100% user impacting maintenance?

[Savarous]

Might as well make fun of the situation.

 

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=2670737#post2670737

 

All we can do is laugh, right?

[Pink_Saber]

Your numbers are based on totally wrong assumptions; that we are playing 24 hours a day! Do you think the guys at SWTOR was taking that into account when they spec'ed the servers? That all players would be playing 24/7? Not a chance.

 

So why wouldn't you count the other hours you're paying for? That doesn't make sense at all.

[xXDraconisXx]

take a few servers from each time zone, turn them into free to play servers with next to no downtimes, but get next to no updates. Therefore the people that don't mind the downtime's continue to pay and get extra's. Meanwhile free to play gets nothing, it would be like privately owned servers but owned by bioware, so it's legit.... This is just an opinion (Troll it if you like) but you'd just be wasting your time.

[Vencar]

It's so not fair. Ive only been able to lvl 3 characters to 50 in 2 months! too much downtime!

[Necrolepsy]

It's so not fair. Ive only been able to lvl 3 characters to 50 in 2 months! too much downtime!

 

I know man, I'm only legacy level 13 The horror!

[Urdnaxela]

It's so not fair. Ive only been able to lvl 3 characters to 50 in 2 months! too much downtime!

 

wow... you must have lots of time on your hands...

[Torunus]

im just wondering why they take the servers down for some lousy patch like this. I could understand if it was fixing something that made the game unplayable. They should have waited till next tuesday. But then again, now I have time to see a long movie and eat icecream!!!

[Caldurjyoh]

And any contractor would tell you to hit the road. The work at set time and not when you want. Guess you have never worked with a contractor.

 

Or maybe you didnt work with the right people yourself MAybe thats a US thing, MAybe you live in NY. Was there for over a decade. Now am in Europe and people RESPECT their customers and plan WITH them!

 

Yes thats a new and hard concept for many

[julzz]

i live in sydney and its always off line when i make it home from work

[Shingara]

im just wondering why they take the servers down for some lousy patch like this. I could understand if it was fixing something that made the game unplayable. They should have waited till next tuesday. But then again, now I have time to see a long movie and eat icecream!!!

 

you have no idea what there doing server side, but the only thing they need to update us on is specific changes to specific bugs or changes to specific class's.

[pieteral]

I often hear people state the following:

1) You should be working during maintenance.

2) You have enough of play time when it is not maintenance.

3) Weekly maintenance is normal, live with it.

 

All those feedback are invalid:

- Circumstances that people can play vary and none should speculate on that.

- Everybody has different expectations on when they can/should play.

- The earth was also flat before. Live with it

 

Bioware is doing the same as many on the forum do is speculating on impact and doing risk management.

 

The choosing of the maintenance window is excluding some group and is creating some miss-alignment of expectations for another group by each hours of maintenance added this group will become bigger.

Bioware knows how many people are playing during that time and how much income that represent against the whole and is willing to accept the risk.

The fuming on the forums might help something but they will not withhold the facts that this group is probably a minority and that Bioware accept the risk of loosing that minority.

 

For me this is bad company policy. It is the Sith way.

 

If Bioware tells me that everybody can play only one time a week a time zone rotation shift and for the rest they are offline they have set expectations, set for everybody the same ground rules and are respecting democracy.

[dirtyone]

There's a lot of products having non-paying customers. Not all customers pay concurrently for use, there's myriads of F2P, B2P, P2P games around.

 

Customer is a person that is consuming the product.

 

a consumer is someone who consumes a product

 

a customer is someone who buys/pays for a product

[TylerDurd]

So why wouldn't you count the other hours you're paying for? That doesn't make sense at all.

 

Because I'm not paying "not to play", I'm paying to play. If the server-downtime becomes greater, the playtime gets lower, thus (at least in my mind) I pay more for less. Still don't get it?

 

Like this week, they said they would use 4-8h on the weekly patch... Two days later, they're taking the servers down again. In other words I can play less this month, thus I pay more for less. Get it?

 

What if they took down the servers for 24h every week? Oh, but only when you sit down to play. Would you still think that "oh well, it's only .02 cents an hour"? That just don't make sense to me!

[Chessack]

I often can't get online until 11pm and the 12am maint schedule really stinks.

 

So... the maintenance window should be altered to cater to you personally?

 

Whether you like it or not, you START playing at the tail end of "prime time" which for games is the same as for TV -- roughly 8-11 PM local time. Do you make the same complaint of TV shows, that when you get home and are ready to watch TV all the good shows are over and the local news is on?

 

Their maintenance times are clearly designed to affect the minimum number of people, if you look at them. ANY shift of times is going to upset MORE people. They have to do it when they are doing it.

[Buddhalux]

Pretty sure the point is that it's been excessive since we have weekly down time anyways. So far there's been 22 patches since Dec 13th. It's been known that the maintenance times completely effect EU/AU players since it's during their prime time every time. People will get tired of not being able to play when they have time and quit which affects us all eventually.

[Chessack]

And the same people complaining that patches happen to often ALSO complain that it takes too long to roll out patches.

 

When you folks start being consistent in your griping maybe I will start to have some sympathy. But until then, I have none.

[DarkSeverance]

WoW always did Maint at 3am in the morning. I often can't get online until 11pm and the 12am maint schedule really stinks. Have to say that basicly I'm losing 2 days of week that I can't play. I pay my money as well can't the servers go down later at night then 12am. Please

But WoW's patch time always happens during the time I can play. In fact that does interfere with my playtime if they move it to later. It actually effects a good portion of my guild as well.

 

It sucks... but just saying. It doesn't matter when they do it, someone will get shafted. That is why they pick the times that have the lowest population on the server so it creates a smaller impact. But no matter what time is picked, it will always impact someone else.

 

In a couple months there usually won't be hot patches. Hot patches usually only happen after large game updates after that. Then everything is during a scheduled time that you typically have a weeks notice around, so just plan accordingly.

[Yakito]

Midnight and onwards on a week day is typically where most people are asleep or trying to.

 

 

You're an unfortunate outlier. Get new working hours. Moving the maintenance to some other time will affect more people.

 

 

 

Haha... get new working hours.

 

This guy is hilarious...

Yeah, get new working hours for a game that you are paying for.

[BingDaoGui]

I'm starting to get really browned off with all the downtimes too.

 

Servers offline again today for 4 hours, to fix a mundane thing? It's a pvp quest, yeah, but still just a quest. There's so many other broken PvE or class quests that they never bother with? Hmmm.

 

Server downtimes are never US daytime, only ever EU daytime.

 

 

1. The game is over 6 weeks old already, the patching process should be streamlined by now. If you're only going to fix one thing, you should have learned how to do it within a much shorter downtime.

 

2. Downtimes need to be better scheduled. Instead of always victimising the EU, how about alternating the slots. Next downtime to be done during EU night time, after that back to US night time, then EU night time. That is, if you can't patch US-only servers during US night, and EU-only servers during EU night.

 

3. Only thing that should ever need an unscheduled maintenance, is access problems. If your servers are unplayably laggy, or if 20% of the players can't load up because of a buggy launcher. Quest problems can wait for the next weekly patch.

[mangarrage]

It is unfortunate but my playtime always perfectly syncs with your maintenance. It also seems your maintenance happens all too frequently with massive windows of downtime affecting 100% of your user base.

 

Um I would not say it is anywhere near close to affecting 100% of the player base

I for one have not been affected at all.

 

The maintenance times are very similar to every game that has ever been released

 

And the maintenance times are actually pretty decent quantity wise considering it is a new game

 

Some games I remember downtime everyday for like 10 days

Some games you couldnt log on for a day and 1/2

 

Some games brought down the game during US primetime

 

So I personally don't think it is bad at all

 

Granted I dont play off peak and I personally don't think a huge amount of people do either

[BingDaoGui]

Some games I remember downtime everyday for like 10 days

Some games you couldnt log on for a day and 1/2

 

Some games brought down the game during US primetime

 

So I personally don't think it is bad at all

 

 

Just because other games have been WORSE, does not make what Bioware is doing "GOOD".

[DarkSeverance]

If you're only going to fix one thing, you should have learned how to do it within a much shorter downtime.

Do you have any idea how long it takes to do a 'e2fsck' or file check on a server as large as these? Trust me in isn't something that is done in a short time.

 

if you can't patch US-only servers during US night, and EU-only servers during EU night.

They can't with their current server structure. In the future that might be possible though.

 

Only thing that should ever need an unscheduled maintenance, is access problems. If your servers are unplayably laggy, or if 20% of the players can't load up because of a buggy launcher. Quest problems can wait for the next weekly patch.

It depends on the severity of the bug. Quest bugs that let me repeat a quest and turn it in repeatable for a duplicateable amount of exp and credits should absolutely happen immediately... unless you are planning to roll servers back a week to adjust to it.

 

So it's ok if 20% of the players can't load up because of a buggy launcher and can't play... but it is not ok if 10-15% of the players can't log in because of a maintenance? Hhmmm interesting logic.

 

Maintenance will always impact someone. Plain and simple. It wasn't like there wasn't a 24 hour notice that let me plan my schedule accordingly, which there was. And for the record current maintenance also impacts my play time.

[DarkSeverance]

Haha... get new working hours.

 

This guy is hilarious...

Yeah, get new working hours for a game that you are paying for.

True story, I got new work hours to play WoW since their downtime always impacted me. ^_^

[VorpalK]

It still amazes me how *some* people seem to think that midnight PST is somehow "off-peak". This isn't the 1950's. There are lot of professions and industries that have long since shifted away from the standard 9-5 schedule. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least 300k (Silicon Valley/Bay Area alone), up to 500k techies (Cali, Washington, Oregon) out west that do not work your typical 9-5 schedule. Try 10-6 or even 11-7. The same goes for many of those who work in finance out west.

 

Stop applying the stupefying EST-centric mentality onto everywhere else as if it is the center of the world. I came from the east coast originally so I am well aware of the existence of that warped thought process. Hell, I even play on an east coast server since that's what my east coast RL friends chose. Even then I usually see at least 70-90 people on Imperial Station at midnight PST. The maintenance schedule needs to be adjusted to reflect the reality, not the fantasy world dreamt up by those who are asleep at 3am EST and could gives a rats arse about anyone else's convenience.

 

It's not "think" They did research and have graphs somewhere showing this is the time period of least impact.

 

Oh and to the OP, this is an MMO. there will always be maintenance that will impact customers.

 

Always.

 

Unless you want them to just not ever add content or fix bugs.

 

And that's never going to happen.

 

You'll get over it.

[Elboc]

Midnight and onwards on a week day is typically where most people are asleep or trying to.

 

 

You're an unfortunate outlier. Get new working hours. Moving the maintenance to some other time will affect more people.

 

I am afraid I have to agree here. Hopefully the day will come when bugs actually get fixed on the test server before live. But until that day, the maintenance they have now affects the least amount of people possible.