All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[Lambdafish]

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...716040e34a5b6/

They do compensate when it is justified. 24 hour maintenance to give you new content is not justification for compensation

[NanaWiloh]

You are complaining about losing one day of play time every 3-6 months!!! You have gone be on reaching for something to complain about it, too jumping 100ft into the air for one.

[AppleJinx]

Am I reading this right or are you seriously complaining about losing a day of play time every 3-4 months? Get a life dude.

[hynaku]

No clue why they need to have 24 hour maintenance here when another mmo I play had a 10gb new expansion and it was down for only 4 hours then back up again. Only thing can think of is they don't have the staffing to have them shorter for big patches and expansions. Which seems wrong when other mmo I play is a f2p one. Doesn't bug me I will just play another game instead that day. Now if it was more than 24 hours like 48+ hours I would complain then. I would miss bunch of dailies.

[Vhailor]

I feel a bit of hypocrisy in your post and I sense mixed feelings about the matter despite you saying "I don't personally think it's a big deal".


I'm just gonna quote what you just said because it's basically what I was getting at:

There's no hypocrisy, and your sense is mistaken. My comment about principle was in reference to your post, which clearly has absolutely no legal argument behind it, nor an argument that the situation is significantly onerous.

If you really have a problem with it then start a petition to change the ToS. As it stands you accepted the terms in order to play the game. Now I certainly don't agree with companies that try to shoehorn in obscene stipulations into the ToS, and I'm always very careful to read them now just to make sure there is no tomfoolery being proposed. But that's kinda where it starts - with consumers actually reading the damn things and protesting them to be changed before agreement.

When you made an account to play this game, you also agreed to the ToS as well and it's even stated in the ToS as someone else has pointed out. That's all there is to it. If you're complaining about something you've longed since agreed to now, SE is going to look at you with a canted head and just point you to the contract you willingly agreed to. They're not going to suddenly feel you've been "cheated".

Duh? Injecting the ToS again distracts from the argument. The OP was not making a case about the ToS, nor indicating there was some legal wrong. Clearly the thrust of the argument was therefore about principle. Bringing up the ToS is akin to derailing the thread.

[Brill_]

I feel a bit of hypocrisy in your post and I sense mixed feelings about the matter despite you saying "I don't personally think it's a big deal".


I'm just gonna quote what you just said because it's basically what I was getting at:

When you sign up, you agree to this:

5. INTERRUPTION TO THE SERVICE
From time to time, in order to provide our customers with the optimal gaming experience, it is necessary for Square Enix to conduct routine maintenance on the computers and/or servers that support the Game. During these times, access to the Game or support services may be interrupted. Access may also be temporarily suspended in whole or in part, without notice, due to emergency repairs, fire, flood, explosion, war, strike, embargo, governmental action or failure to act, the act of any civil or military authority, act of God, or by any other causes beyond Square Enix's control, or any other reasons for which Square Enix, in its sole discretion, deems that temporary suspension is necessary. You acknowledge that disruptions of service may occur and waive any causes of action against Square Enix in any way arising from or related to any such disruptions of service.

[Sigma-Astra]

Duh? Injecting the ToS again distracts from the argument. The OP was not making a case about the ToS, nor indicating there was some legal wrong. Clearly the thrust of the argument was therefore about principle. Bringing up the ToS is akin to derailing the thread.

It doesn't? When you agreed to the Terms of Service, you agreed that not only do you accept that a 24 hour maintenance period can virtually occur sometimes and that it's not the fault of SE, but you also agreed that they also don't owe you a dime on the principle of it. You can argue against it as much as you like, but there it is in writing. If anyone thinks making a forum topic about it now is going to change SE's stance on it, you're sadly being way too optimistic about it.

You acknowledge that disruptions of service may occur and waive any causes of action against Square Enix in any way arising from or related to any such disruptions of service.

Once you clicked that little button that says you've agreed to the ToS, you've essentially thrown out your rights to complain against it. The OP feels that they deserve a "free day of play" as a paying customer because of 24 hour maintenance and while SE has sometimes reimbursed us for such things when it was an emergency, they will not over scheduled content updates. There's never been a history of such a thing. That is the principle of the matter. You may not like it, but that portion of the ToS was explicitly designed to counter people like the OP.

It is not something that SE needs to compensate their subscribers for at all nor will it logically harm anyone to not play this game for one solid day and half of the time, who on earth would be playing this game for exactly 24 hours with no kind of rest, bathroom, social, or food breaks? That's extremely unhealthy. I've never known anyone to be playing this game straight for 24 hours.

If losing one day equals out towards a person feeling that they're not getting their money's worth, then unsubscribe and talk with your wallet. But, if you're still paying the sub fee while complaining, well.....

[Vhailor]

Once you clicked that little button that says you've agreed to the ToS, you've essentially thrown out your rights to complain against it. The OP feels that they deserve a "free day of play" as a paying customer because of 24 hour maintenance and while SE has sometimes reimbursed us for such things when it was an emergency, they will not over scheduled content updates. There's never been a history of such a thing. That is the principle of the matter. You may not like it, but that portion of the ToS was explicitly designed to counter people like the OP.

You throw out a right to legal recourse. That's why these agreements exist - not to restrict discussions about a given policy's fairness or properness on the forums. If the OP was suggesting that we sue SE, or that there's a legal case against them, I'd agree with you wholeheartedly. They aren't. They're venting on a social platform about something they feel isn't a just practice. That's fine and dandy, and an entirely independent argument from the ToS.

That's why the appropriate response is to argue on the same grounds: principles / a sense of fairness. Even on those grounds, you'll know that I disagree with the OP. But discussion on those grounds is far more likely to be productive.

[Elamys]

I'm really glad to see that every single respondent agrees this is an absolutely ridiculous request/demand.

[Sigma-Astra]

You throw out a right to legal recourse. That's why these agreements exist - not to restrict discussions about a given policy's fairness or properness on the forums. If the OP was suggesting that we sue SE, or that there's a legal case against them, I'd agree with you wholeheartedly. They aren't. They're venting on a social platform about something they feel isn't a just practice. That's fine and dandy, and an entirely independent argument from the ToS.

That's why the appropriate response is to argue on the same grounds: principles / a sense of fairness. Even on those grounds, you'll know that I disagree with the OP. But discussion on those grounds is far more likely to be productive.

Well, the OP may not have outright said to sue SE, but they have lamented that it's not a good business practice in their eyes alone, therefore questioning the legal intent and morality of the company itself and putting that into question. When you consider something an unjust practice, that generally means you find the business practice to either be shady or illegal in some way that goes against your own personal values and feelings.

A person who feels scorned by not being able to play during a 24 hour maintenance period, and then feeling as if money and playtime is being unjustly siphoned away from them, even after already agreeing to the terms set before them just seems like a rather silly debate. Even more so if said person is still paying a sub fee on top of their complaints. It looks more like a sense of "entitlement" when you see a person standing on a soap box venting that they're not getting what they paid for and yet they're still funneling money into the very same company that they feel spurned from, in my opinion.

To me, an unjust practice from SE would be charging us additional fees along with our subscription fees for content or things some or all of us would not want or use without notifying us directly. To put it into another perspective, similar towards the way cable companies like to tack on extra fees for channels you don't ever need nor want to the next bill hoping you don't notice these things. So, to put it plainly, if SE would suddenly charge all of us $10 extra dollars a month to keep the Eternal Bonding Ceremony running when not all of the players want such a thing would be something I'd consider an unjust practice.

But what the OP is addressing? No, not really since maintenance is something to be expected with any kind of MMO. I've been more upset over single player games that costs me $50 and ended up being completely terrible to me. (I'm looking at you Arc Rise Fantasia.)