100M GIL taken

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

No, I understand perfectly. I'm saying you are objectively wrong. It is a feature that is beneficial when used with a minimal level of caution and is 100% optional.

It is a tool, an option, and you are most definitely blaming the tool and not the irresponsibility of the one using it (like you should be).

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Please, explain why being able to promote yourself to a rank that's above your own is a good idea at all. As said before anybody who gives someone like their second in command the privilege of promoting people should be able to assume that they wouldn't be able to make themselves Master (Which is where the privilege of taking money out of the chest is) I mean, that's common sense. Organizations in real life follow this in regards to security, Windows Servers follows it, (A local administrator can't elevate themselves to server administrator under any circumstances) and from what I've seen, the game didn't tell the OP otherwise. The game everywhere else gives us warnings when making certain decisions, but it doesn't say anything when OP was going to give that thief those promotion privileges? Are you serious?

And seeming that you didn't listen to me, I'll say it again. I'm not blaming the tool, I'm holding SE somewhat accountable because they were the ones who designed it and thought it was a good idea for people to be able to promote themselves to a rank higher than their own.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

Please, explain why being able to promote yourself to a rank that's above your own is a good idea at all.

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1) It was the original way to allow people to circumvent the problem of an FC leader quitting the game and abandoning the FC to naught. The leader could give one of the officers the ability to promote in the case that they would have to leave the game. Thus allowing the FC to continue and not have to be disbanded if the FC members wanted to continue.

2) The implementation of automatic leader change only mitigates it somewhat. It takes a minimum of a month for it to kick in, so the FC is screwed for that month if the leader has to leave the game for any reason (emergency or otherwise). So the promote ability is a necessary backup tool (and was the original tool for this purpose).

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And seeming that you didn't listen to me, I'll say it again. I'm not blaming the tool, I'm holding SE somewhat accountable because they were the ones who designed it and thought it was a good idea for people to be able to promote themselves to a rank higher than their own.

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Please stop accusing me of not understanding or listening when it's you who are the one that isn't. You are making the faulty assumption that the feature of being able to promote above your rank is "flawed" and that SE is "at fault" for allowing a flawed tool in the game. What you are incorrect about is that the feature is flawed. It is not.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Says the person who purposefully and willfully ignored the explanation of why the feature isn't flawed.

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In all fairness, your justifying situation is an extremely niche one that is easily avoided by the current GM having even the slightest shred of consideration for the free company. As you yourself said, there is a tool in place now that can be used to fix the problem, should it arise, but I would imagine the overwhelming majority of the time it's simply not an issue unless, again, the current GM just doesn't give the free company a second thought. Breaks from the game are rarely so immediate or necessary that you can't find five minutes to log in and pass lead. On the other hand, we have a rather opaque mechanism that is rather unusual compared to many or probably even most other MMOs and the workings of which cannot be readily discerned except through trial and error. As I said before, it's somewhat subjective whether the current iteration should be considered more good than bad, but it certainly leaves a lot to be desired either way and is very obviously flawed. Your zeal in defending its totality is rather misguided.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

1) It was the original way to allow people to circumvent the problem of an FC leader quitting the game and abandoning the FC to naught. The leader could give one of the officers the ability to promote in the case that they would have to leave the game. Thus allowing the FC to continue and not have to be disbanded if the FC members wanted to continue.

2) The implementation of automatic leader change only mitigates it somewhat. It takes a minimum of a month for it to kick in, so the FC is screwed for that month if the leader has to leave the game for any reason (emergency or otherwise). So the promote ability is a necessary backup tool (and was the original tool for this purpose).

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I don't think that's a good enough reason to allow a promoting yourself and I am of the opinion that most of the people in this thread agree with me when I say that.

It does seem like that automatic leader change is a bit too long though. Maybe shorten it down to a week?

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Well, you think wrong then. Seriously, I JUST explained it a few posts ago. If you disagree, then make a constructive, well-thought out response that refutes the facts I laid out above.

Right now you're just doing nothing but being insulting and trolling.

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Mature, disagree with you so i'm obviously the one being insulting and trolling.

There is already a system in place to counteract a sudden absence from the FC lead, what we don't need is for promotions to behave illogically as it's causing more problems.

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Originally Posted by Lone-wolfe-02

disagree with you so i'm obviously the one being insulting and trolling.

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Well, for one, you did directly insult me: You said, "It takes a special kind of person to think this feature isn't flawed".

Secondly, it's trolling if you simply say "you're wrong" without actually providing any kind of argument... like you have been.

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There is already a system in place to counteract a sudden absence from the FC lead, what we don't need is for promotions to behave illogically as it's causing more problems.

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And I already explained that that isn't sufficient because the FC would be forced to wait a month. The promote feature allows an FC to recover much faster in the event of the FC leader leaving the game.

And again, it's 100% optional. You don't have to use it and thus never have to put your FC at risk.

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Originally Posted by Lone-wolfe-02

Then lower how much time it takes effect and then we would have no need for this flawed feature.

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1) Not flawed, as I have explained. You can 100% opt out of the feature with no risk to your FC.

2) That's not sufficient. Even if they reduced it to a week or two without logging in, that's still too long a wait for a serious FC. And if you made it shorter than that, then there wouldn't be a point to there being an FC leader at all since the leader would change constantly.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Secondly, it's trolling if you simply say "you're wrong" without actually providing any kind of argument... like you have been.

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That's not what trolling is.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

That's not what trolling is.

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Trolling encompasses a lot of things. Being inflammatory (which is what saying "you're wrong" and not justifying your statement is) is one aspect of trolling.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

1) Not flawed, as I have explained. You can 100% opt out of the feature with no risk to your FC.

2) That's not sufficient. Even if they reduced it to a week or two without logging in, that's still too long a wait for a serious FC. And if you made it shorter than that, then there wouldn't be a point to there being an FC leader at all since the leader would change constantly.

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You seem to have two completely different points you're making here. On one side, you say it's an "opt out"- almost suggesting every FC should NOT use it as to keep themselves away from any risk of abuse.

Then on the other hand you praise it as being a tool that helps these "hardcore" (severe minority of players, might I add) players recover after the extremely rare case (even smaller now) of an FC leader leaving. So I would advise you slow down, take stock, and actually have the realization your argument in favor of this fundamentally flawed tool is not helping.

The promotion system is horribly flawed, Kaedan. The ability to promote beyond your own rank is extremely open to abuse with a negative impact far beyond the moderate gains it gave to FCs that have disappearing masters. Years of work permanently lost versus a month at most of inconvenience (which a smart master would mitigate the majority of by having trusted officers able to utilize the majority of abilities anyway).

In regards to the current absentee system not being enough in case of disappearing masters, that may be true, but unless it is physically impossible for them to log in and pass off leadership (or have it done via proxy if they are in the hospital, for example), there are speedier ways to make change, and the absentee system is much less open to exploitation than unlimited promotion privileges. Your logic appears to put short-term personal/small group gain as superior to the long-term health of the whole community of FCs, and that view is a bit too myopic for my tastes.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

1) Not flawed, as I have explained. You can 100% opt out of the feature with no risk to your FC.

2) That's not sufficient. Even if they reduced it to a week or two without logging in, that's still too long a wait for a serious FC. And if you made it shorter than that, then there wouldn't be a point to there being an FC leader at all since the leader would change constantly.

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It is flawed, the fact that it can be abused so easily shows that.

How long would it take for an fc to realise the leader isn't coming back? I imagine a month itself is when people would start questioning.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Trolling encompasses a lot of things. Being inflammatory (which is what saying "you're wrong" and not justifying your statement is) is one aspect of trolling.

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No, it's not. Trolling requires deliberately inciting conflict. While it's not conducive to constructive conversation, simply failing to justify your remarks is not trolling by any sensible definition of the word. If you wish to apply some version that is watered down to the point of meaninglessness, I certainly can't stop you, but it's not a reasonable application of the word and not something that should be taken the least bit seriously by anyone. By conflating actual trolling with merely being unproductive or, worse still, your personal pet peeves, you yourself are being harmful to good conversation by slandering the person you're talking to and risking derailing the conversation into inane personal attacks.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

Trolling encompasses a lot of things. Being inflammatory (which is what saying "you're wrong" and not justifying your statement is) is one aspect of trolling.

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It really does sound like you're upset people are disagreeing with you and so you just start using the troll excuse.

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Originally Posted by Bloody

The promotion system is horribly flawed, Kaedan. The ability to promote beyond your own rank is extremely open to abuse with a negative impact far beyond the moderate gains it gave to FCs that have disappearing masters. Years of work permanently lost versus a month at most of inconvenience (which a smart master would mitigate the majority of by having trusted officers able to utilize the majority of abilities anyway).

In regards to the current absentee system not being enough in case of disappearing masters, that may be true, but unless it is physically impossible for them to log in and pass off leadership (or have it done via proxy if they are in the hospital, for example), there are speedier ways to make change, and the absentee system is much less open to exploitation than unlimited promotion privileges. Your logic appears to put short-term personal/small group gain as superior to the long-term health of the whole community of FCs, and that view is a bit too myopic for my tastes.

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Finally, a reasonably polite and thoughtful response, even if I don't agree.

The fact that an FC can 100% opt out of the feature makes your argument rather moot. There is no potential for negative impact if the FC leader has a modicum of caution and care.

The one thing I could agree to change would be to make what the feature can do be a bit more visible and/or have two different promote options: one that only allows promotion up to your current rank, and then keep the current one.

And as a second point, any well designed, active office corp can run an FC without the actual owner needing to be present for... anything. They could be jerking off in a corner while online for all it mattered. If given good tools, a leader can make any guild or FC in any MMO completely autonomous. FF is the only one to date I have ever, EVER heard of having a promotion system where you can alter your OWN RANK. The reasoning is so short-sighted it's baffling. I would expect something like this from an indie developer who might not have played an MMO before in their entire lives, not a AAA developer.

It makes no sense. It's not helpful- and as you can see, if you let people abuse one another, they will do it. Everyone has known this for years online. There's no accountability, no repercussions, no punishment. You can harm other people, cause them severe emotional grief over their months of work and achievements being stripped away and nothing will happen to the perpetrator.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

The fact that an FC can 100% opt out of the feature makes your argument rather moot.

The one thing I could agree to change would be to make what the feature can do be a bit more visible and/or have two different promote options: one that only allows promotion up to your current rank, and then keep the current one.

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You don't seem aware that this tool is completely backwards in its logic, and no one- NO ONE- would assume it works that without doing excessive research prior to allowing someone to have it. It's like seeing the same sign for one-way streets, year after year, even though different companies made them; but they all mean the same thing, all act the same.

Then Square comes in, and suddenly their one-way sign means two-way. But no one is going to know that until there's another car coming.

I think if someone blatantly does something to someone else that person should be punished and the victim should be restored. we discussed helping the FC with keeping buffs up. I was approached by the person who told me that. i said ok and they then 2 hours later when i logged off promoted them self and did things we didn't agree to such as steal my 100m from the gil section when officer clearly didn't have permision to do that. Seems to me just in the agreement we had and her breaking it they should has assisted me and punished her. Instead I was punished and that to me is not good business practice. i'm rebuilding with help. thanks to my friends you know who you are.

also the only thing they did not take was my actual house because the system at least stopped them from promoting them self to the actual master on it to relinquish thankfully for that. Promote / demote should be Master only too? That would have saved me my Gil and Airships. I still could have lost all items in chest other than gil and they could have trashed my housing item but hey that's fine I would have had 100M gil still plus my excitement for the update coming for new diadem. The gil isn't so bad as the Airship and technology upgrade board was. Ill show pics of my house when im done fixing to thank the ones who have supported me.

And I'm so sorry that happened, Shaemus. In fact, reading this thread to hear the story I had to stop and ask some folks in a Discord, "Wait, you can promote yourself? That's not how it works, does it?"

That is how ridiculous the tool is. Coming from someone who has played MMO's for well over a decade, that's just stupid. The very small, very slight benefits it could have in the almost nonexistent situations Kaedan has mentioned do not even tip the scales against the risks.

If MMO's worked hard towards having a more community-based system regarding issues- be it someone disappearing, or abuse- they would be a golden example for the industry. It might take work but with social media, it's possible we could try to change the game for the better. The best ways to prevent abuse of any system is democratically. Now, I'm not saying that's the PERFECT way, for no system is perfect, but it's better than having strict rules that people can simply circumvent.

The person who robbed Shaemus should have their SE accounts terminated immediately. No warning. Their actions are irredeemable. That, I think everyone could agree towards.

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Originally Posted by Thaelin_AnCrach

If MMO's worked hard towards having a more community-based system regarding issues- be it someone disappearing, or abuse- they would be a golden example for the industry. It might take work but with social media, it's possible we could try to change the game for the better. The best ways to prevent abuse of any system is democratically. Now, I'm not saying that's the PERFECT way, for no system is perfect, but it's better than having strict rules that people can simply circumvent.

The person who robbed Shaemus should have their SE accounts terminated immediately. No warning. Their actions are irredeemable. That, I think everyone could agree towards.

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Absolutely. I said it before and I'll say it again. One of the reasons stuff like this keeps happening frequently is because the perpetrators face no consequences. If players saw people actually getting banned for preforming these acts, we'd see less of this happening. People would think twice.

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Originally Posted by ToasterMan

Absolutely. I said it before and I'll say it again. One of the reasons stuff like this keeps happening frequently is because the perpetrators face no consequences. If players saw people actually getting banned for preforming these acts, we'd see less of this happening. People would think twice.

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Also keep in mind how many might be repeat offenders. It's far too easy to deceive people on the internet, and some people get their jollies off to this exact stuff.

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Originally Posted by RubenSnizzle

Could be a flaw, but the fact still remain that he gave a lower rank the power of demote/promote, which by itself is powerful and the person took advantage of it because people were ignorant.



If it's common and has been brought up numerous times why didn't OP knew about it? I don't own a FC and i knew about it

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I have never heard about it before because I play the game and not talk about it online, I sometimes come here to see what people are complaining about again.

A few points that came up:

Why didn't the OP know how permissions worked and prevent this?
Well I can only speak for myself but I remember how I found out. Somebody had the exact same thing happen to them and posted a warning here. Up to then, I'd assumed this was like other MMOs and hadn't even considered the posibility people might be able to promote above their own rank.
It's not like this is consistent in the game, you can't even promote above your own rank in a Linkshell!

It's a useful feature that allows FCs to function if the Master unexpectedly stops logging in
Er, no. The only way it can help in that situation is a) the rank below Master has Chest access, can build and commission airships etc. Or b) that rank has permission to change rank settings.
That's a lot of 'ifs'. If the absent FC master had everything locked down tight, someone promoting themselves to the rank below won't be able to run the FC effectively.
The auto transfer of power we have now is much better and basically makes this unnecessary.

The OPs story is not unique, this keeps happening. Only a couple of weeks ago there was somebody boasting on Reddit how he'd used this 'feature' to scam another player who bought a FC from him. He was completely shameless about it, probably because he knew no action would be taken against him in-game.
I'm sorry but this is not good design, the only winners are people who are dishonest or spiteful. This needs to go.

My fc leader has a great option the only people allowed to promote are those that he personally knows. As a decently high ranked fc member I can't even touch the gil.

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Originally Posted by Freerider

My fc leader has a great option the only people allowed to promote are those that he personally knows. As a decently high ranked fc member I can't even touch the gil.

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That's exactly how it works for us too, the only ones who can take from the bank are myself (leader) and my boyfriend (first lady of the guild :p)
Plus, the players we don't know yet have no permissions at all during the "test period" (3 to 4 weeks) if they (and us) pass that period they get permission on house and garden BUT still nothing on the bank.
On the other hand, it's almost always empty cause everyone buys the thing for the CL when they are needed so....xD

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

1) It was the original way to allow people to circumvent the problem of an FC leader quitting the game and abandoning the FC to naught. The leader could give one of the officers the ability to promote in the case that they would have to leave the game. Thus allowing the FC to continue and not have to be disbanded if the FC members wanted to continue.

2) The implementation of automatic leader change only mitigates it somewhat. It takes a minimum of a month for it to kick in, so the FC is screwed for that month if the leader has to leave the game for any reason (emergency or otherwise). So the promote ability is a necessary backup tool (and was the original tool for this purpose).

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That seems illogical. In those situations the fc leader has already essentially entrusted those individuals with whatever access they granted the top rank since they can promote themselves on a whim. In those cases the fc leader might as well have just given those people the privs of their highest rank. It's absolutely worthless/pointless for that intention.

Good thing I have my own FC and my few chars are the only members! o_O No Dramas and the FC chest is my warehouse!

People need to realize that there are essentially only two ranks when it comes to promotion: owner and then everything else. SE has said that it is not a bug, it was intentional and they won't be fixing it (not that I agree).

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

People need to realize that there are essentially only two ranks when it comes to promotion: owner and then everything else. SE has said that it is not a bug, it was intentional and they won't be fixing it (not that I agree).

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Do you have a link to the specific statement from SE about this?

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

People need to realize that there are essentially only two ranks when it comes to promotion: owner and then everything else. SE has said that it is not a bug, it was intentional and they won't be fixing it (not that I agree).

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Do you have a link to the specific statement from SE about this?

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Yea I would agree, ranks are thing created by the FC leader not by SE.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Do you have a link to the specific statement from SE about this?

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

Greetings,

First let me apologize for the frustration that this situation has caused.

It is difficult to create a system that is both flexible for users and that can safeguard against any number of situations. Limiting the use of the ability to promote could have negative implications for users that are using the feature legitimately (for example, if a leader has left, and a new one needs to be appointed), so we have to be mindful of that before making changes.

However, even with that said, we understand the request for adjustments and the team will be looking carefully into how best to move forward.

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Posted some 3 years ago. While they said they would be looking into how to best move forward, they also did not acknowledge it to be a bug in the system and actually confirmed that it is intended.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

Posted some 3 years ago. While they said they would be looking into how to best move forward, they also did not acknowledge it to be a bug in the system and actually confirmed that it is intended.

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Thanks. Do you think there is any point in requesting some QoL changes to prevent these elevation of privilege attacks?

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Originally Posted by Lexia

Yea I would agree, ranks are thing created by the FC leader not by SE.

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Using a rank hierarchy, promotion/demotion and privilege assignment system created by SE to allow masters to manage their FC. I have never seen a guild system with this kind of design flaw, let alone a system where the design flaw is described as an intended feature. There are lot more simple ways to handle transfer of responsibility due to absence than building a complete rank and privilege system along with promotion and demotion capability. If the system was intended to cover that specific situation of an absent FC master, why are there 15 ranks and why all the different access privileges that can be assigned/revoked? The system appears to offer something that it in fact does not offer, that is a design flaw.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Thanks. Do you think there is any point in requesting some QoL changes to prevent these elevation of privilege attacks?

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I cannot prevent someone from typing anything. It's the other person's choice if they hit backspace or not. Or a moderator, which I'm not.

What I am advocating is it's 3 years since that was said, spread the word on 'this is how it actually is' instead of holding out on a change [that may never happen] and giving more opportunity for con-artists to work.

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

I cannot prevent someone from typing anything. It's the other person's choice if they hit backspace or not. Or a moderator, which I'm not.

What I am advocating is it's 3 years since that was said, spread the word on 'this is how it actually is' instead of holding out on a change [that may never happen] and giving more opportunity for con-artists to work.

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I agree with spreading the word, but I also think that we should not allow SE to think that this is a non issue.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Using a rank hierarchy, promotion/demotion and privilege assignment system created by SE to allow masters to manage their FC. I have never seen a guild system with this kind of design flaw, let alone a system where the design flaw is described as an intended feature. There are lot more simple ways to handle transfer of responsibility due to absence than building a complete rank and privilege system along with promotion and demotion capability. If the system was intended to cover that specific situation of an absent FC master, why are there 15 ranks and why all the different access privileges that can be assigned/revoked? The system appears to offer something that it in fact does not offer, that is a design flaw.

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The point I was making about the only 2 setting is that there pretty much is just FC master and everything else as it is up to the FC master to determine what permissions those ranks that the FC master creates has.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

I agree with spreading the word, but I also think that we should not allow SE to think that this is a non issue.

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Unfortunately, while I may agree, the likeliness of it changing will be slimmer and slimmer as time passes on. The summoner egi glamour system was put in, despite not being an issue and a far newer request (example). The issue only stems from people not realizing promote means literally to any rank other than owner.

Simply should have split it to be either promote upward, or only promote up to your current rank.
If the Leader decided to do the former, then the FC just has to deal with it, even if the leader leaves.

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Originally Posted by Lexia

The point I was making about the only 2 setting is that there pretty much is just FC master and everything else as it is up to the FC master to determine what permissions those ranks that the FC master creates has.

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I understand. However I don't see the point in the FC master making any ranks with a system that is horribly flawed. What's the point of all the different access rights and ranks with a system so deeply flawed? It's almost like those creating that aspect of it were not aware of how deeply flawed the basic promotion capability is.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

Simply should have split it to be either promote upward, or only promote up to your current rank.
If the Leader decided to do the former, then the FC just has to deal with it, even if the leader leaves.

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What's the point of having "promote upwards" as an option at all though? If there's a rank that has all inclusive access to temporarily take over for the leader, anyone with promote privs has access to that rank at any point in time regardless of the leader's status. Just add hierarchy to the entire rank list and if someone wants to make a backup leader rank they can entrust that directly to someone and just tell them to pretend they don't have certain privs unless something happens to the leader.