All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[SendohJin]

maintenance is part of what we pay for.

[Usho]

maintenance is part of what we pay for.

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

[Vidu]

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

Yes and those maintances are adding new content for you to play.
I dont see your problem - would you rather be stuck with only playing the base content?

[Ilan]

I don't agree with that. I'm paying to play the game, not to not play the game.

Of course you are paying SE also to keep the game up and running and if they find a problem they have to solve it and they do so with a maintenance. So get over yourself and accept that this is a part of what you pay for.

People complain about problems/bugs but also complain when it gets fixed. What the hell?

[whiskeybravo]

Hate to be that guy but

You acknowledge that disruptions of service may occur and waive any causes of action against Square Enix in any way arising from or related to any such disruptions of service.

By accepting the ToS and playing the game you've already waived any right to seek compensation for service disruptions. In general I feel where you are coming from, and I think if the service was indeed down for an extended period of time SE would seek to make it right with it's customer base, much like how they halted auto-demolish of houses during the hurricanes last year. Many companies made efforts to relieve consumers around that time, even for people who weren't affected.

Outside of emergency maintenance downtime we really only have a handful of 24-hour maintenance's per year, maybe 4 tops? Big patches simply don't come out that often.

It's the principle of the matter, and it's on principle (and potential consequences of it) that the situation is properly discussed.

If you really have a problem with it then start a petition to change the ToS. As it stands you accepted the terms in order to play the game. Now I certainly don't agree with companies that try to shoehorn in obscene stipulations into the ToS, and I'm always very careful to read them now just to make sure there is no tomfoolery being proposed. But that's kinda where it starts - with consumers actually reading the damn things and protesting them to be changed before agreement.

[Usho]

Outside of emergency maintenance downtime we really only have a handful of 24-hour maintenance's per year, maybe 4 tops? Big patches simply don't come out that often.

That's not the point. It's the principle of the matter. If I'm paying for a service, even if this is only a handful of times a year, I'm still paying for that day I'm not able to play. That's a day out of a 30 day monthly period that I'm paying for that I can't play.



To me, that's not good business.

[Talraen]

That's not the point. It's the principle of the matter. If I'm paying for a service, even if this is only a handful of times a year, I'm still paying for that day I'm not able to play. That's a day out of a 30 day monthly period that I'm paying for that I can't play.

Real talk, do you actually want the 43 cents back every 3 months, or do you just not want 24-hour maintenances? If I sent you $40, enough to cover every maintenance so far and a few years yet, would you be satisfied? I get the impression you would not.

EDIT: I found this post on Reddit calculating total maintenance over the life of FFXIV: https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...iv_really_had/

tl;dr, for the period of 6/18/15 until 3 months ago, the most maintenance any server had was just a smidge over 21 1/2 days. Given the standard subscription ($14.99/30 days), someone who has played that entire time has arguably lost out on $10.75. Even if you paid for 7 extra retainers for that entire period (which isn't possible, but whatever, let's make the math easy!) you'd be out $20.78.

[Aylis]

That's not the point. It's the principle of the matter. If I'm paying for a service, even if this is only a handful of times a year, I'm still paying for that day I'm not able to play. That's a day out of a 30 day monthly period that I'm paying for that I can't play.



To me, that's not good business.

You also paid $60 or more for the cost of an expansion, would you be okay in paying for 1/10'th of an expansions cycle in exchange for never having another maintenance patch outside of the initial release in addition to the monthly sub? Let's be real here, even if they did knock off the 42 some odd cent's per month for say one 24 hour patch a month. No amount of refunded money will ever get that day back. You still wouldn't be able to log in and play. .Would you still feel somehow cheated out of that 42 cents if the subscription fee was altered to make up for that day knowing full well you still would be missing that day? Or would you ask for another reimbursement?

Downtime for maintenance is as old as the dawn of time when it comes to MMO's. It's something we learned to just deal with. Personally I'd be asking the question more of why is downtime 24+hours when other games can do it in 3-6 hours, but that's just me.

[GunksFoy]

Yeah at this point I'm wondering how the people wanting compensation actually want content added in the game if they're unhappy with scheduled maintenances. Like really, how do you expect SE to put stuff in the game without it? And assuming you pay 14.99 a month for your sub, a 24 hour maintenance translates to a little less than 50 cents.

No one claimed to they should stop doing maintenance. That's silly. He asked for a compensatory day in exchange.

You also paid $60 or more for the cost of an expansion, would you be okay in paying for 1/10'th of an expansions cycle in exchange for never having another maintenance patch outside of the initial release in addition to the monthly sub? Let's be real here, even if they did knock off the 42 some odd cent's per month for say one 24 hour patch a month. No amount of refunded money will ever get that day back. You still wouldn't be able to log in and play. .Would you still feel somehow cheated out of that 42 cents if the subscription fee was altered to make up for that day knowing full well you still would be missing that day? Or would you ask for another reimbursement?

Downtime for maintenance is as old as the dawn of time when it comes to MMO's. It's something we learned to just deal with. Personally I'd be asking the question more of why is downtime 24+hours when other games can do it in 3-6 hours, but that's just me.

He didn't ask for a refund, he asked for an additional day tacked on every active sub, literally giving the day back.

[Sylvina]

When is this 24 hour maintainance going to take place?