Maintenance Watch

[Nabian]

I read your estimated time and I don't really understand why it would take SOOOOO much longer? Since the patch is already completed wtf are they doing. I'm sure it's testing etc. just let the players do that. If something goes horribly wrong they can always take it down and be like "oops my bad"

[Eisengrim]

I read your estimated time and I don't really understand why it would take SOOOOO much longer? Since the patch is already completed wtf are they doing. I'm sure it's testing etc. just let the players do that. If something goes horribly wrong they can always take it down and be like "oops my bad"

They're also updating their servers, which takes a good deal of time.

[bpipe73]

I read your estimated time and I don't really understand why it would take SOOOOO much longer? Since the patch is already completed wtf are they doing. I'm sure it's testing etc. just let the players do that. If something goes horribly wrong they can always take it down and be like "oops my bad"

I think the last "oops my bad" was Version 1.0 and I'm pretty sure the developers want anything remotely close to that again. Give the developers props in that they have completely turned around the perception of the game throughout the gaming world. I can't blame them for wanting it to be right the first time they release the patch.

[NuadaAkali]

I read your estimated time and I don't really understand why it would take SOOOOO much longer? Since the patch is already completed wtf are they doing. I'm sure it's testing etc. just let the players do that. If something goes horribly wrong they can always take it down and be like "oops my bad"

A very good question to ask, lemme see if I can clarify some things for you!

Releasing a patch was the major part of this update, do not get me wrong. But they're also updating their own personal servers and changing just how the load of players is distributed amongst them. This can take several hours to update their own software and/or hardware if they decide to do so. My guess would be that the game itself is already done, but the systems behind which the game runs and operates are not in full functioning order like SE wants them to be.

[Nabian]

Ahhh...I completely forgot about the servers. Being naive I would expect them to have two teams working on it simultaneously.

Here is also some food for thought. I've done very very limited coding (I got a C in java many years ago and decided to switch majors --about 10 years ago? idk anyways besides the point). Why wouldn't they have all the coding pre-prepared and simply "copy and paste" it over and reboot everything? Obviously it's not that simple but I guess it would make more sense to me that way.

Perhaps a live test server where they could have all the "down time" and patching nonsense and then for the real game just copy stuff over.

I guess it comes down to man power and them not having enough of it?

[Lurkios]

Ahhh...I completely forgot about the servers. Being naive I would expect them to have two teams working on it simultaneously.

Here is also some food for thought. I've done very very limited coding (I got a C in java many years ago and decided to switch majors --about 10 years ago? idk anyways besides the point). Why wouldn't they have all the coding pre-prepared and simply "copy and paste" it over and reboot everything? Obviously it's not that simple but I guess it would make more sense to me that way.

Perhaps a live test server where they could have all the "down time" and patching nonsense and then for the real game just copy stuff over.

I guess it comes down to man power and them not having enough of it?

It's not really a copy-paste operation. The changes involve running scripts, probably several dozen if not more against the rather large databases that make up the entirety of the worlds we play. Not only does all of the new data have to be introduced, but everything that was changed has to be updated and all the new bits integrated with the old. Honestly my expectation would be that the SE team is sitting there twiddling their thumbs, getting coffee, perusing the forums and occasionally checking to see if the little green spinning "operation in progress" animation has stopped spinning so they can move onto the next thing.

Once you introduce databases into the mix updates become a whole different game. For example, regarding your "update a test server and copy" idea, the test server would have a copy of the database frozen as it was when the copy was created - generally a live database cannot be updated, certainly not with sweeping changes such as are being introduced with 2.1. So while that database is updating, the still online production server with players crafting, gathering, fighting, downing titan, running coil, etc. etc. would be receiving thousands of updates per second - every item moved from an inventory slot to a retainer, every gathering node accessed, every exp earned recorded... And then the now updated test database is ready, the patch is applied... but all the data is several hours old. All those accomplishments do not exist in that copy of the database. Could you move them over? Probably. You'd likely have to significantly alter the data to fit into the new schema, and then... yep, update the old database with all the new data... During which time both servers would have to be offline, or you'd run into the exact same problem again. So instead of just updating the existing database they'd be making a copy, updating the copy, stopping the original, copying the data from the original (again), updating the copied data, applying the copied data, then applying the updated updated data to the production system.

We'd be waiting for a week.

[Aidan8et]

Ahhh...I completely forgot about the servers. Being naive I would expect them to have two teams working on it simultaneously.

Here is also some food for thought. I've done very very limited coding (I got a C in java many years ago and decided to switch majors --about 10 years ago? idk anyways besides the point). Why wouldn't they have all the coding pre-prepared and simply "copy and paste" it over and reboot everything? Obviously it's not that simple but I guess it would make more sense to me that way.

Perhaps a live test server where they could have all the "down time" and patching nonsense and then for the real game just copy stuff over.

I guess it comes down to man power and them not having enough of it?

There's so many things that can still go wrong even with a seemingly simple copy-paste job. Likely/hopefully they're going through each server individually to verify them. Also, the different servers are going to be in different geographical locations. Think about how hard it is to even get a large raid to work together & multiply it by the player base of all of FFXIV. Also, they've got to keep in mind the legacy vs non-legacy servers & what all changes might be needed between the 2.

[NuadaAkali]

Ahhh...I completely forgot about the servers. Being naive I would expect them to have two teams working on it simultaneously.

Here is also some food for thought. I've done very very limited coding (I got a C in java many years ago and decided to switch majors --about 10 years ago? idk anyways besides the point). Why wouldn't they have all the coding pre-prepared and simply "copy and paste" it over and reboot everything? Obviously it's not that simple but I guess it would make more sense to me that way.

Perhaps a live test server where they could have all the "down time" and patching nonsense and then for the real game just copy stuff over.

I guess it comes down to man power and them not having enough of it?

The way gaming companies work is they have different "teams" and resources for various projects, but they're all under the name of the company. SE is no exception. A team popped up with ideas for FFXIV ARR and that's all she wrote. The resources are company-provided, but only after a game has a certain amount of success does the company offer more of its resources to a certain team. It's all gauged by numbers and profit.

How does this answer any of your questions? Simple. The team simply doesn't have the resource available (and yes, probably not the manpower) to open up a PTS while they work on patches. You have to remember that servers do not come cheap and are often times easily broken if not managed properly. Another thing to take into account is that the servers would most likely have to -double- in number to do a request of this multitude.

[Ganfal]

The way gaming companies work is they have different "teams" and resources for various projects, but they're all under the name of the company. SE is no exception. A team popped up with ideas for FFXIV ARR and that's all she wrote. The resources are company-provided, but only after a game has a certain amount of success does the company offer more of its resources to a certain team. It's all gauged by numbers and profit.

How does this answer any of your questions? Simple. The team simply doesn't have the resource available (and yes, probably not the manpower) to open up a PTS while they work on patches. You have to remember that servers do not come cheap and are often times easily broken if not managed properly. Another thing to take into account is that the servers would most likely have to -double- in number to do a request of this multitude.

Another thing no one else said here. It's pretty common that a content has been fully tested on the Test Server but doesn't work as expected on the Production Server. Some other times, there are content they applied on the last Test Server patch, but it wasn't applied to the final Production Server patch. Or, even worse, a hotfix that was already applied to the Production server but wasn't on the final patch, since it was applied after the Final patch was generated (for instance, can you imagine if the board bug came back and you started losing your precious Gil?). Even if everything went all fine, there are chances that, with all the data from the Production Servers, something go south. That's why the QA teams have to complete a checklist on every server. It takes a lot of time.