So why did they choose to take the game down on a holiday? (USA)

[Lyshell]

omg Valkyrie I had to refrain from laughing out loud at my desk right now. Thanks lol

[Tastydoorstop]

LOL thank you for the good laugh..
GO USA!!!! Bill bill bill... =)

[RubenSnizzle]

The game get updated on their server, and prior to that, they sent the patch to sony for review so that PS4 can download it tuesday (which is when they get patch and content update).

[Genaxx]

Well this thread took an awkward turn.

[Reinha]

I don't remember ever having MLK day off in school. :/

Sux you never went to a DoD school, I always had MLK day off in school haha! <3 Federal Gov'ment! =P

*Googles MLK day.*

Ok, so that's a thing in the USA.

I'm guessing the fact that this is a local non-Japanese holiday explains why a Japanese company does not take it into consideration in their maintenance schedule.

[Malzian]

This has nothing to do with what day it is in any country aside from 2 key factors: 1) Is the day before a major patch that had a lot of functional upgrades and patches always fall on Tuesdays. 2) Tomorrow is 6 weeks from the last patch so it it's completely in line with the standard patch cycle.

The fact that today is a holiday on the US is just a fluke.

[Clethoria]

Now that the point has been stated, time for everyone to post their "ohohoho silly americans" and everyone to completely disregard any clarifications that have been made.

[Airget]

I think people miss the main reason maintenance always take place on the same day. Rather than make this a fight against nations take a step back and look at the logic of keeping a consistent schedule. a Consistent maintenance date is important because of the manpower needed to make the patch go live. People most likely pushing extra hours that day on top of making sure the Server Maintenance workers over and the EU and NA data centers are active during that time to make sure everything works out. It's easier to generate a contract or rather to get someone to sign a contract to host your servers if you give them special guidelines and with FFXIV one of those guidelines is most likely huge updates will always take place on a Monday into Tuesday.

It's an important guideline because it lets people know when they need to be on call, if Maint could be whenever they felt like it was ready then it would add unnecessary stress to those working because they would always need to be ready for the day to prepare for the patch, oh this time it's a Thursday, now it's on a Sunday, man I really wanted to go to that event and now I can't. At least when the date is always Tuesday, the team knows that that date around the time of a patch will be lost to them but at least they don't have to worry about the update being set at a random time.

Then it comes down to this. When the date is set to a specific time this means it can't go before or after that unless it's on the same day. Last week the patch wasn't ready, this week the patch is ready, if they didn't do the patch today because of MLK day that doesn't mean they would do the patch tomorrow, that means they would do the patch next week because it's the consistency they aim for to keep their employees happy.

[dejiko_san]

There's probably a holiday somewhere around world each week. We'd never have content if we had to watch out for all of them hahaha

[Malzian]

I think people miss the main reason maintenance always take place on the same day. Rather than make this a fight against nations take a step back and look at the logic of keeping a consistent schedule. a Consistent maintenance date is important because of the manpower needed to make the patch go live. People most likely pushing extra hours that day on top of making sure the Server Maintenance workers over and the EU and NA data centers are active during that time to make sure everything works out. It's easier to generate a contract or rather to get someone to sign a contract to host your servers if you give them special guidelines and with FFXIV one of those guidelines is most likely huge updates will always take place on a Monday into Tuesday.

It's an important guideline because it lets people know when they need to be on call, if Maint could be whenever they felt like it was ready then it would add unnecessary stress to those working because they would always need to be ready for the day to prepare for the patch, oh this time it's a Thursday, now it's on a Sunday, man I really wanted to go to that event and now I can't. At least when the date is always Tuesday, the team knows that that date around the time of a patch will be lost to them but at least they don't have to worry about the update being set at a random time.

Then it comes down to this. When the date is set to a specific time this means it can't go before or after that unless it's on the same day. Last week the patch wasn't ready, this week the patch is ready, if they didn't do the patch today because of MLK day that doesn't mean they would do the patch tomorrow, that means they would do the patch next week because it's the consistency they aim for to keep their employees happy.

Pretty much... Patch dates are always Tuesdays for the same reason all new game release dates are Tuesdays. This maintenance is 6 weeks from the last one so it's consistent in that, and it's much earlier in the day on Monday due to the scope of the patch being introduced.