Change the way that provisioning projects work and prevent scenarios where fleet members are cut off from access to them.
Either way we cut this, Cryptic's going to have to think about changing the way the Fleet Advancement system works as well as Fleet Permissions. They might not do anything about it, but they have to be thinking about it.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
What I don't understand is why this former founder/leader who had not logged on in 6+ months was not removed from the fleet?
Can't someone take ownership after 30 days of inactivity? I cases where someone might be on deployment that could be agreed upon a longer term - I have gone off before and not had access for 60/90 days - but there are few deployments nowadys where someone is away from a computer/internet for longer than that.
I think leaving this persons account in a leader position- inactve for half a year or more was the biggest issue here - and mistake.
Well, it comes down to sentimentality and personal respect, I guess. That's always going to happen when you don't objectively look at guilds as shared resource dumps first and foremost.
I mean, in this thread, we've got people who want to ignore how much a person does contribute when kicking them and saying the measure of a fleet is getting along, even though fleet advancement isn't based around that to begin with.
I'd say it was a mistake to let te guy stay in charge since he didn't even play. But then again, I start this thread trying to argue brute pragmatism and social engineering over sentimental attachment and you can see pushback to that idea in this thread.
By tying fleet enrollment purely to friendship and wanting to allow non-contributors to boot contributors without consequences, that's what allows for one guy to hack one account and walk off with a Tier 4.5 starbase, Scott free. And as long as the hacker who did this can do it, it will happen again and again, endlessly.
There are middle ground solutions and some in this thread. But I personally think the discomfort associated with valuing people and keeping them around for their contributions is a discomfort that would be a positive social pressure.
I'm for linking contribution to membership (not membership to contribution; I'm fine with people giving whatever they want... But I have no issue with the idea that you should keep a person if you want the progress they bought and should lose progress when you lose people).
First, I am truly sorry about your fleet. You are a massive contributor to the community, and deserve better treatment than that.
My only suggestion is to reform the fleet, start over at Tier 0, and only have members that you have known for a long time.Don't recruit, don't allow new members, just work with a close knit group you can trust.
Its a lousy response but being a fleet leader with members I know IRL, security isn't a large issue in the fleet...It gets you banned from the backyard BBQs IRL.;)
What I don't understand is why this former founder/leader who had not logged on in 6+ months was not removed from the fleet?
Can't someone take ownership after 30 days of inactivity? I cases where someone might be on deployment that could be agreed upon a longer term - I have gone off before and not had access for 60/90 days - but there are few deployments nowadys where someone is away from a computer/internet for longer than that.
I think leaving this persons account in a leader position- inactve for half a year or more was the biggest issue here - and mistake.
I think that 30-day Fleet Leader Promotion probably doesn't apply if the inactive leader is one of several leaders and at least one of those IS active.
Maybe he wasn't booted/demoted because they thought he might come back. It's not unusual for people to drop out of the game in between major releases.
My views may not represent those of Cryptic Studios or Perfect World Entertainment. You can file a "forums and website" support ticket here Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Well, it comes down to sentimentality and personal respect, I guess.
I don't think the person needed to be removed from the fleet. But he should of been demoted to some sort of Sr. Officer type rank. One that does not have the rights to kick the current leadership out.
Any time you let someone who hasn't been seen for 30+ days stay keep the top rank in the fleet you're quite simply asking for problems IMO. No matter how well liked or respected the person may of been. If someone leaves for a month they should be demoted by at least a step in rank.
I don't think the person needed to be removed from the fleet. But he should of been demoted to some sort of Sr. Officer type rank. One that does not have the rights to kick the current leadership out.
Any time you let someone who hasn't been seen for 30+ days stay keep the top rank in the fleet you're quite simply asking for problems IMO. No matter how well liked or respected the person may of been. If someone leaves for a month they should be demoted by at least a step in rank.
I think he was in a leader position that was set to be undemotable by other leaders and that this was setup before fleets even had rewards.
We did have more than one leader, which is why nobody else could claim the fleet. Like I say, it was a respect thing.
I'm assuming that the fleet has tried to contact the guy and get him to acknowledge to Cryptic that his account was TRIBBLE.
By this point, though, the hacker could have sold the fleet and handed it off to a third party who changed the name, I guess.
We have the word of the person who started the fleet, who claims he didn't do any of this. It should be easy for Cryptic to verify his identity. But the fact is, apparently, that his word isn't good enough to get the fleet handed back over.
I mean, in this thread, we've got people who want to ignore how much a person does contribute when kicking them and saying the measure of a fleet is getting along, even though fleet advancement isn't based around that to begin with.
I think that's a BIG mischaracterization of the situation. The fact is, most players DON'T stick with one Guild, or one MMO constantly for years at a time. That doesn't mean they don't play to the fullest and participate in everything a given MMO has to offer when they are playing it - NOR does the reason they left/moved on have ANYTHING to do with something going on in the Guild or the game.
If someone played STO (making huge Fleet contributions); but one day got tired of playing STO and found another MMO he/she enjoys more; when they move on they are still taking up a Fleet slot (remember that 500 member cap); that could be used to get a new Fleet member who's not burned out on STO yet; and wants to play the game.
^^^
I don't think Fleets should be penalized IN ANY WAY for kicking out inactive members who've moved on - nor do I think they should be penalized because someone decides to move on to another Fleet, because it was their choice to contribute what they did, when they did (it's not a requirement per se; and even if the Fleet in question made it a requirement, it was that member's personal choice to go along with the requirement, instead of leaving the Fleet at that point if it was something they didn't want to do.
Anything that penalizes Fleets because of member churn is a bad idea and detrimental to the STO Fleet system as is stands because again, it would just add another level of possible griefing, while really adding NOTHING positive (and sorry, no, I don't think forcing a Fleet to keep an inactive or disruptive member or lose Fleet Holding progress is a positive addition to the STO Fleet system)
Still, that doesn't mean I am ignoring the contributions of a Fleet member who's left the Fleet for whatever reason. In the end, a Fleet is a reflection of it's members, and those members do need to take some personal responsibility for what happens in their Fleet - but adding a mechanic that forces a Fleet to retain any donating member of lose that member's contributions actually takes that out of the hands of the Fleet leadership and membership; and imposes a very draconian set of rules that remove the ability of a Fleet to handle members that move on to other Fleets (for whatever reason) or outright quit STO.
Bottom line: If you find you don't like the administration methods of a Fleet you joined, quit before you become too invested and find (or start) a Fleet yourself. Also be aware that any social situation is fluid, and things could change; and there's no 'perfect system' that can prevent someone who's really determined from griefing a Fleet in some way. Nothing is foolproof.
Even in the Op's Fleet situation, A LOT of safeguards had to be bypassed by the griefer in that:
- He had to hack the Fleet Leader's STO account.
- He also had to know what e-mail account the Fleet leader had tied to the STO account in question and hack that as well (to get past the account guard system and authorize the PC he was using to log in) OR he had to have access to a PC the Fleet Leader had authorized previously to log into STO; or the Fleet leader at some point DISABLED the Account Guard feature (which you can do, but isn't recommended.)
Either way a lot of safeguards were in place that were bypassed, or disabled by one or more persons by their own choice - including the choice of leaving a known inactive account that could go weeks without being monitored/checked by the owner, with full leadership powers.
Now, I realize the affected Fleet's members have acknowledged their role in all this, and I think it speaks well of them that they're not descending into the Forums or the game with Pitchforks (and I do hope that if they can somehow find evidence that actual hacking was involved; and it wasn't a case of the Fleet Leader sharing account info with someone he considered a friend at some point, that Cryptic would restore their former Fleet status); but still, as well intentioned as this proposal may be; I think in the long run it causes way more negative issues then the issue it's attempting to address.
Formerly known as Armsman from June 2008 to June 20, 2012 PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
I think he was in a leader position that was set to be undemotable by other leaders and that this was setup before fleets even had rewards.
There is no such rank, in reality. If two people hold top rank in a fleet, they can demote each other any time.
If this person was the only person in top rank, and the rest were below, any one of them could have claimed leadership after 30 days, and summarily demoted the idle character(s).
That this was not done is a personal decision, and not one that I fault anyone for as it, too, could have been seen as a form of 'stealing.'
The fact is, if all you need a fleet for is a shared resource dump in order to get things, there are plenty of fleets that will sell you access to ships, gear, and consumables in exchange for donations, EC, etc. You can dump your resources that way, enjoy the use of fleet provisions, and be on your way with none of the icky social hassle that is part of most guilding in MMOs.
Sadly for you all, Cryptic/PWE has shown a remarkable lack of give a damn in many cases about helping people recover things after being TRIBBLE; up to, and now including, an entire fleet. Likely they enjoy the fact that you and your fleetmates spent time, and especially money, building that fleet up, and hope that you'll stick around to do it all over again.
We have the word of the person who started the fleet, who claims he didn't do any of this. It should be easy for Cryptic to verify his identity. But the fact is, apparently, that his word isn't good enough to get the fleet handed back over.
Finally, one of our leaders was able to reach the aforementioned founder to speak with him. It was then that we realized that it was his account that had likely provided the opportunity for the seizure. While he steadfastly denies even having the game on his computer, he seemed to realize that an acquaintance of his (someone who had on frequent occasions boasted to him about his ability to hack everyone in the game) might have done something, but for what reasons, no one really knows. Our founder reached out this alleged hacker, who then had the audacity to tell us that he had indeed used the leader's account, kicked every single member of the fleet, and would be "holding it for ransom," but no real terms were ever mentioned, and again, no real reasons for the alleged hacking were verbalized.
So an "acquaintance" of one of the founders did it, and is holding it for ransom. :suspicious:
Besides the theft of the fleet, were any other assets of the founder affected?
And isn't it the second time a fleet gets ransomed?
That is terrible OP, and this suggestion is too late for you.
For all the other fleet members out there, though, it seems to be extremely prudent to have one or at most two admirals in charge of a fleet, and have them alone have the power to do something like this. Obviously, people work to get their rank up in a fleet, and demoting someone for being afk for a while feels weird. At the same time, though, you can always send a message letting them know why they are being demoted, and that it is security as opposed to personal, etc. etc. If they really care about the fleet, this should be totally acceptable to them.
I think too many fleets give original founders too much credit and power. The fleet should be run by whoever will run it best at any given time.
Our fleet recently demoted a ton of people, whereas before we had maybe 40 or 50 admirals. Hearing this story, I am glad that we did.
Some basic security should be taken by the fleet leaders.
in my fleet we have 5 Fleet admirals (fleet leaders) 2 of witch are inactive. both of the inactive accounts have been demoted to a recruit rank for security reasons. if / when they come back they will get there fleet rank back.
The fleet system is a member beware system. know what you are getting into. this can be hard to avoid and it will happen even in the best of circumstances.
We have a special rank just for inactive members, precisely to avoid situations like this. Periodically people who haven't logged in for a long time get demoted into it. They can't do anything with the bank, but they're still in the fleet, so they can find their friends and work on coming back. I highly recommend you implement such a system.
Sorry for your loss. You're a great bunch of folks, and you will pull through this.
Former moderator of these forums. Lifetime sub since before launch. Been here since before public betas. Foundry author of "Franklin Drake Must Die".
Again this just goes to my prior post - this guy/founder who had been inactive for 6-9 months was not demoted for leader status after 30+ days.
This is 100% the blame of the fleet leadership for not taking action earlier to prevent this horrible situation.
30 days to takeover is what I believe - and if not then the existing leaders should be able to contact Cryptic after X amount of time to have them removed.
Seems like this "leader" had not even been around since starbase construction started!! - that's insane!
That is terrible OP, and this suggestion is too late for you.
For all the other fleet members out there, though, it seems to be extremely prudent to have one or at most two admirals in charge of a fleet, and have them alone have the power to do something like this. Obviously, people work to get their rank up in a fleet, and demoting someone for being afk for a while feels weird. At the same time, though, you can always send a message letting them know why they are being demoted, and that it is security as opposed to personal, etc. etc. If they really care about the fleet, this should be totally acceptable to them.
I think too many fleets give original founders too much credit and power. The fleet should be run by whoever will run it best at any given time.
Our fleet recently demoted a ton of people, whereas before we had maybe 40 or 50 admirals. Hearing this story, I am glad that we did.
We had two leaders. The other (active) one got unfairly blamed at first.
There is no such rank, in reality. If two people hold top rank in a fleet, they can demote each other any time.
If this person was the only person in top rank, and the rest were below, any one of them could have claimed leadership after 30 days, and summarily demoted the idle character(s).
That this was not done is a personal decision, and not one that I fault anyone for as it, too, could have been seen as a form of 'stealing.'
The fact is, if all you need a fleet for is a shared resource dump in order to get things, there are plenty of fleets that will sell you access to ships, gear, and consumables in exchange for donations, EC, etc. You can dump your resources that way, enjoy the use of fleet provisions, and be on your way with none of the icky social hassle that is part of most guilding in MMOs.
Sadly for you all, Cryptic/PWE has shown a remarkable lack of give a damn in many cases about helping people recover things after being TRIBBLE; up to, and now including, an entire fleet. Likely they enjoy the fact that you and your fleetmates spent time, and especially money, building that fleet up, and hope that you'll stick around to do it all over again.
I really have a hard time believing any game designer is so unfocused on sustainability that they'd relish people losing their fleets.
That's just off in sociopath land... and not a terribly smart sociopath at that. Because this is more likely to cost Cryptic sales than increase them in the long run.
Apparently people are being nice right now... and that's cool. But I'd be baffled if this made people more likely to spend on fleets and not less likely to, in the long run.
And you can't convince me that PWE or Cryptic don't care about the long run. They might be bad at tending to it sometimes and it may not always be priority #1 but I sincerely doubt that they don't care about it either.
I like the idea of fleet equity. Each character would have a fleet equity rating equal to its contribution to the fleet that they can bring with them. This would mean the most hard-working of people would have higher fleet equity ratings compared to those just along for the ride.
Sadly for you all, Cryptic/PWE has shown a remarkable lack of give a damn in many cases about helping people recover things after being TRIBBLE; up to, and now including, an entire fleet. Likely they enjoy the fact that you and your fleetmates spent time, and especially money, building that fleet up, and hope that you'll stick around to do it all over again.
Cryptic gave us the Account Guard system. And how exactly did this founder who says he got TRIBBLE lose control of his email account?
People are going to do dumb things: use weak passwords, shared passwords, shared accounts, buy from gold-sellers, etc... At some point that has to stop being the service provider's problem.
I'd personally be much happier if Cryptic had true 2-factor authentication, but Account Guard is a pretty reasonable compromise.
"Participation in PVP-related activities is so low on an hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly basis that we could in fact just completely take it out of STO and it would not impact the overall number of people [who] log in to the game and play in any significant way." -Gozer, Cryptic PvP Dev
Cryptic gave us the Account Guard system. And how exactly did this founder who says he got TRIBBLE lose control of his email account?
People are going to do dumb things: use weak passwords, shared passwords, shared accounts, buy from gold-sellers, etc... At some point that has to stop being the service provider's problem.
I'd personally be much happier if Cryptic had true 2-factor authentication, but Account Guard is a pretty reasonable compromise.
After their entire database had been TRIBBLE at least once, if not twice. As to someone losing control of their email account, I'm reserving my opinion about that particular part of this story.
I'm not excusing people for getting TRIBBLE. But when it has happened, PWE customer service has proven far less than helpful in remedying the situation in more than one case.
If they wanted to be equitable, I have little doubt they possess the data mining capability to determine exactly where this fleet went, who is now in charge of it, who profited, and could confiscate all the in-game assets associated with it fairly rapidly.
I really have a hard time believing any game designer is so unfocused on sustainability that they'd relish people losing their fleets.
That's just off in sociopath land... and not a terribly smart sociopath at that. Because this is more likely to cost Cryptic sales than increase them in the long run.
Apparently people are being nice right now... and that's cool. But I'd be baffled if this made people more likely to spend on fleets and not less likely to, in the long run.
And you can't convince me that PWE or Cryptic don't care about the long run. They might be bad at tending to it sometimes and it may not always be priority #1 but I sincerely doubt that they don't care about it either.
I really don't think it's designed to do this. This seems to be a flaw in the system and not a feature.
While I would like for them to do something to remedy it... that seems unlikely.
I really have a hard time believing any game designer is so unfocused on sustainability that they'd relish people losing their fleets.
My understanding is that most F2P MMOs actually actively avoid long-term player sustainability (or at least such was what I discerned from PWE's financial reports).
My understanding is that most F2P MMOs actually actively avoid long-term player sustainability (or at least such was what I discerned from PWE's financial reports).
I always just got the impression that it's less expensive to focus on new customers if your target demo is young males in China.
STO doesn't even operate in China. And in while gamers are probably an easy passive sale, your whales are going to be close to 10x as expensive to replace as they are to keep.
While the situation does indeed suck, I'm going to be brutally honest, and say your leadership failed you. Leaving someone, in the fleet, in a position to do this, while they are inactive, is well, stupid. I have members of my fleet I KNOW will never be back, but because I know them personally, I keep them in fleet, at the LOWEST rank possible, they can do nothing to the fleet other than chat. IF one of them was to return while I was on its a few moments of work to promote them up.
Leaving someone in a position to do this was foolish, I'm sorry but it was, Real money is at stake here, sentimental reasons, do not trump sound thinking. My friends I trust, i know and respect, they're still at the lowest rank possible.
Just my thoughts and opinions on the matter, as far as the suggestion of your system, its open to grievers, gives WAY to much power to the player to harm a fleet, and well its unneeded, if sound decisions and procedures are in place
a starbase XP penalty when someone leaves a fleet based on their contribution total, which may include taking base amenities offline. Ie. boot everyone and the fleet gets knocked back to T0.
Thoughts?
I've highlighted the problem with this (otherwise nice) proposal .
Some ppl just won't care if the Starbase gets knocked back to T0 .
They would have gotten their jollies/revenge either way .
This only works for (against) ppl who have a greed factor working for them , and they want to 'ransom' / sell the Starbase .
So far the approaches I've heard/liked were :
- Limit the number of ppl that can be kicked per day .
- Have a 3-5 player "council" that can block a disbanding of a Fleet or a demotion of a Fleet Leader .
(mind you I think this one can be abused by 'cliquish' Fleets , where they wish to demote a Fleet Leaer but he does not want to go and has some of the Officers in his pocket)
First: Sorry for Your Loss. As pretty much a one man Fleet (other members have minimal time to spare for video games) I know the pain of raising a Starbase.
Which brings us to two:
Why is raising a Starbase so immensely expensive to do? Aren't we supposed to be having fun here? Are even massive Fleets having fun pouring uber resources down a drain?
So here's my fix to this problem:
Make raising a Starbase immensely cheap to do, that way if you lose one it's no biggie to replace. Makes them less valuable so less chance of someone wanting to steal one. People can still enjoy the Starbase's amenities.
Starbase Grind is NOT end game content. It is ONLY Grind. Grind is bad. You can't buy Fleet Marks so it doesn't entice people to spend money like they think it does. You can't sell Dilithium for ECs to buy DOFFs. For the money lure to work, they would have to (again) combine all the many different types of currency in game to one that CAN be bought with real money.
... Sorry for your loss. You're a great bunch of folks, and you will pull through this.
We live in a world where bad people pray on innocent victims everyday. Even though this is the Star Trek Universe, unfortunately we can not expect the game to assist cheated members better than this, and frankly it's just a shame.
There have been moments when I have become unhappy with STO. As a small fleet member, grinding out a T1 star base has been overwhelming at times. Hearing another one of these stories makes me sad.
So... I was part of Caspian Division. We had a T4.5 starbase and a T2 embassy. I haven't been in game a few weeks due to a bad motherboard but I gather that one of our inactive founders' accounts was TRIBBLE and the person on the TRIBBLE account booted everyone and has claimed the base and fleet for himself. Cryptic can't or won't do anything, which is frustrating but I imagine it's the result of well meaning but inflexible policies and limited manpower. The community, I've heard, has been awesome.
However, I think this presents some real issues when people have spent thousands of hours and spent hundreds of dollars on a product that can be stolen this easily. It makes me reluctant to participate in the Fleet system again.
these things happen and nothing is ever guaranteed, dont be put off by one bad experience.
as for cryptic, pretty much all their tos and such is at your own risk, so one way or the other you are on your own and should of made preparations incase something like this happened. i would of if i were in your position.
Thinking about this, I have a proposal for a Fleet Equity system. It's really very simple.
The game already tracks lifetime fleet credit purchases. My idea is that, based on that total, there would be a starbase XP penalty when someone leaves a fleet based on their contribution total, which may include taking base amenities offline. Ie. boot everyone and the fleet gets knocked back to T0.
If someone gets booted, the penalty takes effect. When booting a person, you can discharge them dishonorably (nobody gets anything, the fleet loses progress) or honorably (the fleet still loses progress but the person gets sent an item which can be used to provide their new fleet with direct base XP, based on lifetime fleet credit). Either way, the fleet loses progress when someone gets booted.
If someone quits a fleet, they get nothing but get a choice whether the fleet they're leaving takes a progress penalty.
The point overall is to discourage fleet migration while encouraging amicable departures... And to make the hijacking of a fleet nearly impossible.
Thoughts?
i dont like this idea, it is open to significant abuse. what happens if someone makes up multiple accounts with multiple characters for the explicit purpose of kicking the fleet to the curb with this system because of the penalties?
i know this train of thought been through it myself several times, you question yourself on what should of been done. just forget about it, the system is the way it is and there is nothing you can do about it. found another fleet and start over, just be more wary of inviting other players to your fleet. nothing more you can do then that really.
T6 Miranda Hero Ship FTW. Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Comments
Fleet Founders as Permanent Trustees
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=9150581&postcount=13
Change how we think about forming fleets in the first place.
Fleet Elections
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=9150941&postcount=14
Optionally allow fleets to operate more democratically.
Protecting Member Access to Fleet Provisions
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=9245701&postcount=29
Change the way that provisioning projects work and prevent scenarios where fleet members are cut off from access to them.
Either way we cut this, Cryptic's going to have to think about changing the way the Fleet Advancement system works as well as Fleet Permissions. They might not do anything about it, but they have to be thinking about it.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
Well, it comes down to sentimentality and personal respect, I guess. That's always going to happen when you don't objectively look at guilds as shared resource dumps first and foremost.
I mean, in this thread, we've got people who want to ignore how much a person does contribute when kicking them and saying the measure of a fleet is getting along, even though fleet advancement isn't based around that to begin with.
I'd say it was a mistake to let te guy stay in charge since he didn't even play. But then again, I start this thread trying to argue brute pragmatism and social engineering over sentimental attachment and you can see pushback to that idea in this thread.
By tying fleet enrollment purely to friendship and wanting to allow non-contributors to boot contributors without consequences, that's what allows for one guy to hack one account and walk off with a Tier 4.5 starbase, Scott free. And as long as the hacker who did this can do it, it will happen again and again, endlessly.
There are middle ground solutions and some in this thread. But I personally think the discomfort associated with valuing people and keeping them around for their contributions is a discomfort that would be a positive social pressure.
I'm for linking contribution to membership (not membership to contribution; I'm fine with people giving whatever they want... But I have no issue with the idea that you should keep a person if you want the progress they bought and should lose progress when you lose people).
My only suggestion is to reform the fleet, start over at Tier 0, and only have members that you have known for a long time.Don't recruit, don't allow new members, just work with a close knit group you can trust.
Its a lousy response but being a fleet leader with members I know IRL, security isn't a large issue in the fleet...It gets you banned from the backyard BBQs IRL.;)
Good luck SL99.
I think that 30-day Fleet Leader Promotion probably doesn't apply if the inactive leader is one of several leaders and at least one of those IS active.
Maybe he wasn't booted/demoted because they thought he might come back. It's not unusual for people to drop out of the game in between major releases.
Link: How to PM - Twitter @STOMod_Bluegeek
I don't think the person needed to be removed from the fleet. But he should of been demoted to some sort of Sr. Officer type rank. One that does not have the rights to kick the current leadership out.
Any time you let someone who hasn't been seen for 30+ days stay keep the top rank in the fleet you're quite simply asking for problems IMO. No matter how well liked or respected the person may of been. If someone leaves for a month they should be demoted by at least a step in rank.
I think he was in a leader position that was set to be undemotable by other leaders and that this was setup before fleets even had rewards.
We did have more than one leader, which is why nobody else could claim the fleet. Like I say, it was a respect thing.
I'm assuming that the fleet has tried to contact the guy and get him to acknowledge to Cryptic that his account was TRIBBLE.
By this point, though, the hacker could have sold the fleet and handed it off to a third party who changed the name, I guess.
http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/04/08/captains-log-the-day-my-star-trek-online-fleet-died/
We have the word of the person who started the fleet, who claims he didn't do any of this. It should be easy for Cryptic to verify his identity. But the fact is, apparently, that his word isn't good enough to get the fleet handed back over.
I think that's a BIG mischaracterization of the situation. The fact is, most players DON'T stick with one Guild, or one MMO constantly for years at a time. That doesn't mean they don't play to the fullest and participate in everything a given MMO has to offer when they are playing it - NOR does the reason they left/moved on have ANYTHING to do with something going on in the Guild or the game.
If someone played STO (making huge Fleet contributions); but one day got tired of playing STO and found another MMO he/she enjoys more; when they move on they are still taking up a Fleet slot (remember that 500 member cap); that could be used to get a new Fleet member who's not burned out on STO yet; and wants to play the game.
^^^
I don't think Fleets should be penalized IN ANY WAY for kicking out inactive members who've moved on - nor do I think they should be penalized because someone decides to move on to another Fleet, because it was their choice to contribute what they did, when they did (it's not a requirement per se; and even if the Fleet in question made it a requirement, it was that member's personal choice to go along with the requirement, instead of leaving the Fleet at that point if it was something they didn't want to do.
Anything that penalizes Fleets because of member churn is a bad idea and detrimental to the STO Fleet system as is stands because again, it would just add another level of possible griefing, while really adding NOTHING positive (and sorry, no, I don't think forcing a Fleet to keep an inactive or disruptive member or lose Fleet Holding progress is a positive addition to the STO Fleet system)
Still, that doesn't mean I am ignoring the contributions of a Fleet member who's left the Fleet for whatever reason. In the end, a Fleet is a reflection of it's members, and those members do need to take some personal responsibility for what happens in their Fleet - but adding a mechanic that forces a Fleet to retain any donating member of lose that member's contributions actually takes that out of the hands of the Fleet leadership and membership; and imposes a very draconian set of rules that remove the ability of a Fleet to handle members that move on to other Fleets (for whatever reason) or outright quit STO.
Bottom line: If you find you don't like the administration methods of a Fleet you joined, quit before you become too invested and find (or start) a Fleet yourself. Also be aware that any social situation is fluid, and things could change; and there's no 'perfect system' that can prevent someone who's really determined from griefing a Fleet in some way. Nothing is foolproof.
Even in the Op's Fleet situation, A LOT of safeguards had to be bypassed by the griefer in that:
- He had to hack the Fleet Leader's STO account.
- He also had to know what e-mail account the Fleet leader had tied to the STO account in question and hack that as well (to get past the account guard system and authorize the PC he was using to log in) OR he had to have access to a PC the Fleet Leader had authorized previously to log into STO; or the Fleet leader at some point DISABLED the Account Guard feature (which you can do, but isn't recommended.)
Either way a lot of safeguards were in place that were bypassed, or disabled by one or more persons by their own choice - including the choice of leaving a known inactive account that could go weeks without being monitored/checked by the owner, with full leadership powers.
Now, I realize the affected Fleet's members have acknowledged their role in all this, and I think it speaks well of them that they're not descending into the Forums or the game with Pitchforks (and I do hope that if they can somehow find evidence that actual hacking was involved; and it wasn't a case of the Fleet Leader sharing account info with someone he considered a friend at some point, that Cryptic would restore their former Fleet status); but still, as well intentioned as this proposal may be; I think in the long run it causes way more negative issues then the issue it's attempting to address.
PWE ARC Drone says: "Your STO forum community as you have known it is ended...Display names are irrelevant...Any further sense of community is irrelevant...Resistance is futile...You will be assimilated..."
There is no such rank, in reality. If two people hold top rank in a fleet, they can demote each other any time.
If this person was the only person in top rank, and the rest were below, any one of them could have claimed leadership after 30 days, and summarily demoted the idle character(s).
That this was not done is a personal decision, and not one that I fault anyone for as it, too, could have been seen as a form of 'stealing.'
The fact is, if all you need a fleet for is a shared resource dump in order to get things, there are plenty of fleets that will sell you access to ships, gear, and consumables in exchange for donations, EC, etc. You can dump your resources that way, enjoy the use of fleet provisions, and be on your way with none of the icky social hassle that is part of most guilding in MMOs.
Sadly for you all, Cryptic/PWE has shown a remarkable lack of give a damn in many cases about helping people recover things after being TRIBBLE; up to, and now including, an entire fleet. Likely they enjoy the fact that you and your fleetmates spent time, and especially money, building that fleet up, and hope that you'll stick around to do it all over again.
So an "acquaintance" of one of the founders did it, and is holding it for ransom.
Besides the theft of the fleet, were any other assets of the founder affected?
And isn't it the second time a fleet gets ransomed?
For all the other fleet members out there, though, it seems to be extremely prudent to have one or at most two admirals in charge of a fleet, and have them alone have the power to do something like this. Obviously, people work to get their rank up in a fleet, and demoting someone for being afk for a while feels weird. At the same time, though, you can always send a message letting them know why they are being demoted, and that it is security as opposed to personal, etc. etc. If they really care about the fleet, this should be totally acceptable to them.
I think too many fleets give original founders too much credit and power. The fleet should be run by whoever will run it best at any given time.
Our fleet recently demoted a ton of people, whereas before we had maybe 40 or 50 admirals. Hearing this story, I am glad that we did.
how ever
Some basic security should be taken by the fleet leaders.
in my fleet we have 5 Fleet admirals (fleet leaders) 2 of witch are inactive. both of the inactive accounts have been demoted to a recruit rank for security reasons. if / when they come back they will get there fleet rank back.
The fleet system is a member beware system. know what you are getting into. this can be hard to avoid and it will happen even in the best of circumstances.
Sorry for your loss. You're a great bunch of folks, and you will pull through this.
This is 100% the blame of the fleet leadership for not taking action earlier to prevent this horrible situation.
30 days to takeover is what I believe - and if not then the existing leaders should be able to contact Cryptic after X amount of time to have them removed.
Seems like this "leader" had not even been around since starbase construction started!! - that's insane!
We had two leaders. The other (active) one got unfairly blamed at first.
I really have a hard time believing any game designer is so unfocused on sustainability that they'd relish people losing their fleets.
That's just off in sociopath land... and not a terribly smart sociopath at that. Because this is more likely to cost Cryptic sales than increase them in the long run.
Apparently people are being nice right now... and that's cool. But I'd be baffled if this made people more likely to spend on fleets and not less likely to, in the long run.
And you can't convince me that PWE or Cryptic don't care about the long run. They might be bad at tending to it sometimes and it may not always be priority #1 but I sincerely doubt that they don't care about it either.
Cryptic gave us the Account Guard system. And how exactly did this founder who says he got TRIBBLE lose control of his email account?
People are going to do dumb things: use weak passwords, shared passwords, shared accounts, buy from gold-sellers, etc... At some point that has to stop being the service provider's problem.
I'd personally be much happier if Cryptic had true 2-factor authentication, but Account Guard is a pretty reasonable compromise.
After their entire database had been TRIBBLE at least once, if not twice. As to someone losing control of their email account, I'm reserving my opinion about that particular part of this story.
I'm not excusing people for getting TRIBBLE. But when it has happened, PWE customer service has proven far less than helpful in remedying the situation in more than one case.
If they wanted to be equitable, I have little doubt they possess the data mining capability to determine exactly where this fleet went, who is now in charge of it, who profited, and could confiscate all the in-game assets associated with it fairly rapidly.
While I would like for them to do something to remedy it... that seems unlikely.
My character Tsin'xing
My understanding is that most F2P MMOs actually actively avoid long-term player sustainability (or at least such was what I discerned from PWE's financial reports).
I always just got the impression that it's less expensive to focus on new customers if your target demo is young males in China.
STO doesn't even operate in China. And in while gamers are probably an easy passive sale, your whales are going to be close to 10x as expensive to replace as they are to keep.
Leaving someone in a position to do this was foolish, I'm sorry but it was, Real money is at stake here, sentimental reasons, do not trump sound thinking. My friends I trust, i know and respect, they're still at the lowest rank possible.
Just my thoughts and opinions on the matter, as far as the suggestion of your system, its open to grievers, gives WAY to much power to the player to harm a fleet, and well its unneeded, if sound decisions and procedures are in place
I've highlighted the problem with this (otherwise nice) proposal .
Some ppl just won't care if the Starbase gets knocked back to T0 .
They would have gotten their jollies/revenge either way .
This only works for (against) ppl who have a greed factor working for them , and they want to 'ransom' / sell the Starbase .
So far the approaches I've heard/liked were :
- Limit the number of ppl that can be kicked per day .
- Have a 3-5 player "council" that can block a disbanding of a Fleet or a demotion of a Fleet Leader .
(mind you I think this one can be abused by 'cliquish' Fleets , where they wish to demote a Fleet Leaer but he does not want to go and has some of the Officers in his pocket)
First: Sorry for Your Loss. As pretty much a one man Fleet (other members have minimal time to spare for video games) I know the pain of raising a Starbase.
Which brings us to two:
Why is raising a Starbase so immensely expensive to do? Aren't we supposed to be having fun here? Are even massive Fleets having fun pouring uber resources down a drain?
So here's my fix to this problem:
Make raising a Starbase immensely cheap to do, that way if you lose one it's no biggie to replace. Makes them less valuable so less chance of someone wanting to steal one. People can still enjoy the Starbase's amenities.
Starbase Grind is NOT end game content. It is ONLY Grind. Grind is bad. You can't buy Fleet Marks so it doesn't entice people to spend money like they think it does. You can't sell Dilithium for ECs to buy DOFFs. For the money lure to work, they would have to (again) combine all the many different types of currency in game to one that CAN be bought with real money.
We live in a world where bad people pray on innocent victims everyday. Even though this is the Star Trek Universe, unfortunately we can not expect the game to assist cheated members better than this, and frankly it's just a shame.
There have been moments when I have become unhappy with STO. As a small fleet member, grinding out a T1 star base has been overwhelming at times. Hearing another one of these stories makes me sad.
these things happen and nothing is ever guaranteed, dont be put off by one bad experience.
as for cryptic, pretty much all their tos and such is at your own risk, so one way or the other you are on your own and should of made preparations incase something like this happened. i would of if i were in your position.
i dont like this idea, it is open to significant abuse. what happens if someone makes up multiple accounts with multiple characters for the explicit purpose of kicking the fleet to the curb with this system because of the penalties?
i know this train of thought been through it myself several times, you question yourself on what should of been done. just forget about it, the system is the way it is and there is nothing you can do about it. found another fleet and start over, just be more wary of inviting other players to your fleet. nothing more you can do then that really.
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.