Suggestion for improving download experience

[l33ch]

Hi,

Suggestions:

* Make the launcher's downloader retry in the event of failure. (i.e. Rather than giving a "Exception downloading file, possible network failure: The operation has timed out." modal dialog, just provide a modeless warning and drop and restart the network connection when this condition is detected all the while the launcher process is running.)

* Provide a background downloader. (So that updates are downloaded in the background when my PC is running without me having to run the launcher and click "Update".)

* Stagger client updates. (i.e. Publish client updates a couple of days before the corresponding server update. This would allow people to play with existing clients for a couple of days while the upgrade is downloading in the background. When the server is updated, the launcher can detect this and switch to the most recently downloaded client (or force a download at this point).)

Rationale:

I've been unable to play for 4 days now, because I can't keep up with the updates. I'm on a slow connection, and even when I leave the launcher updating overnight, I invariably find a "Exception downloading file, possible network failure: The operation has timed out." error in the morning with little progress made. All I do when I see this, is close the dialog and click "Upgrade" again and the download restarts immediately; if I can do this, then the launcher can do it for me (when I'm sound asleep). It would also be nice to have a couple of days to get a head start on upgrades before the server refuses to let me play: I wanted to show someone the game on Sunday, but because I'd not played for a while, I faced a 20+ hour download before I could do this; when I eventually got that upgrade installed, another one was released on Tuesday, and I'm still downloading that now...

Cheers,
- Lee

 

[RallyPoint]

Just a means of picking up where you left off would be huge. The "all or nothing" method really sucks for those with slow or unstable connections.

 

[l33ch]

Just a means of picking up where you left off would be huge. The "all or nothing" method really sucks for those with slow or unstable connections.

I believe it already supports this: I can certainly quit and restart the launcher and it will pick up roughly from where it left off. I guess it might rollback to the last completely downloaded file, but I've not found this to be a problem.

Getting it to keep on trying regardless (fire and forget) rather than aborting with timed-out exceptions should be relatively simple to implement, though.