SE, Please fix this FC exploit

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Originally Posted by Norna

How about after a month without any activity from leader, the members of the FC will be given a choice whether or not they want to be leader. .

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A system they're implementing for this is detailed HERE

Or, take a bite out of WoW and when the leader of a FC hasn't logged in for some set amount of days, give people that HAVE logged into the FC the ability to promote themselves to leader instead of the person that hasn't logged in for ages.

Edit: Just seen the link to the plans, and I gotta say. Looks nice enough for me.

Ouch :(

Really sorry OP....

And people called me 'stingy' for holding House donations in one of my retainers......

I update the collected House Fund money into our FC topic on the board, and throw the money in the FC chest once a week so any/everyone in the FC can see that the total matches what I claim. Put gil in, immediately take out, Gil shows in the History for quite a while. I had no idea about being able to promote higher than your rank, but in the early days of the game I had a lot of those shady people try to infiltrate our FC and steal contents from Company Chest. They would mad-dash for the chest, see they couldn't take anything then insta-drop FC. This happened enough times for me and the other 10-15 real close friends of our FC to agree upon my secondary retainer just being the Place-holder for our House Fund. Seeing as how I have donated over half the fund myself, it was an obvious choice, and one that was agreed upon amongst the higher ranked players in our FC. People can donate gil into the Chest or by mailing to me, and we have had no problems.

Until the obvious flaws you have commented on have been addressed/fixed, I suggest y'all think hard about this way of donation. It's not the cleanest, or most friendly option....but you would still have your money.... :(

Once again, sorry to hear this happened to your FC and I truly hope it can all be resolved for you.

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Originally Posted by Orophin

I think it should be common sense that within any kind of hierarchy that you shouldn't be able to promote to a rank higher than yours. That's like a 1 star General in the military promoting a Colonel to a 2 star general.

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It also destroys the whole purpose of making custom permissions in a hierarchy. Even more so for larger FC's that want more organization within ranks.

Promote is now no longer an option to give to anyone but the leader of a FC.

This is why only I as master have the ability to promote and my quartermaster is the only person with access to the gil in our chest other than myself.

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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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That's crazy. If a FC leader leaves, then you all leave and build a new FC.

Just another example of how they didn't think out and just plain rushed out content. Free companies were given so much praise while they were telling us how awesome ARR was going to be, but all they come down to is linkshells that share a few extra inventory slots and minimal buffs. I highly doubt the promoting over your own rank was planned, my opinion it was just an oversight, if it was planned, then wow someone really screwed the pooch there. Expecting people on the internet to always be civil and honest means they have no clue who their customers are, content needs to be planned and implemented with the intention that people will try to break and take advantage of everything they can, if it's not, then they aren't doing their jobs as developers. Some games use test servers for this, maybe if this game did, it wouldn't have such blatant exploits, or maybe it wouldn't take 5-10 hours of emergency maintenance to fix their hotfix to their latest patch.

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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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Thank you for your answer Bayohne

sad :P still nothing about the FC getting some of the gills back? :(

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Originally Posted by Alipoprocks

That's crazy. If a FC leader leaves, then you all leave and build a new FC.

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so you saying that if a rank 8 FC leader left (assuming FC already got large house). you want to rest of the member to abandon FC and start grinding the new FC for rank and house all over again?

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Originally Posted by Remn

so you saying that if a rank 8 FC leader left (assuming FC already got large house). you want to rest of the member to abandon FC and start grinding the new FC for rank and house all over again?

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Yeah. We have a house and I already forgot about it. Sorry, didn't even think about that.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

I was under the impression that it was persons WITH rights to promote, that could promote above their own rang that is the problem.

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This - Technically people asked for this.

"What if the leader goes awol and we can't promote anyone to power?"

Of course not as open but in general, this system was requested.

SE really should return your items and money. There is no one to blame but the person who took it. There is no blame on the FC that gave the guy the permissions to promote.

It is only fair one would assume that someone could not promote above their rank. I have known about this for a while. Promotion and demotion work both ways.

As long as I have promotion/demotion privs I can promote or demote anyone from any rank to any rank except master. The game does not let you promote yourself, but you can demote yourself strangely enough, I did that before I quit the game. I still lurk the forums, they are a never ending source of amusement when I am bored.
Master can only be assigned to a new person by the existing master.

To the FCs:
To make it clear.
Someone with promote/demote privs can promote/demote anyone to any rank except Master.
If the master leaves before passing on the rank, it is currently forever locked to that character.
They can demote themselves.
Master can only be assigned by the current master. There can be only one.

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Originally Posted by Randelmire

Thank you for your answer Bayohne

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Told you! Now let's hope SE fixes this issue within the next mini patch or hotfix.

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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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The easiest way to handle that from my experience in other MMOs is to auto-promote a member of the next highest rank to leader. In conjunction, if a leader hasn't logged in for so many days, say 90 or 180, they are automatically demoted and someone else is promoted to leader.

Just to be clear... I just checked this in my FC. I can promote people up to the rank under FC master. I cannot demote the master, nor can I promote someone to master. So this DOES NOT fix an instance where the master goes missing but does not actually leave the guild. The only instance I can think of it fixing is if someone physically leaves an FC without first appointing someone. I can't test if leaving is actually possible without first doing that because I'm not the Master.

Why not just make the FC leader promote someone new before leaving?

A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding what the problem is. It has nothing to do with the Master and everything to do with the ranks below.


Fictional FC organisational ranks:
1 Master
2 Treasurer - only one person other than master who can withdraw gil and items from the chest, let's say they're a lifelong trusted and trustworthy friend of the Master, they also use an authenticator and never go to dangerous sites, etc
3 General leaders - these guys can promote people from the social rank into something more specific, indicating what that person does for the FC, they may also lead events, etc
4 Crafters and gatherers - who you go to first to ask for things to be produced/melded/gathered
5 Combatants - These would be the professional raiders and FATE grinders and chocobo trainers and everything else involving whacking/zapping/band-aiding something/someone with other members of the FC
6 Social - the first rank someone goes into when they join, before they become well known for one of the above roles, also good for the casual jack of all trades or those who don't participate much

Say a bigger FC absorbs a smaller FC and the leader of the smaller FC is given the authority to bring in and promote their members to the appropriate gatherer/crafter/combatant/social rank as they're the ones who should know what their members do. Presumably the company chest is still safe because only 2 people have been given access to that: rank 1 and 2, Master and Treasurer, both above the rank of the promoters.

The leader of the smaller FC can promote another member to a higher (but still non-Master) position than the promoter is currently in, meaning they can make their entire FC (other than themselves) Treasurers without permission and rob the bigger FC blind.

That is the problem. It has NOTHING to do with the Master rank and everything to do with every other rank.

In the year 2014, where MMO is a common game genre, they are still unable to include or even figure out how to make some useful (and basic) social features. In fact, most MMO games are not able to do better than the job of an IRC bot.
In the year 2014, MMO developpers still don't focus on social stuff, while their whole game is based on that.

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Originally Posted by Sunarie

Just to be clear... I just checked this in my FC. I can promote people up to the rank under FC master. I cannot demote the master, nor can I promote someone to master. So this DOES NOT fix an instance where the master goes missing but does not actually leave the guild. The only instance I can think of it fixing is if someone physically leaves an FC without first appointing someone. I can't test if leaving is actually possible without first doing that because I'm not the Master.

Why not just make the FC leader promote someone new before leaving?

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It's been linked already, but one of the devs already said in 2.2 that there'll be an automatic demotion of a inactive FC leader. The time hasn't been announced.

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Originally Posted by AkashiXI

It's been linked already, but one of the devs already said in 2.2 that there'll be an automatic demotion of a inactive FC leader. The time hasn't been announced.

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I wasn't talking about that... I was more pointing out that what the mod gave as a reason doesn't really fix anything at all (as several others in the thread seemed to think it would work if the FC leader was afk). There is no legitimate reason for someone to be able to promote a person to a rank above their own. The OP's situation should not have happened, and is a serious, blatant design flaw.

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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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Tell them that the system they have in place equates to this:

Bayohne have been promoted to a lead position within SE with responsibilities to manage 10 people new people. Congrats! One of your new responsibilities is to choose 2 people from the 10 to lead two teams to come up with new content ideas for FFXIV. However, with you new found responsibilities you can now give yourself a raise and promotion to be the COE of the company, fire Yoshida and have access the companies bank account, which you then transfer all the money out of. You then leave the company and live a nice life on a small island you just purchased drinking mimosas on the beach.

Now, we know in the real world, you'd get charged, sued, arrested, etc...

In the game there is zero accountability. There are no safe guards to protect a free company.

All we're asking for is that the hierarchy has some sort of meaning other than just being a title, ie you can not promote yourself or others to a higher rank than you are currently (if you are given promote permissions). I don't understand how this is a hard concept to understand. You already provide a means to order those ranks.

Easily solved by having a "Double-check" feature where one or more officers/leaders will be required to approve of a said action or transfer. In this case, gil, there will be thresholds as to how much approval will be needed depending on the amount being withdrawn.

Example:
100k requires the approval of one other officer, excluding the person attempting to withdraw.
1m requires the approval of the founder of the fc or three other officers, excluding the person attempting to withdraw.


Complicated? Yes. Safe? Yes.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

Easily solved by having a "Double-check" feature where one or more officers/leaders will be required to approve of a said action or transfer. In this case, gil, there will be thresholds as to how much approval will be needed depending on the amount being withdrawn.

Example:
100k requires the approval of one other officer, excluding the person attempting to withdraw.
1m requires the approval of the founder of the fc or three other officers, excluding the person attempting to withdraw.


Complicated? Yes. Safe? Yes.

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Actually, under your system, the thief simply needs to have 3 other characters that they can promote to officer rank (regardless of their own rank) in order to steal the 1m. Easily achieved with an FC of thieves or just a bunch of mule characters. Does not remedy the promoting-over-your-own-authority issue.

or how about you do it the smart way of only giving the FC Commander withdrawl priveleges for the Gil?

not sure if it was covered by others but i want to clear something up for others reading this thread after doing some testing last night, a rank with promoting privileges can promote anyone to any rank but they can also promote themselves to any rank

I am an FC leader and did not know this is how the heirarchy promote/demote feature works.. that's pretty damn broken..

Glad I got myself some good officers lol

Yeah. It's a real shocker to see an oversight like this. I'm glad that people are at least more aware of the issue. Knowing about it at least prepares one for the issue.

How about remove the Gil pool and make a new one but it shows who added gil to the bank, the money stays in said person who added the gil unless they give permission to take gil have a lock option.

I am basically saying, if I added 3k it will show that I added 3k and is in my own pool in FC if I add more it goes up and its only available for me unless I give permission to take it.

this way if leader gets taken or there is a crook in the shell they only can take what they added.

I seriously don't see any rational, logical reason why people should be able to promote other plays to ranks higher than their own within an FC. There's absolutely no purpose to that.

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Originally Posted by Bayohne

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As it stands, with the way Free Companies will be "fixed" in 2.2, this exploit will still be there. The Devs' fix for passing leadership to the next in line is to wait 35 days and it goes to the next player. Yes, this fixes the problem of inactive leaders, but this doesn't fix the problem of someone being able to promote themselves or someone else above their own rank in the hierarchy.

Here is an analogy: If I hire someone to clean my house and give them the key to my house so they can get in while I'm away. I better find all my stuff still there when I get home. Just because they have the key and permission to get into the house, doesn't mean they can become lord and master of the house.

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Originally Posted by Lumia

Here is an analogy: If I hire someone to clean my house and give them the key to my house so they can get in while I'm away. I better find all my stuff still there when I get home. Just because they have the key and permission to get into the house, doesn't mean they can become lord and master of the house.

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This analogy works for personal housing, because it's personal house. FC housing meant to be shared, and sometime members contribute to buy land.
Do you pay your members to clean FC house? Probably not
Do you have to invite people to FC to give them access to FC house? No

This is the 2nd time seeing something like this happening. Saddens me to see it with a large amount of hard earned gil. I hope you get your money back and spread the word on the people involved.

The highest privilege in our FC above master is invites/kick and using the FC boosts. There's really no need for anything else. No one can give me a good enough reason to give them more then that lol

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Originally Posted by Veon

This analogy works for personal housing, because it's personal house. FC housing meant to be shared, and sometime members contribute to buy land.
Do you pay your members to clean FC house? Probably not
Do you have to invite people to FC to give them access to FC house? No

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Who's ever FC you are in I would consider kicking you out, simply because you sound like you would take stuff that isn't yours, if I stuck 1mil gil into the FC bank and said don't touch it, it doesn't give you a right to take 1 gil or any gil, doesn't matter if you have access, if you didn't contribute it ain't yours to touch plain and simple, unless you did something good to deserve it.

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Originally Posted by Arkista

I hope you can get your gil back.... But SE is going to have to do an investigation on it. I can't find that person on the lodestone, So whoever stole your stuff made an account and deleted it. Now you are going to have to look at it from the other side (sorry going to say it).

How do you or we know that it wasn't you or one of your other FC leaders that made an alt and stole the items/gil? Now I'm not trying to say you did, I'm saying this from an investigative standpoint. But to me it doesn't sound like you had anything to do with it. If someone made an ALT then deletes it can SE still link it to someone's account?

If the person who stole your Gil was smart they used a account that wasn't linked to the SE account they used. If I was wanting to steal the items I would use a separate account, That way it couldn't be traced back to me.

I hope that it wasn't someone you trust. When I played FFXI I was in a big LS and one of the LS leaders made of with the LS bank close to 200mil. That's why I hate the whole bank idea. I really hope you get your Gil back cause that is a lot.

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If they straight up deleted the character, it would of taken the items with the character. So to prevent that, I assume they would of traded or mailed the stolen items to a different alt or their main. If GM's track the character who stole from the fc, there should be records in their back end data to track those transactions. So even if the character isn't on a main account, there would be justice.

Either way, I am sorry for what happened. I hope everything gets better in getting your stuff back

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Originally Posted by Kaela

Either way, I am sorry for what happened. I hope everything gets better in getting your stuff back

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Still no word on getting the gil back. We've submitted several tickets to the STF and have heard nothing.

But on a brighter note, our FC has remade all the gil that was stolen and then some and we're on our way to soon being able to get a medium house (probably in 3-4 weeks).

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Originally Posted by Veon

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I'm not sure you understand what an analogy is.

Think of it like working at a retail job as a cashier. Your job is to take the money from the customer and put it in the drawer. This is a simple action. You are given responsibility over money, it isn't yours to keep, you aren't allowed to take it home with you, etc. It belongs to the store. The free company bank is much the same as this. The person was allowed to deposit gil, but not take any "home" with him. Now, think of this person's rank as being similar to a shift leader at a store. He is allowed to lead a team within the store, but he has no managerial capabilities beyond that. But then, the team leader decides to hire his buddy and promote him to assistant manager who then has complete access to the safe. This is what happened in my free company.

As literally second in command along with the other leaders who are also second in command, our FC leader monitors the FC outside her normal play times. So, if she sees anything remotely suspicious she will tell us. I also do cross examination on all members that join us to make sure they're legit and as you had said, and not an RMT or scammer.

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Originally Posted by Lumia

Still no word on getting the gil back. We've submitted several tickets to the STF and have heard nothing.

But on a brighter note, our FC has remade all the gil that was stolen and then some and we're on our way to soon being able to get a medium house (probably in 3-4 weeks).

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I can empathize with you, as we had our gil stolen in the Free Company I was previously in. The GMs gave us contradictory information and then refused to do anything.

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2

I really hope that they've changed their stance on this since then, and that you get your money back.

Yeah, if you have promote privlages you can essentially take over the FC. You can put yourself as master and demote everyone else. It's pretty fucking stupid, but that's how it is right now. I had a bank stolen too, and we were told "too fucking bad" because they had the rights to access gil, and that's all there was to it.

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Originally Posted by Taggerung5

Yeah, if you have promote privileges you can essentially take over the FC. You can put yourself as master and demote everyone else. It's pretty fucking stupid, but that's how it is right now. I had a bank stolen too, and we were told "too fucking bad" because they had the rights to access gil, and that's all there was to it.

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Depends on the current FC master though. For instance my FC master, yes us co-leaders share most of her privileges, but we can't use half of them without her say so. So, what this helps us do is limits the gil withdrawal to only her and yes we can promote/demote but we only do that if she requests help.