Please call it "Daily Maintenance"!

That way it's not misleading.

that would imply we have it every day

this is more a "post patch" maintenance

http://static2.finalfantasyxiv.com/t...W0_160_160.jpg

Ffffoom, just in time!

SON OF A WHORING TARU SLUT DANCER!

I just want to play the game ~_~*

Always with the maintenance!

And by lay I mean send the next 6 hours stripping the land of its precious Dark Steel supply.

Know what? Never mind. Darksteel is down to 4k now. Screw you guys, I'm going home. The one thing that would have freshening up the mining gig and under cutters have ruined it within 2 days.

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Originally Posted by Zaaku

SON OF A WHORING TARU SLUT DANCER!

I just want to play the game ~_~*

Always with the maintenance!

And by lay I mean send the next 6 hours stripping the land of its precious Dark Steel supply.

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I wouldn't doubt that being the case, at all actually.

I may be unusually cranky since I took the day of work to play today only to now find out that my gaming day starts with 4 hour maintenance, but please SE, change the way you do releases. OBVIOUSLY you do not do nearly enough testing. I would be much happier if the content worked on release than to have it come out quickly and broken. I work for an IT department in a big company and if we everytime we released a new version of our software had to then shut it down for hours several days a week after every release I would be out of a job in a hurry.

A sure sign that you are doing something wrong is if you several times a week have to do "emergency" hotfixes. Emergencies should NOT be a regular occurrence.

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Originally Posted by Eldarion18

That way it's not misleading.

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How is unscheduled maintenance misleadin...you know what nevermind.

Lol Roll Back? :O Mauahahahaha

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Originally Posted by Zaaku

Know what? Never mind. Darksteel is down to 4k now. Screw you guys, I'm going home. The one thing that would have freshening up the mining gig and under cutters have ruined it within 2 days.

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stipenstones were 30k, and someone went straight to 5k, so yeah i feel the pain

at least all mine sold for 30k before they plumeted due to a single idiot

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zaaku

Know what? Never mind. Darksteel is down to 4k now. Screw you guys, I'm going home. The one thing that would have freshening up the mining gig and under cutters have ruined it within 2 days.

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You're welcome! Saving the day from people who would overcharge for materials, one item at a time! :D

Guys, this patch was practically a full expansion, of course there will be uncaught bugs that are unable to spot until release. Be grateful they are fixing things in a timely manner instead of letting them remain broken. Yes it stinks when you have a day off, and it has maintenance -- but its for the greater good. We are paying monthly for this game so look at it as they are fixing known issues and your money is going to proper care of the game instead of paying for something is down due to maintenance. also it has had 2(i believe) maintenances since its the patches release. After they get the bugs that crop up sorted out it will be smooth sailing until it goes down for 1.22a. Thanks for fixing the known issues SE!

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Originally Posted by Joche7566

You're welcome! Saving the day from people who would overcharge for materials, one item at a time! :D

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http://todaysmama.com/files/2011/08/...-on-a-lego.png

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Originally Posted by TheVedis

stipenstones were 30k, and someone went straight to 5k, so yeah i feel the pain

at least all mine sold for 30k before they plumeted due to a single idiot

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Yaayy! Now I can afford to buy some! (If they stayed at 30k I was just going to level Miner from 0 to 50 and get it myself).

It is sad they have a lot of trouble after release.. hopefully in the future they can invest my people/monies to iron out these issues before they do a big release!

SE have seriously hecked the bed on this one.

Wow really a day later and another "emergency maintenance" this is ridiculous. How can they really make us pay if we get so much of these things every time they do an emergency maintenance they should refund us 5% of the money we paid to play. We will see how many times we have emergency maintenance then.
*Snake Eyes*

we'd be a lot more pissed if they didn't do this imo.

but yeah, it sucks, I was just getting into the groove of using my new WHM super powers, RAWR!

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Originally Posted by Zaaku

Know what? Never mind. Darksteel is down to 4k now. Screw you guys, I'm going home. The one thing that would have freshening up the mining gig and under cutters have ruined it within 2 days.

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its at 2k on our server >.<

You all do realize that the reason darksteel plummeted so fast has far less to do with under cutters, and far more to do with demand, right?

In addition to the new recipes being largely novelty items, they're all bottle-necked by an HQ synth that requires a material that for a while many people had no idea where to get. And now that they do know, and they know the material is NQ only, and 100k a pop...

Well combine difficult synthesis, with synthesis changes, and the final items prompting the response "When would I ever use this?" and you see the problem.

If people had known where to get coke from the beginning, and these items were usable by jobs, the ore would be selling like hotcakes still, and probably at 3-4x the current price.

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Originally Posted by Cynthis

I may be unusually cranky since I took the day of work to play today only to now find out that my gaming day starts with 4 hour maintenance, but please SE, change the way you do releases. OBVIOUSLY you do not do nearly enough testing. I would be much happier if the content worked on release than to have it come out quickly and broken. I work for an IT department in a big company and if we everytime we released a new version of our software had to then shut it down for hours several days a week after every release I would be out of a job in a hurry.

A sure sign that you are doing something wrong is if you several times a week have to do "emergency" hotfixes. Emergencies should NOT be a regular occurrence.

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Don't take work off to play a game then?

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Originally Posted by Cynthis

I may be unusually cranky since I took the day of work to play today only to now find out that my gaming day starts with 4 hour maintenance, but please SE, change the way you do releases. OBVIOUSLY you do not do nearly enough testing. I would be much happier if the content worked on release than to have it come out quickly and broken. I work for an IT department in a big company and if we everytime we released a new version of our software had to then shut it down for hours several days a week after every release I would be out of a job in a hurry.

A sure sign that you are doing something wrong is if you several times a week have to do "emergency" hotfixes. Emergencies should NOT be a regular occurrence.

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Guess what, they knew

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/43218

"So! Spring is finally in full swing here in Tokyo, and the cherry trees are done shedding their blossoms. Work on patch 1.22 enters the final stage, and we’re on track for an April 26 (JST) release.

In order to deliver the patch to you in time for Golden Week, I’m afraid we’ve had to postpone a number of things. These include job-exclusive weapons, chat log reforms, and other content I touched on last time. With regards to hamlet defense, only Hyrstmill will be ready for 1.22; the remaining two hamlets will go live in 1.22a, which is scheduled for May 10. We also have plans for a patch 1.22b, which is expected to follow shortly thereafter. You can rest assured that we will maintain our pace even after 1.22 is released!"

The statement Yoshida made in his letter, clearly shows that they weren't ready for the April 26 release but they wanted to release content so people could enjoy it through Golden Week. If it wasn't for Golden Week odds are we wouldn't have seen this patch til May 10th lol.

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Originally Posted by Victor

http://static2.finalfantasyxiv.com/t...W0_160_160.jpg

Ffffoom, just in time!

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did you make those and where do you get the recipe for that

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Originally Posted by neorei

did you make those and where do you get the recipe for that

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...the patch notes?

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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Truth and lolz

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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If other game developers can release content patches without following it with a week of DAILY "emergency" maintenances why can't they? It's not like we're screaming outrage for no good reason. This happens EVERY patch. Other games don't suffer from this. But of course you're blind to all this coz god damn man, fanboys will be fanboys!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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seriously... its like they would rather have things remain broken. They are making the right choice by fixing things people.. you would complain if things stay broken asking where your subscription money is going, you complain if they fix something that obviously requires immediate attention. in these forums i learned people just complain

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Originally Posted by Eldarion18

If other game developers can release content patches without following it with a week of DAILY "emergency" maintenances why can't they? It's not like we're screaming outrage for no good reason. This happens EVERY patch. Other games don't suffer from this. But of course you're blind to all this coz god damn man, fanboys will be fanboys!

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most developers are not releasing content patches of this size, built on a horrible foundation and crappy netcode. those other developers would of have 1.21 and combined 1.22 on sale for $30 called an expansion.

also remember their team is writing things for TWO clients, the current, and 2.0. testing goes into both. Majority of this content is going to be in 2.0 - and I imagine the difference in making these things work in both is quite different. oh and dont forget about the ps3 port which they are also still working on

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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I may not know much about software developement but I do know that 10 hours of Maintenance downtime + another 3-4 hours of missed time due to server locks within the forst 36 hours of release is a bit too much and players do have a right to complain about it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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I actually work in IT. Not in aplication development. But as another person allready wrote on the forum, if they would put a software update live and that would cause such problems every time with that much downtime they would loose theyr job pretty fast. Sometimes I need to update systems too and I know if I would handle this like SE does I would loose my job too.

On critical system we load a backup of the running software nad implement the patch there. Then somone working daily with the software has to do basic jobs and check if they work fine. There are also programs out there that simulate load. Or sometimes we even made them ourself to test the behaviour of the new system with heavy loads on it.

There is seriously something wrong with the way SE handles this...

Imaging you working in a bank and putting the hole money transfer offline every two months, and customers loosing all therey money... You would tell them the same too?

Reading your comment I have to wonder if you actually now anything about software development and releases.

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Originally Posted by Mushy

most developers are not releasing content patches of this size, built on a horrible foundation and crappy netcode. those other developers would of have 1.21 and combined 1.22 on sale for $30 called an expansion.

also remember their team is writing things for TWO clients, the current, and 2.0. testing goes into both. Majority of this content is going to be in 2.0 - and I imagine the difference in making these things work in both is quite different. oh and dont forget about the ps3 port which they are also still working on.

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I can understand that this makes it more of a problem. I actually got in touch wich such patchwork too, and I know it's awfull. But that's SEs problem, not the customers.
I can't just tell my customers I screwed up in the past thats why everything is fucked up now, get over it and give me your money.

from the mouths of the developers themselves: these tools, this client, the server is junk this is why they are making 2.0. i repeat THIS IS WHY THEY ARE MAKING 2.0. and to Deatheye the people responsible for the problem did lose their job. remember? Now they can only work with what they got while they develop a completely new client/server side putting in the current stuff too, and continuing the port to PS3. they are stretched. This is very different than your job deatheye. doing roll outs and checking load stability is very different than managing a team of coders(many types), artists(many types), engineers(many types), and the testers. If you could do any better apply at square and fix all their issues(ohhh wait...)

*munches quietly on her cookiee as she observes the latest rants on the lodestones*

I'm not sure which is most odd.

That people would rant so much but still stay here and forget their own rants a few days later (which means it wasn't that important to begin with).

Or that people make so many silly rants that are completely illogical or unfounded to begin with.

Some days, reading the lodestone makes me sad.

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Originally Posted by Eldarion18

blahblah This happens EVERY patch. blahblah

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No it fucking doesn't. It's only happened since 1.21, for whatever reason, and became more of a problem after server merge.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deatheye

I can understand that this makes it more of a problem. I actually got in touch wich such patchwork too, and I know it's awfull. But that's SEs problem, not the customers.
I can't just tell my customers I screwed up in the past thats why everything is fucked up now, get over it and give me your money.

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You have the very, extremely simple option of not paying.

There will still be emergency maintenance after patches even after 2.0. Count on it.

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Originally Posted by Answa

No it fucking doesn't. It's only happened since 1.21, for whatever reason, and became more of a problem after server merge.



You have the very, extremely simple option of not paying.

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correct. they said this was a beta essentially if you want to pay for it go ahead, and told the others to come back 2.0 where they will be given free time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

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It seems to me a lot of the problems after patches are related to a lot of people playing at the same time. This can hardly be a surprise to the development team and given that it seems to always be a problem, I'd say it warrants significantly improved test focus. Besides, some of the explanations for "emergency maintenance" the last month have been quite silly in my mind. Unfortunately I can't find the descriptions right now...but I seem to recall one emergency maintenance was described as fixing a problem with an item that disappeared or was not available. Unless that item is your character, that does not seem to warrant emergency maintenance,

What I would prefer is some predictability. Have a weeekly maintenance window and make fixes at a set time with the only exception being repeated crashes and login problems which would equire faster action. Instead, in April we had all world maintenance on April 5,10,11,18,26,27 . We had maintenance on individual/several worlds on April 7,9,14,16,19 and payment processing maintenance April 23.

I am just not sure if an MMO is the kind of software suitable for a contiuos deployment pattern...

I do want to stress that I think the game is improving tremendously and the development team is doing a great job. I would simply prefer that new features weren't rushed.

You have the very, extremely simple option of not paying +1

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Deatheye

I actually work in IT. Not in aplication development. But as another person allready wrote on the forum, if they would put a software update live and that would cause such problems every time with that much downtime they would loose theyr job pretty fast. Sometimes I need to update systems too and I know if I would handle this like SE does I would loose my job too.

On critical system we load a backup of the running software nad implement the patch there. Then somone working daily with the software has to do basic jobs and check if they work fine. There are also programs out there that simulate load. Or sometimes we even made them ourself to test the behaviour of the new system with heavy loads on it.

There is seriously something wrong with the way SE handles this...

Imaging you working in a bank and putting the hole money transfer offline every two months, and customers loosing all therey money... You would tell them the same too?

Reading your comment I have to wonder if you actually now anything about software development and releases.

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Developing a patch is worlds different from applying a patch. For one, the developers run their updates through the QA team, meaning that if the QA team didn't find whatever was wrong, someone dropped the ball there. In a game of this scale, patches such as these are being built upon tons and tons of preexisting systems, some of which likely haven't been touched by a developer in years. A simple off-by-one error, a precondition check that was ">" instead of ">=," something that would only be discovered in an extreme edge case condition. Unless you can design an AI that simulates EVERY possible thing a real human player could do at EVERY instance of play and let it run automatically (and people have tried) there's no way a QA team is going to catch such a rare instance of instability. For games that receive updates that affect core systems, the last line of QA is unfortunately the players.


Basically: deal with it. Better things get fixed that left in a crappy condition.

The issues we're having this time are likely the result of the team squeezing out what they can with the current engine and server architecture. They've said it before, this engine is not ideal, they're trying to appease us with new fixes and content but the core systems are only designed to do so much, they're not very robust like that. I mean, have you seen what happens when you purchase an item using Item Search? It goes into the instance, buys the item, then exits the instance, without actually loading the market ward zone, that's why it lags. If that's not a hack-a-round, I don't know what is.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mushy

from the mouths of the developers themselves: these tools, this client, the server is junk this is why they are making 2.0. i repeat THIS IS WHY THEY ARE MAKING 2.0. and to Deatheye the people responsible for the problem did lose their job. remember? Now they can only work with what they got while they develop a completely new client/server side putting in the current stuff too, and continuing the port to PS3. they are stretched. This is very different than your job deatheye. doing roll outs and checking load stability is very different than managing a team of coders(many types), artists(many types), engineers(many types), and the testers. If you could do any better apply at square and fix all their issues(ohhh wait...)

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Not really. I have projects too where I need to talk to different companys cause on makes the Database, one the software that uses the database, I need to set up the basic network, server, client infrastructure etc.
There are specialist for different softwares, for specific Hardware / Infrastructure parts.
We need to coordinate between companys and inside they different companys they need to coordinate there teams / teammembers.

Sure SE has propably more people involved, the project itself is on a bigger scale. But the basics are the same.
If the difference is just about the scale of the project, I'm sure there are people out there that have to deal with bigger projects than I have to.
And it's really wierd that I can't remember any other MMORPG (and I played a few) where every patch seems to put unfinished stuff out, cause new problems and a lot more downtime then anticipated.

And with so many emergency patches, thats also not a good sign.... emergency... says it all, doesn't it?

In regards to 2.0 we are going again to the point: I can't tell my customers I screwed up int he past that's why now everything new is screwed up too.

If a company makes an error that hunts them they have to live with the consequences which are unhappy customers.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zyph

Developing a patch is worlds different from applying a patch. For one, the developers run their updates through the QA team, meaning that if the QA team didn't find whatever was wrong, someone dropped the ball there. In a game of this scale, patches such as these are being built upon tons and tons of preexisting systems, some of which likely haven't been touched by a developer in years. A simple off-by-one error, a precondition check that was ">" instead of ">=," something that would only be discovered in an extreme edge case condition. Unless you can design an AI that simulates EVERY possible thing a real human player could do at EVERY instance of play and let it run automatically (and people have tried) there's no way a QA team is going to catch such a rare instance of instability. For games that receive updates that affect core systems, the last line of QA is unfortunately the players.


Basically: deal with it. Better things get fixed that left in a crappy condition.

The issues we're having this time are likely the result of the team squeezing out what they can with the current engine and server architecture. They've said it before, this engine is not ideal, they're trying to appease us with new fixes and content but the core systems are only designed to do so much, they're not very robust like that. I mean, have you seen what happens when you purchase an item using Item Search? It goes into the instance, buys the item, then exits the instance, without actually loading the market ward zone, that's why it lags. If that's not a hack-a-round, I don't know what is.

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Is it just me or does it seem like SE is the only one mmorpg company having so regularly emergency patches?

I know from other MMORPGs there is always something wrong with a patch. And that I can understand. Goes back to what you allready explained. But it never seemes to be so bad to varant an emergency patch.

And I also have basic programming skills. So I know how a something little like a wrong space or a missing "!" or what ever can totaly screw you up.

Telling a customer to

Quote:

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deal with it.

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is not the way to have a customer relationship... what every the cause.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lordvr

There will still be emergency maintenance after patches even after 2.0. Count on it.

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True but I would hope they are fewer and further between after a few patches at least since 2.0 will be based on code that has been developed by the urrent team and where they are not doing "hacks" to fit new features into an old code base and server structure that clearly had serious problems.