Constant Maintenance

[roblinb]

Wow.. I love these threads.. People QQ about all the bugs and demand that they be fixed.. Now that Bioware is fixing them people QQ some more..

 

Well since all of you have a PHD in video game programming, or a doctorate in business, a masters in customer servicve, and a bachelors in quality control.. Why don't all of you go out and create an MMO of this size, run it, fix the bugs without interrupting service, then you can sit back and condemn Bioware for how they are handling things..

 

I applaud them.. I am glad they are fixing issues as soon as they crop up.. More power to them.. If you folks have issues with that.. Then you simply have issues..

 

Sir please show me what bugs they have fixed. For a game that's been out 7 months, this is nuts. I started playing in February and every single bug that I came across which existed then hasn't been fixed.

[LordKOLZ]

Wow.. I love these threads.. People QQ about all the bugs and demand that they be fixed.. Now that Bioware is fixing them people QQ some more..

 

Well since all of you have a PHD in video game programming, or a doctorate in business, a masters in customer servicve, and a bachelors in quality control.. Why don't all of you go out and create an MMO of this size, run it, fix the bugs without interrupting service, then you can sit back and condemn Bioware for how they are handling things..

 

I applaud them.. I am glad they are fixing issues as soon as they crop up.. More power to them.. If you folks have issues with that.. Then you simply have issues..

 

Ah. there you fanboys go. I was wondeing where the blind fanboyism was. Took a bit long, what happened? Waiting on that hour+ lfg queue? lol

 

Another brick in BioWare's incompetence wall. Give it 2-3 more patches and we'll have enough bricks to build the freaking Great Wall of China. I have never seen such a horrible management team before. Taking down servers for 3 fixes that can be fixed by the users themselves by relogging is NOT worthy of a 5 hour maintenance. I bet the maintenance patch today will be no different, maybe a max of 5 fixes that no one even knows about. SWTOR is doomed? **** yes with this management team leading the charge, never seen such stupidity in the human race before, which only goes towards proving my "the management team is comprised of 5 monkeys"-theory.

LOL I couldn't have said it better my self, nice work. Honestly I never seen such a horrid management of game design my self in my self with the countless games I have played. Wonder why they are looking at a f2p model...hmm still no idea because according to the fanboys this game is doing "amazingly well".. Odd, isn't it..

[Lakhesis]

First world problems...

 

Yeah, no one should ever be bothered by anything unless they're starving, surrounded by disease & being shot at by anti-government rebels. Unless those are your concerns, your concerns are irrelevant & clear indications that you're spoilt.

[MbaxterBeau]

it's a complex system. Sometimes, things happen that are unforeseen. Instead of leaving it broken, they fix it.

 

If you weren't whining about downtime, you'd be whining about lag or some other issue.

 

We've seen it in wow where a patch breaks a few other things and they have to repatch to patch the patch. If your life revolves around a game so much that a few hours downtime causes you to rage, you need to re-evaluate your life.

 

^^ this!!!!!!!

[Buddan]

....

The customer service bots on these forums are the worst. They claim the bugs are our fault and that there's nothing wrong with their game even though hundreds (if not more) have reported the same darn thing.

...

 

Not to mention, a copy paste message and instant thread closure, without having the balls to answer why!

 

We are all paying customers, and despite a very weak EULA, consumer governing bodies, over-ride these in a heart beat, when a service is not being delivered in an acceptable manner, which in the case of so many down-times in PEAK Oceanic times, is not acceptable.

 

Be honest, 7pm-11pm on a Friday night, whether your US, or any other country, is that fair, for a a PAID service?

 

At least have the balls, to push it back to Midnight-1am AEST, that's still early morning for the US, that can go out, enjoy daylight, or even for-bid, actually be at work/school/uni.

 

What choice does an Oceanic person have with a family? Watch crap on TV or go out. Well for me, and possibly alot of FAMILIES out there, going out is not really a viable option, due to costs.

 

BW, get real! Find a time that is non-peak for ALL, I know a balance exists somewhere!

[Wallner]

Gah, servers down again?

 

Get your **** together Bioware. This is ... almost.. unaccetable.

[roblinb]

Not to mention, a copy paste message and instant thread closure, without having the balls to answer why

 

I know right. I am not unduly crticisizing or throwing personal insults at anyone, like I said this game has potential. It's just maddening that Bioware seems to ignore us, act like everything is okay and it's our fault. Then they have repetitive downtimes and nothing gets fixed.

 

I hate to say it, but this game could fail. A great concept but inept management and employees will make it shut down.

[chimunga]

BW, get real! Find a time that is non-peak for ALL, I know a balance exists somewhere!

 

I'm actually guessing that there is no balance. "It's 5 o'clock somewhere." I'm thinking this game has players in almost every time zone on the planet. So there's no "miracle cure." If you can figure it out, great, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. But staggering the maintenance times would be nice.

 

You don't even have to do it every week. I can handle the game being down from Noon to Four, Five , or Six once a week. I can deal with that. But three days in one week? Seriously? How does anyone think that's okay.

[Gevecht]

I'd rather have a few hours of downtime (which by the way, tends to happen during the middle of my day yet you don't hear me whining about it) than a broken game. THAT is what we're paying money for - constant problem-solving and development. You guys don't like it? Then go back to playing CoD or whatever other purile wastes of time are on the console market right now.

 

As for how long it takes... Have ANY of you whiners ever attempted to code and then troubleshoot a 3D application? There is no "Fix the problem" button. It's an incredibly long, incredibly trying and incredibly complex process that nine times out of ten boils down to a single line of code buried somewhere in the middle of the other billions of lines of code.

 

But of course I'm sure all of these facts pale into insignificance when compared to the fact that you happen to be bored out of your tiny minds for roughly four hours or so...

[RemusLoxyyk]

I'm actually guessing that there is no balance. .... So there's no "miracle cure." If you can figure it out, great, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist.

 

Change the time zones ^^

[imallHD]

So every night i have to wait an hour+ to play with my main since the stupid transfer apocalypse and now i can't play in the day for the last too days i've been able to because of your 'constant maintenance' of your perfetic 1.3 update that has ruined the game

 

I'm unsubscribing, at this rate Bioware, DC Universe will have more subcribers at the end of the year than you pfft.

[driveby]

I'd rather have a few hours of downtime (which by the way, tends to happen during the middle of my day yet you don't hear me whining about it)

 

what being discussed in this thread is downtime impacting people from 5-11pm, 3 nights out of the last 4, thanks.

Edited June 29, 2012 by driveby

[Buddan]

I know right. I am not unduly crticisizing or throwing personal insults at anyone, like I said this game has potential. It's just maddening that Bioware seems to ignore us, act like everything is okay and it's our fault. Then they have repetitive downtimes and nothing gets fixed.

 

I hate to say it, but this game could fail. A great concept but inept management and employees will make it shut down.

 

Whole part of this, is Sad, but TRUE. Love this game to, even with the Bug's and all, however, when they get reported by so many on PTS, it is un-acceptable to even roll out the patch.

 

BW's poor communication and lack of not listening to the people that play the game will be the death of it.

 

Hell, Im having dejuvu of SWG

 

I'm actually guessing that there is no balance. "It's 5 o'clock somewhere." I'm thinking this game has players in almost every time zone on the planet. So there's no "miracle cure." If you can figure it out, great, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. But staggering the maintenance times would be nice.

 

You don't even have to do it every week. I can handle the game being down from Noon to Four, Five , or Six once a week. I can deal with that. But three days in one week? Seriously? How does anyone think that's okay.

 

True True, probably no balance being a world wide MMO, but 7pm-11pm is worse than 5pm-9pm

 

It was suggested elsewhere, staggered each week, maybe the only way around it, although, knowing BW's attitude towards Oceania (yes TY for servers, but again not much communication leading upto x-fers etc), it will be the week Oceania downtime is prime-time, that's the week they will patch and keep having all these issues post patch ROFL

[Lakhesis]

I'm actually guessing that there is no balance. "It's 5 o'clock somewhere." I'm thinking this game has players in almost every time zone on the planet. So there's no "miracle cure." If you can figure it out, great, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist. But staggering the maintenance times would be nice.

 

You don't even have to do it every week. I can handle the game being down from Noon to Four, Five , or Six once a week. I can deal with that. But three days in one week? Seriously? How does anyone think that's okay.

 

Yeah, the time isn't great but until they realise that one size doesn't fit all & do region-specific maintenances, someone does have to lose out.

 

The frequency is the real problem.

 

Bug fixes sound great, but fixes are meant to improve gameplay quality. A game which is down for maintenance doesn't have any gameplay, so it is fundamentally broken no matter how good it might be later.

 

If you really wanted to argue "more bugfixes, it improves quality", then surely they should shut down the server every night at the global offpeak time until all bugs are fixed. It'll permanently shut them out of whichever region loses out globally (at present, all late night US, daytime Euro & prime time Asia), but hey, game quality is better right? right?

 

There has to be a stability trade-off somewhere. More maintenance windows do not fundamentally improve stability. What they need is less maintenance, but maintenance of a higher quality standard.

 

No more last minute rush jobs, where they don't even know if they'll have it ready in time for their maintenance window until the last minute.

Edited June 29, 2012 by Lakhesis

[Goretzu]

I'm just wondering why they have to take it down for a patch two days in a row. Surely they could've just made it a single patch? O_o

 

3 days this week.

[Fornix]

It's a complex system. Sometimes, things happen that are unforeseen. Instead of leaving it broken, they fix it.

 

If you weren't whining about downtime, you'd be whining about lag or some other issue.

 

We've seen it in WoW where a patch breaks a few other things and they have to repatch to patch the patch. If your life revolves around a game so much that a few hours downtime causes you to rage, you need to re-evaluate your life.

 

Communication is key though, and in that, EA/BioWare is failing.

 

If something unforeseen happens, sure, fix it. However, keep in mind that you do have scheduled downtime sessions and owe it to your paying customers to maintain an acceptable uptime level. With 4 hours of maintenance a week, you have a 98% uptime, which is fine. However, the roughly 85% uptime over these past 3 days however is not acceptable as is.

 

Urgent need to change this, could persuade us to change our minds.

 

Is it there however? Well, judge for yourself:

 

1.3.0a Patch Notes

6/28/2012

Group Finder

Leaving a Group Finder group where all other members have disconnected will no longer cause players to be temporarily locked out of Group Finder.

Flashpoints and Operations will no longer occasionally reset and eject players who have recently used Group Finder for a replacement member.

PvP

Ballistic and Knockback effects no longer occasionally de-sync the character's location, which could cause characters to not interact properly with the world (such as being able to be hit by melee attacks when the character appeared to be out of range).

 

A temp lock out out of group finder? Hardly a deal breaker, no need for an additional patch. Occasional resetting and ejecting players? Pretty much the same. De-sync character locations in pvp, annoying sure but need for emergency maintenance?

 

Seriously BioWare, either release actual patch notes or simply start saving up measily little bug fixes for the weekly scheduled maintenance sessions; emergency patches for these sort of fixes are simply ludicrous.

[RooMeat]

i really do like this game but the maintenance times are starting to bug me

why always during Australian prime time, would it kill you to mix it a little

3 nights this week to myself and others has basically killed my entire week of gaming due other outside commitments, yes that's right i have a life before any more smart arse remarks are made

that's 1/4 of this month of my subscription that was useless to me

so i agree with those who believe some sort of recompense is in order

or just simply rotate the maintenance periods would make life for us Aussies much more pleasant

[Origamihell]

Again, are you serious? This is a bloody farce

[SajmanPeetee]

I'd rather have a few hours of downtime (which by the way, tends to happen during the middle of my day yet you don't hear me whining about it) than a broken game. THAT is what we're paying money for - constant problem-solving and development. You guys don't like it? Then go back to playing CoD or whatever other purile wastes of time are on the console market right now.

 

I agree with you, however, it needs to be stated that the problem they brought the servers down for yesterday and most likely today players can fix by simply relogging. These are not dire problems by any stretch of the imagination and could wait till next Tuesday's maintenance.

[Goretzu]

There has to be a stability trade-off somewhere. More maintenance windows do not fundamentally improve stability. What they need is less maintenance, but maintenance of a higher quality standard.

 

 

I'm not entirely convinced by weekly maintance to begin with, the stopped weekly maintance with Warhammer Online when they offically mothballed the game post Bioware's fairly disasterous () 1.4 patch and performance pretty much stay the same, dispite the servers then running 24/7 for months in WAR.

[roblinb]

The frequency is the real problem.

 

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhh stop making sense or legimate points because forum bot will make you post a DXDIAG

[Bolognawan]

Quit justifying reasons for downtime. If you are satisfied paying for a service that you don't get because it's constantly in 'maintenance' mode, then you're an idiot. 3 days this week and always when I plan on playing. Bioware sucks ***.

[Koppster]

I'm thinking this game has players in almost every time zone on the planet. So there's no "miracle cure."

 

Seriously? What do you think WoW has been doing the last few years? Seperating regional servers and performing server maintenance at different times is not exactly rocket-science, but then we're talking about a company who've had their game unavailable for about 20 hours out of the last 4 days, because of patches to fix the patch that was supposed to patch the patch.

[Liquidacid]

I'm not entirely convinced by weekly maintance to begin with, the stopped weekly maintance with Warhammer Online when they offically mothballed the game post Bioware's fairly disasterous () 1.4 patch and performance pretty much stay the same, dispite the servers then running 24/7 for months in WAR.

 

since when did BW make or ever patch WAR

[chimunga]

I'd rather have a few hours of downtime (which by the way, tends to happen during the middle of my day yet you don't hear me whining about it) than a broken game. THAT is what we're paying money for - constant problem-solving and development. You guys don't like it? Then go back to playing CoD or whatever other purile wastes of time are on the console market right now.

 

As for how long it takes... Have ANY of you whiners ever attempted to code and then troubleshoot a 3D application? There is no "Fix the problem" button. It's an incredibly long, incredibly trying and incredibly complex process that nine times out of ten boils down to a single line of code buried somewhere in the middle of the other billions of lines of code.

 

But of course I'm sure all of these facts pale into insignificance when compared to the fact that you happen to be bored out of your tiny minds for roughly four hours or so...

 

Whine whine whine whine. I forgot. That's all I'm doing. There's no basis for my argument, nor am I stating it in a mature way. Just whining. My bad. My brain must be insignificant.

 

I am so very, very tired of that argument. "U duz not now bout computers so shud ur face. There fixin bugzzz. Terrrrrribul bugzzzz.."

You're right. I don't. That doesn't mean I can't be an annoyed customer. I understand that it's a complex process, that I don't know jacksquat about. But BW also doesn't seem to ever acknowledge that they even have players outside of America.