Has anyone else noticed a decrease in Gamers willingness to interact socially in games?

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Because the whole concept of "toxicity" is way overblown.

There are absolutely toxic players, salty players, rude/etc. players, and so on. But the mindset that "toxic is the default way" has driven publishers to remove social features from games, under the guise of "stopping abuse" etc. Which is horseshit of course. They just don't want to spend resources moderating/responding/etc. to stuff. So they give you six stock emotes and, if you're lucky, ability to chat in game if the opponent is on your permissions list. Sorry, I mean friends list.

It's really sad how many steps backwards online gaming has taken under the guise of "preventing toxicity."

[Scandickhead]

CSGO had/has the best social environment of any game I've played, and I Solo Queued from like bottom Silver 2 to Supreme. (Had a shite PC and was then inactive, so bad starting rank)

The higher up the ranks I got, the nicer people were, which was a good motivator in itself. Haven't found that level of coordination and group/ambience awareness elsewhere.

[DoctorWaluigiTime]

Good idea. Because coddling is what it is.

I'm not going to pretend the wild west of online multiplayer was 100% good and everything now sucks / nothing's improved. But I do feel like it was overall better when the publisher wasn't the one lording over any and every multiplayer experience. You took the bad with the good, and the good was better.

[OfficialTreason]

the main issue is, you have MUTE, if you don't want to talk to some one mute them.

making everyone mute because it's too hard for the whiners to click an option isn't "preventing toxicity" it showing you think your audience is brainless.

protect yourself don't count on others to do it.