All Day Maintenance and Compensation: My Thoughts

[Malzian]

5. INTERRUPTION TO THE SERVICE

From time to time, in order to provide our customers with the optimal gaming experience, it is necessary for Square Enix to conduct routine maintenance on the computers and/or servers that support the Game. During these times, access to the Game or support services may be interrupted. Access may also be temporarily suspended in whole or in part, without notice, due to emergency repairs, fire, flood, explosion, war, strike, embargo, governmental action or failure to act, the act of any civil or military authority, act of God, or by any other causes beyond Square Enix's control, or any other reasons for which Square Enix, in its sole discretion, deems that temporary suspension is necessary. 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.

It's in the TOS, you agreed to it and you're legally bound by it as are they. You are not entitled to refunded time due to maintenance, though in the past when SE has deemed that downtime was excessive and beyond their control they have credited us time. That is solely at their discretion. There's nothing more to be said about this.

[whiskeybravo]

I don't think anyone said they couldn't be changed. I'll quote my first comment:

But that's kinda where it starts - with consumers actually reading the damn things and protesting them to be changed before agreement.

Now how "we'd" actually get a change I'm not sure. I looked over the ToS from my cable company and there is indeed a separate clause dealing with customer reimbursement for down time of service. I'd imagine to start any change you'd need a petition, of some sort, with enough signatures to make a meaningful impression. Language of how exact the clause would read (an example, let's say) and probably some sort of financial data to back up the claims and impact. But, I've never done such a thing so all that is just my best guess. (I mostly just try to avoid.. Like, part of me even wants to delete my Facebook because I don't want to agree to their terms lol)

[Tridus]

They absolutely should be compensating people for downtimes this long. Doing so sends two messages:
1. That you value your customers
2. That 24 hours to deploy a patch is too long, and we're giving ourselves a financial incentive to do better

Removing that sends the message that day long downtime for patch deployment is acceptable, and in modern IT, it's really not. In any IT shop outside of the games industry, you'd be laughed out of the room if you pitched that.

Sometimes I'm amazed at just what a low bar gamers set for what's considered acceptable.

[Talraen]

They absolutely should be compensating people for downtimes this long. Doing so sends two messages:
1. That you value your customers
2. That 24 hours to deploy a patch is too long, and we're giving ourselves a financial incentive to do better

FFXIV used to have shorter maintenance windows, and longer and more frequent emergency maintenances. I feel much more valued as a customer by having a longer, pre-planned maintenance window than by waiting all day to play a brand new patch only to be kicked off for the duration of primetime due to some unforeseen issue that they could have caught with a longer maintenance. Overall maintenance time has been decreasing since they started doing longer maintenances. There's more than one way to value your customers.

[GunksFoy]

Snip

The person I quoted told me something to the effect of "you're an adult, get over it, this is life". Indicating we should merely accept SE's policy and never question it.

I think you are correct on this, a petition and data would likely be necessary, and I'm not going to be the one to start it, because lazy. However, if someone handed me the petition, I'd sign it. My whole point was that his idea is not so ludicrous as people kept claiming. It's not like other companies don't already do things like this. And, even if you disagree with him, there is no reason to insult him.

Snip

Basically this.

Snip

You're not wrong, and I can see your point, but this also doesn't mean they couldn't comp us a day to show that they understand this is an inconvenience for many players.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

"We understand it is an inconvenience to add new content to the game, as it requires bringing the servers down. So we have heard your feedback, and will no longer be adding content, so the game can be up 24/7 and no longer have extended patches applied."

[NephthysVasudan]

"We understand it is an inconvenience to add new content to the game, as it requires bringing the servers down. So we have heard your feedback, and will no longer be adding content, so the game can be up 24/7 and no longer have extended patches applied."

^Total win Post.

[Garnetiferous]

^Total win Post.

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.

[Vaer]

SE does do this though but only in extreme cases and cases where the game is down/unplayable for more than one day. Back in 2011 because of a natural disaster they decided to turn the servers off for XI, XIV completely for a while, and they gave everyone one free month. During the NA datacenter move, they gave everyone one extra day. Similar for the EU data center move. During 2.0 launch, people couldn't play since the servers were congested so they extended everyone's trial that came with the base game by a week.

24 hour patch maintenance doesn't seem to meet the requirements currently. Maybe if we end up with a patch maintenance that is 2 days they'll think about it.

[Hamada]

there's a reason that SE did 24 hours for patch 4.1 and said it wouldn't come up earlier and that was to ensure people got a fair shot at Shirogane housing. Granted (and I own a small plot) said wards/apartments were all sold in less than 120 minutes, safeguards failed, and SE apologized, thus adding more housing with restrictions, I would take a full day of down time to ensure we never have something like Rahaban EX or Pipin savage during Stormblood's early access period occur again. FFXI I do believe wasn't all 1 and 2 hr down times for patching-it may have SEEMED like that because of all the downloading you did which was at a fixed speed (on console, installing a expansion from disc took between 30 and 60 minutes to finish)

That is the thing, "Rahaban EX or Pipin savage" has happened before and they STILL repeat the same mistakes. So what does that leave us now? I was expecting some kind of PR/ damage control/ reimbursement over that just on the basis of repeating mistakes. Really shocked they did nothing about it. (2.0 had a "Rahaban EX or Pipin savage" and there might of been other times i do not know about)