There is too much downtime IMO

Adaarye

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

It literally tells you how long the maintenance is going to be at the top of the forum page, so I'm not sure why you keep counting hours. It will be up in about two hours if their estimate is correct.

A large percentage of players never visit forums.

Aylish

I have no issues with maintenance. But please use it to fix at least one minor bug each time.

Bushido2513

Aylish wrote: »

I have no issues with maintenance. But please use it to fix at least one minor bug each time.

This says a lot that I didn't even touch upon. Waiting for multiple hours to play a game that still has some game breaking bugs in it that almost seem too easy to address given the time that's been put into maintenance.

Northwold

aadderoosb16_ESO wrote: »

the biggest problem I have with these maintenances, apart from being 2 times in a week, is the bad timing for european players. for us its during daytime, I mainly play during daytime and to make things worse, I live in the netherlands, we are on utc+2, so maintenance is basicly no playing that day for me.

So why not plan this earlier in the day for the eu so more is during nightime, the time most people do sleep anyway.

And really, couldn't this been done the last time and turn the changes on later or something, 2 times in 5 days is too much.

I agree with this. We keep seeing instances of ZOS acting like an American company from the 1950s (eg completely ignoring public holidays that affect literally hundreds of millions of people and slapping maintenance in the middle of them because America). The world has moved on.

If you're going to sell your product to European (and other) users and take their money, then adapt to them. Don't expect *your customers* to adapt to *your* convenience.

This is pretty basic and it makes ZOS look backward and ridiculous.

Vonnegut2506

Adaarye wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

It literally tells you how long the maintenance is going to be at the top of the forum page, so I'm not sure why you keep counting hours. It will be up in about two hours if their estimate is correct.

A large percentage of players never visit forums.

But, you know, the person was posting on the forum counting down hours, so I'm going to assume they had, in fact, visited the forum.

wenchmore420b14_ESO

Who was here at launch?
They had maintenance twice a week.
Then one time, I forget exactly when, first year or two, they went weeks and weeks without maintenance and the lag and game play was crazy! Was HAPPY to see maintenance!

Maintenance is a necessary evil. Every game is different and have different maintenance protocols.
And maintenance isn't bug fixing. That is a different critter and you will see in the notice if it is or not.
I am not a game developer, computer IT guy, coder or programmer, but I do know what happens to my computer if I don't update drivers, clear cache data, back up files, etc. ESO is the same except times millions of players data.

Yes, down time is annoying. I get frustrated with ZoS also, but all in all they have given us a stellar game. Played since early access and beta, 11 years and almost 14K hrs play time, so I have seen a LOT of downtime.
For you armchair programmers and IT guys, do a search about maintenance in forums. This subject is almost as popular as "We Need Auction Houses". There are several responses as to what they do and why it is necessary.
And the next down time, play BG3 or another game. Read a book or do something fun. Or do what we have done since launch, get on forums and post memes.

method__01

nothing is fixed after all this downtime ,same probs with CPU 100% ,loading screens take forever, frame drops
client crashing randomly ,now im getting server timeout -kicked while just walking-cause if i run ,game will freeze-

maybe i should ask for money back from plus ,i pay to play not restarting every 30 min cause someone cant do his job

Danikat

I'm intrigued by how many people seem to think the alternative to "too much maintenance downtime" is "no maintenance, for any reason, ever".

Of course they need to do maintenance sometimes, but it seems strange that a well established game from a major corporation needs to take the game offline for so long, so frequently, when their competitors don't. If it was a little indie game built by 5 people in a garden shed I could understand they have to work with what they've got and things get done as and when they can in whatever way they can manage but I expect better from Zenimax and Microsoft, at least up to the standards of smaller companies running other MMOs.

Petoften

[quote="Nydarisa;c-8335811What you you meeeaaaannnn there is downtime?? *grabs pitchfork*[/quote]

+1 to the "people who can't tell the difference between too much downtime and some downtime"

Petoften

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

Adaarye wrote: »

Vonnegut2506 wrote: »

It literally tells you how long the maintenance is going to be at the top of the forum page, so I'm not sure why you keep counting hours. It will be up in about two hours if their estimate is correct.

A large percentage of players never visit forums.

But, you know, the person was posting on the forum counting down hours, so I'm going to assume they had, in fact, visited the forum.

I did visit the forum, to post that; I don't want to have to visit the forum to see downtime information.

Petoften

wenchmore420b14_ESO wrote: »

Who was here at launch?
They had maintenance twice a week.
Then one time, I forget exactly when, first year or two, they went weeks and weeks without maintenance and the lag and game play was crazy! Was HAPPY to see maintenance!

Maintenance is a necessary evil. Every game is different and have different maintenance protocols.
And maintenance isn't bug fixing. That is a different critter and you will see in the notice if it is or not.
I am not a game developer, computer IT guy, coder or programmer, but I do know what happens to my computer if I don't update drivers, clear cache data, back up files, etc. ESO is the same except times millions of players data.

Yes, down time is annoying. I get frustrated with ZoS also, but all in all they have given us a stellar game. Played since early access and beta, 11 years and almost 14K hrs play time, so I have seen a LOT of downtime.
For you armchair programmers and IT guys, do a search about maintenance in forums. This subject is almost as popular as "We Need Auction Houses". There are several responses as to what they do and why it is necessary.
And the next down time, play BG3 or another game. Read a book or do something fun. Or do what we have done since launch, get on forums and post memes.

As I said, I think that is a false choice. That they can reduce downtime without the other problems, if they want to.

Petoften

LadyGP wrote: »

You don't just push a button that says push to production and then "magic happens".

No one said that straw man. But I think they have not done what they can to reduce downtime.

Petoften

LadyGP wrote: »

Relax, it's really not that serious. It's impossible for them to take the game down without irritating at least someone.

Another straw man.

dcrush

And while patch maintenance hopefully means bug fixes, with the maintenance planned for the coming week that marks four weeks in a row with downtime. Come on ZOS, at least send everyone something to acknowledge that this is much more downtime than usual.

Dock01

licenturion wrote: »

Yeah this is inexcusable that they didn't update infrastructure and code behind the scenes for the past 11 years to make stuff more seamless.

Games like Diablo, Overwatch and many others launch huge seasons and updates with like 0 minutes of downtime.

Patch comes in and a notice 'We are currently conducting a live server maintenance, you might have to restart your client.'

I was recently playing another game when a new patch was being deployed and I got a timer so I could continue playing my current session. After that all game functions where disabled until I restarted my client. All was seamless.

With this game it seems every minor in game thing needs a full day of maintenance.

exactly , most people dont realize other games had it way better