Provide a warning about garden crops dying during extended server downtime

[Hasrat]

Notice of this maintenance went up well over a week ago, didn't it? And haven't we had enough maintenance periods by now to have figured out timers continue to tick while servers are down?

[Penthea]

Penthea:

Thavnairian Onions take 10 days.
Blood Pepper, Broombush, and Glazenut each take 7 days.

Fair enough but this doesn't answer my first question. Aren't we given at least a week notice for long maintenance? I've been playing a while and should know this but I haven't exactly been gardening long enough to care up until fairly recently.

[Chevronone]

Yeah, they're not going to reimburse anything. btw you can get past that pesky character limit by just editing the post.

I had FC members who are in charge of gardening contact a GM regarding their expired plants due to maintenance and were reimbursed their original seeds. This is usually a one time fix and can take up to a week to happen.

[Wilan]

Well the simplest solution is just don't plant things when we're told about a maintenance and you know you won't be able to tend them.

Sorry that probably sounds a bit harsh, but normal garden operations require frequent tending. If you know you're not going to be able to do that for whatever reason, don't plant something.

That's not always an option though when your crops rely on intercrossing for producing more seeds. If you interrupt a cycle you might lose weeks to get it started again, not to mention money.

[Penthea]

That's not always an option though when your crops rely on intercrossing for producing more seeds. If you interrupt a cycle you might lose weeks to get it started again, not to mention money.

What do you mean by interrupting a cycle? I have done quite a bit of cross planting already. It's not a completely seamless stream of planting right up until the last seed, each crossing is a separate process even if the seeds you want require multiple crossings. Or am I missing something here?

[TarynH]

I have 17 gardens

You lost me at ridiculous. You'd think with that many assets, you would at least keep track of when maintenance will occur. Like checking the weather in real life; maintenance warning was your frost advisory. Also, if you're staying on top of that many gardens consistently, your loss would be the equivalent of dropping a quarter down a sewer grate.

Edit: The first notice for this data center move was 4/25/2017 at 7:45 AM.

[worldofneil]

If you interrupt a cycle you might lose weeks to get it started again, not to mention money.

No you don't... they crossbreed at the point you plant them, not when you harvest them (even though you won't find out what the result is until they're grown.

So if you completely shutdown a garden, if you plant them again starting at plot 1, going round to plot 8, the only one that definitely won't cross breed is plot 1 because when you planted it, it wasn't next to anything.

You can get around this by planting plot 1 using cheap soil (basic potting soil for example), then after you've planted all 8 plots, remove plot 1 (losing the seed it had) and replant it again using grade 3 Thanalan soil. When you plant that plot 1 the second time because it's now next to something, it'll have its usual chance of crossbreeding.

Yes you lose that one seed each time you have to reset a garden (so of your crossbreeds make sure that's the cheaper seed!), but that's only a minor inconvenience given how infrequently we have maintenance of this magnitude.

[SimonRose]

You lost me at ridiculous. You'd think with that many assets, you would at least keep track of when maintenance will occur. Like checking the weather in real life; maintenance warning was your frost advisory. Also, if you're staying on top of that many gardens consistently, your loss would be the equivalent of dropping a quarter down a sewer grate.

Edit: The first notice for this data center move was 4/25/2017 at 7:45 AM.

Besides the ridiculous part, you are correct. I do keep track of everything, including maintenance, but I wasn't about to shut everything down 10 days early (Thav. Onions). So I took a chance, and lost. My gil loss was somewhere around 3 - 4 million in lost product and supplies. And again you're correct, that is like dropping a quarter down a sewer grate for me, but it doesn't lessen the fact that this should not be happening and SE should do something about it in the future.

[Lexia]

No, I think based on the number of players impacted by this issue the simplest solution would be to provide a warning. Not everyone sees a maintenance notification and thinks about how it will affect their garden, but a simple text reminder would alleviate this.

Cause apparently people need everything spelled out for them.

[Lexia]

Notice of this maintenance went up well over a week ago, didn't it? And haven't we had enough maintenance periods by now to have figured out timers continue to tick while servers are down?

A pop up screen about the maintenance was up for about a week but it was posted on lodestone almost a month prior. So there was plenty of notice if anyone took the time to check. But they rather say it all SE fault.