Please call it "Daily Maintenance"!

[Airget]

I may be unusually cranky since I took the day of work to play today only to now find out that my gaming day starts with 4 hour maintenance, but please SE, change the way you do releases. OBVIOUSLY you do not do nearly enough testing. I would be much happier if the content worked on release than to have it come out quickly and broken. I work for an IT department in a big company and if we everytime we released a new version of our software had to then shut it down for hours several days a week after every release I would be out of a job in a hurry.

A sure sign that you are doing something wrong is if you several times a week have to do "emergency" hotfixes. Emergencies should NOT be a regular occurrence.

Guess what, they knew

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/43218

"So! Spring is finally in full swing here in Tokyo, and the cherry trees are done shedding their blossoms. Work on patch 1.22 enters the final stage, and we’re on track for an April 26 (JST) release.

In order to deliver the patch to you in time for Golden Week, I’m afraid we’ve had to postpone a number of things. These include job-exclusive weapons, chat log reforms, and other content I touched on last time. With regards to hamlet defense, only Hyrstmill will be ready for 1.22; the remaining two hamlets will go live in 1.22a, which is scheduled for May 10. We also have plans for a patch 1.22b, which is expected to follow shortly thereafter. You can rest assured that we will maintain our pace even after 1.22 is released!"

The statement Yoshida made in his letter, clearly shows that they weren't ready for the April 26 release but they wanted to release content so people could enjoy it through Golden Week. If it wasn't for Golden Week odds are we wouldn't have seen this patch til May 10th lol.

[neorei]

Ffffoom, just in time!

did you make those and where do you get the recipe for that

[Ramsey]

did you make those and where do you get the recipe for that

...the patch notes?

[Zyph]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

[Ruri]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

Truth and lolz

[Eldarion18]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

If other game developers can release content patches without following it with a week of DAILY "emergency" maintenances why can't they? It's not like we're screaming outrage for no good reason. This happens EVERY patch. Other games don't suffer from this. But of course you're blind to all this coz god damn man, fanboys will be fanboys!

[Mushy]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

seriously... its like they would rather have things remain broken. They are making the right choice by fixing things people.. you would complain if things stay broken asking where your subscription money is going, you complain if they fix something that obviously requires immediate attention. in these forums i learned people just complain

[Mushy]

If other game developers can release content patches without following it with a week of DAILY "emergency" maintenances why can't they? It's not like we're screaming outrage for no good reason. This happens EVERY patch. Other games don't suffer from this. But of course you're blind to all this coz god damn man, fanboys will be fanboys!

most developers are not releasing content patches of this size, built on a horrible foundation and crappy netcode. those other developers would of have 1.21 and combined 1.22 on sale for $30 called an expansion.

also remember their team is writing things for TWO clients, the current, and 2.0. testing goes into both. Majority of this content is going to be in 2.0 - and I imagine the difference in making these things work in both is quite different. oh and dont forget about the ps3 port which they are also still working on

[Rizon]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

I may not know much about software developement but I do know that 10 hours of Maintenance downtime + another 3-4 hours of missed time due to server locks within the forst 36 hours of release is a bit too much and players do have a right to complain about it.

[Deatheye]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

I actually work in IT. Not in aplication development. But as another person allready wrote on the forum, if they would put a software update live and that would cause such problems every time with that much downtime they would loose theyr job pretty fast. Sometimes I need to update systems too and I know if I would handle this like SE does I would loose my job too.

On critical system we load a backup of the running software nad implement the patch there. Then somone working daily with the software has to do basic jobs and check if they work fine. There are also programs out there that simulate load. Or sometimes we even made them ourself to test the behaviour of the new system with heavy loads on it.

There is seriously something wrong with the way SE handles this...

Imaging you working in a bank and putting the hole money transfer offline every two months, and customers loosing all therey money... You would tell them the same too?

Reading your comment I have to wonder if you actually now anything about software development and releases.

most developers are not releasing content patches of this size, built on a horrible foundation and crappy netcode. those other developers would of have 1.21 and combined 1.22 on sale for $30 called an expansion.

also remember their team is writing things for TWO clients, the current, and 2.0. testing goes into both. Majority of this content is going to be in 2.0 - and I imagine the difference in making these things work in both is quite different. oh and dont forget about the ps3 port which they are also still working on.

I can understand that this makes it more of a problem. I actually got in touch wich such patchwork too, and I know it's awfull. But that's SEs problem, not the customers.
I can't just tell my customers I screwed up in the past thats why everything is fucked up now, get over it and give me your money.