SE, Please fix this FC exploit

Perhaps add a feature where you can only take out so much at a time, if they wish to keep taking the master has to come online and remove their restriction?

Regardless of if this particular FC gets their money back or not, I want SE to make it so you can't promote above your own rank. You can't promote anyone to Master at least I hope? >.>; That would be be beyond dumb.

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Originally Posted by Keith_Dragoon

Snip.

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Nice assumption, but you are incorrect. My previous FC, which is no longer active, was at 1 time the largest FC on Adamantoise. Within that time we had several smaller FCs merge with us. And we had no problems inviting all their members into our ranks. Granted we did lose all our items/gil once our "Fearless Leader" decided to leave the game for Wildstar and not tell anyone. We had several(minor) server firsts including first DoW/DoM to 50, first crafting class to 50, and first to have all crafting classes to 50. So we had quite a bit of goodies, but I digress. Once again, I'm sorry that this happened to you guys, but take it as a learning experience. I know it sucks(been there) but don't be so trustworthy to new people. Especially ones who are expecting access to your company chest. Make them go through a probationary period or w/e.

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Originally Posted by Kat_Manx

Regardless of if this particular FC gets their money back or not, I want SE to make it so you can't promote above your own rank. You can't promote anyone to Master at least I hope? >.>; That would be be beyond dumb.

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Agreed, you should not be able to promote to a rank higher than your own. And the only person who should be able to have the Master position is the FC leader, and no one else should be able to hold this title. If the current Master quits or leaves, either the FC is disbanded, or the Master title is given to someone else, and immediately removed from previous Master. i.e. FC can only have 1 Master at a time. On top of that the Master should be the only one that is able to withdraw gil for the company chest. The only thing I guess you'd have to take the hit on is the items. And most items are usually so easy to obtain in this game, it wouldn't be much of a loss if someone were to ransack the chest.

I'm sorry this happened to you. When I heard about this flaw a few weeks back, I took away the ability to promote/demote from everyone but officers. I also will not promote anyone to the rank of Officer without being sure they are trustworthy and use an authenticator. Even the nicest person in the world can get hacked without one. My FC is working toward raising funds for a house, and losing all of our money would be a huuuuuuge blow to morale.

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Originally Posted by Woggers

Agreed, you should not be able to promote to a rank higher than your own. And the only person who should be able to have the Master position is the FC leader, and no one else should be able to hold this title. If the current Master quits or leaves, either the FC is disbanded, or the Master title is given to someone else, and immediately removed from previous Master. i.e. FC can only have 1 Master at a time. On top of that the Master should be the only one that is able to withdraw gil for the company chest. The only thing I guess you'd have to take the hit on is the items. And most items are usually so easy to obtain in this game, it wouldn't be much of a loss if someone were to ransack the chest.

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As a FC Master I once promoted someone else to Master because I was going to be away for a while. It lets me do it because I am the Master, I assume. There can indeed be only one Master at a time, when I accepted the promotion, it made that person the Master and lowered my rank to the lowest possible one. Now I'm just hoping there isn't some weird issue that could let someone else than the Master promote someone to Master.

Yyyyikes. Look at that money. I am so sorry Lumia.

Should not be able to promote above your own rank. Its a bad
design flaw, and should be changed.

At least this person now has a reputation with the bigger guilds.

I've let the people I know this information as well.

Keep being vocal about this. Even if the FC mechanic is "working as intended" it's still theft. We're not allowed to send /tells in instances because they are afraid of people harassing other players but this is ok? Something doesn't add up. Hopefully you will get a better response on here than you have in game. Good luck to your FC!

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Originally Posted by Kat_Manx

As a FC Master I once promoted someone else to Master because I was going to be away for a while. It lets me do it because I am the Master, I assume. There can indeed be only one Master at a time, when I accepted the promotion, it made that person the Master and lowered my rank to the lowest possible one. Now I'm just hoping there isn't some weird issue that could let someone else than the Master promote someone to Master.

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I tried it a few weeks ago and only Master can promote someone to Master rank. It's still messed up either way OP. I hope you get your gil back. In my FC, I think the leader saw this problem a while ago so now only 3 of us at the highest ranks have the promotion perk.

Hate to say this, but as a FC owner myself, I see the blame 100% on the FC owner, how can you own a FC and not have super restrictive rules on withdrawing and promotions? With my FC, others can only deposit gil and nobody else can promote anyone. Chest 2 & 3 are completely turned off and chest #1/crystals are deposit only. Plus I don't allow gil to be contributed unless its a leader/RL friend. With these rules, my FC has been setup months ago to make sure things like this dont happen. Sucks that you had to go through something that was completely avoidable if the owner did his/her job correctly.

that...is a big exploit.

thanks for spreading awareness of it so other FC's can insulate themselves from this.

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Originally Posted by Lumia

The leader, myself, and another 2nd in command have sent in player abuse/RMT tickets and have only gotten copy and paste responses back. Part of that response states that they can't do anything about it because "it is working as intended" and that if we want it changed to post on the Lodestone.
We are going to try the STF next to try and get our gil back.
The person who did this is still hopping from FC to FC to try and scam them. He begs to be given permissions which will allow him access to their FC chest.

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Of course this is a flaw. And of course that person is a thief that needs to be banned. And your savings should be returned to you.
You know there will be others who either will try this, or realize they already have that privilege and will drain the FC dry, slowly or quickly. SE needs to put something in place ASAP to prevent this.
I'll warn people I know. And I hope you'll respond to /tells requesting names and more information. (I understand why SE doesn't want names posted forever in public.)

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Originally Posted by Cegiana

Hate to say this, but as a FC owner myself, I see the blame 100% on the FC owner, how can you own a FC and not have super restrictive rules on withdrawing and promotions? With my FC, others can only deposit gil and nobody else can promote anyone. Chest 2 & 3 are completely turned off and chest #1/crystals are deposit only. Plus I don't allow gil to be contributed unless its a leader/RL friend. With these rules, my FC has been setup months ago to make sure things like this dont happen. Sucks that you had to go through something that was completely avoidable if the owner did his/her job correctly.

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I wonder if people who reply like this even read the post? :/ It was super restricted. It's a flaw. If the flaw wasn't there, no harm would have come to this FC.

I hope this gets fixed for you guys, and money returned. Really a bad system to allow such a thing.

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Originally Posted by Kat_Manx

I wonder if people with these replies even read the post? :/ It was super restricted. It's a flaw. If the flaw wasn't there, no harm would have come to this FC.

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Except it wasn't super-restricted.

There are 5 possible ranks...why should someone with the middle rank be able to promote? It just doesn't make much sense to me to allow that; yay, you can promote from rank 5 to rank 4! Why?

I personally don't think anyone under rank 2 should be able to promote, but that's just me. I also wouldn't allow anyone I don't know and trust to have promotion powers in the first place.

Allowing someone new to have promotion powers just doesn't seem right to me.

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Originally Posted by ArkhamNative

Of course this is a flaw. And of course that person is a thief that needs to be banned. And your savings should be returned to you.
You know there will be others who either will try this, or realize they already have that privilege and will drain the FC dry, slowly or quickly. SE needs to put something in place ASAP to prevent this.
I'll warn people I know. And I hope you'll respond to /tells requesting names and more information. (I understand why SE doesn't want names posted forever in public.)

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I will be happy to share via /tell or you can also check out the Balmung facebook page for names and additional screenshots of the FC activity log from when this happened.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

Except it wasn't super-restricted.

There are 5 possible ranks...why should someone with the middle rank be able to promote? It just doesn't make much sense to me to allow that; yay, you can promote from rank 5 to rank 4! Why?

I personally don't think anyone under rank 2 should be able to promote, but that's just me. I also wouldn't allow anyone I don't know and trust to have promotion powers in the first place.

Allowing someone new to have promotion powers just doesn't seem right to me.

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If it work normally -> than third rank can only promote to fourth rank -> not to second rank
(It's like supervisor can choose who become general manager....)

edit to save daily post number -_-

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I said it before, if you read the thread, that it should work that way...but then you get the situation in the quote, where you can only move them from rank 5 to rank 4...which then...why bother?

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to move members from casual to raider.

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But...allowing a newcomer such power is a bad idea, even if its just for rank 5 to rank 4. Chances are, they also have dismissal powers, and can really do a number on your lower-ranked members that way.

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if it work normally (normally like in common sense) than it should be no problem to give new raid leader such power

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Originally Posted by Greed

If it work normally -> than third rank can only promote to fourth rank -> not to second rank

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I said it before, if you read the thread, that it should work that way...but then you get the situation in the quote, where you can only move them from rank 5 to rank 4...which then...why bother?

But...allowing a newcomer such power is a bad idea, even if its just for rank 5 to rank 4. Chances are, they also have dismissal powers, and can really do a number on your lower-ranked members that way.

I think the point was, it was a merge. They gave the new leader less power than all the other officers, but enough of a rank that he could set up a raid team (which, to my understanding, is what he promised them.) New lower-rank officer then accepted, and promoted the gilseller-named account to regular officer, or fc master status, that account stole all the money, and then presumably transferred it somewhere and deleted itself.

This was not the original guild's fault. It is unfortunate, it shouldn't have been able to happen, and the guy that pulled it off is a scumbag. The point of this thread is not so that we can blame the original fc for setting their fc up in a reasonable way, but that we can be aware there is a problem, and that morally ambiguous individuals will use it to scam people.

And really. Since when do we decide that the actions of a thief are without blame, and we need to instead blame the people he stole for being stolen from? Come on community, you can do better.

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I think the point was, it was a merge. They gave the new leader less power than all the other officers, but enough of a rank that he could set up a raid team (which, to my understanding, is what he promised them.) New lower-rank officer then accepted, and promoted the gilseller-named account to regular officer, or fc master status, that account stole all the money, and then presumably transferred it somewhere and deleted itself.

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This is exactly what happened.

The "RMT looking character" was promoted to rank #2, which is an officer with almost all rights. (Used for months only by the master's wife)

Thanks Lude for translating this into French for us :)
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...er-dans-les-CL

If anyone is capable of translating this to other languages, please let me know.

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Originally Posted by Gethyn

And really. Since when do we decide that the actions of a thief are without blame, and we need to instead blame the people he stole for being stolen from? Come on community, you can do better.

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^This. Like. What is up with some people? There's a flaw in the FC rank design that someone exploited under the FC leaders' noses. That's all this is about. Not what they could've done to prevent the theft from happening. What is up with the victim-blaming?

I reeeeaaally hope you guys can get this resolved somehow, some way. I can't even imagine losing that much Gil and what work it took to accumulate it. ;; good luck.

Sounds like the player you promoted is/was working together with the RMT. With a name like that how could anyone think it wasnt. It does suck that that happened to you guys. Not sure what else I can say then what's been said. Sell and save hopefully you some reimbursement for what was stolen.

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Originally Posted by Iymala

I noticed this on release as I was able to promote others above my rank no my alt. I thought it was horrible design, but never considered it would be used to do this. I always lock gil removal to guild leader only, but I am paranoid.

It is absolutely shameful that SE will not offer you any help. I hope you get your items restored by someone who actually cares about the community that is still invested in playing their game. Those people should be taken care of as their numbers are getting smaller and smaller.

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Yeah, I noticed it at launch as well. A few people have invite/gil withdraw rights too, but those are people I've known for 10+ years. I do hope this gets changed either way

yea same thing happend to my fc. they really need to fix this

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Originally Posted by Krokov

Sounds like the player you promoted is/was working together with the RMT. With a name like that how could anyone think it wasnt. It does suck that that happened to you guys. Not sure what else I can say then what's been said. Sell and save hopefully you some reimbursement for what was stolen.

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While I thought maybe it was RMT related, I don't think it was. The "RMT" looking name has thought put in to it to confuse the reader with the use of I and lowercase L's along with combinations of v's and w's. Most RMT names I've come across are random button mashings of letters on the keyboard or randomly generated names using the naming conventions.

I think this is just some punk kid and his punk friends running scams on people.

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Originally Posted by Krokov

Sounds like the player you promoted is/was working together with the RMT.

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Just because the name looks like the crap RMTs come up with doesn't mean it is. Most likely the person who promoted the guy who stole the items/gil are the same person.

This is most unfortunate, OP. I hope it gets rectified. I honestly never knew it was possible to promote someone to a rank higher than your own (I've played in games where you couldn't promote characters to the same rank as yourself unless you were the guild leader).

I will be passing this information along to the FCs my Miqo'te are in. (My other 6 characters are not in FCs.)

SE needs to stop assuming that all the players will behave and not screw other players over.

Sorry for what happened to you and I hope you get, at least, your gil back.

But I do have a question which I'm kinda confused by:

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Originally Posted by Lumia

we gave that FC's leader his own rank so he could form his coil static group.

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Why did this guy need a rank just to form a coil static within your group? We have members that create coil statics and they don't need a higher rank given to them to do it. Just a little confused by this...

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Originally Posted by KaiKatzchen

Why did this guy need a rank just to form a coil static within your group? We have members that create coil statics and they don't need a higher rank given to them to do it. Just a little confused by this...

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He wanted a rank to distinguish his group from other people in the free company. His rank was "Static Leader" and his static members were "Static Onions". (We use an Onion Knight theme for ranks).

I didn't think anything of it when we created the extra ranks. I have an alt character on another server who's FC has specialty ranks for crafting/gathering, and other random things.

But I digress, the point of this thread isn't about our failures... it's about fixing this so it doesn't happen to others. There are several people who responded to this thread that didn't know about this.

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Originally Posted by Lumia

He wanted a rank to distinguish his group from other people in the free company. His rank was "Static Leader" and his static members were "Static Onions". (We use an Onion Knight theme for ranks).

I didn't think anything of it when we created the extra ranks. I have an alt character on another server who's FC has specialty ranks for crafting/gathering, and other random things.

But I digress, the point of this thread isn't about our failures... it's about fixing this so it doesn't happen to others. There are several people who responded to this thread that didn't know about this.

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This

My FC Also uses special titles as ranks for those I truly trust which has individual rights depending on how much I trust them. While I am sure none of them would screw me over my FC is also going through a merge with a FC that splintered off from us around launch and occasionally one of them gets promoted temporarily to a specialized rank to invite the mass of people coming in. I have it set up to prevent this kind of thing from happening but only because I was online when it happened and was notified by their FC leader as soon as he found out.

I'm one of the GM's of Dark Hour and the same thing happened to us, but it was when we first started saving up gil. We lost 1.3m. May not seem like a lot, but it really put a stop to our saving up gil for a while.

Someone joined the FC, got promoted up to the second rank, and withdrew all of our gil. He then left and deleted his character.

We were forced to change the ranks so that no one but the leader can withdraw gil, and no one but the leader can change rank settings.

Our first response from SE was that this was basically our fault for trusting any member with promotion privilages.

Our second response said that this bug should be reported on the forums. But either way, we were told that there would be no way for us to get our gil back.

Our third and final attempt, I was told that it would be brought to the attention of the developers and I would get a follow up later on. Nothing was ever done or followed up on.

I hate to compare this... but in WoW once we had an issue where someone stole gold from our guild, and within an hour we had it all back and every item too. I was hacked and had my gold stolen from my personal character and it was replaced within 20 minutes.

This is not something that is "working as intended" and it is not the fault of any FC. This is an issue with the hierarchy system in this game that lets members promote above their own rank. This is SE's fault and them not replacing the gil stolen due to this ovesight is complete bs.

/rant

I would like to see this fixed as well, obvious major design flaw that shouldn't be considered "working as intended". This is the second time I've heard about this happening, the first time I heard about it was in game and that FC lost something like 85 mil, don't think they ever got it back either.

85M !!?? God... I think I would rage quit, unsuscribe and throw my computer through the window.

I hope they fix this and ban the moron -_-; The guy already had a sort of bad rep among pugs (I didn't have a good experience with him either).

It is incredibly stupid that the Promotion/Demotion permission allows someone to promote themselves beyond their current rank. Like, mind-bogglingly stupid.

That being said, I don't think you're likely to get any help from Square Enix, unfortunately.

That's why the only one allowed to promote/demote should be the Master.

Ow.
Sucks that happened to you.