All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[Talraen]

I actually mentioned this a couple of pages ago, and I agree. An 8 hour maintenance, or perhaps shorter, should be more than sufficient. And would make things like this total non-issues.

Assuming they want maintenances to continue to end at the weekly reset (4 AM Eastern), an 8-hour maintenance does seem a bit unfair. That would start maintenance on the east coast at 8 PM, basically killing prime time, and completely destroy west coast prime time. Meanwhile, Japan basically loses the work day and is totally unaffected. Of course, recent maintenances have been planned to end at 6 AM, which is better for me (start at 10 PM) but still brutal for the west coast (7 PM). If my calculations are correct (and I suck terribly with time zones lol), Europe would basically lose the morning. I suspect this asymmetry might have something to do with why they settled on a 24-hour maintenance: this way everyone loses the same amount of prime time.

[GunksFoy]

Assuming they want maintenances to continue to end at the weekly reset (4 AM Eastern), an 8-hour maintenance does seem a bit unfair. That would start maintenance on the east coast at 8 PM, basically killing prime time, and completely destroy west coast prime time. Meanwhile, Japan basically loses the work day and is totally unaffected. Of course, recent maintenances have been planned to end at 6 AM, which is better for me (start at 10 PM) but still brutal for the west coast (7 PM). If my calculations are correct (and I suck terribly with time zones lol), Europe would basically lose the morning. I suspect this asymmetry might have something to do with why they settled on a 24-hour maintenance: this way everyone loses the same amount of prime time.

Perhaps, and this is a fair point. However, losing prime time is not as bad as losing an entire day, imo. Not everyone plays at prime time, and while the unfairness sucks, it's better than losing a whole day of play.

[NanaWiloh]

Be down time 24 hours or just 4 hours someone will always complain and demand compensation for their lost time. Nothing wrong with asking for compensation for lost time, but like it or not there is a point that it becomes petty if not outright pathetic to be asking.

[GunksFoy]

Be down time 24 hours or just 4 hours someone will always complain and demand compensation for their lost time. Nothing wrong with asking for compensation for lost time, but like it or not there is a point that it becomes petty if not outright pathetic to be asking.

If he were asking for compensation for 4-8 hours time, I would agree. But an entire day is not so outlandish.

[Devils_Lawyer]

Compensation = new content.

Enough said.

[GunksFoy]

Compensation = new content.

Enough said.

This is a fallacy, they could implement new content in less time OR implement new content and give you a day back. You pay for the new content with your sub fee, just as you pay for the service, they are trading you content in exchange for the maintenance, the maintenance is merely the vehicle by which they implement it.

[Devils_Lawyer]

This is a fallacy, they could implement new content in less time OR implement new content and give you a day back. You pay for the new content with your sub fee, just as you pay for the service, they are trading you content in exchange for the maintenance, the maintenance is merely the vehicle by which they implement it.

You think they just add the new content and then go sit there fiddling with their thumbs for 12+ hours?

They do other things during the maintence aswell if anything making sure that things work to limit the number of emergency maintence afterwards.

Also give us a day back? you mean that 50 cent or whatever people been talking about, sure send me a pm with your paypal adress and ill gladly give you that to make up for that horrible time loss you had to suffer.

[Sukocat]

But with a new major patch in this game, the maintenances take 24 hours to complete and as a result, we, the players, lose an entire day of game play

Allow me to set your mind at ease here with a fact I remember from WoW, and other games. By comparison, this game has -significantly- less maintenance time overall then WoW simply because WoW has maintenance for a few hours EVERY week (or at least it did back when I played). Personally, I like this model of having 24 hours out of 1,440 hours (60 days) roughly between major patches in which SE has maintenance, then emergency maintenance as needed. Keep in mind, also, this time keeps the game running as smoothly as possible. Let's compare though. Let's say we had 4 hours of maintenance every week. That'd be about 40 total hours (roughly, give or take) between each patch of -scheduled- maintenance, meaning not including emergency maintenance.

All in all, I think they do pretty good in regard to maintenance.

[Elamys]

Perhaps, and this is a fair point. However, losing prime time is not as bad as losing an entire day, imo. Not everyone plays at prime time, and while the unfairness sucks, it's better than losing a whole day of play.

It looks a lot better for them to be unfair, I suppose. As mentioned, people will always complain either way, but the complaining will be less if everyone is in the same boat. "Maintenance for me happened at prime time!" or "I work nights and the game was down for maintenance when I got home!" etc. Nobody could play so it impacted everyone equally.

Allow me to set your mind at ease here with a fact I remember from WoW, and other games. By comparison, this game has -significantly- less maintenance time overall then WoW simply because WoW has maintenance for a few hours EVERY week (or at least it did back when I played).

WoW no longer does maintenance every week, and goes down about as frequently as this game does, though their patch maintenances are still significantly shorter. though yeah, it was definitely bad there for a long time lol. The one tradeoff though is that when there's a problem with a patch, they don't fix it immediately as this game does unless it's extremely severe. They will wait until Tuesday maintenance. I think I prefer how XIV does it - treat the big problems with an emergency maintenance right away - vs. WoW.

[Sukocat]

WoW no longer does maintenance every week, and goes down about as frequently as this game does, though their patch maintenances are still significantly shorter. though yeah, it was definitely bad there for a long time lol

I'd heard for awhile they were planning to implement that change, I just don't remember if they did it while I was still playing. I stopped back in MoP. But yes, compared to other possible models of doing maintenance for a game, I think our current one is pretty high up the list as far as desirable.