They only show a few comments on certain pages, which deemphasizes discussion. I'm not aware of any other changes to new Reddit that would do that.

Although other changes might have made things better, like changing how default subreddits work (although this applies to new and old reddit).

With the exception of a few subreddits that have made explicit rule changes (either encouraging or discouraging memes), I haven't really noticed a significant long term trend in meme-posting within subreddits.