Please "rotate" the Emergency Maintenances (unable to play)

[Timberwolf]

I guess I have to agree with the OP, especially upon logging in and seeing ANOTHER maintenance for tonight. I'm on Pacific time and play later in the night (as well as most of my cohorts in WA, CA and especially Hawaii), and this is really starting to kill our groove.

What got me more fired up was checking out the last JP maintenance. Guess what time their server group was down? 6AM to 8AM Tokyo time. WTF? You're going to kill some of our prime play time, but when it's Japan's turn, of COURSE they're going to pick dead times. I logged onto my server this morning at 8, only 2 people by the aetheryte in Grid. If that's any indication...

Is there a place on the forums where they specify what they are doing with every single maintenance? All I'm figuring is a whole lot of time they spend fixing something (and often breaking something else in the process) only to have to come back and fix the NEW broken thing, which one more again breaks something else. What. Are. You. Doing. SE?

[Timberwolf]

We hear plenty of 'get over it' from all directions, and I get that some people don't care. It doesn't REALLY burn me - I just go play Mechwarrior Online. But to put it into perspective, if you pay for tickets to a football game, but you only get to watch the first 3 quarters, would that be okay? If you pay for a 4 course meal, but don't get that juicy steak that is supposed to come with it, would you still leave a good tip? Let's face it... folks pay for a service, and it is completely reasonable that they should expect to only see a few maintenance periods a month.

Just sayin'.

[Waaltar]

Heyell no.

North American servers already rotate between NA and EU friendly maintenance times, so no thank you. SE really should not also cater to people on the opposite side of the planet just because they decided to play in the wrong data center.

Australia and New Zealand should obviously be playing on Japanese data center servers. All the maintenance times would be friendly to peak demand times. The connection should be much better. Nobody talks/types in pub groubs anyway, and why wouldn't they have official 'Oceania' data centers in Japan the way they have official EU servers at the NA data center.

[Selkie]

I honestly don't see a problem with them rotating maintenance and, emergency or not, they plan them somewhat in advance. I'm surprised, frankly, that there have been so many in such a short period of time. I'm sure they're tweaking things, but it's a bit absurd. The argument here is one side saying it would be a nice quality of life improvement for many if the same group isn't affected time and time again and the other side saying, well, that Square-Enix doesn't need to do anything just because you want it...

And I find that kind of strange.

A company's job is to provide a satisfactory product for the customer and this is such a small thing that I feel like the benefit greatly outweighs any negative impact. An MMO is a constantly shifting and changing product at that. Saying that SE shouldn't do something because, ugh, effort, is a very peculiar argument. SE wants to fix problems that affect players concerning their game, and this is one of them. I don't see the problem with everyone sharing the burden of maintenance a little more. Even if it was changed by a few hours, it could make a major difference. The maintenance doesn't tend to affect me but I feel like the pros outweigh the cons and it's perturbing to see people argue otherwise.

[Timberwolf]

The maintenance doesn't tend to affect me but I feel like the pros outweigh the cons and it's perturbing to see people argue otherwise.

Well said. I CAN see the other issue being the work times at SE. I'm not keen on if servers are maintained US side, or JP, or whever, but IF they are maintained JP, you may deal with office hours. For example... when they did JP server maintenance, it was 6A-8A. Sounds like it coincides with a lot of typical work days. Our 11P/12A PST maintenance falls at 3P/4P there, so again - kinda sorta typical work day. If the servers are maintained HERE, though... why couldn't they do it during those same hours? Easier to have folks do the updates say, 10A-2P than it is to drag people in at midnight and put them to work for 2-4 hours.

[blowfin]

I honestly don't see a problem with them rotating maintenance and, emergency or not, they plan them somewhat in advance.

Emergency maintenance won't be rotated, because it's an EMERGENCY! They'll just do them when necessary and schedule for the next available window.

[Azyria]

While I support this in spirit, I think they choose their hours for -emergency- maintenance because it's convenient for their workers.

Now this whole idea about how they are supposed to provide a service is all well and good, but what is most important? Providing a smoothly working service as often as possible, or providing one that's always available but ultimately unusable due to various issues (like the horrible lag some have been experimenting)?

[InsanityPanda]

I entirely support OP in this. There have been far too many "emergency" maintenances this month, and I am getting sick of it.

In fact, I'm posting this right now during maintenance...gee...

[wildgalax]

Totally feel you here, also playing from Australia. However as much as i would like them to consider their times more, i dont see it happening. Im pretty sure they will go by the times when the least amount of people are playing and unfortunately we are in that minority.

Althought it cuts the playtimes it hasnt bothered me that much, i just do other things instead in that time. Even in relation to the game, i sometimes use that time to read strategies, watch videos and how to further and improve my gameplay, and before i know it bang games back up. Sometimes it even has helped me cause i got a plan set when i go back on.

But yes i hope these emergency maintenances are eliminated or are reconsidered.

[WiseWolfHolo]

I support the rotation of maintenance periods, tired of getting cut short because maintenance.