"Vacate Chambers" without Estate Access

It blows my mind that this happened and there has been 0 GM response. The in-game GM support is horrendous at the best of times (gotta love the canned responses) but their ineptitude with this situation blows my mind. This player (hostage taker) should get hit with a perma ban hammer. >.<

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Originally Posted by Aleczan

It truly boggles my mind that there had been a similar situation A YEAR AGO and the devs and GMs still can't do anything about it.

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It's possible they didn't realize that Guess Access was also denied and hence didn't see that issue.

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Originally Posted by ExKage

It's possible they didn't realize that Guess Access was also denied and hence didn't see that issue.

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I am willing to bet this is entirely the issue. I'm not sure anyone realized that was the key to all of this.

Not even the first time this happened. Wow.

Also, I don't think the issue here is the option to lock FC members out of the house. I think the issue is having to manually empty your room of furniture to be able to demolish it. It's altogether inconvenient, and there's not even a reason it needs to be that way, since it happens automatically if you're kicked from the FC instead of leaving on your own. Since the option to lock FC members out of the FC house is based on their respective rank, I can understand locking out new probationary members or maybe members who are being punished for something. It's not something I would ever do, or consider useful, but that doesn't mean no one else can find it useful. I don't think the option needs to be removed. If it--understandably--bothers you, then don't join an FC that utilizes it.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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I get why you feel that way, but that's not the case. We've had members join up AFTER my co-leader and I spent all our gil purchasing the house and then decide to stick around to get permissions and take things. People who show up after we've purchased our house aren't entitled to the estate just because it belongs to the FC. Sure, if they had a hand in helping to purchase the plot and the permit they do. But I'm talking people who either don't contribute anything(be it gil or mats or even helping lower level players within the fc) or join up after the estate is there. People can't steal or plan to steal what they can't see, and they'll get tired of waiting within a few days. Not to mention, I don't enjoy having members who just intend to use us for housing features; I've had people ask to join up to use our stables and chocobo food and then leave when their bird is the color they want, or people who said, in all honesty, that they don't care about the fc and they just want a room of their own. Restricting access to the estate discourages these types of "members". That isn't the problem.

The problem is that this feature can be used to abuse others all because the devs won't allow people to vacate furnished rooms from the lawn. All features in this game can be used to abuse and/or harass others. voting to kick a member from a dungeon/trial/raid, the rank system in FCs, even Linkshells and the MB if a person is popular enough. However, all of those systems have the means for players to remove themselves or protect themselves from harassment. This case did not have that. Because you cannot vacate from the lawn, these players could not protect themselves or their items. Everything in game has potential for exploitation. That's why almost everything has a backup plan or a way out. This situation could have been avoided had the devs allowed for people to vacate furnished rooms. It's that simple.

Really odd there has been ZERO comment from anyone at Square on this.

GMs will usually say "rest assured that people from our staff are reading the forums" in canned responses, but seeing this kind of issue going unanswered proves that those are HUGE LIES.

I'm going to add my two gil to this.

When I first got our FC Hall set up, and was setting rank privileges, and I saw that Estate Access was a privilege...my first thought was "...no good can come from this...", just right away.

I used to GM for EverQuest (the original one), so my mind often immediately thinks of the worst case scenarios for everything that I run across in a video game. And the first thing I thought of is someone locking up their FC house and not letting members in - and this was before private rooms were added. When they added private rooms, with all the restrictions on them, I really thought bad things could happen. Stuff exactly like this where an FC leader just locked up the house and prevented anyone from getting to their rooms because they got salty over something. And it's happened because the coding exists for it to happen, and it's absolutely horrifying that the loophole exists, because unfortunately not everyone is nice, and people will be abusive as hell when given the chance if they feel "justified" - even if they are wrong for doing so.

The simplest solution to this is to just make the "Vacate Chambers" function work as it apparently was intended - click the button, have your stuff that's in the room go to the sutler, and have the chambers demolish. A second solution would be to have the "Leave FC" button tied to the same set of functions that the "Kick Member" function is tied to, so that when a person confirms they wish to leave an FC, their room is demolished and all of their items go to the sutler. These would keep situations like the one that just occurred on Balmung - the very situation that I expected to happen when I saw that Estate Access could be removed or added as a rank priveledge and the specifics of Private Rooms were released - in check, as members could still get the items from their rooms, many of which can only be obtained through quests or exceptionally hard work, and leave the free company when a leader loses their minds and locks everyone out of the FC hall.

Another solution would simply be to have it so that the "Purchase Private Room" right voids the "Estate Access" being removed from a FC member. Essentially tie the two together in a fashion so that when you grant the right to purchase a private room to a rank, it makes it so you cannot remove the right to estate access from that rank, and make it extremely obvious so the FC leader knows that this is a thing. That way they can't complain about it later.

So yes. This needs to be fixed. There are some solutions for you, Squeenix. I realise that many FC leaders want to limit access to the FC hall to some ranks, but I think it's harmful after a certain point to have it...as this all has proven.

I wonder if the folks who had trouble with this a year ago also tried making a thread and attempted to get SE's attention? People are right - just having someone at SE confirm that somebody has seen this and that they're looking into it would be more of a comfort than silence. Especially since as of now, GMs are unable to help people who are unfortunate enough to go through something like this.

As just finally reading this senario (herd about it 2 months ago in Linkshell/party chat a few times) & being a FC leader, even if I don't plan to rebuild it after its "colapse" a year ago, this sounds/is a problem bad enouf that I'd ahve to find a dictionary just to have the proper words to express how bad it is since I don't think "obsurdly horrible form of harrasment" quite covers what I'd wanna say about it fully... to Square-Enix: "PLEASE FIX ASAP!!"

Actually I tested this and estate hall access permission seems to do NOTHING. our member we tested with was still able to enter the houde and make a room.

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Originally Posted by AnnietheCat

Not to mention, I don't enjoy having members who just intend to use us for housing features; I've had people ask to join up to use our stables and chocobo food and then leave when their bird is the color they want, or people who said, in all honesty, that they don't care about the fc and they just want a room of their own. Restricting access to the estate discourages these types of "members". That isn't the problem.

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This wouldn't be such a problem if housing was available for all players rather then just a few FC's and rich players

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

This wouldn't be such a problem if housing was available for all players rather then just a few FC's and rich players

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I do agree with you, but that's a separate issue. However, the person wanting to use our stables wanted to use /our/ chocobo foods and /our/ seeds and /our/ soil. She wasn't going to pay for anything. So while I'm against the cost of personal housing, especially knowing first hand how difficult it can be to scrape that kind of gil together, the fact of the matter is the estate access setting helps to weed out the people who only want to /use/ Free Companies rather than be a part of them. Or at least that's how I use it. And much more than "a few" FCs have housing, and I'm far from rich and I bought myself a cottage. ¯\_(⌣̯̀⌣́)_/¯

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Originally Posted by AnnietheCat

And much more than "a few" FCs have housing, and I'm far from rich and I bought myself a cottage. ¯\_(⌣̯̀⌣́)_/¯

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The question is how long ago? I'm part of a relatively new FC (only a few months old) and things as they are there is no way for us to obtain a house at this time. We have every officer checking for vacant plots in all 3 areas, all wards, multiple times a day but the fact is that it's all gone with no ETA on when exactly anything is going to become available. Any newer players or FCs are restricted from housing purely on availability with no concrete dates for relief in sight. I'm sorry that people seem to be wanting to join your FC for the wrong reasons. It will be an issue until the matter is resolved though.

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Originally Posted by Silhouettic

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I agree with you, but what I'm saying is that the housing restriction feature does currently have a use. The number of plots wasn't the problem at the time we had a majority of these requests; the players simply didn't have the gil to buy their own houses and somehow though a casual fc would be okay with being used like that. But this thread has nothing to do with the limited housing, and that's an issue that SE needs to actually fix. This thread is about the estate access feature being abused, and I simply stated that it does, currently, have a use. I was saying this to combat the idea that it doesn't have a place in this game and that everyone, regardless of circumstances, is entitled to the FC estate just because they happen to be part of that fc. To reiterate my point: all features in this game can be abused, and the problem is that SE didn't have the foresight to plan for this kind of situation, which is the reason this feature was able to be abused. The existence of this feature is not to blame for the behavior of that fc leader.

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Originally Posted by AnnietheCat

the person wanting to use our stables wanted to use /our/ chocobo foods and /our/ seeds and /our/ soil. She wasn't going to pay for anything. So ... the fact of the matter is the estate access setting helps to weed out the people who only want to /use/ Free Companies rather than be a part of them.

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Originally Posted by AnnietheCat

...This thread is about the estate access feature being abused, and I simply stated that it does, currently, have a use. I was saying this to combat the idea that it doesn't have a place in this game and that everyone, regardless of circumstances, is entitled to the FC estate just because they happen to be part of that fc.

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But you keep mixing together different accesses. The ability to enter the FC house doesn't let them use your stables, food, gardens, seed, etc. You can block all of that, i.e. all of the exploitable stuff, without blocking access to the house. That specific access setting doesn't protect you from anything. Nobody has said that the other access settings aren't useful, only that there's no legitimate purpose for this particular one.

Wow. I had no idea this was even going on. Was this ever resolved?

I don't know why SE doesn't perma-ban that player as she is extorting and harassing them.

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Originally Posted by Niwashi

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I also made mention of people who stated, and I quote "I can't afford a house and I just want a private room. I don't really care about being part of a company."

Restricting house features as a whole to the lowest rank level does, in fact, weed out shitty people who just want to use the company instead of wanting to be a part of it. So rather than blaming the feature, SE needs to be blamed for not having a contingency for this. Had those members been able to vacate from the lawn and pick up their items from the caretaker npc, this whole situation could have been avoided. Just because a feature can and has been exploited doesn't mean the feature doesn't have a place. FC's in general are exploited daily by RMT groups who store all the cheated gil they make in the fc chest so that they can give it to buyers without looking suspicious. There's three of those bot companies on Coeurl that I know of, btw. Also, four of the people I encountered who just wanted to use the fc estate were on coeurl, one of which tried to take the fc from me while I was away for a family emergency.

No one has the right to your FC estate just by being a part of it, especially those who did nothing to help you get it or just want to use that and not care about the fc at all. So it's great that you don't like it or need it. However, some of us like the feature and do use it. While you might not need it, there may be people on other servers who are constantly faced with users and abusers and want to weed them out. It does have a legitimate purpose, especially now with estate rooms, crafting benches, and food items scattered around plots. So I mean it's great that you have never dealt with those types of people, really, go you. But some people have and that's probably precisely why that feature was added in the first place. I didn't pay for a fc plot and nearly everything in it for my fc to be taken advantage of by assholes.

TL;DR: everything is exploitable and therefore it is SE's job to plan for this, and in this case they dropped the ball. The feature itself isn't useless and if you don't like it, don't use it. However, the fact remains that SE was unhelpful in this situation and /they/ believe the feature couldn't be exploited(the GMs somehow thought there was a loophole, after all). So tell SE to add a loophole, instead of removing a feature that some of us may actually use.

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Originally Posted by Silhouettic

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The ETA on possible open plots: Count 45 days forward from the start of patch 3.1 this is when people who have quit the game and don't plan on coming back (so who have not even logged in since patch) will have their housing removed from them. At least on my server, there are a lot of *ghost plots* I see around. Chances are there will be quite a few across the servers that will open up and give those fast enough a chance to get a house (and not through another player and the *relinquish* fee. Was in patch notes.

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Originally Posted by AnnietheCat

I also made mention of people who stated, and I quote "I can't afford a house and I just want a private room. I don't really care about being part of a company."

Restricting house features as a whole to the lowest rank level does, in fact, weed out shitty people who just want to use the company instead of wanting to be a part of it.

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So when I point out that it isn't the notion of access settings in general, but just this specific one I have a problem with, you respond by just bringing up yet another one?

Ok, the only reason I can see for any company with a house wanting to restrict which of its members can have private rooms in that house is if it's a big enough FC that they'd hit the limit on the total number of private rooms they can have. But that's reason enough that it has to remain a setting, so if you want to make sure that only members who are around for a while can have a room, that's fine. It still has nothing to do with the question of whether being able to enter the FC house is something that can be restricted from FC members.

When it comes down to a matter of simply being whether you like another player and want them in your group, that's a decision for the FC leader and officers to make, implemented by inviting a player to join or kicking them out. No access setting is going to take care of just generally keeping out whoever you don't want there. How would you deal with someone who wants to be in your FC just because they like the tag that adds after their name, or because having an FC tag after their name keeps them from getting other FC invites? Access settings are for protecting the FC from people who would exploit it, not for finding who you want to play with and who you don't. That part is up to you.

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Originally Posted by crc0427

Actually I tested this and estate hall access permission seems to do NOTHING. our member we tested with was still able to enter the houde and make a room.

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0 privileges, No estate hall access permission, and the estate must be closed off to guests.

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Originally Posted by saberchic

Wow. I had no idea this was even going on. Was this ever resolved?

I don't know why SE doesn't perma-ban that player as she is extorting and harassing them.

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So far I haven't seen anything change. The players were able to use the social media to I believe a) get the leader the items they demanded and b) intimidate the fc leader with the sheer amount of people who showed up in support of the people held against their will.

Necromancing this because it is a serious design flaw.

Currently FC leaders can kick people from the free company and that would send players' furnishings to a vendor. Players should be able to leave the free company and have the room demolished that way.