All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

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Originally Posted by whiskeybravo

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They do indeed, but it doesn't mean that is a just or fair term, as Vhailor said.

The purpose of making your consumer feel like you care about them and their time, which is how you secure lifelong customers. If you assume $3 a person, which is high considering the numbers everyone keeps spitting out (.$50 a day for 3-4 days, $2 max), but we'll use your numbers. That's $1.5m out of $78m for the year. That's hardly breaking any bank for SE. But that does assume each person is active. I'm not even saying they should, I was basically just defending the OP from the rather rude naysayers, and pointing out that it really isn't that asinine.

I'm okay with it... so what if I can't play for one evening after I get home from work, I'll just do something else instead. This is what you sign up for when you play an online, everchanging game. There's going to be maintenance. If maintenance is unreasonably long (say, a few days) then I would expect them to compensate...but 24 hours, no. That's pretty standard.

Yeah, not only is this normal for FF14 its also normal for the majority of subscription based services that need regular maintenance. For example, the gym I go to, once a year for about a week and a half shuts the pools down for cleaning and maintenance and I don't get reimbursed for it.

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Originally Posted by Usho

One little gripe I have though is the all day (24 hour) maintenance that this game has. Coming from 10 years of playing Final Fantasy XI, the version updates (patches) we got, wither minor or major, only took maybe 1-2 hours tops. But with a new major patch in this game, the maintenances take 24 hours to

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I'm sorry but you are wearing rose tinted glasses when it came to 11 updates. Yes we did have 4-5 hour maintenance but it was also followed be another couple of 4-5 hours maintenance due to bugs etc. (I dont remember always getting 1-2 hour) Also some bugs stayed on that game for YEARS before they eventually fixed them due to no time.

As regards to 14, when we had the shorter maintenance's we had far more bugs and extra downtime. I'm happy with the way it is now 24hr, hotfixes and the odd random emergency fix. As regards to compensation it's stupid we get a working game that's compensation enough.

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Originally Posted by GunksFoy

Yes, because I can just move my work days around to fit the game. Regardless of what the ToS say, it still sucks when the game is down for an entire day, especially if it happens to be your day off and you're stuck with nothing to do. Additionally, the fact that they have a 24 hours maintenance for every patch is a little excessive. Our servers at work can be done in 3-4 hours and they have massive amounts of data flowing through them at any given time. What he's asking for isn't that unreasonable. And even if it was, he hasn't said anything that deviates from the ToS agreement, i.e. legal action.

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I never said re-arrange your work schedule. I said errands and chores. Surely you do housecleaning on occasion, and yard work/maintenance/repairs if you own your home? Go to the store to buy groceries and other supplies? There are a multitude of little maintenance things in our lives that we tend to do out of habit at certain times of the day/week but can easily be rescheduled when we know there's going to be a disruption to our regular routine in advance.

Yes, it sucks if the downtime coincides with a day off from work but welcome to being an adult where we've finally learned that things don't just magically happen the way we want just because we're adults even if that's what we imagined things to be like as children. We knew a month in advance that a major patch with extended maintenance would be coming in the second half of May. We knew 11 days in advance what the specific day would be. Those of us who have learned to be reasonable and responsible adults planned for it.

Any waste of time was due to your lack of responsible response to the scheduled downtime and thus your responsibility. It is not SE's responsibility nor is there any need for them to compensate us for it. If the server hardware blew up and we couldn't play for an extended period of time while they were getting the servers repaired, you might have an argument.

Remember you're throwing your temper tantrum over not being about to play a game for a single day. Think about that for a while. That should feel pretty darn embarrassing for an adult.

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Originally Posted by GunksFoy

I was basically just defending the OP from the rather rude naysayers, and pointing out that it really isn't that asinine.

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Actually...it is asinine. We where warned many days in advance. Told why and there is historical proof that this is SOP for SE's handling patches for this game. What's next? Major expansion launch (5.x) and we go down for 2 to 3 days and people are going to demand a month of subscription time? Yeah - Right. (Consider how rare it is in the first place)

I would rather they take the time they need to make sure the damn thing doesn't break as opposed to abruptly launching content and then having the servers go down again..and again..and again to get something right. Bad enough there's no "beta test" site to play with to test new content out like EVE Online does....so everything depends on them getting it right the first time. Even they have trouble with that (IE Emergency patch deployments)

Something that has been a recent thing with EVE Online (many false starts/issues lately)

Maybe you should take the time to consider SE's perspective in terms of deployment before you defend someone's utterly foolish request of compensation.

As I said before - it would be different if the game broke down after the maintenance and kept causing problems. Then you have grounds for it.

But without that....you got zero,nadda,zip.

And as its been said before, with plenty of warning, it comes down to the player to organize their time in their lives to do things. Asking to get paid for ignorance is not going to work here.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

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This is exactly the kind of rude retorts I was referencing. This holier than thou attitude. Just because you've learned "things don't always go your way" doesn't mean you can't endeavor to change them. No one is throwing a "temper tantrum, just suggesting that SE could compensate us, and perhaps should. But I'm sure you're right Mr. Adult, efforts be damned, we should just accept our lot and never utter suggestions to improve it.

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Originally Posted by NephthysVasudan

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No.... I'm quite certain they would ask for 3 days... But nice strawman anyhow. A full expansion is also somewhat different in that it's as much content as all 5 patches between and then some typically, so more understandable.

As for the rest, if they aren't testing their content on an in-house test server, they're doing it wrong. And no one is asking to be "paid" for ignorance. Again, you can't say anything without being rude. These forums truly are cancerous. Ignorance plays no factor, busy lives do. If the only day in a given week that you can play is taken up by a 24 hours maintenance, you're going to feel pretty bad about that. Many companies do things to support their customers in times of inconvenience. Mazda for example, if you don't live close to a dealer for a test-drive, they will ship one out to you in an effort to convince you to buy. Is this exceptionally profitable for them? No, but it shows they care about their customers. It is SE's decision in the end, but it's not wrong or outrageous to ask for something.

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Originally Posted by GunksFoy

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You're comparing a bloody car manufacturer/dealer to a video game.

One is a piece of equipment that is regulated by the government to meet safety standards and requires a license to drive. Not to mention far more likely to get people killed.
The other is a virtual game with virtual goods. If it goes down - oh... no game to play. Far likely not to put yourself in the hospital (ignoring the obvious)
I think we are done here if your going to make wholly ridiculous comparisons.

Let me know when you've arrived a rational part of reality and not your "straw-man" argumentation.

I am so glad that out of 8 pages of discussion only a couple of people are being petty enough to agree to this rubbish. This takes entitlement way pass the God level.

People complain about the silliest things sometimes.