Bit of a stink over the way Sony announced the new party system and some of the functionality it removed.
https://www.thesixthaxis.com/2020/10/19/ps4-8-00-party-changes-sony-looking-into-your-feedback/
While I’m normally fairly allergic to joining the baying crowd, I do agree here.
I like the WhatsApp style idea, but I frequently used party to simply block out voice chat in games that don’t support it. Ever since the last socom actually, which was pretty egregious in that respect; I’ve tried to avoid random voice chat.
I really don’t like it when games don’t have that basic option; and too many games still don’t. It only takes a single session in any online game to realise that it’s ridiculously idealistic to expect everyone to play nice regardless of whether you think the game is dependent on communication.
So an empty party was always my go to option. If that’s not possible, and you have to add a friend of a friend (or eg. a stranger in Destiny ) to a permanent messaging group just to be able to temporarily communicate, well that’s a crazy decision.
All that is made worse by the infuriating game of chicken both platform holders played, leading to extremely last minute info dumps.
I reckon they’ll at least partially detach party formation from messaging. I hope so anyway. The WhatsApp thing will be great for us I think, especially if groups get formed around games; but if that’s how it works across the board then that’s a retrograde step.