100M GIL taken

Hey everyone I took a few minutes today so make a short video to thank you all for the support and show you what I have done with the motivation I have gotten from kind remarks and telling me to go on and not to quit. Please take a moment to check it out because like I said I couldn't have done this without you all motivating me to not give up.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123773885

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Originally Posted by JunseiKei

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.

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I'm going to hold out and hope SE finally gets a clue and fixes this. This "feature", from a security standpoint, is completely unacceptable. This is not something that should come from a AAA developer like SE. I and everyone else should expect a lot more from SE in regards to this issue.

And this is why I'd love to get off Balmung. It's gotten too big and mean for its own pants. Make free transfers happen SE, please.

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Originally Posted by Adire

And this is why I'd love to get off Balmung. It's gotten too big and mean for its own pants. Make free transfers happen SE, please.

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What would work even better is if thye made a new server. Officially tagged it role play free transferred from Balmung to start. Then after a month or so allowed any other server a one time free transfer. And allowing legacy players some breathing room.

I had always thought that you couldn't promote yourself to a higher rank than you were at never mind promoting yourself to the leader position/owner of the FC.

If that is indeed something anyone that has the ability to promote/demote ppl can do then SE should modify it so a person isn't able to promote them selves to a higher rank or to being the head of the FC.

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Originally Posted by AmalonStar

I had always thought that you couldn't promote yourself to a higher rank than you were at never mind promoting yourself to the leader position/owner of the FC.

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You cannot promote to the very top, but if you have another rank below that (maybe for an alt to have all the permissions your main does like the op had, or for officers) and a lower rank has promote permissions, they can raise themselves up to any rank other than leader and gain the permissions of that rank.

If the only one who could promote or demote was the master than it would never be a problem.

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Originally Posted by myahele

Sadly nothing will be done.

SE should never allow anyone to promote themselves into a higher position than they are already in.

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I think a given rank must not even be able to promote others up to their own rank.

This is the serious flaw that made me decide to never give promotions/demotions rights to others than Master. Yes I trust my Officers but I cannot risk a whole FC for an error it can happen.

It is quite amusing this flaw running wild for years, makes me feel on this side we are same league with cheap f2p games.

I am more shocked that the GM cant get those things back just because it would show that they punished the player...Are they protecting those "criminals" while hurting the victims with that? No wonder that there are still quite a lot of such cases..they also probably only give them a slight warning and nothing more. How disappointing..I mean that person did it willingly and with that destroyed the work of months/years for those people and yet somehow they still need to be protected in some way? *facepalm*

@ OP: I really hope that you and your other members can pull it through. If that had happened while I was still in the old FC that I was leader too I probably would have stopped playing for a while. I am also kinda happy with my decisions of only having a duo FC now with a good real life friend. All that drama is now gone and thanks to the rules you cant even hope for help from SE's side..

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

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.

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I have 3 alts in my FC, and I want them to be able to do w/e my main can in its entirety. And SE has mentioned they dont plan to remove this feature, so we should instead be asking for something else, or some middle ground.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

I have 3 alts in my FC, and I want them to be able to do w/e my main can in its entirety. And SE has mentioned they dont plan to remove this feature, so we should instead be asking for something else, or some middle ground.

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I don't understand how making this change would affect you negatively. Under the present system your alts cannot promote themselves to FC Leader but you are able to set permissions so they can do everything else your main can. However, if your alts have that much power you absolutely cannot afford to let anyone else promote within your FC, because if someone promoted themselves to your alts' rank they could clean your company out.
Changing this would give you more protection and let you delegate promotions.

The official response was given before they implemented the auto-transfer of power when a FC Leader goes inactive, so basically it's out of date. Reading through the thread Please Fix This FC Exploit, it would appear that there are effectively only 2 FC ranks, leader and everyone else.
Ideally, we need a hierarchy established and nobody allowed to promote above their own rank. This would give maximum flexibility to FC leaders.
Alternatively, they could just remove the ability to promote from all other ranks and lock it to the leader (far less flexible and less ideal but absolutely better than what we have).

Considering that thread was started in 2014 and problems are still occuring three years later, I do feel something needs to be done.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

I have 3 alts in my FC, and I want them to be able to do w/e my main can in its entirety.

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And how does a proper hierarchy system change that?

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

I have 3 alts in my FC, and I want them to be able to do w/e my main can in its entirety. And SE has mentioned they dont plan to remove this feature, so we should instead be asking for something else, or some middle ground.

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No offense, but your point of view comes across as very narrow and self serving, and mis-informed since I am not aware of any negative impact such a change would have on your situation.

The problem we aer discussing has affected numerous Free Companies and players negatively and is easily resolved with relatively minor changes. This whole thing about emergency leadership changes when the FC Master goes AWOL is a red-herring since there is now a system that provides for automatic leadership change if an FC Master goes missing.

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

I think a given rank must not even be able to promote others up to their own rank.

This is the serious flaw that made me decide to never give promotions/demotions rights to others than Master. Yes I trust my Officers but I cannot risk a whole FC for an error it can happen.

It is quite amusing this flaw running wild for years, makes me feel on this side we are same league with cheap f2p games.

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Indeed, I cannot see how SE can justify exposing paying customers to these kinds of risks due to a serious design flaw that they will not patch.

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Originally Posted by Shaemus_Jodocus

If the only one who could promote or demote was the master than it would never be a problem.

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Yes, that is currently the only reliable 'solution'. But for larger FCs it creates an issue because it places the complete load on the FC master, and if the Master goes on holiday or is out sick, then no promotions/demotions can happen. FC Masters should be able to delegate promotion capability without risking the entire FC.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

You cannot promote to the very top, but if you have another rank below that (maybe for an alt to have all the permissions your main does like the op had, or for officers) and a lower rank has promote permissions, they can raise themselves up to any rank other than leader and gain the permissions of that rank.

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Indeed, it's the Free Company equivalent of allowing some users to "su root" without a password...

You guys are missing my point. SE isnt going to change this feature.
THAT is why I said, let's have an alternative.

But on a side note, I was incorrect in that my alts can promote themselves to leader, so it was an unnecessary feature.

If SE wasnt against it, I would be saying the same thing you guys are. I'm not against what you're saying, IDK why you assume so.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

You guys are missing my point. SE isnt going to change this feature.
THAT is why I said, let's have an alternative.

But on a side note, I was incorrect in that my alts can promote themselves to leader, so it was an unnecessary feature.

If SE wasnt against it, I would be saying the same thing you guys are. I'm not against what you're saying, IDK why you assume so.

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All we know for sure is thus far SE hasn't changed it, but that doesn't mean change is impossible. Look how long it took for a lot of the QoL changes to chocobos or a move feature for houses (oh twelve, please be good!). It's just a matter of bringing it to their attention and hoping they find good enough reason to avert enough time to making changes.

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Originally Posted by Kaedan

What you are incorrect about is that the feature is flawed. It is not.

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While perhaps the tool's actual function isn't entirely flawed (though it could be better), and works when set up by someone who understands it, the interface is very misleading, and that fact is definitely a flaw.

When setting up ranks and permissions, it looks as though they're hierarchical with each rank being either above or below each of the others, but in fact they're not. There are actually only two different levels which the rank system implements. Everyone with the "promote/demote" permission is effectively a co-leader along with the FCs current official leader. And all other ranks are the level below that.

If that fact was made clear, and the leader got a warning whenever granting the promote ability to a rank "This permission is for ranks equal to your own as co-leaders. It gives them full permission to do anything with the FC. Do you really want to grant that to rank <x>" then maybe these kind of problems wouldn't come up as often.

The rest of the permissions work pretty much like you'd expect them to, but the ramifications of this particular one are not made obvious enough by the interface where they're set.

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Originally Posted by Dustytome

All we know for sure is thus far SE hasn't changed it, but that doesn't mean change is impossible. Look how long it took for a lot of the QoL changes to chocobos or a move feature for houses (oh twelve, please be good!). It's just a matter of bringing it to their attention and hoping they find good enough reason to avert enough time to making changes.

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Those examples they never said "No" to.

The reason SE doesnt agree with this option, is because if the FC leader leaves, this now becomes a "The lives of the many, outweight the lives of the few." in their minds.
And we dont know how the Japanese players will view this situation.

So I think it would take quite a bit more to convince them, or the easy way out, is just have the extra feature of "only promote to equal level" on top of the current feature, which they will have less reason to argue against.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

The reason SE doesnt agree with this option, is because if the FC leader leaves, this now becomes a "The lives of the many, outweight the lives of the few." in their minds.
And we dont know how the Japanese players will view this situation.

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I'm actually curious about that now. If we have any bilingual players watching this, any chance you could ask on the Japanese boards? Are similar threads popping up on there with this issue from time to time by chance?

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

You guys are missing my point. SE isnt going to change this feature.
THAT is why I said, let's have an alternative.

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The only alternative is not touch the promotion permission for any rank, making it useless. I'm quite sure that over-rank promotion is an overlook of the feature and not intended. If intended, I'm quite curious to read their reasons for it.

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Originally Posted by Claire_Pendragon

The reason SE doesnt agree with this option, is because if the FC leader leaves, this now becomes a "The lives of the many, outweight the lives of the few." in their minds.
And we dont know how the Japanese players will view this situation.

So I think it would take quite a bit more to convince them

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Since leadership passes automatically after a FC leader goes inactive, the 'needs of the many' issue has been taken care of.
I'd be very interested to know if being able to promote above your own rank has caused problems on Japanese servers, too. If not, perhaps that might explain why they haven't taken a look at this since auto-transfer of leadership was introduced.

One thing I have noticed in this game is that Square do listen, players make suggestions here and they do get a response. A lot of suggestions from the forum have made it into game. So I am hopeful that we're not wasting our time here and that somebody will take note, because all these FCs being cleaned out by malicious members can't be what they intended.

Common sense dictates you check rank settings and don't give anyone but yourself promotion and demotion abilities. The fault lies entirely with you OP.

As for restarting? Sure why not. You know how the old saying goes.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

A big mistake putting that amount of gil in the FC chest.

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Originally Posted by Kerwin

Common sense dictates you check rank settings and don't give anyone but yourself promotion and demotion abilities...

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'Common Sense'? When every other MMO I can think of has guild/company ranks organised on a hierarchy where nobody can promote themselves above their own rank? I'm not sure common sense is any help in understanding a system that is so different from the norm. If there were warnings given, that would be different, but there aren't.
Allowing people to promote above their own rank serves no useful purpose but it does help players who wish to scam companies out of their gil or spitefully destroy FC property like the workshop and airships.
I'm sure the OP won't make the same mistake twice and I'm sure any FC leaders reading this thread will take precautions too but it would be nice to see something done to prevent this happening in the future.

As to not putting large amounts of gil in the Chest, where should you put your company's gil? It doesn't look good when the FC Leader takes gil donations from members and keeps them all on a retainer.

Stop letting randos in your FC. Do you not have a vetting process? It amazes me with some FCs so desperate to just get numbers they'll let everyone into their FC without the slightest care what baggage could be coming with them.

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Originally Posted by Chevronone

Stop letting randos in your FC. Do you not have a vetting process?

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Depending the FC's scope, it cannot be done, I mean, if the fc is just casual and all, it have not much sense, and any "professional" griefer may be good to pass it. As I pointed before on a previous post, it is maybe more useful don't give the promotion privilege to anyone than the Master, given how they are implemented today.

Then, when a member asks for a promotion because "insert excuse here", if you find it somewhat legit, it is much more better create a temp rank with -only- the needed permissions and give it to him. If he doesn't like the thing, shady things alert has triggered.

here is the latest update. due to losing all my gil and airships my morale hit bottom and i gave up the fc and house. i'm quitting. thanks for the kind words and good luck to everyone.

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Originally Posted by Shaemus_Jodocus

here is the latest update. due to losing all my gil and airships my morale hit bottom and i gave up the fc and house. i'm quitting. thanks for the kind words and good luck to everyone.

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More than quitting, why don't join another FC of your taste as member? Less stressful, and you can concentrate just on have your fun playing than handling all the fc stuff and possible jerks. Give it a try :)

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Originally Posted by myahele

Sadly nothing will be done.

SE should never allow anyone to promote themselves into a higher position than they are already in.

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I think this common sense to everyone else, so idk why SE can not make changes to their system already. If I was a small-time chief at a company, obviously I shouldn't be able to promote myself as the CEO of the company.

As for OP: even if naming-and-shaming isn't generally looked kindly upon in forums, you should at least warn everyone else about said person throughout your linkshells and the like. Morally-inept guys like the thief should not be able to walk scot-free (seeing as we have no idea what kind of repercussions he ultimately met with), and if nothing else, they should be prepared to lose their face and respect within (a large part of the) community.

As someone who apparently shares a server with this sort of scum, name and shame. At LEAST do it on the Balmung facebook page.

This isn't just a matter of trying to get even or anything vindictive. This is protecting other members of this community.

Until I read this thread I wasn't aware people could promote others to ranks 'above' them, though SE apparently doesn't seem to consider there to be any higher or lower ranks, and for this reason I've adjusted my rank permissions accordingly. I'm sorry to hear what happened to you OP (assuming you may still read this despite saying you quit). Thank you for pointing this out before it would have happened to my FC and those who read this.

To those pleading 'common sense', said sense would be to follow the majority of what's out there (MMOs and RL) and that is to assume one could not promote another to a rank with more priviledges than their own. If SE doesn't consider ranks to be ranks, they shouldn't be calling them ranks to begin with, as ranks imply hierarchy. Heck they shouldn't be using the word hierarchy either then. I hope this is getting fixed soon so I can give people (officers) limited promotion rights and not the 'all-or-nothing' system we have in place now.

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Originally Posted by Shaemus_Jodocus

here is the latest update. due to losing all my gil and airships my morale hit bottom and i gave up the fc and house. i'm quitting. thanks for the kind words and good luck to everyone.

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http://i.enki-village.com/Wbi-9mPD2b...0a22298982.jpg

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Originally Posted by Shaemus_Jodocus

here is the latest update. due to losing all my gil and airships my morale hit bottom and i gave up the fc and house. i'm quitting. thanks for the kind words and good luck to everyone.

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I'm sorry to hear that Shaemus. If you're moving on to a different FC I hope you find one the suits you. If you're heading on to another game then may you find one with green pastures, friendly folks and a plot of land with your name on it. :)

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Originally Posted by Chevronone

Stop letting randos in your FC. Do you not have a vetting process? It amazes me with some FCs so desperate to just get numbers they'll let everyone into their FC without the slightest care what baggage could be coming with them.

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It's not so much as inviting randos, it's about who gets the power and a matter of judgement. If someone wants to be an Officer, then they can be. Doesn't mean that they can't be restricted at all. It's why the settings are there.

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Originally Posted by Chevronone

Stop letting randos in your FC. Do you not have a vetting process? It amazes me with some FCs so desperate to just get numbers they'll let everyone into their FC without the slightest care what baggage could be coming with them.

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Randoms? or does skipping the 'm' save time and effort?

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Randoms? or does skipping the 'm' save time and effort?

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It's a form of slang and an implementation of speech to text. "I ain't gotta talk like I'm typin' my prof when 'm on a online forum."

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Originally Posted by Clethoria

It's a form of slang and an implementation of speech to text. "I ain't gotta talk like I'm typin' my prof when 'm on a online forum."

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But...it's one letter being removed. How does that qualify as slang?

No, never mind, it will never make any sense to me, it seems like going out of your way to save time.

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Originally Posted by Adire

And this is why I'd love to get off Balmung. It's gotten too big and mean for its own pants. Make free transfers happen SE, please.

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I just transferred to Balmung and already met a bunch of really nice people. Sure, there are jerks too, but there are jerks everywhere and you can't always avoid them.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

But...it's one letter being removed. How does that qualify as slang?

No, never mind, it will never make any sense to me, it seems like going out of your way to save time.

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It's not meant to save time.

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Originally Posted by Nixxe

It's not meant to save time.

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Yeah, I got that, I'm not sure what it's meant to be. I do know that it reads ridiculously and I bet it sounds worse when spoken.

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Originally Posted by Kosmos992k

Yeah, I got that, I'm not sure what it's meant to be. I do know that it reads ridiculously and I bet it sounds worse when spoken.

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Yeah, that's the point. It adds a sense of flippancy and emphasizes the unfamiliarity.

If you allow 100M gil to be taken, then you deserve it to be taken.