A Review to Frontiers Elite Dangerous Client and its "nice" Download Rates

[Diamondh3art]

I never before expirienced such a mess of a download Rate in ANY Client there is out there.
To be Fair most Clients cant handel Downloads really well, but it never has been that ing bad.
I downloaded the "Game" [Steam (20.2 GB on Drive)] in like 10 Minutes and then i have to download the none Legacy Horizon Version in the Frontier Elite Dangereous Client and the Downloadspeeds are so bad im still not even half way trough after like 3 Hours of Download.

It's not a Problem with my Bandwith its a Problem with the Download Server/ Host. "See Screenshots below."
Why the is the Default Download the Legacy Version of the Game and not the "standard" Horizon Base Game????

You should be ashamed of this Frontier.
If i hadent passed my 3 Hours of "Playtime" (Downloadtime in the Client) already i would instantly refund the Game on Steam.

 

[GroG79]

Pointing fingers without proof of a problem is not a very polite thing to do.
The launcher is not even downloading at the moment of the screenshot. My guess is that the luanhcer is stuck verifying your files.

If you are upset over the downloading of legacy first...
Let me just walk away here.....

 

[Draike]

Have a look here i just recently downloaded the game after a long time, see my experience below... there is a solution in there to the issue as well. Launcher is pretty much dog poop at this point :/

ED Launcher

I have been playing ED off and on since alpha... I decided to install ED and play again a few days ago.. I started installing the game... Now here we are 3 days later after wrestling with ED launcher for HOURS and reading topic upon topic about the same issues with the launcher on REDDIT and...

forums.frontier.co.uk

 

[Ashnak]

Launcher is pretty much dog poop at this point

Which is not something you can lay at the door of FD. Not entirely at least. The Launcher is essentially a Microsoft Internet Explorer window. You read that right - Internet Explorer. Which was well alive and kicking at the time the game was released.
However, during the last 5 years, MS has decided to gradually retire IE - and has completed this task sometime autumn last year. Since then, there is no more IE available. At all. Anything that calls up an IE link through Windows is handed an Edge Instance in IE compatibility mode. And those compatibility crutches are like dancing bears - the amazing thing is not that they are bad at it, the amazing thing is that they work at all.

Sure, FD could have (or could now) re-write the game and the Launcher to use another browser. Question here is, though - how high should they priorize changing something that basically works and is needed maybe four times in a year compared to fixing things that definitely do not work and crop up in every game session?

 

[Bravo17]

Just because you have a fast internet connection to a nearby host doesn't mean that that your provider has an available fast connection to every other host on the planet. There could be an overloaded or faulty router on the way to the download servers that FD have absolutely no control over, so blaming them for this issue without any other evidence is hardly fair.

I recently downloaded ED to a different computer and got pretty much the same download speed through the launcher as I did through Steam, so it wouldn't seem to be entirely the launchers fault that your download was slow.

 

[GraphiteGB]

Open task manager and youll likely see microsoft OS protection programs also going nuts...

IE11 back end clients that download content have a very very high chance of triggering windows OS defence programs...
File verification and other things fight it out with the launcher.EXE download...
When you get lucky and it does not trigger its stupidly way faster downloads...
With 4.0 releases these became Fdev direct only updates from amazon AWS servers with the core being Ireland AWS based only which is then cloned to other locations after later...
steam and epic games will only update 3.8 and the launcher... the 4.0 updates are fdev only now this has stopped steam and epic from doing any upgades sharing as 3.8 is mostly dead its all on Ireland AWS to handle every update now...
with window 7 dumped it only needs windows 8 to also be dumped and this IE 11 launched can be dumped...
Then new updaters that use windows 10 and 11 shared code base can be released that won't panic Windows OS...
May see an Open Source Bittorrent updater client version...

 

[Fixitman]

This is just more old code that will never be updated. Might as well get used to it, the game is full of the same.

 

[Bravo17]

With 4.0 releases these became Fdev direct only updates from amazon AWS servers with the core being Ireland AWS based only which is then cloned to other locations after later...
steam and epic games will only update 3.8 and the launcher... the 4.0 updates are fdev only now this has stopped steam and epic from doing any upgades sharing as 3.8 is mostly dead its all on Ireland AWS to handle every update now...

Are you sure that this is accurate? Because I see a HUGE difference in the download sizes between the Steam and Epic versions - which I wouldn't expect if this were the case.

Also the updates seemed to be done through the Steam and Epic launchers, rather than the ED one?

Might be the case for Horizons only installs I guess since I have OD on both Steam and Epic installs.

 

[MickyG1982]

Interesting, i just did a reinstall fromsteam onto an external hard drive & everything downloaded in one go without dowwnloading anything else inside the client.

 

[GraphiteGB]

Are you sure that this is accurate? Because I see a HUGE difference in the download sizes between the Steam and Epic versions - which I wouldn't expect if this were the case.

Also the updates seemed to be done through the Steam and Epic launchers, rather than the ED one?

Might be the case for Horizons only installs I guess since I have OD on both Steam and Epic installs.

4.0 is never updated via steam or epic. its only 3.8 content and 3.8 is now dead since the galaxy split in november...
Legacy is 3.8 only and 3.8 is all steam and epic can update ...
live is 4.0 fdev direct only updates....
steam and epic never get given 4.0 content ever. 4.0 update is only via fdev launcher and thats only from amazon aws which fdev contract for the game servers...
Every time you boot the steam of epic version and 4.0/live has an update it will never run a 4.0 update, you will all ways have to open launcher and press the update manual button in the launcher which is going to get the download direct from fdev only...

 

[Ned Flandalorian]

That's completely wrong. Neither my steam nor epic copies have ever needed to download anything through the frontier launcher due to the storefronts taking care of updating all the content, including 4.0.

 

[Shadowsnog]

I never before expirienced such a mess of a download Rate in ANY Client there is out there.

im guessing you never played star wars the old republic ^^

 

[Crank Larson]

There's a lot of misinformation in this thread. Beware.

 

[DrinkyBird]

4.0 is never updated via steam or epic. its only 3.8 content and 3.8 is now dead since the galaxy split in november...
Legacy is 3.8 only and 3.8 is all steam and epic can update ...
live is 4.0 fdev direct only updates....
steam and epic never get given 4.0 content ever. 4.0 update is only via fdev launcher and thats only from amazon aws which fdev contract for the game servers...
Every time you boot the steam of epic version and 4.0/live has an update it will never run a 4.0 update you will all ways have to open launcher and press the update manual button in the launcher which is going to get the down load direct from fdev only...

You can download 4.0 from Steam/Epic - but only if you own Odyssey.

 

[GraphiteGB]

You can download 4.0 from Steam/Epic - but only if you own Odyssey.

no you have to open the launcher and click the big install button.. Steam and epic only allow you to buy the access token to add to your account ...
The fdev launcher will still show install and select install and that install is direct from fdev only.. only 3.8 is direct of steam servers...
All 4.0 content update is optional installs via the launcher...

 

[DrinkyBird]

no you have to open the launcher and click the big install button.. Steam and epic only allow you to buy the access token to add to your account ...
The fdev launcher will still show install and select install and that install is direct from fdev only.. only 3.8 is direct of steam servers...
All 4.0 content is optional installs via the launcher...

No.

 

[GraphiteGB]

That's completely wrong. Neither my steam nor epic copies have ever needed to download anything through the frontier launcher due to the storefronts taking care of updating all the content, including 4.0.

All the updates require you hit that BIG update button in the launcher for 4.0 content.

 

[MickyG1982]

All the updates require you hit that BIG update button in the launcher for 4.0 content.

Nope, I'm with ned on this one, never have I had to download anything via the client. I installed again (after time away playing other things) on a laptop that had been subject to a full reset since I last played, on a drive the game has never been installed to before via steam & every version of the game was present & correct in the launcher without having to install anything else via the launcher.

This has been the same situation for every version I've owned of the game since the OG ED install. The only exception was when I installed any of the betas, they had to be (as far as I can remember) downloaded via the launcher.

I will however concede that I didn't sit & watch the entire install process so it might well be the case that Steam installs the base game & then schedules its own update for all the rest. That might be the cause of some confusion.

 

[GraphiteGB]

@Diamondh3art
when using the Manual launcher update watch for the windows anti malware services section and others in task manager to cripple the CPU use added to the launcher.EXE and slow down your read and write speeds... I dont know how to kill that task yet but its normal very clear windows anti malware services section will go nuts...
Edit =To speed it up you can add the install folder location to exceptions list..

What is Antimalware Service Executable? Why is it High CPU Disk Usage?

Antimalware service executable is a component of Windows Security that runs in the background. But sometimes antimalware service executable can impact Windows 10 computers negatively by using too much CPU. In this guide, I will show you what antimalw...

www.freecodecamp.org

 

[Ozric]

I think you're going to need to start providing citations for these claims if you want to carry on in this way.