Quote Originally Posted by Ephremjlm View Post
It's a true fact of the matter but your comment made me wonder, how much harder would it be for them to segement off data center updates based on the average player prime time?

I almost feel like that should be pretty doable, with exceptions to major patch updates. Like idk im just riffing here, but I feel like this would be especially fair for them to have to figure out considering some of the bugs in these emergency patch updates are things that they should have been able to catch through quality testing. I think the unreal tomb drop rate not working properly comes to mind in the previous patch.

I could be completely off in my assumptions here so feel free to correct any dumb opinion I just had lol.
It would be fairier and imo, entirely doable. But I just can't see Square Enix, particularly, doing it. On their end, I imagine it would require a lot more scheduling than the usual Japanese working hours allow, which in turn leads to a lot of additional costs on the company's end to facilitate. I imagine based on what I've read on here before, as well, that there'd be some technical hang ups because of the limitations of the engine. Can't remember exactly how it goes, but even a small dialogue change seems to require a full on server shut down. On the quality control front, which I'm not impressed with in Dawntrail, I think it's likely that a staggered approach to updates would just lead to more clumsiness across the board.

All in all, cost wise, I really wouldn't imagine it 'should' cost that much to facilitate, but every game company across the board seems to be in constant financial straits to the point opting for a staff vending machine is probably too much of an expense. I'd like to get back to a point, some day, where player goodwill trumps such things but eeeeeh. Eeeeeeh.