Really love the game, but your service forced me to quit.

[Sayura_]

JP servers are split from NA/EU actually, so there's no actual "global" servers this go around, there's just no oceanic servers.

You're obviously failing to see the OP's point. He has maintenance in his prime-time every few days. He barely gets 1 days notice in advance which means he is scrambling to try and reschedule his coils, FC events, etc. This is SE's problem and a global game should have rotating maintenance times.

[DoctorPepper]

Although the maintenance time is literally perfect for me since I go to bed right at the time it starts I still feel your pain. The number of maintenance have been a little overboard and it does give the impression that they don't know what they're doing or aren't willing to put the money required into fixing the problem at hand. Other mmo's have similar problems at launch but I would be lying if I didn't say that this is one of the worst launches I've seen in a while. I guess as standards go down so does quality and these days all SE seems to care about is their wallet to me.

[DoctorPepper]

Tell me Sayura, how is it SE's problem if someone only has 3 hours a day to play and those 3 hours happen to be in the frame they do maint? Let's not forget the fact the game has 99% up time. Serious answer only or don't bother answering.

I'm just wondering where are you getting this 99% uptime fact you're claiming? You do realize that to be up 99% of the time SE would have to only bring the servers down for 1.68 hours a week right? From what I've seen this game definitely cannot make the 99% uptime claim, probably more like 95% which is low compared to the average for this type of service. Get your facts straight.

[verily]

ITT: OP mad he can't play the game for a few hours per week, responds by not playing the game at all

lol? Logic.

That's like your doctor telling you to cut back on your coffee intake by one or two cups per week and you flip tables and vow to never drink coffee again. Totally rational, mature response.

[Lithera]

They have been drifting the maint times a little each week. That's why there's No PST people complaining about last nights maint. Also take a look at when they do the datacenter specific maintenances. They're at off peak for the respective datacenter. Unfortunately the OP decided to roll on an NA server instead of one close to his timezone (JP). The other issue with rotating is if you end up coming off maint. during that datacenter's peak hours you risk a crash due to simultaneous logins or at least 1017s and queues.

Also the freeze bug in Turn 5 was an exploit they needed to nip quickly. Exploiting it to clear Turn 5 would have been a ToS breach and reason for ban. Better to fix it than have to start swinging The ban hammer.

[Zantetsuken]

I agree with the OP.

As FFXIV is the ONLY game I own, (and I have no friends, family, work, or hobbies); I find it unforgivable that this game (read: my entire life) has been unplayable for blocks of 3-4 hours in order to "fix" critical "issues".

Dear SE. You've lost a customer for life, mostly because my "life" now is over. I will quit playing your game, my parents (who don't exist) will quit paying for your game, and I will just sit here in my empty basement for the rest of my life with nothing to do.

I hope you're happy!!! YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!!

/ragequit
/fume

/sarc

[RowanLauron]

20 days out of the month? Really?

Boy I feel sorry for you when you get married, have a full time job plus kids. You'll be lucky to get 7 days, unless you ignore your kids and wife all the time.

[Inquisitor]

Back when I started playing games they had to launch them right the first time because they came on a cartridge.

A landfill full of ET for the Atari 2600 cartridges shows that they didn't always manage to launch them right.

[Cendres]

JP servers are split from NA/EU actually, so there's no actual "global" servers this go around, there's just no oceanic servers.

It's still a game servicing around the world. I'll grant you OP could have picked a JP based server instead. That's why I moved from Masamune to Excalibur personally. That said not everyone on those servers will play at the same time either, I used to have a graveyard job and on my days off the maintenance hours are exactly when I would have played. Which would effectively cut off most of my play time except for the odd afternoons. That's not really fair.

Fair would be to change it up a bit. Which again is actually a standard practice in major mmos. :S No matter which region your server is on. Also the frequency of these is a little silly, I hope we'll be seeing less of these and more actual meatier patches.

[TrystWildkey]

Ok, I'm going to say a lot of things here.

1. Let's rotate maintenance times.

Sure, that would work out great for the players. But how does that work out for the employees? How would you feel if your job asked you to work bizarre shifts once a week. One week you're coming in 3am-7am. The next week it's during normal working hours for you, but the week after that it's your Friday night at 7pm-11pm. And the week after that it's 11pm-4am. Let's keep that schedule going for weeks at a time just to make sure the same customers aren't always inconvenienced. I really don't think anyone would appreciate that kind of schedule being forced upon them, yet we want to force that schedule upon someone else? I don't think that's right.

2. Maintenance for a mob not acting the way it should isn't necessary, I'd rather have the game up more often with this kind of maintenance going on infrequently.

And if they actually shifted to that policy, instead of threads where people are quitting due to the frequent maintenance, we'll have threads where people are quitting because bugs like that aren't fixed in a timely manner. It's a no-win situation, so they're doing the responsible thing and fixing things.

3. I love how most people are still trying to defend the fact every couple of days there's maintenance.... you're trying too hard.

Perhaps we're not trying too hard, we're just rational human beings. Nothing can be 100% perfect all the time, and really, for the people making and maintaining this game, it is their job. Pause, if you will, for just a moment and reflect on how you approach your own job. Do you have your nose to the grindstone every moment of the day, working your hardest to make everything pristine. Do you spend your time considering the customer, and what they're going through? Do you think about the customer and want, desperately want, to provide them with a flawless experience? Or, do you do what you're told to do, in the quickest way possible just to get it done? Don't forget that SE is made up of human beings doing regular jobs so they can have a house, food and clothing. Yeah, we see Yoshi, and Soken and Foxclon and they're passionate about what they're doing, and they care about the customer experience. But in the real world, they are a MINORITY of employees.

Also, to the people wondering why so many fixes are needed, have you ever coded anything? Have you ever had to go through thousands/millions of lines of code to find whatever is not working as intended, then determine how to fix it while ensuring that your fix is compatible with the remaining thousands of lines of code? You think that is easy or simple when even Starbucks doesn't always manage to get your coffee order correct?

Anyway, yeah, there are any number of reasons why people aren't happy with the product being provided to them. That's their choice. However, to come on the forums and whine about it without any real world consideration just seems selfish and immature.

I don't see myself as defending a company, I see myself as someone who lives in the real world and understands that any company is made up of employees that are just regular people. The people we see representing the company are just the very tip of the iceberg. Any decision made by management has to be carried out by regular people. Regular people who have lives outside of work. People who come into work tired, hungover, sad, happy, motivated, depressed, etc.

We as customers have the right to be unsatisfied, but we need to consider that 'customer service' is being provided by people just like us.