Excessive Maintenance

krayphysh

I don't mean to make this about me, as I'm sure I'm not alone in regards to the topic of my post. I work a second shift job; because of this, I have to sleep during the day and don't get home until around midnight central time most nights. My available time for gameplay is generally inbetweeen midnight and 6am central time (USA). Over the past few weeks there have been numerous maintenance sessions that begin at 3:00am my time and generally ends up being extended past the predicted time frame, preventing me from being able to get much play time in. I wouldn't be as bothered by this if I didn't pay for ESO Plus, but I really feel that I've been cheated out of my plus service this month. Is there any way you might consider pushing maintenance back a few hours? I'd love to get to play for more than 3 hours per day. That's just enough time to do my writs and a few dailies. What can you do to ensure people who, like myself, aren't losing half of their available play time? Customer satisfaction is very important, and it seems reasonable to ask for something....anything....to ensure your 2nd shift paying customers are satisfied. I feel like I've lost at least half of my play time since the new chapter has been released and no one has done anything to ensure those of us who are limited to late night hour game play time are being taken care of and getting the opportunity to use the service we have paid for. I don't believe my request is unreasonable at all. Hoping someone from the ESO crew replies back with good news! Hopefully everyone is doing well and having a great week!

Best wishes and warmest regards!!
@krayphysh

Sorry for the typos, typed this on my tablet as I play in Cyro!

OutLaw_Nynx

They don’t care about second shift or third shift people.

trackdemon5512

OutLaw_Nynx wrote: »

They don’t care about second shift or third shift people.

Or primary shift. Maintenance happens when it happens.

Alucardo

OutLaw_Nynx wrote: »

They don’t care about second shift or third shift people.

or EU people for that matter.

krayphysh

They don't schedule maintenance during daylight hours (US). I understand there are fewer people on at night, but that's really not cool that we are the customers that always get the short end of the stick. Maintenance should be evened out so all players are affected by it from time to time rather than just cutting our play time short. I don't know what else to say except this really sucks for us and there are no alternative solutions. We can't skip work to play video games, we can't forgo our bedtimes (sleep is pretty important), and most importantly, we can't play much as of the past few weeks because of constant maintenance. It would really help if ESO's customer support showed us late night players a little love. We don't all choose our play time, we have to work it into our schedules. ESO employees - when you go out shopping at night, or out to eat dinner, remember those people serving you just may be waiting to get home to play ESO...only to discover yet another maintenance and another night of play time significantly reduced. Take a moment to think about how you'd feel if the tables were turned. What can you do to make us as feel valued and important as the daytime players? We deserve something to show you sincerely care about us and realize that we are involuntary sacrificing our limited gaming time.

🤞🤞🤞🤞🤞

Zaddiucs

Alucardo wrote: »

OutLaw_Nynx wrote: »

They don’t care about second shift or third shift people.

or EU people for that matter.

I find maintenance weird, like I find they do it usually between 8-9am (GMT) until 11-13pm which is actually alright considering a lot of the player base are probably in work/school, however there are also others who work from home or stream in the day also so I'm not sure why they don't do it between like 2-7am

kargen27

"Maintenance should be evened out so all players are affected by it from time to time rather than just cutting our play time short."

That means the employees are on a rotating schedule and rotating schedules are pure hell.

"What can you do to make us as feel valued and important as the daytime players?"

They do maintenance on a regular basis to keep the game running and they do unscheduled maintenance when something gets really messed up instead of putting it off until a scheduled maintenance. That is what they do for us no matter the time we play.

Someone is going to get the short end of the stick. Usually I am on that short side but I understand things gotta happen.

Túrin_Vidsmidr

Are they patching the 280+ ping at sieges?

mekops_ESO

when you look at the thread they link on the header with the maint times, it looks like all this fuss is due to.."the issue where the effects from Minor Lifesteal and Magickasteal are ignoring their cooldowns in some cases."

I bet that event end right on time

ApoAlaia

Funny story, I am off this week; I picked up the week very deliberately because scheduled maintenance seems to take place every other week so this Monday was likely to be exempt from downtime, which it was.

Of course to compensate for this boon we had two unscheduled maintenances so far.

Once more is not a matter of 'when does maintenance take place' it is the fact that 'downtime due to maintenance' should be an obsolete concept.

LadyLethalla

Alucardo wrote: »

OutLaw_Nynx wrote: »

They don’t care about second shift or third shift people.

or EU people for that matter.

Or Australians... I got a whole 40min play after yesterday's maintenance and 10min this morning before work. Now I have to wait another 2.5 hours of my evening before I can play. -_-

kmontywrwb17_ESO

Yeah the constant downtime is getting tedious now. I subbed this month, but next month is looking pretty unlikely at this stage.

Jaimeh

I was hoping to do some MYM stuff now that it's usually quieter on the server but maintenance had other plans...

alanmatillab16_ESO

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

Red_Feather

The company needs to develop the ability to do hotfixes if they want to run a live service. It's not a suggestion. Hate to be rude, but it's truth.

ApoAlaia

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

None.

Servers should be patched, synced and failed over.

Players would get a heads up, just in case they are doing trials etc then experience a short loading screen, akin to what sometimes happens when entering an instanced zone, and carry on as if nothing happened.

If the client needs patching should download on the background then apply in the next zone transition.

Armanie

ApoAlaia wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

None.

Servers should be patched, synced and failed over.

Players would get a heads up, just in case they are doing trials etc then experience a short loading screen, akin to what sometimes happens when entering an instanced zone, and carry on as if nothing happened.

If the client needs patching should download on the background then apply in the next zone transition.

Is there any game working like this? Sounds too good to be true tbh
Best I've seen is 15min maintenance every day

ApoAlaia

Armanie wrote: »

ApoAlaia wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

None.

Servers should be patched, synced and failed over.

Players would get a heads up, just in case they are doing trials etc then experience a short loading screen, akin to what sometimes happens when entering an instanced zone, and carry on as if nothing happened.

If the client needs patching should download on the background then apply in the next zone transition.

Is there any game working like this? Sounds too good to be true tbh
Best I've seen is 15min maintenance every day

It is achievable but there is financial burden attached to it.

The only way of encouraging ZOS to tackle the financial burden is for the customers to push for it.

If threads like these are any indication of the players at large the sum of those who genuinely don't care about it and those who don't care about it because they are unlikely to be affected by it probably exceeds 50% of the customer base so the likelihood for such push remains low.

krayphysh

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

If the servers must be shut down for 3 to 6 hours, the timing should vary so that the same players aren't routinely affected. I'm guessing you have the freedom to play when you'd like. Maybe you're young, jobless, or don't have any real responsibilities? Perhaps you aren't paying for a service that you don't have time to utilize due to factors outside of your control, for example, consistant almost daily maintanence. I don't know your situation and I don't mean to sound rude, but I've explained my thoughts about this topic and others who have to schedule what times we can play based around real life responsibilities. Maybe you'll understand one day.

krayphysh

Armanie wrote: »

ApoAlaia wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

None.

Servers should be patched, synced and failed over.

Players would get a heads up, just in case they are doing trials etc then experience a short loading screen, akin to what sometimes happens when entering an instanced zone, and carry on as if nothing happened.

If the client needs patching should download on the background then apply in the next zone transition.

Is there any game working like this? Sounds too good to be true tbh
Best I've seen is 15min maintenance every day

Fallout 76 works like that. Of course it's not ESO, but at least paying customers can chose to play on their own server if the server they are currently playing on is going down for maintenance. It's a nice solution to ensure paying customers get to utilize the service they are paying for.

ghost_bg_ESO

It is amazing how after MS acquisition 2 weeks to month is not necessary for patch anymore. It will be even more amazing if this downtimes become only bad memory from the past.

matterandstuff

They just need to break up the maintenance so that it's not repeatedly hitting the same users in peak time for multiple days in a row.

ZOS seems really slow to work out when their problems are actually going to cause players to end their subscriptions and stop spending money (like with the months-long mail bug that they very belatedly suddenly took seriously a couple months ago after who knows how many players had quit), and they seem to really underestimate the annoyance of repeated major downtime with no compensation hitting the same cohort of paying players, *especially* during events. At the bare minimum there's a need to, say, chuck all Asia-Pacific players some event tickets considering how hard they're making it to get them.

I quit for a couple of years because of these issues around the time that ZOS' server issues caused Midyear Mayhem to break the servers so badly it had to be abandoned. When the odds of ragequitting are getting higher, it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not spending money on the game.

SammyKhajit

Game is not just for North American time zone. Never could understand what’s so hard to have a global perspective in your business plan.

alanmatillab16_ESO

krayphysh wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

If the servers must be shut down for 3 to 6 hours, the timing should vary so that the same players aren't routinely affected. I'm guessing you have the freedom to play when you'd like. Maybe you're young, jobless, or don't have any real responsibilities? Perhaps you aren't paying for a service that you don't have time to utilize due to factors outside of your control, for example, consistant almost daily maintanence. I don't know your situation and I don't mean to sound rude, but I've explained my thoughts about this topic and others who have to schedule what times we can play based around real life responsibilities. Maybe you'll understand one day.

Wrong, I work 12 hour shifts 4 on 4 off. Sometimes the downtime is when I am working, sometimes it isnt. When I have dealt with other real responsilibities and sit down to play and the game is down for maintenance I go and do something else since ESO isn't the only hobby or game out there.

Maybe YOU will understand that one day.

CallmeFishmeal

Armanie wrote: »

ApoAlaia wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

None.

Servers should be patched, synced and failed over.

Players would get a heads up, just in case they are doing trials etc then experience a short loading screen, akin to what sometimes happens when entering an instanced zone, and carry on as if nothing happened.

If the client needs patching should download on the background then apply in the next zone transition.

Is there any game working like this? Sounds too good to be true tbh
Best I've seen is 15min maintenance every day

Fallout 76. They give a warning that maintenance is about to happen. All you have to do is log off then back on and they will have you in the updated server and you carry on like nothing happened.

Doc45

The scheduled maintenance time has never bothered me even though it is during the time I play, nor do I find maintenance excessive. I figure they have their reasons for the times chosen, and maintenance has to be done, but I have to admit the times chosen seem odd. If I'm not mistaken, the NA servers are in Texas, so that means employees there are starting maintenance at 3AM and those on the East Coast (Maryland) are working at 4AM.

For customers in AUS (East Coast), maintenance starts around 6PM. It does make me wonder why it's not moved forward a few hours to have ZOS employees starting around 6AM or 7AM, and it would go down about 9PM in AUS (not great but allows some time to play after an 8-5 shift). In Germany (EU) server, it starts around 10AM, so a few hours later still would allow employees there to work a regular day shift. It would be down for East Coast US early morning, but can't imagine a ton wake up at 7AM to play.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. As I said, maintenance times have never bothered me. I do, however, wonder why the specific times were chosen. I don't think ZOS has ever commented as to why they set the maintenance times to occur regularly during those hours.

Hans_58

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

they should have a server for each continent or hemisphere and play their maintenance game according to night time of the local time

Grandchamp1989

Hans_58 wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

they should have a server for each continent or hemisphere and play their maintenance game according to night time of the local time

This right here.

Also makes no sense to have 100+ ping when you play on your native server...

ZOS_Icy

Hello!

We have removed a few comments from this thread that were determined to be bashing and to be discussing conspiracy theories and misinformation. If there may be any questions in regards to the rules, please feel free to review them here.

kargen27

krayphysh wrote: »

alanmatillab16_ESO wrote: »

So, what 6 hours of the day should they choose that will impact absolutely no one on the planet?

If the servers must be shut down for 3 to 6 hours, the timing should vary so that the same players aren't routinely affected. I'm guessing you have the freedom to play when you'd like. Maybe you're young, jobless, or don't have any real responsibilities? Perhaps you aren't paying for a service that you don't have time to utilize due to factors outside of your control, for example, consistant almost daily maintanence. I don't know your situation and I don't mean to sound rude, but I've explained my thoughts about this topic and others who have to schedule what times we can play based around real life responsibilities. Maybe you'll understand one day.

What you are suggesting would mean ZoS employees would have to work a schedule that is always changing. It takes about six weeks for the body to adjust to a new routine. What you are asking would mean the employees that do the maintenance would never get on a good and comfortable sleep cycle. That isn't healthy and leads to bad productivity.

Klad

Fix the game fix the game!

ZoS there is too much maintenance!