People exploiting FC rights.

Please review your policy on players that loot an FC then leave

Our FC opened access to an FC chest to all members that have been around for min. a month, and we put all the items that are tricky or take time to get, so that people could get involved in fc crafts.
Someone who had been in our FC for months, took everything and then dropped out of the FC. Scam? He was here long enough for trust and then stole everything.

I reported this, and SE says it was our fault. I thought that was pretty disgusting. Here we are, trying to get new players involved in the fc, and this happens. Its not our fault that someone exploited kindness and trust.

As it is, you are encouraging people to stay within close knit circles, and disclude new players, as we have no recourse to turn to. We cant go harass that player to try get the stuff back, as thats against ToS. As it is, word is getting around, so that player probably wont be in any FCs, but really? Is this EVE online?

I am very sorry to hear that someone would loot your fc chest then leave. Please use this as an opportunity to learn from this horrible situation. I would recommend setting up crafting ranks in your fc that are limited to specific inventory slots. See example below.

• Slot 1 (common mats used for leves level 20 - 55) - This slot is for fc mates that joined 1 month ago and is working on crafts/gathering classes ... basically below level 55 in crafts/gathering.

• Slot 2 Trusted FC mates (common mats used for leves/collectables level 55+) - This slot is for active FC mates that are helpful and only have FC interests in mind.

• Slot 3 Trusted FC mates (rare and common end game mats) - This slot is for active end game crafters that are helpful and only have the FC interests in mind.

What I mean by FC interests: actively helping others by crafting leveling gear for newbies or running content to help clear MSQ dungeons...ect. Basically wanting to help give other fc mates the best experience possible.

SE is not gonna change their stance on FC chests. It's your responsibility to manage your own FC.

I do see where people are coming from, but it's still wrong that we have no recourse - if we persistently nag this player to give the items back he can report us for harassment, while se is unwilling to take any action whatsoever.

Locking people out of the chests means that they can't get involved until they are highly trusted which could take years. So that means they can't be involved in airships, or any of the company crafts without levelling the crafters and gatherers themselves - which for a new player is going to take a lot of time.

I mean, this member had been in for months - we really did think we could trust him. And we wanted an environment where people could get in fast with the support of players who are much further ahead.

I also dont see the logic in handing out warnings and bans to people for resetting hunts under "disrupting others game experience", while stealing and dropping isnt considered so?

SE simply does not have the time, energy and resources to micromanage the circumstances of why you have an FC chest open. It cannot make judgements based on whatever arbitrary rules you have for your FC. So yes, there's little recourse ...I mean how can it? Is it going to set up the People's Court of Eorzea to make cases for anyone?

With a dungeon/raid it can back actions up with a chat log. However, FCs are around for years...you want them to go through a backlog of messages for some written agreement you may or may not have clearly stated months ago what the purpose of the chest is for? It provided you with a warning that opening the chest leads to the possibility of these circumstances happening.

If you stated it in teamspeak, discord, facebook etc it's outside the game and outside their jurisdiction.

Sorry to hear you were deceived, however you only have your own FC master to blame. If anything no member should have access to Chest item/airship/ect removal, only deposits. A trusted co founder or founder should be the one taking request and just mailing them. Only the FC Master should have main actions in regards to land and such. I mean it's only common sense that if you can't trust people to run a business in real life, you sure can't trust them in the game to run an FC.

We had a similar problem a few months ago. luckily it was generally just glamour prisms (though it worked out to be like 5000 + prisms and the night after i put in 1500 worth of them in) but we keep our third tab open now but limit it to only 15 of each prism and them stuff like the fried fish for the summer event things that aren't worth anything and limited amounts. To long term members. new members get no access.

Unfortunately Se is correct that you as a fc have control of who can access that chest. It still be nice if se would least punish people who clearly stole even if its a warning and 3 strikes you get a suspension.

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Originally Posted by Snoopy_Edin

I also dont see the logic in handing out warnings and bans to people for resetting hunts under "disrupting others game experience", while stealing and dropping isnt considered so?

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This goes back to how much easier it is to check on a report that's usually fresh. Resetting a hunt can be proven at the date and time. Someone taking/stealing stuff out of the chest that has been left open is much more trickier. Yes, you can report WHEN it happened, but they cannot investigate your rules. There's no documentation they can rely upon short of the evidence clearly showed you allowed people to access it.

Also there's only 3 types of ranks in your FC you should be very aware of.

Master
Person that can Promote/Demote
Member

If for example you created:

Master
Treasurer - A person that has access to the company chest and can withdraw funds
Officer - A person that can promote players to have access to certain things, but cannot touch the gil in the chest.
Squad - A person that can access things but cannot promote players. Like they can access a certain part of the FC chest...
Member - Standard flags when a person joins the FC

The Officer can promote themselves to Treasurer and take the gill out of the chest and leave. Anyone with Promotion abilities can change their rank and possibly go into a rank that can access things you didn't intend them to access.

So just another FYI while running an FC.

Hmm while I admire your openness and goodwill, and feel bad for your loss, generally a FC chest is only stocked to the lowest average wealth level of the FC. It means it shouldn't be stocked with stacks of things worth over hundreds of thousands each, unless the wealth of vast majority of people in the FC is hundreds of millions. Anything that is serious enough to actually warrant consideration should be asked for, traded and used with supervision from real people only.

In my opinion, the FC chest is too small anyways to stock with all the possible items for levelling a crafter. Most of those items are buyable too, or acquirable on short notice if someone asked, no point in stockpiling in in the public FC chest. The FC chest should be used for quick-access items such as chocobo feed, gardening, materia, glamour, etc. Which are never so expensive they would warrant consideration for security. Or handouts for FC events, which are meant to be taken anyways.

The gil count is also not for stockpiling gil, it's only filled up by the master when there's a project, aka buying a new house. Otherwise everyone's gil are their own and better to have it in your inventory and usable, than sitting in a chest. Same logic with most items. Better have it in your inventory and used, than sitting in a chest depreciating and unused, until someone decides to rectify that, and clears out the chest.

I'm sorry this happened to you.
We could definitely do with more controls on the FC Chest. In WoW we were able to limit the number of stacks people could take out and set an amount of gold for each rank, too (so we could cover repairs). Little refinements like that would be nice and would also help limit the damage in a case like this.

Unfortunately the system we have here is all or nothing, you either give access or you don't. Once access is granted to a tab, one person can clear it out and there is nothing Square can do because they had permission. I understand your frustration but as things stand, no rules were broken.
Our Company started out with the chest completely open, now we lock tabs 2 and 3. I'd rather not do that as I know some people just hate having to ask for things, but I learned from experience.

You mentioned FC Crafting, if your company lost any of the mats needed to unlock recipes we have surplus. Give me a shout in-game, we have plenty of mats from the airships going spare and I have a stash of crafting mats that I'll probably never use, hopefully we can help you out.

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Originally Posted by Kogekigami

It still be nice if se would least punish people who clearly stole even if its a warning and 3 strikes you get a suspension.

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I think this is much what I would have appreciated. Yes, it was a kick in the teeth for us, but the thought that this person can just go into more and more FCs and do the same thing is what really bugs me.

And I do understand where people are coming from with being unable to prove if it was a previous arrangement of some kind, however, I don't think that stance is very conducive in an MMO environment. It puts off the impression that SE is more concerned about molly coddling people who have a bad impact on the community, than encouraging good ones. They probably lose more subs to people being horrible to other people, than horrible people getting banned and then un-subbing.

I don't think it was my FC leader's fault. Everything else was locked up tight, and he has a rank for fresh new people to the FC who don't have access to anything, including chest 1. Very few people would still distrust someone after they've sat in your FC for months without any trouble.
And I believe he should keep it that way. Yes, I came up on here to complain about what happened, but I would still like to keep offering mats and prisms to all (non-noob rank) people in the FC.

I think too many people focused on the things that were lost. I was never expecting those back. Basically what some have said here, is *assume people are awful* - I prefer to live by *assume people are nice, but anticipate that you might be wrong*. The thing is, as the moment, we only have the tools to assume someone will do wrong, and no recourse if we decide to trust them and things go south.

Sad to hear this happen, and the permission system definitely could do with some reworks, though it'd come at the cost of how efficient the system already is, to where you simply have permissions and for the most part, anyone can give, and take at their own leisure.

If they've been around for a while, and have permissions to take items from a chest slot, then to all intents it is well within their right to take it. If the leader, or people are concerned with what was taken, or lost, then they should learn that it's perhaps not to take permissions lightly with people. Primarily the reason that I only craft food and potions for people in the FC on request, rather than filling the chest up, as if I do that it's well within their right to take a stack of 99, or everything and resell it for excess of 2 million. Sure, the person that done it would be quite the.... But, again, well within their right.

If the leader is torn about it, then probably best giving everyone view only privileges and have the items available only upon request. Then you have no need for a recourse if things go south.

I agree FC Permissions need an overhaul. In fact, I would love to see FCs given more attention generally, but at this stage I don't see it happening.

Proving an FC Leader didn't ask someone to clear the chest for them is practically impossible, so in the case of 'theft' from the chest, I can see why Square take the stance they do. But having said that, they are partly responsible for problems such as this and people promoting above their own rank, because the system they've created facilitates thpse actions.

Ideally, they'd take an interest in helping FCs to prevent scams and would work at closing loopholes. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be happening. It's almost impossible to get anyone official to pay attention when we raise FC issues here.

The same problems keep cropping up and people make threads asking for change but they usually die fairly quickly without an official response. It seems like a really big thread is needed to get someone's attention. Sadly, there just aren't that many players interested in FC management who come here and post.

It's likely due to a coding problem. Promotion is strictly a binary action. You either can promote or not.

It cannot make the distinction of who is "higher ranking" You either can promote or demote others or not.
It can't tell if your "Treasurer" rank is a higher rank than an "Officer" Rank (see my example in the earlier post).

The problem is a user perception one that makes assumptions. If you had created it in a certain order, you see the list and assume that because it's created first it has a higher significance.

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Originally Posted by Astral145

• Slot 1 (common mats used for leves level 20 - 55) - This slot is for fc mates that joined 1 month ago and is working on crafts/gathering classes ... basically below level 55 in crafts/gathering.

• Slot 2 Trusted FC mates (common mats used for leves/collectables level 55+) - This slot is for active FC mates that are helpful and only have FC interests in mind.

• Slot 3 Trusted FC mates (rare and common end game mats) - This slot is for active end game crafters that are helpful and only have the FC interests in mind.

What I mean by FC interests: actively helping others by crafting leveling gear for newbies or running content to help clear MSQ dungeons...ect. Basically wanting to help give other fc mates the best experience possible.

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This is what my old FC did after a theft. only a few people could access tab 3 which had the rarer items. It worked much better.

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Originally Posted by QT_Melon

It's likely due to a coding problem. Promotion is strictly a binary action. You either can promote or not.

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I understand that's how it works at the moment, but I am not inclined to let them off.
Every other game I have played has had Guild ranks in a proper hierarchy. WoW is a much older game, yet it gives control over how much members can take from the Guild Bank. If older games can create more user-friendly systems, I see no reason why FFXIV cannot do the same.

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Originally Posted by Driavna

Coding problem? Then they need to hire better coders, WoW worked like that since forever (and others games like RIFT or Wildstar).

There you can only promote to a rank below yours and it works the same if you want to kick anyone.

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I'm not saying it to disagree, I'm just stating why they have problems. Let's be honest here I love SE...but their UI development overall is not the greatest. It's a definite improvement over what was in 1.0 but look how we had issues in the past, like buying Coke from a Grand Company. How tedious the process is. The fact there's a lot of token bloat for items that long should have been currency (Ventures is finally going to be in the currency tab....). Things like how we couldn't preview gearsets (even the new interface is clunky in previews when trying to try on multiple pieces).

It even trickles down to Mogstation where buying items is an extremely tedious process that often causes card companies to flag transactions as fraudulent.

Then there's the matter this is built on top of 1.0 so they still have to keep tearing it down little by little without trying to break something else.