All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[Kurando]

Doesn't change the fact that a 24 hour maintenance should be completely unnecessary for a patch.

As stated by Yoshi personally in the live letter;

"This is yet another dense patch with a lot of moving parts, so we’ll be performing a 24-hour maintenance starting the day prior, on Monday, May 21".

So yes it was very necessary for it to take 24hrs. But you know the maintenance actually finished about 4-5hrs early so it wasn't even a whole day.

[Ilan]

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

Of course you are paying SE also to keep the game up and running and if they find a problem they have to solve it and they do so with a maintenance. So get over yourself and accept that this is a part of what you pay for.

People complain about problems/bugs but also complain when it gets fixed. What the hell?

[GunksFoy]

Snip

Perhaps they have, although all that would require is them saying they have as there is no way to prove it, so not really the point. My point was, as I said, the OP's request is not that absurd.

Snip

Lacking the ability to do it efficiently and it being necessary are 2 different things. I work in tech, a 24 hour maintenance is enough to replace an entire server array for a few skilled technicians, depending on errors. Pushing a patch to the servers absolutely should not take 24 hours. Even if they finish early, most people probably aren't watching for the second the servers go up, so you can assume the average player planned around the maintenance window to the best of their ability.

[Kurando]

Lacking the ability to do it efficiently and it being necessary are 2 different things. I work in tech, a 24 hour maintenance is enough to replace an entire server array for a few skilled technicians, depending on errors. Pushing a patch to the servers absolutely should not take 24 hours. Even if they finish early, most people probably aren't watching for the second the servers go up, so you can assume the average player planned around the maintenance window to the best of their ability.

The thing is that's not for you to say how long they need to take and what exactly they need to do. Yeah great you work in tech, but you don't hear SE coming and telling you how to do your job, how quickly and how long your downtime as to be, so you aren't really in a position to criticise another party on how to do their job when you don't actually know their own procedures, not to mention it's being done over multiple time zones that requires coordination.

SE gave 24hrs as a rough estimate and majority of the time state that completion is subject to change, so if players take advantage of an early finish great. If others wait for the time that was previously advertised that's up to them as well, but it was planned regardless.

[Issac]

Eh, I get one day off a week, and it can be a little frustrating when that one day is a 24-hour maintenance. I guess I just play csgo or something when that happens...

[whiskeybravo]

Yes, the work analogy was not my strongest. And perhaps exact laws vary by employer and possibly even state/country. But at any rate, I haven't seen anything to make me change my mind on the subject. I think it's unreasonable to demand compensation because the game has 99.8% uptime instead of 100%.

Not only is it beyond absurd - it's just plain petty.

[Hamada]

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.

It did seem to me you where giving views that conflict but now it makes sense. For me, with the ever increasing "time limited" bonuses and such, what I would like to see is some kind of leeway to meet all the deadlines.

For the maint itself, I am not sure. On the one hand they are keeping what they state in the tos, you still pay for the sub during maintenance and it should be expected. On the other hand, they could use PR brownie points given all the backlash they get. Not saying they should or required, but could be in their better interest to "give" something. I recently started play a f2p mobile game that gives out some "premium currency" sometimes "energy refilling" items, whenever it goes down for maintenance. (basically 3-10 USD of value) Once they gave a high amount of both for being down nearly 24 hours due to a bug. (more like 20 USD of value for this)

So just helps to have better pr I guess, but with the infrequency of them currently I am not personally bothered.

I will say this though and I think it echoed something you said in an earlier post. I do feel incompetence after you have the servers down for around 24 hours, have them up for 4 hrs or so, then have to take them down again. If you are going to have them down for 24 hrs, don't you think that is enough time to make sure it releases right? However, mistakes can be made i guess and it is better then them having us play on a buggy game for months (like how that retainer item count display bug went unchecked for so long, drove me nuts)

[GunksFoy]

Snip.

Actually, they probably remote manage the servers and require no physical contact at all. It's probably all done from Japan. The amount of data for the patches should not take 24 hours to upload. And they should have already been tested for stability on a test server, so that should require minimal time. But sure, we'll give that maybe it's a procedural issue.

And indeed, it was planned and that is SE's decision. However, the OP's wish that SE grant us a few measly days is not that outlandish. All the people against him look at it as if his request for these few days is totally absurd because "it's only 3-4 days a year get over it" and fail to see from the other side "it's only 3-4 days a year, would SE even notice this financially (probably not)". And that's what annoys me. and why I gave him a vote in favor. I don't particularly care either way, the 24 hr maintenances are definitely an inconvenience, but is that big a deal? However, everyone seems to see the company is greater than the consumer and I would argue the opposite is true

Snip.

I tend to agree that demanding compensation for the small amount of time lost is unnecessary. However I wouldn't consider it absurd or petty. You pay for a product and expect to get full access to the service.

[Vaer]

You can just unsub for a while and take one of their free login campaigns (happens every patch it seems like) once a year. The last one was up to 96 hours, or 4 days. That's them giving you up to $2.00 right there!

[whiskeybravo]

However, everyone seems to see the company is greater than the consumer and I would argue the opposite is true

No, but they have the leverage when they are the ones stipulating the terms required to use their product.

And keep in mind you are talking $3-4 for what, 100k players? Last census shows 500k+ active "characters", who knows actually how many players/service accounts that is. But that's gonna add up quick, and for what purpose? So you can feel good?