Please call it "Daily Maintenance"!

[kaylarene]

If SE acted as smug as you do this game would simply vanish into thin air. That or get handed over to another game developer like they did with Fantasy Earth Zero. The simple fact of the matter is SE is desperate to have whatever subscribers they have left keep on paying to fuel back development costs before their higher ups go "That's it we've lost enough money, hand it over to another company".

So before you suggest some other non-productive idiotic idea of simply cancelling subscriptions, which believe me nobody here is above doing, think of what consequences this game would suffer if everybody who cared to took your advice and took the very, extremely simple option of not paying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_earth_zero

I looked this up and there is no connection with SE whatsoever, There is however a Final Fantasy zero, which the name was originally Final Fantasy Agito XIII. If Final Fantasy XIV was still turning into a failure they would 1 take the servers offline and take another year or two to make it better. Or they would discontinue it altogether. Square Enix is a HUGE Corporation that doesn't just give their titles away.

[Answa]

If SE acted as smug as you do this game would simply vanish into thin air. That or get handed over to another game developer like they did with Fantasy Earth Zero. The simple fact of the matter is SE is desperate to have whatever subscribers they have left keep on paying to fuel back development costs before their higher ups go "That's it we've lost enough money, hand it over to another company".

So before you suggest some other non-productive idiotic idea of simply cancelling subscriptions, which believe me nobody here is above doing, think of what consequences this game would suffer if everybody who cared to took your advice and took the very, extremely simple option of not paying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_earth_zero

It's not smug. If you don't like something, you don't pay it.

[Zyph]

I actually work in IT. Not in aplication development. But as another person allready wrote on the forum, if they would put a software update live and that would cause such problems every time with that much downtime they would loose theyr job pretty fast. Sometimes I need to update systems too and I know if I would handle this like SE does I would loose my job too.

On critical system we load a backup of the running software nad implement the patch there. Then somone working daily with the software has to do basic jobs and check if they work fine. There are also programs out there that simulate load. Or sometimes we even made them ourself to test the behaviour of the new system with heavy loads on it.

There is seriously something wrong with the way SE handles this...

Imaging you working in a bank and putting the hole money transfer offline every two months, and customers loosing all therey money... You would tell them the same too?

Reading your comment I have to wonder if you actually now anything about software development and releases.

Developing a patch is worlds different from applying a patch. For one, the developers run their updates through the QA team, meaning that if the QA team didn't find whatever was wrong, someone dropped the ball there. In a game of this scale, patches such as these are being built upon tons and tons of preexisting systems, some of which likely haven't been touched by a developer in years. A simple off-by-one error, a precondition check that was ">" instead of ">=," something that would only be discovered in an extreme edge case condition. Unless you can design an AI that simulates EVERY possible thing a real human player could do at EVERY instance of play and let it run automatically (and people have tried) there's no way a QA team is going to catch such a rare instance of instability. For games that receive updates that affect core systems, the last line of QA is unfortunately the players.


Basically: deal with it. Better things get fixed that left in a crappy condition.

The issues we're having this time are likely the result of the team squeezing out what they can with the current engine and server architecture. They've said it before, this engine is not ideal, they're trying to appease us with new fixes and content but the core systems are only designed to do so much, they're not very robust like that. I mean, have you seen what happens when you purchase an item using Item Search? It goes into the instance, buys the item, then exits the instance, without actually loading the market ward zone, that's why it lags. If that's not a hack-a-round, I don't know what is.

[Cynthis]

SE's coders should be perfect. They should never make any mistakes. They should test every one of their tens of millions of lines of code every time they add content, testing each line for every single foreseeable and unforeseeable circumstance. They shouldn't even need to compile before they ship the patch.


Or you know, OP could learn about software development.

It seems to me a lot of the problems after patches are related to a lot of people playing at the same time. This can hardly be a surprise to the development team and given that it seems to always be a problem, I'd say it warrants significantly improved test focus. Besides, some of the explanations for "emergency maintenance" the last month have been quite silly in my mind. Unfortunately I can't find the descriptions right now...but I seem to recall one emergency maintenance was described as fixing a problem with an item that disappeared or was not available. Unless that item is your character, that does not seem to warrant emergency maintenance,

What I would prefer is some predictability. Have a weeekly maintenance window and make fixes at a set time with the only exception being repeated crashes and login problems which would equire faster action. Instead, in April we had all world maintenance on April 5,10,11,18,26,27 . We had maintenance on individual/several worlds on April 7,9,14,16,19 and payment processing maintenance April 23.

I am just not sure if an MMO is the kind of software suitable for a contiuos deployment pattern...

I do want to stress that I think the game is improving tremendously and the development team is doing a great job. I would simply prefer that new features weren't rushed.

[Asiaine]

*munches quietly on her cookiee as she observes the latest rants on the lodestones*

I'm not sure which is most odd.

That people would rant so much but still stay here and forget their own rants a few days later (which means it wasn't that important to begin with).

Or that people make so many silly rants that are completely illogical or unfounded to begin with.

Some days, reading the lodestone makes me sad.

[kaylarene]

*munches quietly on her cookiee as she observes the latest rants on the lodestones*

I'm not sure which is most odd.

That people would rant so much but still stay here and forget their own rants a few days later (which means it wasn't that important to begin with).

Or that people make so many silly rants that are completely illogical or unfounded to begin with.

Some days, reading the lodestone makes me sad.

If it makes you sad then why go on the lodestone if you know right after the servers go down everyone is going to be ranting. That's what happens when the servers go down people are pissed off. I am going to be honest the reason In like going on the lodestone after the servers go offline is that I am bored and its something to do. But you are acting like your better than everyone else which is disgusting.

[Asiaine]

If it makes you sad then why go on the lodestone if you know right after the servers go down everyone is going to be ranting. That's what happens when the servers go down people are pissed off. I am going to be honest the reason In like going on the lodestone after the servers go offline is that I am bored and its something to do. But you are acting like your better than everyone else which is disgusting.

Well, for 1, I am an Elf, so obviously I am better than everyone else ^.^;

Additionally, I like to come to the lodestone (normally) as there is often good information here and sometimes useful discussions.

But, when we have unconstructive rants that show the less desirable side of people, that makes me sad. But perhaps others enjoy seeing negativity and baseless claims, and they should be allowed to behave in that manner (it is a freeish world).

So how about that.. in this freeish world, I can come here and see things which make me sad, and others can contribute in whatever manner they are most comfortable with. C'est la vie.

It does make me sad that you think I should not come here anymore, but you are entitled to your opinion ^.^

[kaylarene]

Well, for 1, I am an Elf, so obviously I am better than everyone else ^.^;

Additionally, I like to come to the lodestone (normally) as there is often good information here and sometimes useful discussions.

But, when we have unconstructive rants that show the less desirable side of people, that makes me sad. But perhaps others enjoy seeing negativity and baseless claims, and they should be allowed to behave in that manner (it is a freeish world).

So how about that.. in this freeish world, I can come here and see things which make me sad, and others can contribute in whatever manner they are most comfortable with. C'est la vie.

It does make me sad that you think I should not come here anymore, but you are entitled to your opinion ^.^

True. I never said I dont think you should come on the lodestone you are emplying that its my business to care where you go or not go. And Yh some people like venting to pass the time. And technically your an Elezen =}

[lordvr]

There will still be emergency maintenance after patches even after 2.0. Count on it.