Size of the patches

Tazcada

Tazcada
Someone want to tell me why every patch in this game is over a gigabyte? I mean, I get that there are terabyte drives, but what ever happened to compressed files and tight programming?

I hate to say this, but hell, I've downloaded smaller complete games that actually had a storyline and better graphics than are available in Elite that were much smaller. Between the last update and this, we're talking almost 5 gigabytes of download. And 11.5 hours of downloading on my internet. Are the devs taking lessons from Microsoft in "How to p/0 your customers off 101"?

I don't know about anyone else, but my bandwidth CAP is only 19 Gigabytes a month.... and this games update (if I allowed it) would use a third of it. Every other online game I've played has an offline installer/updater, but not this one? What's up with that?

My only hope is that I can somehow download the patch at work, and copy it to my home machine If that doesn't work I'll have to unplug my tower, bring it to a friends house in town, and sit there for 5 hours on their crappy internet.

Imagine my joy.:mad:

Oh, and so you know..... I just spent over 4 hours downloading the first quarter of the patch before I'd had enough of wasting my bandwidth on an exercise in futility. And yes, I'm p*d about it.
 
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metatheurgist

metatheurgist
The game code is slim, this is Frontier after all. It's mostly assets you're downloading, you know enough to procedurally create an entire galaxy and fill it with 25+ ships. The DL for Star Citizen was 16GB and that's not even half-baked. You can just copy the files over from another source, that will work.
 

Vandyl

V
Tazcada said:
Someone want to tell me why every patch in this game is over a gigabyte? I mean, I get that there are terabyte drives, but what ever happened to compressed files and tight programming?

I hate to say this, but hell, I've downloaded smaller complete games that actually had a storyline and better graphics than are available in Elite that were much smaller. Between the last update and this, we're talking almost 5 gigabytes of download. And 11.5 hours of downloading on my internet. Are the devs taking lessons from Microsoft in "How to p/0 your customers off 101"?

I don't know about anyone else, but my bandwidth CAP is only 19 Gigabytes a month.... and this games update (if I allowed it) would use a third of it. Every other online game I've played has an offline installer/updater, but not this one? What's up with that?

My only hope is that I can somehow download the patch at work, and copy it to my home machine If that doesn't work I'll have to unplug my tower, bring it to a friends house in town, and sit there for 5 hours on their crappy internet.

Imagine my joy.:mad:

Oh, and so you know..... I just spent over 4 hours downloading the first quarter of the patch before I'd had enough of wasting my bandwidth on an exercise in futility. And yes, I'm p*d about it.
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The update for ESO, last week was over 20 GB....just sayin.
 

Daisuke-kun

Daisuke-kun
It all depends on the type of patch. Minor patch are usually small. Major patch are usually large. New content patch are usually massive. We went through several major patches, two new content patches, and I think one minor patch since launch. That is why most of the patches we see are large.
 

Vi.king

V
dont blame FD or any other developer for game/update size, they are only getting bigger and bigger..
blame your ISP for providing you internet. 19 GB traffic limit in 2015? I use that traffic in like 2-3 days
 

Valethar

Valethar
Does your ISP throttle certain connections? ED uses a P2P connection while playing, I'm not sure if it does for updating. It's possible the connection is being intentionally slowed down, as some ISP's are still in the dark ages and take a dim view of P2P connections.

Even as bad as ComCrap is in general, I managed to DL the update in about 15 minutes or so. It may actually be worth trying to DL it from work if you have a decent connection there, then copying the folders to a USB stick, and transferring them to your machine at home. It's sort of a crappy workaround, but if it works...
 

Scimiter

Scimiter
You are trying to blame FD for your own problem, the amount of bandwidth you have!
There were people yesterday moaning and groaning about the lengh of time it was taking to download the update, again I would say it was their problem not FD's, I downloaded the update in 10min.
 

Madbeard

M
My PC eats the amount of GB you use in like half a day. You called your buddy's internet crappy but so is yours. You really need to change ISP buddy.
 

MADmanOne

MADmanOne
Took me 3 minutes yesterday to load the patch. Elite is one of the smallest games I have, many other games needed ten times the amount of hard disk space which Elite takes. And the Patches are also quite small, the most time is spend for comparing which file to load and which not. So it seems to me at least.

And if you are using a stone age internet connection you cannot blame others for that, times have changed and games get bigger because of more details. YOu cannot expect the same download sizes than for 8-bit Gameboy images. Change your ISP.
 
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Tazcada

Tazcada
%OnePercent% said:
How much are you paying per month for only 20 gigs? I have a feeling you are getting ripped off.
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My choices for an ISP are quite limited where I live... It's the provider I use now or satellite. And while neither is great, Satellite internet does not work for online gaming.... as for what I pay: 39.95 Canadian gets me 20GB of bandwidth. Not sure if my ISP throttles connections... I rather doubt it, as they are a very small outfit... probably has more to do with the fact they connect to the web by microwave towers designed for voice 30 years ago.And the bandwidth cap I have has more to do with the fact that my ISP has to buy it's bandwidth from another company to connect to the web.

My issue was and is: Why is there not an offline installer for huge updates for those of us with crappy internet and/or bandwidth caps? That way, we could bring it home, and just copy over our existing install. That's the question I'd like answered. It's not a question of "blame". And considering how long I've been in this industry (probably before many of you were even born) and have watched programming go from tight code to unwieldy (as in the case of the ESO update, which is one of the reasons I uninstalled that) and huge blocks of code. Just because you have all this ram, processing power and, above all, space doesn't mean you have to write sloppy code.
.
Of course, that may have changed. I wouldn't know, since I haven't programmed in years.

And I'm happy for you if you.live in an area with decent internet... probably in some major city somewhere. Many people do not. I fall in that category. And I'd still like to not have to be connected via a launcher to do something as mundane as an update.
 
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Mikey2305

Mikey2305
Both of todays patches have uploaded in a couple of minutes, 1.2 in just over an hour. I would settle for that. As many have said here and elsewhere, check your own end before blaming FD for everything including the price of biscuits...
 

Tazcada

Tazcada
metatheurgist said:
The game code is slim, this is Frontier after all. It's mostly assets you're downloading, you know enough to procedurally create an entire galaxy and fill it with 25+ ships. The DL for Star Citizen was 16GB and that's not even half-baked. You can just copy the files over from another source, that will work.
Click to expand...

And thank you metatheurgist for your succinct answer. It's still a 4 hour download for the patch in town, but that'll save me from packing my tower up and hauling it to town.
 

SpartanBeef

SpartanBeef
Just out of interest, what do you mean by an offline installer? surely it would have to be downloaded at some point, unless FD sent it to you via CD? Do you mean a method of downloading and installing seperately or am I just missing the point entirely. I probably am aren't I...:(
 

Zplintz

Zplintz
No problem with the time it takes to download (some just minutes and others longer, especially at peak times), not do I have an issue with the amount of data that we are receiving.

SpartanBeef said:
Just out of interest, what do you mean by an offline installer? surely it would have to be downloaded at some point, unless FD sent it to you via CD? Do you mean a method of downloading and installing seperately or am I just missing the point entirely. I probably am aren't I...:(
Click to expand...

I think you are probably not missing the point, but hit the nail on the head and blew an argument out of the wat....er....out of space...

There is no such thing as a game with an offline installer that doesn't come on disc or usb stick. Would anyone really be happy if FD only did patches or updates once per month to save downloads or sent out (and charged) for DVDs for each update? Of course not.

This is the age of downloads, less paper, less DVDs and frequent updates. Time to up the download limit to cope with current demands.
 
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Armour

A
I'm guessing the actual differences betwen patch binaries is minimal, so you would think some kind of delta file and a set of hashes would be all that is required.
 

Flimley

Flimley
Patches. Bla bla bla patches. And patches with more patches. All patches and no patches makes jack a dull patch.
 
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