Soo should we strap in for weekly maintenance at this point or...?

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Minor quibble: hotfixes imply that the systems are live, available, and in use while the change is being deployed. If you take it down, it's not a hotfix- it's maintenance.

It doesn't anymore. It was originally used, but word usages change constantly.

The term "hotfix" originally referred to software patches that were applied to "hot" systems; that is, systems which are live, currently running, and in production status rather than development status. For the developer, a hotfix implies that the change may have been made quickly and outside normal development and testing processes. This could increase the cost of the fix by requiring rapid development, overtime or other urgent measures. For the user, the hotfix could be considered riskier or less likely to resolve the problem. This could cause an immediate loss of services, so depending on the severity of the bug, it may be desirable to delay a hotfix. The risk of applying the hotfix must be weighed against the risk of not applying it, because the problem to be fixed might be so critical that it could be considered more important than a potential loss of service (e.g., a major security breach).

Similar use of the terms can be seen in hot-swappable [2] disk drives. The more recent usage of the term is likely due to software vendors making a distinction between a hotfix and a patch.

Also, maint is over.

[MicahZerrshia]

That maintenance is conducted as conveniences Japan seems quite besides the point. The US East Coast is a sizable portion of the game's subscribers repeatedly inconvenienced not only by the baffling decision to not rotate maintenance timings in a sane, responsible manner that, if not equalizing the impact across the board, at least offers an occasional reprieve to the one group of players saddled with the worst of the maintenance burden, but also by frustratingly poor routing that too often causes East Coast players to have worse ping to US servers than do players connecting from Southeast Asia. It is not as if the revelation that Square Enix is a Japanese company - quelle surprise! - somehow eases these concerns. Nor does it satisfactorily explain them.

Um....I am on the east coast and generally the maintenance for us is not during peak hours but instead, in the middle of the night, its really not often we have it this early, so they do seem to be rotating it somewhat so the same group isn't always effected. How you came to the conclusion that we as east coasters are always the ones inconvenienced is beyond me, since we have it easier than even the west coasters. Also I have 0 ping issues and neither do any of my friends around here for that matter. It may exist for some but its not like they just don't care and shrug off the entire east coast of NA. I am not white knighting either, you can read my past posts, I can be really critical of SE and FFXIV. But if I am going to be critical it's going to be with an actual issue. Maintenance times, are not one.

[Luna-M]

This is the 3rd time servers have gone down for maintenance in 3 weeks, just wondering if this is going to be the new normal going forward. Feels like every other time I've sat down to play I've had to cut it short due to maintenance. It doesn't help that the time chosen for maintenance is peak hours for east coast, when everybody is back from school/work.

I see no harm with a weekly maintence. It always accure during my zzz time or going to work so all good! /EU

[Neri]

So NA player base is bigger than JP and EU combined?

[Luna-M]

So NA player base is bigger than JP and EU combined?

According to latest (un)official census NA have aprx 30k more active characters, so it margins.
People have to understand their people is located in Japan and they can't please everyone.

I know this maintenance started earlier than normal but normally it's 10:00 p.m. - 3:00 a.m. (PDT)
Now I don't know how this affects East/West Coast in NA and your various timezones but to me it don't seem that bad?


Edit: numbers

Active characters
NA 267,629
EU 120,959
JP 231,677

https://ffxivcensus.com/

[Neri]

Yeah, and I think there's also time zone difference between east and west coast too right? Prime time on east coast could have been not-so-prime time in west coast, I think?

So overall, I thought people already know this already that no matter when the maintenance is going on, it will screw someone's time zone up. Perhaps, it's all about mememe.

[MicahZerrshia]

9pm on the west coast is midnight on the east. We have 4 time zones pacific-mountain-central-eastern

[LyraKuroneko]

So now we're also complaining when they try to fix things a little?

[Luna-M]

So now we're also complaining when they try to fix things a little?

Yes. No fun allowed!

9pm on the west coast is midnight on the east. We have 4 time zones pacific-mountain-central-eastern

Then I don't get the crying. If It happend say 6pm-10pm pdt every week (assuming that would be your primetime?) but it not like that always the case and being offline a couple hours once in awhile - is it really that bad? lmao

[MistakeNot]

Let's be clear here, SE rarely does hotfixes in this game. The word hotfix specifically refers to fixes performed while the system is still live.

First of all, SE called the latest update a hotfix, so a hotfix it is as far as discussions here are concerned.
Besides, the word hotfix covers a bit more than you claim. It is often used to refer to any fix that is considered urgent enough to apply outside the normal update schedule.