Excessive Maintenance

[Miste]

snip

I'm not conflating timing with existence, I am explaining how maint doesn't even really happen that often. I actually play the game often during their typical maint hours, but maint only blocks me from playing very little of the time.

I am being lenient with that 5% downtime also, it is probably more like 98% uptime which would be a 2% maint downtime...but I figured give it some more leeway because it is an educated guess of a player who plays very often and at multiple times of the day/week. I am sure anyone who plays often and sporadically can agree the game is up at least 95% of the time if not more.

It sucks you and OP land in maint all the time, but like I pointed out I don't think anything can be done about this. You guys just don't have enough time to play the game if you land in that 2%-5% downtime every time. I know that its lame but you are a major minority, like probably only 0.001% of people subbed end up only logging in in on maint nights.

[Faelandaea]

OP has a legitimate point, which is that repeatedly scheduling maintenance around the same time of day is likely to affect the same people/time zone repeatedly.

Which happens with every MMO I play. When you choose to play a game, you voluntarily and GLADLY choose to play based on the geographical location of the headquarters of the game in question. For a lot of MMO games these days, this is California, in the USA. Such is the case here, as well as with STO, SWTOR, Neverwinter . . . almost every game I play will base their maintenance time on the prime time of their locale - and in the case of the games I mentioned - PST - California.

I knew this before I started playing FFXIV, and you knew this before you started playing (any smart player who is interested in a subscription MMO reads forums, wikis, patch notes and other resources to gauge the information within against if they want to commit to the game or not).

Right now is my prime time. This is when I play the most, yet here I sit on the forums being entertained here because the server is down for maintenance. Do I complain? Fuck no. Because I am VERY happy that they are fixing stuff and getting back up instead of making fixes wait for some scheduled day next week. Get it down - get it fixed - get it back up!

[Avenger]

Right now is my prime time. This is when I play the most, yet here I sit on the forums being entertained here because the server is down for maintenance. Do I complain? Fuck no. Because I am VERY happy that they are fixing stuff and getting back up instead of making fixes wait for some scheduled day next week. Get it down - get it fixed - get it back up!

Fair enough, but there's nothing stopping me from dreaming of an even better (or at least fairer) world where they might spread the maintenance inconvenience a bit across time zones. Or (in secret moments of selfish weakness) that they might go back to the FFXI schedule of maintenance at Japanese midnight... ;-)

But yeah, we are lucky that the game is doing so well and they are fixing the bugs and adding content.

[Lovescake]

The fact is, that they have been tending to schedule these maintenances during primetime for EU players, as well as the normal time for second-shifters.

These hours are the times that my FC is most active, of the entire day. why cant we just space them out a bit, to the other time zones as well?

Primetime EU?
23:00 ST (based on a GMT timezone) - 1am.
07:00 - 8:00/9:00/10:00.

These aren't primetime. Primetime for MOST timezones for any form of multiplayer game is usually anything from 15:00-22:00.

[Fynlar]

Maintenance is timed such that's it's more convenient for whoever's doing the maintenance. (This means: not you.)

[Avenger]

I'm not conflating timing with existence, I am explaining how maint doesn't even really happen that often. I actually play the game often during their typical maint hours, but maint only blocks me from playing very little of the time.
...
It sucks you and OP land in maint all the time, but like I pointed out I don't think anything can be done about this. You guys just don't have enough time to play the game if you land in that 2%-5% downtime every time. I know that its lame but you are a major minority, like probably only 0.001% of people subbed end up only logging in in on maint nights.

Apparently you have more opportunities to play than OP, so maintenance doesn't affect your overall game time as much.

One thing that could be done to address the problem would be rotating the maintenance schedule across time zones, which would reduce the number of times that maintenance hits during OP's preferred game time. It seems like it would be fairer to try to reduce the likelihood of inconveniencing the same people repeatedly, though people who now dodge maintenance entirely would now be more likely to be affected by it periodically.

[Imotept]

Ahh, BS, "Emergency Maintenance" and Maintenance are 99.9% scheduled from Square Enix to happen during thier "off peak hours" 9:00PST~3:00PST, anyony getting home from work and wanting to play during these hours are SOL, like me, i lose 4 days a month because Maintenance is always around this time. sitting here right now because of Maintenance.... DUH

[tocsin]

Ahh, BS, "Emergency Maintenance" and Maintenance are 99.9% scheduled from Square Enix to happen during thier "off peak hours" 9:00PST~3:00PST, anyony getting home from work and wanting to play during these hours are SOL, like me, i lose 4 days a month because Maintenance is always around this time. sitting here right now because of Maintenance.... DUH

umm... as of this posting, the game has been up for the better part of 30 minutes now. j-just saying...

[Cynthis]

The fact is, that they have been tending to schedule these maintenances during primetime for EU players, as well as the normal time for second-shifters.

7-10AM is primetime... That doesn't fit my definition and I have to say that, as unfortunate as it is for those who can only play those hours, I have a hard time seeing how the downtime could be any better for us in the EU in that it is in the time when the fewest EU players are online.

[Faelandaea]

Fair enough, but there's nothing stopping me from dreaming of an even better (or at least fairer) world where they might spread the maintenance inconvenience a bit across time zones. Or (in secret moments of selfish weakness) that they might go back to the FFXI schedule of maintenance at Japanese midnight... ;-)

But yeah, we are lucky that the game is doing so well and they are fixing the bugs and adding content.

And I completely understand your feelings. At least you word them like a wish or request, rather than some posters I have seen in this and other threads that make it seem like they have somehow been personally attacked or wronged by a maintenance update