised with the ideas they mentioned such as skill trees.

Take Extreme Primal mounts, for example: why should I bother grinding them now when I know that by 8.0, the drop rates will increase, unsync will make it trivial, and patience will reward me more than effort ever could?

You're right and many people choose to wait and unsync, but here is why I do it when it's current: for the experience and the memories. Once the content is old, the mechanics have no punch and it's not the same. I want to be able to say to sprouts "in my day, it was like X" and after 10 years, I can and do exactly that.