100M GIL taken

[Solarra]

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.

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response was given before they implemented the auto-transfer of power when a FC Leader goes inactive, so basically it's out of date.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.

[Dustytome]

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 how does a proper hierarchy system change that?

[Kosmos992k]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

[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.

[Dustytome]

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.

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.

[Niwashi]

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

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.

[Claire_Pendragon]

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.

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.

[Dustytome]

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.

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?

[LalaRu]

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

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.

[Solarra]

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

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.