maintenance constantly eating up game time

[Merrac]

It's not really that bad. I mean I've had loads of time to play in between scheduled maintenance. I know emergency maintenance is frustrating but be a little patient.

It may not be that bad for you, but these maintenance times have so far landed everyday I get off work and run the allotted time I have to play, and now on my day off. So It's effectively barred me from multiple days of play. I can't stress enough that I'm not even raging or furious over this. Merely pointing out that it is in fact, frustrating as you said. I've been playing MMOs for awhile, was very excited to pick up this game because I'm a fan of Final fantasy, And I'm here to tell you, people who aren't major fans of the series aren't gonna poke around when multiple days of the 30 they paid for cant be played. And the whole "see ya later! we don't want ya!" response, Is actually more detrimental to the player base then you'd think. Not to say you did, But I can see that general idea forming in this small thread haha.

[Layhe]

You can complain all you want about maintenance, but like people have said, it's a necessary evil. Sure you can't play for the duration, but if they didn't do it the game wouldn't even exist, or the game would lag so bad it wouldn't even be playable.

Think of it this way: you alone use your computer, or maybe you share it, either way if you don't restart it, clean it, keep it free of dust/dirt, etc what will happen to it? It will slow down and become sluggish, to the point that you probably wouldn't even be able to browse the internet easily.

Now, imagine the servers for FFXIV which has over 5million players. Each person is making multiple connections when you add in every time someone loads the game. Which you do multiple times a day most likely. So let's say that's at least 10 million connections, if there was never any maintenance done on that, what do you think would happen? The same as your computer, it slows and becomes sluggish to the point people wouldn't even be able to play it. So what do you prefer? Not being able to play for just a few hours, and that's seriously the length of a maintenance, or would you rather just lag to death until you can't even play it anymore because you don't like maintenance happening for a few hours every once in a while?

Now, I do know there have been a lot of emergency maintenances lately, and while they are irritating at times, they are still necessary. Be glad they even tell you why they are doing it, most games won't bother to even tell you that. They just say there is a maintenance and that's all there is to it. Square tries to keep people involved and up to date on what is going on, but with there being so much going on sometimes things mess up. Everyone is only human, mistakes will be made.

TL : DR version - Shut up and get used to it - it's necessary - and maintenances don't even last that long. They aren't trying to purposefully make your life horrible, or make you unable to play the game. It's just a necessary evil.

[Ferth]

Or they could just stop doing maintenance and we can slowly watch the servers deteriorate until the game is straight up unplayable. You aren't paying a subscription JUST to play the game... you are paying the subscription for them to make sure the game is running optimally and so they can keep producing new content.

Would you purchase a car and expect the required maintenance to be reimbursed by the dealer?

[worldofneil]

Its like 5 days out of every 30 that we cannot play but we still pay for.

With the exception of the 24 hour June 6th patch that gave us 3.3, all of the other maintenances were for 4 hours. Even the Primal/Aether unplanned maintenances over the last week were fixed within the same sort of time frame. You do realise you can actually play for the other 20 hours of those days?

Also just because we can't play doesn't mean SE don't still have operating costs. It's in the user agreement that we agreed to that they can have maintenance from time to time and it's because of that the game servers are generally quite stable.

The lag for half the people in our party doesnt allow it some days.

There's no lag on the servers, that's your ISP giving you some bad routing. It probably won't do much good, but you need to complain to them.

Imagine being a player who paid for and started the game on June 29th around 5 PM PDT. That player is never logging in again.

Well neither of us know for sure, but given that the player has already paid for the game, it would seem very unlikely to me that they're just going to walk away and never try it again. The alternative that you're proposing is that SE just let the servers have problems and surely an unstable game is going to turn players away much faster?

Thanks for letting me know I can't sue, Captain Obvious.

I have another helpful suggestion then, you should probably try getting the user agreement changed BEFORE you agree to it.

[Seezur_Undies]

Have you tried sending them the schedule you plan on being online? i am sure they will be more than willing to compromise and never schedule a routine maintenance to interfere with your play time

[Wyrdhare]

Game time is more expensive than subs 99% of the time, and maintenance is a necessary evil...

True, but...

...maintenance is a necessary evil in order to get the new content that gets added to the game very regularly

Seriously, that was all you contribute to your defense of that statement?

Don't be selfish, the maintenance is there to implement the new content created FOR YOU.

I must correct you, Lambda. They DO NOT create the content for us; they create a product, put it on the shelf and we eat them up, because we are dumb like that. So, in actuality, they create it for themselves, because it keeps the license fees rolling in; they couldn't care if we all like it, because one day, everyone will forget about it when they new content comes along. That's consumerism for you!

You can complain all you want about maintenance, but like people have said, it's a necessary evil.

Still true; however...

TL : DR version - Shut up and get used to it - it's necessary...

...but that tone wasn't...

Or they could just stop doing maintenance and we can slowly watch the servers deteriorate until the game is straight up unplayable.

Hehe...

Have you tried sending them the schedule you plan on being online? i am sure they will be more than willing to compromise and never schedule a routine maintenance to interfere with your play time

I would dig at this, but it is at least witty in its sarcastic overtones. so "pass".

This is what I would contribute...

We may not like waiting for maintenance when it unexpectingly comes around, but that's just how it is; while I concede that there have been an unusual number of scheduled maintenance periods of late, at least they give a few days notice. As for emergency maintenance, that is technically the definition of "emergency"; it had to be done.

My issue is that I have been sitting on this for the last few updates, and there actually has been no actions towards issues I am experiencing, but even if you go through the process of reporting issues, it always has be rectified in an order of priority; there are just some issues too damaging to ignore. If we can learn to be patient, give them four hours of one day of your week to do what they must, then just maybe, we could at least not have to have threads on the forum, like this, where people will abuse (or at the least, humiliate you) because you aren't so.

[Alistaire]

Thanks for letting me know I can't sue, Captain Obvious. Your services are appreciated, perhaps you'd like to tell me the Bears aren't going to win the next Super Bowl?

If he was really being a Captain Obvious this thread wouldn't exist.

[Maxipep]

You can complain all you want about maintenance, but like people have said, it's a necessary evil. Sure you can't play for the duration, but if they didn't do it the game wouldn't even exist, or the game would lag so bad it wouldn't even be playable.

Think of it this way: you alone use your computer, or maybe you share it, either way if you don't restart it, clean it, keep it free of dust/dirt, etc what will happen to it? It will slow down and become sluggish, to the point that you probably wouldn't even be able to browse the internet easily.

Now, imagine the servers for FFXIV which has over 5million players. Each person is making multiple connections when you add in every time someone loads the game. Which you do multiple times a day most likely. So let's say that's at least 10 million connections, if there was never any maintenance done on that, what do you think would happen? The same as your computer, it slows and becomes sluggish to the point people wouldn't even be able to play it. So what do you prefer? Not being able to play for just a few hours, and that's seriously the length of a maintenance, or would you rather just lag to death until you can't even play it anymore because you don't like maintenance happening for a few hours every once in a while?

Now, I do know there have been a lot of emergency maintenances lately, and while they are irritating at times, they are still necessary. Be glad they even tell you why they are doing it, most games won't bother to even tell you that. They just say there is a maintenance and that's all there is to it. Square tries to keep people involved and up to date on what is going on, but with there being so much going on sometimes things mess up. Everyone is only human, mistakes will be made.

TL : DR version - Shut up and get used to it - it's necessary - and maintenances don't even last that long. They aren't trying to purposefully make your life horrible, or make you unable to play the game. It's just a necessary evil.

5 Million Players ? Hahahaha it's 500,000 active players at best, and even if it was 5m it wouldn't be 10m connections. The definition of connection is someone or something linked or associated with someone or something else

[BlairCrosszeria]

ill assume Japan has more of the playerbase. Or at least maintenance is catered towards their play times. It would be nice if it started at like 3 or 4 am central time and go until 7 or 8 am. Or have a different maintenance time for each Region.

[Zari]

ill assume Japan has more of the playerbase. Or at least maintenance is catered towards their play times. It would be nice if it started at like 3 or 4 am central time and go until 7 or 8 am. Or have a different maintenance time for each Region.

Idk, I am in the US and the maintenances generally fit in well for me. They usually go somewhere from 2AM to 6AM EST for me