Suggestion: allow free trial players to use DMs and send friend/party requests

[Alicie]

Final Fantasy XIV is being advertised as a game with extensive free trial (yes, Square Enix actually buys advertisement on Reddit to promote the game and it's free trial)
However, should you join with a friend (and let's be honest: people are most likely starting MMORPG with a friend or a company) or recommend the game to a friend, you'll quickly find that they can't party up, they can't add each other to friends list, they can't even send a tell to you.

"But if we enable all this to free trials, they will just start advertising RMT!!11"
No, there are bunch of ways around it. Simply add "Authorize incoming actions" into context menu of another player. Upon clicking on it, for a limited time (until you log out) this person will be able to send you friend requests, send you tells and party requests even on free trial. And once you are on each others friend lists? You can freely communicate with each other without need to autorize each other.

Other players will not be spammed with these requests because they simply will not even see who and even if they got that authorization.

[FudoMyoo]

A friend can call you, talk on discord or social media etc. You can party up with a free trial player if they told you their in game handle. /sea all name/zone/area. Unless you are referring to "two" free trials account, than no. They can't add each other.

Is this for FF14 Night Clubbing scene? Frankly I don't understand the issues you have highlighted. Me & wife always party up with our free trial friends.

[Sunhwapark]

I think the point of the free trial is to be just slightly inconvenient enough to get you to buy and subscribe to the game.

[Crafoutis]

Absolutely not.

[Hyperia]

There are so many harassment issues with allowing burner accounts to DM people, sorry, this can’t happen.

[CCheshire]

I mean, you always can just add each other on discord? if they refuse to, then, well, that's the end of that friendship so...

[ForteNightshade]

"But if we enable all this to free trials, they will just start advertising RMT!!11"
No, there are bunch of ways around it. Simply add "Authorize incoming actions" into context menu of another player. Upon clicking on it, for a limited time (until you log out) this person will be able to send you friend requests, send you tells and party requests even on free trial. And once you are on each others friend lists? You can freely communicate with each other without need to autorize each other.

This is a game with a Friends List still running on dial up. You really think they'll add in a whole separate feature that really only benefits free trial players who may not even stick with the game to begin with?

The whole purpose of a free trial is to give you a taste of the game to see whether you'd like it. They don't actually want you to stay on a free trial until Heavensward or Stormblood. Hence why it's so restrictive. And that doesn't even get into possible harassment issues, RMT and whatnot.

[Grimforth]

I don't think the op knows what a free trial is.

[BlisteringFrost]

A friend can call you, talk on discord or social media etc. You can party up with a free trial player if they told you their in game handle. /sea all name/zone/area. Unless you are referring to "two" free trials account, than no. They can't add each other.

Is this for FF14 Night Clubbing scene? Frankly I don't understand the issues you have highlighted. Me & wife always party up with our free trial friends.

Because then it would be less annoying to bot.

[Alicie]

This is a game with a Friends List still running on dial up. You really think they'll add in a whole separate feature that really only benefits free trial players who may not even stick with the game to begin with?

The whole purpose of a free trial is to give you a taste of the game to see whether you'd like it. They don't actually want you to stay on a free trial until Heavensward or Stormblood. Hence why it's so restrictive. And that doesn't even get into possible harassment issues, RMT and whatnot.

If they didn't want people to stay up on free trial until HW or SB, they would never have added them into free trial in the first place.
Harassment and RMT can not be done if it's implemented in a proposed way.

We need more people to come and stick to the game right now more than ever, and when you join and have literally zero way to communicate with others it's not helping.