We Want Spam Protection - Control Who Makes Trade, FC, etc. offers

It's high time that there was a filter for who can and can't send a player unsolicited pop-ups including free company invites and trade offers. These are already annoying, but they're especially irritating when they pop up near enemies or when someone is trying to immerse in the story.

There should be three toggles for both Free Company invitations, Friend Requests, and Trade Requests:
1) Anyone you've spoken to before during this current game session can send you a Free Company invite.
2) Your Contacts on your Friends List can send you a Free Company invite.
3) No one can send you a Free Company Invite.

1) Anyone you've spoken to during the current game session can send a Friend Request
2) No one can send you a Friend Request

1) Anyone you've spoken to/raided with during this current game session can send you a Trade Request
2) Your Contacts on your Friends List can send you a Trade Request
3) No one can send you a Trade Request

It should be pretty easy to incorporate, seeing how the Black List is now. Remove the Invite to Free Company option from the drop down in the map, and then make it appear in the chat box with people you've spoken to or in your friends list. If someone doesn't want to receive Free Company invites, then whenever someone sends something, it can give an automated response, sort of how players in instances can't receive messages.

Much has already said about Free Company offers. I'll waste my time and recount them here:[LIST][*]But the buffs! You can get so many buffs in this game. You're joining the FC for more buffs? And there's such ceaseless complaining when the buffs go down. Probably because it's the only reason people put up with FC's. It's not worth the buffs.[*]But the community! Free Companies are not community. It's just a subsection of random people who gave in to all the unsolicited messages. It's the people running around the major cities. You just have a random smattering of those people. The conversations in a FC chat are usually "wb!" "wb!" "anyone want to [raid no one is doing]?" "we need money" "we need more money for lotto" "lotto money" "we lost the lotto" "lotto" You can set all your chat boxes to filter out all free company chat, but doesn't that defeat the purpose?[*]But housing! You can have a tiny apartment with eight to ten items in it, and every time you are on the property, you have to go through the Free Company. You also don't get to enjoy housing perks like having more items or using the shops. It's kind of like having a studio apartment with a pool. Yeah, there's a pool, but you can only have one guest and forty kids are in said pool at a time. You should just get your own personal house. But don't worry, the free companies will scream about all the personals in the housing lottery.[*]But the raids! Play tank or healer, pleb. Or hop in line as DPS and go live life outside of raids. Or get your real life friends to raid with you. No one raids with their FC lol[*]But our fun events! No, no one thinks your events are fun. People who think playing streaming games online with strangers are already on Twitch. No one should stop what they're doing, quit their main story quests or raids or whatever, to go join your FC and... drink? at the same time their character drinks? [*]But our Discord! See "fun events" above

[*]But you can just set yourself to /busy This is not a permanent solution. If someone is /busy, they cannot form parties or send /tells. If you want to play with your friends, you have to remove your /busy status to actually have fun! and then the spam starts all over again. Your friends can't interact with you at all without finding you in the game and hunting you down. I am furious at the number of times my friends had to leave their world server, find me in the map, and then either /shout to the whole city "HEY MIKA YOU'RE SET TO BUSY"before we could do quests together. Same goes for the niceties inside the game, like, "Whoa, that's an awesome Yennifer setup!" Because the moment you let your guard down, the spam starts.[*]But you can make your own free company of one person or with your friends! For one, you need a certain number of people to sign onto your petition to form an FC. For two, your friends might be in another FC already. For three, why should you have to pay money to start a free company so that you can be safe from the spam invites?[*]But it's not as fun without an FC! People who enjoy whatever interactions they have with FC are free to enjoy that, but not everyone wants that. A lot of us just want to play a Final Fantasy game and immerse in the little side quests and intrigue. That's extremely fun and we never once join an FC! It should not feel like a forced thing. If you kept getting forced to the Gold Saucer and harassed to play Triple Triad over and over and over, you might understand. When people harass you for being alone, you experience what's called the "Backfire" effect in psychology in which you're actually less likely to see things their way. The more people tell you to join their FC (OR ELSE!) the less likely you are to join an FC. It feels aggressive, toxic, and mean. So STOP.[/LIST]
Less has been said about the unsolicited Trade Requests, but here are some of the reasons people have given to justify these sudden pop-ups that completely interrupt whatever it was you were doing:[LIST][*]I was being nice and giving you free stuff! Your free stuff is interrupting my quest or crafting or whatever it was I actually wanted to do. Also, free stuff is usually junk you weren't able to desynthesize or sell, so I have no interest in it.[*]You don't want free stuff? No, I want to craft and roleplay and whatever it was that I was doing. [*]I was trying to help with your crafting/materia melding Thanks but I don't like feeling like I got something for nothing or feeling obligated to give you gill. That's what the Market Board is for. Let me craft my own stuff, thanks. [*]I'm so sorry. I thought you were someone else. You're good, buddy.

[*]I'm a robot and I'm using this as a promotion. Yeah, you and everyone else sending unsolicited trade requests and fc invites are spammy. Get in line, buddy. I don't want whatever it is you're selling, and you're making my game suck. This is supposed to be a Final Fantasy game, remember?[*] You're very pretty and I want you to wear this. Please do not. This is why no one wants to play 14. Gross.[/LIST]

This was long-winded, and I do not care, because no one seems to hear the screams of the unaffiliated. We want to be heard. We are tired of being silenced in /busy. We want filters. We want to enjoy Final Fantasy in peace.

The red text is uncomfortable to read. So much so that even if you made good points, I didn't read your posts.

Just go with white, and if you need to emphasize something, do it with writing style.

On topic, I agree with the OP. Weirdly enough, I get unsolicited trades all the time in this game. On an unprecedented scale, I might add. Fourteen, fifteen years in WoW and I can probably count the unsolicited trades I got on one hand. One year in FFXIV and I've had, I dunno, ten or twelve?

These folks that do it strike me as odd, too. When I close the trade window they always give some RP-ish response, like, "You've made your intentions known, Sir. I bid you farewell." And then if I message them asking what was up, I never get a response. The items in the trade window are generally a single piece of crafting material - I don't really get why some random person would want to trade me a single animal hide. It's just a bit strange.

TBH I'm just gonna start taking the items and remaining mute. See how that goes, LOL.