Hello JeffTheSandwich, love the name, welcome to the forums.
With Starter Access. you and your friend should be able to play together through multiplayer on 25 new maps every season.
It sounds like this may be a Nat issue. Do you and your friend know what type of Nat setting you both have? As this can affect your ability to host and join games.
You can usually find this out from your ISP's website by entering your routers IP address into your browsers address bar, logging in and navigating to your routers settings.
Can I also ask, are you trying to play from home and do you have more than one router?
Or, do you live in a college dorm or a building with shared internet as this can mean you may have double or triple nat which can sometimes affect connection too.
To help you both, please make sure to follow all of the connectivity steps in this guide -
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