In a forum post, the director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV Naoki Yoshida explained how the Ungarmax glitch made it through QA testing into the finished game. With this, players could inflict significant damage with a simple chat command. An incredible exploit, to say the least.
At the end of February, a strong exploit in FFXIV became known in the community through a Reddit thread.
The Ungarmax Limit Break allowed players to significantly increase their damage output for a short period using a simple chat command.
The exploit was so bold and so noticeable that many people wondered: How could this slip through? And why wasn’t the exploit fixed immediately after it was reported?
Now, the director of FFXIV, Naoki Yoshida, has commented on the incident. In a surprisingly transparent post, he explains how the glitch occurred and what is being done about it now. The penalties for the exploiters are also detailed.
How does Ungarmax work?
Originally, the exploit was implemented in October 2017 along with Content Patch 4.1. To gain access to this NPC Limit Break, players had to first unlock the NPC command missions.
Compared to the normal Limit Break, Ungarmax has several special features:
- It only consumes one Limit bar out of a maximum of 3 and can be used multiple times in boss fights.
- It increases the group’s damage output by a whopping 50% for 15 seconds.
- The duration of the effect can be extended to 25 seconds by the Astrologian job’s “Opposition” ability. For a single player, it can be extended up to 40 seconds.
Some time after the release of Content Patch 4.1, players discovered that they could also use Ungarmax outside of the intended instances with the help of a chat command.
Some players then used the strong buff effect of the Limit to conquer the hardest raids in FFXIV.
When the exploit gained significant attention through a Reddit post on February 27, 2018, several players came forward claiming they had reported the glitch to the GM team months earlier.
To determine how the error occurred and whether it had indeed been reported multiple times, appropriate investigations were initiated.
The routine check by the server did not take place
The investigations revealed that a player had indeed been reported multiple times to the GMs for the illegitimate use of the NPC Limit Break.
A special team, the special command, began monitoring the player. However, as no use of third-party programs was detected, the observations were discontinued.
The glitch remained undiscovered because the special command was too focused on cheating via third-party programs and botting.
The error itself was absolutely trivial: In the case of Ungarmax, the server-side validation was missing.
This is a routine check that occurs when all abilities are used and checks them for their legitimacy.
The chat command that triggered Ungarmax was not monitored by the server and could therefore be used outside the intended instances.
The workflows of the Dev and QA teams will be adjusted
The director of FFXIV holds himself and the development team responsible for the error.
According to him, certain minimum standards and routine processes in development were not followed. Additionally, some team members were not properly informed about the necessity of server-side checks.
To prevent such an error from occurring again in the future, error reports of this type will be examined more thoroughly than they have been so far.
Furthermore, the QA team will revise its guidelines to ensure better checks in the future.
In general, none of the GM teams should specialize too much, allowing them to overlook error reports like Ungarmax.
And what happens to the cheaters?
After the exploit became public on February 27 on Reddit, a special team began analyzing the combat logs of all players to determine if they had used the Ungarmax chat command, with the following results:
- By midnight (JST) on February 27, “Ungarmax” was used by 25 characters from 21 accounts in 8-player content.
- After midnight (JST) on February 27, “Ungarmax” was used by 1110 characters under faulty circumstances.
The investigations revealed that the owners of the 21 accounts had used the chat command multiple times outside the designated content. Additionally, they had kept the exploit secret from other players to gain an advantage.
A large portion of the 1110 characters that tried the exploit after its announcement used it primarily in public areas or in instances where they could not gain from the buff.
These players, who only used it “out of curiosity” once, have nothing to fear in terms of punishment.
How Yoshida will deal with the other players is still unknown.
This kind of transparency regarding internal processes at Square Enix is rare and has been positively received.
The director subsequently apologized to the players for the oversight and explicitly asked them not to exploit glitches like Ungarmax, as it violates the game’s guidelines.
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