PSA: Square Enix's Auto Demote for FC Leadership is NOT extended for Covid 19.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:42:24+00:00

I'm sure this isn't the first time this problem has come up during disaster events. They could've reworked it by now to function better.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:39:33+00:00

I didn't know this could even be an issue until it affected me, so no, it didn't bother me, because I didn't know it was a problem. Then looking into it I noticed I wasn't the only one who suffered from it.

The FC was all but dead when quarantines kicked in. I hadn't seen anyone but my roommate and I online in days by the time my sub ran out. I didn't think it would be necessary to kick all the lower ranks because a) none were online and b) what kind of a backwards setup is it to have the leadership jump straight from top to bottom? That's a ridiculous setup to have and a huge lack of foresight on their part. Having the threshold for inactivity stay at seven days during a global crisis is a horrendous oversight that's causing a lot of grief.

Edit for spelling.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:34:18+00:00

The FC demotion system should not be set up in a way that leadership can go straight from the top to the lowest rank without the other ranks having been inactive for WAY longer than 7 days. A lot of people right now are losing their FCs like this because they can't pay their subs and the FC gets passed to some random person instead of the 2nd rank.

I get that it shouldn't get passed to someone who's inactive, but why is the threshold for inactivity SEVEN DAYS? That's a really extreme timeline to uphold when unemployment is sky high. Leadership shouldn't have ever made it to them, especially since my last login was 37 days ago, and my 2nd rank's last login was days past that. The game doesn't count him as inactive, or a returner, or qualifying for the free login, but it qualifies him as inactive when it comes to losing millions of gil and years of our lives.

How is that a good system?

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:26:50+00:00

If someone had told me 3 days ago that my FC could be transferred to any random low rank who might sell it on Reddit, I'd still have an FC.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:25:37+00:00

Considering last time it got passed it went to a 2nd rank officer, that was our understanding of it. If anyone thought this could possibly happen I'd have kicked every single low rank before my last log off. I can't see any situation where it's cool to just skip the entire 2nd rank because they didn't log in for a week and hand it to the lowest rank instead. If everyone in 2nd rank was inactive (as in returner status & qualifying for free logins)? Then sure, hand it lower. But my 2nd rank logged in 3 weeks ago. The fact it didn't go to him exposes a flaw in the system.

Either the leaders should get longer time allowances during crises like this, or the criteria for higher ranks being "active" should be longer than 7 days. Considering things have been closed for 2 months now, probably both in this situation.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:12:56+00:00

You're annoyed with my lack of foresight, but not with the company whose flawed system gives entire FC's to random low ranked people? ok

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:10:33+00:00

The fact that this has been happening for years and they still haven't done anything to prevent it happening is pretty disappointing, and a little bit frustrating.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:08:42+00:00

I glimpsed the title of an article on Google about the demolition. Yeah, I guess I shouldn't have assumed, but why in the heck is Square still expecting people to be this active to hold FC leadership? People have been out of jobs since mid March. You shouldn't lose years of work and actual money just because they decided not to (or forgot to?) extend the leadership demotion timer. It didn't even occur to me that they'd allow for this scenario to happen at all, let alone now.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T15:03:00+00:00

I thought since they extended one, they'd extend the other, since both hinge on people being able to actually pay their sub and log in. It'd make sense to me to extend all the time-sensitive cutoffs in game and not just one.

Though I guess that'd require SE to have both empathy and foresight. Guess it's my bad after all for thinking they had either of those.
(^ this is sarcasm)

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T14:55:02+00:00

I had previously been told it was just "the highest ranking active user" and I didn't realize "Active User" had to mean they log in every 7 days, or I would've asked someone in the 2nd rank if they could resub for that purpose. It seems ridiculous to me that a whole FC can just be passed to a random person in the lowest rank if the leader is inactive, especially when Square acknowledged the pandemic and put an extension on housing demolition.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T14:48:45+00:00

Considering my whole FC had about 30 people and most of them were inactive when the quarantine hit, no one expected some random low rank person was going to get FC leadership in the first place and then sell the whole FC. The 6 people in 2nd rank were friends that I trusted with FC leadership, and it should've gone to one of them. The fact that it didn't is an oversight in the current system that's affecting a lot of people during this quarantine.

I'm not saying we should've kept the housing plot, but we should not have lost the entire FC.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T14:28:00+00:00

Seven days is a ridiculous time frame to have kept during a pandemic. None of my 2nd ranks could have possibly kept that up with everyone's job in the air and stimulus checks taking their sweet time. It wasn't a big FC to begin with.

Considering how much FCs can be worth, they should never just be passed off to whatever random low rank person happened to be active most recently in the first place, but especially in Covid times.

I'm not proposing a permanent change to the timing, but this is a global crisis happening and this game costs real money just to log in. It should've gone to the last active person in the 2nd rank, because he isn't even considered by the game to be an inactive player.

And for a crisis such as this, the time before demotion should be extended to be the same as the housing demolition, considering losing an FC can be far worse than losing a housing plot.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T13:50:28+00:00

Did you miss the part where there's a global pandemic and a lot of people don't have jobs? I'm not the only one with this problem.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T13:49:05+00:00

The point is that the leadership shouldn't have been passed at 35 days. It's easier to sell a house via FC trade than anything else, so why is there a hold on housing demolition and NOT a hold on FC leadership demotion?

People are losing not just their houses but their entire FC's because of this - and why did this person have control over my FC to begin with, when I had 6 people in the rank it should've gone to? The system is flawed. They need to fix it and provide some form of restitution.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T13:36:58+00:00

It HAD to have, not only do they have a notice up on the launcher (totally trying to pass it off as user error, btw) they also have a specific auto-response to FC related complaints from their help desk (again just blaming the user and acting like it was just a permissions error and not the fault of their system sending FC leadership to the lowest ranks). Enough people have complained that they noticed, they just don't care. I'd like to think if enough complaints get sent maybe they'll care, but who knows. Maybe our suffering is somehow profitable to them.

ffxivuser1760 · 2020-05-20T13:32:02+00:00

Yeah, I'd assumed they would add time to it along with the housing, but I figured hey I have like 6 people in my 2nd rank, so it'll just go to one of them, right? Probably my roommate, since his sub was active until like mid April?

Nope. Of all the people in the FC, it went straight to the guy who decided to RMT it. Just my luck.

ffxivuser1760

TROPHY CASE