A server farm takes a bit longer to shut down and restart than a PC, even if that's all they do (and this time, they have to install a bug fix, then try to make sure the fix didn't break three other things). Cryptic tried running the servers until updates were actually needed, and discovered that their systems developed a terrible memory-leak problem. Now they restart once a week, every Thursday, and avoid those particular issues.
On the plus side, at least it doesn't take as long as the weekly "updates" on WoW...
yes and no.
Yes, it takes a while to reboot a server. But do you NEED to reboot? Sometimes yes, sometime no, could just need to kill and restart the STO server software.
No, there is NO reason to check the software once on the live servers, because it was checked carefully offline first, in a copy of the real servers, carefully debugged and then placed on tribble to be stress tested by players to find and fix any other bugs before it was released, right?
Memory leaks are simply bugs. Just a specific type of bug. Whether that is in their code or their OS or the like I do not know, but somewhere, someone dropped the ball. (This is not unusual, several versions of windows leaked like a sieve which lead people to reboot excessively to compensate for the problems caused by this).
A different sort of answer:
it takes 1/2 an hour but they scheduled 3 to ensure enough time to do things. Then if/when the weekly needs an hour, or 2, they are still in the clear. That is better than saying 1/2 an hour and then constantly taking longer.
...
Memory leaks are simply bugs. Just a specific type of bug. Whether that is in their code or their OS or the like I do not know, but somewhere, someone dropped the ball. (This is not unusual, several versions of windows leaked like a sieve which lead people to reboot excessively to compensate for the problems caused by this).
...
Your answer was the best so far, but concerning the memory problems I'll add my experience / viewpoint.
Windows memory problems are still present day problems. Not all are caused by Windows. Many are caused by bad memory management of applications. If there is some dirty programming (and probably there is some kind of that in any big software project), it is prudent to rinse and clean (restart) at least the memory. (I'll keep on doing it on my PC's for years. You do it too. Because you shut down your computer daily. - In some ways, that's your personal maintenance.)
So maintenance is what you do to keep your service as good as possible. Make a generous time estimate as well, so you don't run into tight schedules (except for bad surprises).
Some of that may be prepared for in advance, but even then you need some time to plug it all together.
you never know what type of problems you will encounter doing maintiance , Even on your own PC
It may take less time or more time ...Or a lot more time
Jellico....Engineer ground.....Da'val Romulan space Sci
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Guys, you know the devs official forum is reddit. Just check the icon revamp, where TTC is discussing with the redditors, while the official topic on the tribble forum have 0 dev interaction (beyond creating the topic itself).
Or that quote about the bug between the breen carrier mastery trait and the other one I can't discuss that made the game crash.
There's a good reason for that, you know. /r/sto has a good, active moderation team, and a much better community than the general forums. Not saying everyone here is bad; on the contrary, there's some great people here, and I've learned a lot from the forums. But on /r/sto, devs are treated with actual respect by the community most of the time. If they come here, they will get personally attacked all the time for commenting or for not commenting, whichever they do.
So, you ask, why not fix their forums, take control? Well, they've tried, but that gets even more backlash, because they're 'censoring my opinion' and far worse accusations. If I was going to answer questions about STO as a dev, I'd take reddit over the forums anyday, and it's because of the community here and the attitude here as it becomes perceived as a whole.
SCM - Crystal C. (S) - [00:12] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 8.63M(713.16K) - Fed Sci
sometimes i think virus is a cryptic dev...then i remind myself...wait virus actually communicates with us...well so much for that conspiracy thoery lol
sometimes i think virus is a cryptic dev...then i remind myself...wait virus actually communicates with us...well so much for that conspiracy thoery lol
I've been called a lot of things in my life...but that's pretty low.
When reading these forums I get the feeling this is the first mmo most people here play. Downtime is a normal thing in every mmo and tbh I find this game to be one of the most reasonable ones. I rather have a weekly maintaince then a game that's down a whole weekend.
^^^This!! I remember patches on EQ taking foooorever, this is nothing. I rather like them keeping up to date on the game, regardless how effective anyone seems to think they are. :cool:
Im curious because i haven't seen it posted, but during these matienance updates, does cryptic patch all there games while patching STO? Or on different time schedules?
Times on launcher have now been changed with NO official announcement on the forums. And wiped out the small fraction of my normal morning playtime that was left after the maintenance - again. (I have to log off at 10:30 AM Pacific.)
By my count, this is the FIFTH maintenance period which has been extended beyond the original estimate in the last eight weeks. Two of the other three were "stability updates only" and no patch was applied.
In four of those five cases, no official announcement was made until AFTER the originally posted end time had passed.
Has Cryptic/PWE somehow forgotten how to come up with an accurate estimate?
In every MMO I've ever played it never ceases to amaze me the amount of whining that goes on during maintenance periods. It's a few hours, one day. If you can't live without the game for those few hours on one day, you've got issues. You have absolutely no idea what is required to perform the maintenance, the work needed, the verification, the steps built into the business process. It's not just installing patches on your PC and rebooting. Go do something else for a little bit and get on with your life.
Do I want to play right now? Yes. Am I upset about it? No. Because I'm a reasonable person. I'm relatively new to STO and this is just like a mirror image of the whining that goes on during every other MMO's maintenance and it's funny in a sad kind of way.
If people understood more about game development they would not complain so much about maintenance on MMO games, as the game is forever changing in the background out of sight in the code it gets clogged and errors can emerge if you don't shut down and clean it out every now and then, also as it's played little things pop up that will need changing.
99.999999% of the things they fix or tinker with during maintenance you will never notice and you shouldn't as it's just all background work unless it's bug fixing then you will notice the bug gone or transformed into another bug which does happen. Code is a *****, game development is a ***** it does not stay the same it's always changing and in MMO's it changes a lot.
I work in the games industry and on a couple MMO games and we have had some real killer bugs killed before they become a problem thanks to regular down time, you will never get to a point where down time is completely removed, some games do it once a week, some every day for about an hour, some even less but they still have to do it now and then.
Also to the OP despite NW and STO likely using the same game engine that is where the similarities end, in development, and code they are completely different games and so suffer from different issues.
It's a normal mmo downtime. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
Nothing special here. Others like WOW or SWTOR do the things in a similar way.
I am come from work yet. Can not play, but if cryptic have things to do let them do, so I can play tomorrow a more lag less and hopefully more fixed game
Good thing needs while, and sometimes a bit more. Thank you Cryptic for all your work you have done so far!
Im curious because i haven't seen it posted, but during these matienance updates, does cryptic patch all there games while patching STO? Or on different time schedules?
Cryptic only owns the one server farm, and the one account-maintenance system (which is why, when you start up an account on one Cryptic game, you get into the others as well). They used to try to take down just one game system at a time, but that had - er - repercussions, both in the way of unintended downtime and in the way of overtime for maintenance engineers (because if something went wrong, and they'd started the downtime three hours before the end of the shift, they'd have to stay until it was all back online). So now everything goes down for maintenance at the same time. Depending on patches, they may come back up at different times (played a lot of CO while I was waiting for systems to stabilize after LoR, for instance).
How dare they run maintenance when I want to play?
They should do it when I'm sleeping or at work so I'm not affected.
Seriously though I'm somewhat disappointed that its during my prime time, but Its beter than the alternative where they just run the system into the ground before doing anything.
I'm reasonably patient and dont think 3 hours a long time either, and I can easily find other things to do during that time.
I understand that we need downtime to keep things running 'smoothly' however a couple of asks...
1) rotate the time/day its done. Its always afternoon Thursday (UK time) and eats into some players prime time all the time.
2) it seems to me that unexpected downtime extensions have been increasing as of late. please don't do this if possible. work out what you have to do and how long it will take to do it. communicate with us and all will be well...
3) Also the timings of the downtimes seem to be a little hit and miss. Sometimes it starts at 14:05, sometimes its 14:02. Today it was 13:58. Which really pissed me off as I was logging onto a character to send of a weapon upgrade (that would in turn be done at the end of the maintenance). Since the account server went down early today I couldn't do that so in effect lost 4 hrs. When you fill the game with pointless and pathetic timegates things like this start to matter.
Comments
yes and no.
Yes, it takes a while to reboot a server. But do you NEED to reboot? Sometimes yes, sometime no, could just need to kill and restart the STO server software.
No, there is NO reason to check the software once on the live servers, because it was checked carefully offline first, in a copy of the real servers, carefully debugged and then placed on tribble to be stress tested by players to find and fix any other bugs before it was released, right?
Memory leaks are simply bugs. Just a specific type of bug. Whether that is in their code or their OS or the like I do not know, but somewhere, someone dropped the ball. (This is not unusual, several versions of windows leaked like a sieve which lead people to reboot excessively to compensate for the problems caused by this).
A different sort of answer:
it takes 1/2 an hour but they scheduled 3 to ensure enough time to do things. Then if/when the weekly needs an hour, or 2, they are still in the clear. That is better than saying 1/2 an hour and then constantly taking longer.
Your answer was the best so far, but concerning the memory problems I'll add my experience / viewpoint.
Windows memory problems are still present day problems. Not all are caused by Windows. Many are caused by bad memory management of applications. If there is some dirty programming (and probably there is some kind of that in any big software project), it is prudent to rinse and clean (restart) at least the memory. (I'll keep on doing it on my PC's for years. You do it too. Because you shut down your computer daily. - In some ways, that's your personal maintenance.)
So maintenance is what you do to keep your service as good as possible. Make a generous time estimate as well, so you don't run into tight schedules (except for bad surprises).
Some of that may be prepared for in advance, but even then you need some time to plug it all together.
It may take less time or more time ...Or a lot more time
Saphire.. Science ground......Ko'el Romulan space Tac
Leva........Tactical ground.....Koj Romulan space Eng
JJ-Verse will never be Canon or considered Lore...It will always be JJ-Verse
Cryptic saw your complaint and addressed it.
There's a good reason for that, you know. /r/sto has a good, active moderation team, and a much better community than the general forums. Not saying everyone here is bad; on the contrary, there's some great people here, and I've learned a lot from the forums. But on /r/sto, devs are treated with actual respect by the community most of the time. If they come here, they will get personally attacked all the time for commenting or for not commenting, whichever they do.
So, you ask, why not fix their forums, take control? Well, they've tried, but that gets even more backlash, because they're 'censoring my opinion' and far worse accusations. If I was going to answer questions about STO as a dev, I'd take reddit over the forums anyday, and it's because of the community here and the attitude here as it becomes perceived as a whole.
SCM - Hive (S) - [02:31] DMG(DPS) - @jarvisandalfred: 30.62M(204.66K) - Fed Sci
Tacs are overrated.
Game's best wiki
Build questions? Look here!
sometimes i think virus is a cryptic dev...then i remind myself...wait virus actually communicates with us...well so much for that conspiracy thoery lol
I've been called a lot of things in my life...but that's pretty low.
The estimate they give is whatever they get out of the lock box.
^^^This!! I remember patches on EQ taking foooorever, this is nothing. I rather like them keeping up to date on the game, regardless how effective anyone seems to think they are. :cool:
Nah, all the server technicians set one of these Ferengi Gambling Device's upon employment.
The Cm's have a magic 8 ball....
KHAAAAAAAAN!
It'll force thousands to go outdoors and talk to the public.
"It's easy to cling to principles when you're standing on a vessel with its bulkheads intact, manned by a crew that's not starving."
In every MMO I've ever played it never ceases to amaze me the amount of whining that goes on during maintenance periods. It's a few hours, one day. If you can't live without the game for those few hours on one day, you've got issues. You have absolutely no idea what is required to perform the maintenance, the work needed, the verification, the steps built into the business process. It's not just installing patches on your PC and rebooting. Go do something else for a little bit and get on with your life.
Do I want to play right now? Yes. Am I upset about it? No. Because I'm a reasonable person. I'm relatively new to STO and this is just like a mirror image of the whining that goes on during every other MMO's maintenance and it's funny in a sad kind of way.
99.999999% of the things they fix or tinker with during maintenance you will never notice and you shouldn't as it's just all background work unless it's bug fixing then you will notice the bug gone or transformed into another bug which does happen. Code is a *****, game development is a ***** it does not stay the same it's always changing and in MMO's it changes a lot.
I work in the games industry and on a couple MMO games and we have had some real killer bugs killed before they become a problem thanks to regular down time, you will never get to a point where down time is completely removed, some games do it once a week, some every day for about an hour, some even less but they still have to do it now and then.
Also to the OP despite NW and STO likely using the same game engine that is where the similarities end, in development, and code they are completely different games and so suffer from different issues.
LEARNING!!!!!
Nah, when that day comes, I'll just find another MMO to gripe about.
I mean, play. :P
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
Nothing special here. Others like WOW or SWTOR do the things in a similar way.
I am come from work yet. Can not play, but if cryptic have things to do let them do, so I can play tomorrow a more lag less and hopefully more fixed game
Good thing needs while, and sometimes a bit more. Thank you Cryptic for all your work you have done so far!
They should do it when I'm sleeping or at work so I'm not affected.
Seriously though I'm somewhat disappointed that its during my prime time, but Its beter than the alternative where they just run the system into the ground before doing anything.
I'm reasonably patient and dont think 3 hours a long time either, and I can easily find other things to do during that time.
I understand that we need downtime to keep things running 'smoothly' however a couple of asks...
1) rotate the time/day its done. Its always afternoon Thursday (UK time) and eats into some players prime time all the time.
2) it seems to me that unexpected downtime extensions have been increasing as of late. please don't do this if possible. work out what you have to do and how long it will take to do it. communicate with us and all will be well...
3) Also the timings of the downtimes seem to be a little hit and miss. Sometimes it starts at 14:05, sometimes its 14:02. Today it was 13:58. Which really pissed me off as I was logging onto a character to send of a weapon upgrade (that would in turn be done at the end of the maintenance). Since the account server went down early today I couldn't do that so in effect lost 4 hrs. When you fill the game with pointless and pathetic timegates things like this start to matter.
...#LLAP...
But they don't fix anything, just 1 ****ty item gets fixed...