All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[Usho]

Before I start, this is somewhat of a mini rant so if you are easily triggered by my opinion, only come here to troll, and have nothing insightful to say, you might want to not continue reading.



So, I've been playing the game for about 2 years now and over time I've adapted and gotten used to life and how things are done on the game. One little gripe I have though is the all day (24 hour) maintenance that this game has. Coming from 10 years of playing Final Fantasy XI, the version updates (patches) we got, wither minor or major, only took maybe 1-2 hours tops. But with a new major patch in this game, the maintenances take 24 hours to complete and as a result, we, the players, lose an entire day of game play...on a game we are still paying for each month.



I don't mind the sometimes 4-5 hour maintenances the game has as it's only like a 1 or 2 hours more than the usual maintenances after patches in FFXI, with the 24 hour maintenances it's beyond annoying at this point for me, despite knowing it will happen.


That all day maintenance is a day we players don't get back and SE doesn't even compensate the players for the day they can't play. I think that as a way to show subscribers who pay their monthly subscription fees good will, I think SE should, at the very least, give the players a extra day before SE bills them for their monthly fee.


What I mean is, since players lose a day of no game play, SE should allow the players a extra day of free playtime before their next monthly bill is due to be paid, if you guys know what I'm getting at.


I mean, as a paying customer, I want to be able to enjoy the game to the fullest and make each day on the game count. But, because of all day maintenances, I feel like I'm not getting the bang for my buck and that lost day means I'm paying for a day in which I can't play and imo that's annoying to me.


Other players may see it differently, but this is how I feel on the subject. I'm not asking for much and I feel it's only right seeing as paying customers can't access what they are paying for, for an entire day.


I think this is something SE should consider or at least think about. I love the game, and despite it's many flaws, I like being on the game everyday chatting with my friends, and raiding or just chilling at my house and I feel like not being able to play a game I'm actively paying for, for an entire day, is a waste of money and a day I could be enjoying the game, that's all.


Anyway, I'm sorry for the semi long rant. I just wanted to get my feelings out there and make them known.



Thanks for reading.

[Magic-Mal]

A day is worth 50¢...

[Usho]

A day is worth 50¢...

A Day, is a day that shouldn't be wasted either.


/2 cents

[Talraen]

Very simply, these 24-hour maintenance windows are expected parts of patches, and thus should be an expected part of your subscription. The only time it makes sense to compensate users is for unscheduled maintenance, and even that is arguable.

If it makes you feel better, assume that they lowered the sub fee by $1 when they started doing 24-hour maintenances, while simultaneously increasing the sub fee by $1 to pay for staffing said maintenance.

Also as I recall, FFXI's maintenances were a lot longer than 1-2 hours, often happened in NA prime time, and were usually followed up by several emergency maintenances. I much prefer the way things are done in FFXIV these days.

[SDaemon]

We as a playerbase freely accepted that SE can and occasionaly does shut down servers for any and all reasons they choose to, in this case for understandable maintenance. A show of good will on our behalf towards them would be to accept what we agreed to with grace and humility and wait out this minor period of inconvenience.

[Tigerfury]

The Terms Of Service you agree to outline maintenance as part of what you are paying for. You are not being cheated. Grow up.

[CoolCat]

Its not like it happens very often anyway.

[Sigma-Astra]

It won't kill any one to play something else for one day. My goodness.

[Vhailor]

A Day, is a day that shouldn't be wasted either.


/2 cents

Iunno, I don't see that much of a problem. I actually have a far larger issue with the 2-3 follow-up maintenance windows following updates than I do with the 24-hour maintenance coinciding with its launch; I mean, if you're going to take such a long amount of time, get it fucking right, you know? And these windows typically come at the tail end of NA prime time, while most of the 24-hour period is going to inevitably fall during work / school / sleep time.

I'd also be leery of giving SE any incentive for minimal maintenance times. We are already suffering immensely from the atrocious structural decisions SE has made around FFXIV's back-end, a problem rearing its head every time we hear the dreaded phrase 'server limitations'. Clearly FFXIV would be a better product now and into the future were time taken to appropriately resolve this technical debt. And yet, nothing is done: because the incentives are strongly weighted toward churning out content as rapidly as possible, be damned the long-term scalability concerns. Do we really want to see the same situation arise for basic server maintenance? Servers crashing routinely and kicking people out but kept 'up' because corporate doesn't want to reimburse people for longer maintenance windows? It's a real possibility if compensation were something players insisted on.

Anyway. Like I said, there's at most one of these every few months. I don't personally think it's a big deal, but to each their own.

Edit / Addition:

It won't kill any one to play something else for one day. My goodness.

No offense, but posts like this really aren't helpful. It's not about whether maintenance windows are an onerous burden; it's about whether we should be paying for service we don't get. It's the principle of the matter, and it's on principle (and potential consequences of it) that the situation is properly discussed.

[Usho]

Anyway. Like I said, there's at most one of these every few months. I don't personally think it's a big deal, but to each their own.

I feel a bit of hypocrisy in your post and I sense mixed feelings about the matter despite you saying "I don't personally think it's a big deal".


I'm just gonna quote what you just said because it's basically what I was getting at:

It's not about whether maintenance windows are an onerous burden; it's about whether we should be paying for service we don't get. It's the principle of the matter, and it's on principle (and potential consequences of it) that the situation is properly discussed.