Update Congestion

Problem is not all of us are on the PC. I'm using XBOX.

I thought I was in the clear but it stopped and restarted after I got to 1217 files. Now patch.txt is giving trouble again.

How is it even possible for this to be such an issue? It's an embarrasment to everyone concerned, not least of all us for playing a game that is obviously so badly supported. I've not actually managed to download a single file yet.

I've got an image in my head of a single overworked server from the mid 1990s in the centre of a completely chaotic scene; SE's four FFXI employees are screaming and running around with their hands over their eyes, tripping over cat5 cables and colliding with metre high stacks of 720k floppy disks as magnetic tape spools whirr furiously overhead and literally kilobytes of data are transferred per second through a single, overworked ISDN line. In the corner a small twitching man flails hopelessly with a telephone switchboard-type construct, desperately trying to plug each FFXI user into a new port for every file they attempt to download.

Don't be angry if your download cuts out half way through. Think of the poor file switchboard man.

Ok, now I'm getting peeved, I have limited time to play each day & now by the time I update, if at all today, it will be too late, it's already nearly 6pm here in the UK.
As a disabled person the one joy I have in life, sad as it may seem, are my jobs & friends in FFXI so thanks SE, you really made my day & sure know how to build confidence in your products, FFIV ? You have got to be kidding, once bitten etc . . .
Interesting to note that they have not updated the 'Latest News' section of the official SE website since 13.20GMT [1.20pm] over 4 hours ago & that the 'Live Vana'diel' feed is not available either, just what is going on here ?

What really gets my goat is that the new update has absolutely nothing of any interest to me or anyone that I usually play with on my LS, good job SE, good job . . .

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Originally Posted by Dazusu

Been like this since 2003. What makes you think they're going to do something about it now?

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Because I'm an eternal optimist? Actually, I'm usually quite the cynic. But, even if I don't think something will change, it doesn't mean I won't say anything.

Well I'm down to 588 files to go on my second machine now doing the SE download.
So I should hopefully make it in for 7-pm UK time. Nothing going wrong from now.

That download is confusing me that a few people are referring to.
I downloaded it. And it says on the site "Drag the contents of the zip into C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix"
Well the contents of the zip is a folder called strangely enough FINAL FANTASY XI.
Which surprise surprise, I already have a folder with the same name in my \SquareEnix folder.

So I am being told to basically overwrite my 10.4GB folder with the downloaded one containing 1509 files totaling 844MB guys?
You must think I was born yesterday :/
What are the actual proper instructions with what to do with this download please?

Finally got past the checking version screen, now locked at 3% preparing update.......omg this is like years ago.

I'm pretty sure if you ask it to be overwritten, it keeps the older files in it, it just adds the newer files...

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Originally Posted by Komori

I'm pretty sure if you ask it to be overwritten, it keeps the older files in it, it just adds the newer files...

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Yes thank you.
Finally read a bit further in the topic on the site with the download and some other doofus like me asked the same question.
Just dropped the folder straight from winzip onto the SquareEnix folder and it merged them.

Now to get it to do the file check.
This is going to be the good bit. Can't get in for love nor money :/

*edit*
yes cheers whoever posted the update download link.
2 mins after finally getting it to do the file check, I'm in ^^

This better be good SE.
I want 1000 free Traverser Stones for this. I mean it :mad:

Honestly I'm not sure how some people are supposed to update this, not everyone has 8 hours to sit at their PC/Xbox/PS2 waiting for an update, some people only have hours a day, leaving your platform on for hours on end while your at work or sleeping isn't necessarily a good idea (I'm one to talk -_- my PC hasn't been off for more than a hour or 2 in like 4 months...) and the magical errors that pop up half way through cant be stopped, all in all very sad for some people who are hit badly by this.

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Originally Posted by Frankbrodie

Yes thank you.
Finally read a bit further in the topic on the site with the download and some other doofus like me asked the same question.
Just dropped the folder straight from winzip onto the SquareEnix folder and it merged them.

Now to get it to do the file check.
This is going to be the good bit. Can't get in for love nor money :/

*edit*
yes cheers whoever posted the update download link.
2 mins after finally getting it to do the file check, I'm in ^^

This better be good SE.
I want 1000 free Traverser Stones for this. I mean it :mad:

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*Hands you 1000 Trav stones* Not like I need em, have thousands sittin there... really wish I could make a Azure Traverser Stone, that gives me unlimited time/don't have to zone to add time...

Finally, I'm at like 200 files left (82%), I started trying to update at 5 or 6 AM, it's 2 PM now.

finally finished updating and am logged in.

What is even funnier about how long this one is taking me (4hrs so far)... once I eventually finish on my pc, I still need to update on my wife's pc and then my xbox /sigh.

It's really been a long time since an update had this many issues for me so I'm not really complaining much but it is indeed painfully funny.

Finally got to the installing files! Oh happy days, gonna fix food while it's on this last leg.

For anyone who's been lucky enough to get the update by now, are you experiencing any in-game lag? After almost 8 hours I finally managed to get the update downloaded and installed, but now FFXI is running unusually slow for me. I'm trying to figure out if it's an issue with my ISP or if it's due to the number of people attempting to update their game.

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Originally Posted by jesterx

SE get a clue .. all you had to do is distribute a file like the one so kindly linked to in the above.. and 90% of PC would be done by now.. relieving the congestion for console updates..

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Or they can continue doing what they do, by doing nothing and letting the congestion sort itself out in a couple days of users fighting to get it finished.

Remember that this game has hardly a budget. Everything runs under SE Account now and they couldn't even be bothered to slim down the POL viewer to make it faster to launch into FFXI for instance.

Instead of things improving over time, SE has mastered the art of screwing up things that were'nt broken (kinda).

Why keep making updates that are so huge they take 12hrs and cause congestion for 2-3 days? WAKE UP!!!

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Originally Posted by Gropitou

Instead of things improving over time, SE has mastered the art of screwing up things that were'nt broken (kinda).

Why keep making updates that are so huge they take 12hrs and cause congestion for 2-3 days? WAKE UP!!!

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I wouldn't call 88 mb huge.

It's funny that the two people you are worshiping are the two people who created the top two bots for HNM lol

No lag for me. But only 650 people have been able to get on and it's 4:30 PM lol

Well I just downloaded it took 5 min to download. I downloaded it at 1:30pm PST. I see you guys were having like problems at 4 AM PST, do you really got to play FFXI that early in the morning when like all the JP players are trying to download it? There is the problem.

Maybe that was the problem in the morning, but people are still having trouble at 12~5 in the afternoon.

I think it's worth mentioning that getting them files from a third-party might not be as safe as people make it seem (you know the internet, malicious stuff lurks everywhere!). I certainly would not recommend it to someone not knowing anything about what they're doing.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but strictly speaking it probably is a violation of the User Agreement et al., to distribute the game files like that (can't remember fer sure, and I'm not going to check right now), and same goes for 'DAT mining'. Sure, it's been going on for ages and seems like SqEX doesn't care, but it's worth acknowledging, methinks.

Then again, I'm also very paranoid when it comes to account security and such, which is one reason to never using them cheats. That, and preferring to play myself and by them rules. ^^;

Just my opinion, of course~


For those like me with multiple PCs (or other systems), it can indeed be handy to find all the tmp2 files. You would also want to preserve the directories (can't remember how to do that in windoze, but it's very easy to do on Linux (SPONsor!)).

Though as I mentioned before, for me example, it doesn't really speed up the process since any system would get 0-30~ KiB/s which is rather ridonkulous (this is what I always get, congestion or no congestion).


Any ways...

Congestion should be done fer now. I was excited about making many AF+1, especially since it took somewhere around 10 runs to get one certain item, but after logging in, I noticed I must have given the OTHER item to the goblin whose box gives absolutely nothing useful ever, remembering the item was for another job...

Oh well, seeing Sagheera is M.I.A. for a time, it's not even an issue. ^^;


/etc/init.d/blabber stop

Play safe,
Cake tare~

Why do people come on here blaming the users when the problem is obviously on SE's end? I was still getting a few POL errors more than 12 hours after the maintenance ended even after using the download from blugartr. Also, "early in the morning" doesn't apply to everyone the same as it does you. For some that is their playtime whether due to their schedule or their time zone.

I don't get how anyone can defend SE on this and blame the users. Even if you didn't have problems downloading, wouldn't you still be for any improvements that can be made? Do you really think the same people that design your in-game content are the ones who'd be working on improving the update system? Do you really think SE would be financially ruined if they put resources toward this?

the congestion is indeed an issue SE has yet to address, they could easily fix it on the PC by making it a torrent, and allowing users to share it, or they could change POL Viewer to have a Torrent client in it to relieve congestion(you being able to control the bandwidth of course) also giving you the choice to save the updates for later use in case you need to reinstall, I'm sure there are solutions that could be done, I just think SE has no intention, very little about what they are planning for the future of XI is worth getting excited about at the moment

wildsprite,

I think they're avoiding doing anything with the POL viewer (other than stripping features off of it, that is). It is understandable, thinking how much work it would likely be!

As for “Torrent client in it to relieve congestion(you being able to control the bandwidth of course)”, can you do that with FFXIV? If you don't know, the answer is: no, you have no control over it at all what comes to the regular GUI/options which is why I mentioned most people probably use a third-party torrent software for it.

That might tell something about that. xd

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Originally Posted by wildsprite

the congestion is indeed an issue SE has yet to address, they could easily fix it on the PC by making it a torrent, and allowing users to share it, or they could change POL Viewer to have a Torrent client in it to relieve congestion(you being able to control the bandwidth of course)

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It'd work on PCs, but it'd probably never pass muster on consoles. PS2 probably couldn't handle the multitasking (meaning that it'd only seed the torrent while in POV itself), and Microsoft doesn't even let software open port 80.

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Originally Posted by Dragoy

As for “Torrent client in it to relieve congestion(you being able to control the bandwidth of course)”, can you do that with FFXIV? If you don't know, the answer is: no(.)

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The XIV update is P2P. I don't know if it's BitTorrent proper under the hood, but players do seed updates to other players while downloading themselves.

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Originally Posted by Ziyyigo-Tipyigo

The XIV update is P2P. I don't know if it's BitTorrent proper under the hood, but players do seed updates to other players while downloading themselves.

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Yeah, with no controls whatsoever on the speeds. One might want to limit the downstream not to mention upstream, which can be a lot smaller in comparison (for example I have a 8/1Mbit connection; tiny upload rates are still quite common here) but of course, other software exists that can be used for throttling.


On another note, this time around was the first time I looked more into the update process as it was going on. From the looks of it, it downloads a single compressed file, and then makes it uncompressed in its designated location, then downloads the next file.
This is probably why it needs to re-check the files every time the update is interrupted (as if it doesn't know where it left off). Re-downloading the patch-info is probably a kind of a fail-safe.

I'm not quite sure why they would opt for downloading single files instead of one package, which would then be uncompressed at once, and the files implemented to the installation.

IF they were to patch the files as soon as they are downloaded and uncompressed, then this would allow for less space required for the update all in all (the uncompressed file-size for this particular update is a bit over 840MiB). Since it patches the files only after everything is downloaded and uncompressed, this is not what is happening (I can not tell if it does on the consoles, though?).

Perhaps they could not implement any other kind of a resume feature (e.g., the download would have to start from 0 were it to be interrupted at any point when using one single file).


I'd guess it is what it is more than likely due to the PS2.
That is if I'm understanding it all right anyways...

XIV uses normal torrent files for its updates at any rate, so you can just throw a proper torrent client at it to maintain connection sanity, which I needed since all XIV's client likes to do is max out my upstream and download at dial-up speeds.

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Originally Posted by Jerbob

How is it even possible for this to be such an issue? It's an embarrasment to everyone concerned, not least of all us for playing a game that is obviously so badly supported. I've not actually managed to download a single file yet.

I've got an image in my head of a single overworked server from the mid 1990s in the centre of a completely chaotic scene; SE's four FFXI employees are screaming and running around with their hands over their eyes, tripping over cat5 cables and colliding with metre high stacks of 720k floppy disks as magnetic tape spools whirr furiously overhead and literally kilobytes of data are transferred per second through a single, overworked ISDN line. In the corner a small twitching man flails hopelessly with a telephone switchboard-type construct, desperately trying to plug each FFXI user into a new port for every file they attempt to download.

Don't be angry if your download cuts out half way through. Think of the poor file switchboard man.

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You're wrong, an ISDN would just queue us getting rid of the 1160 error.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Frankbrodie

Well I'm down to 588 files to go on my second machine now doing the SE download.
So I should hopefully make it in for 7-pm UK time. Nothing going wrong from now.

That download is confusing me that a few people are referring to.
I downloaded it. And it says on the site "Drag the contents of the zip into C:\Program Files (x86)\PlayOnline\SquareEnix"
Well the contents of the zip is a folder called strangely enough FINAL FANTASY XI.
Which surprise surprise, I already have a folder with the same name in my \SquareEnix folder.

So I am being told to basically overwrite my 10.4GB folder with the downloaded one containing 1509 files totaling 844MB guys?
You must think I was born yesterday :/
What are the actual proper instructions with what to do with this download please?

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One action, merge all.

Was anyone else amused by the annoucement that the problem had been "resolved" (i.e. most people had finished the download) and the subtle implication that they'd actually fixed something?

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Originally Posted by Juilan

You're wrong, an ISDN would just queue us getting rid of the 1160 error.

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That really wasn't the point! :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jerbob

Was anyone else amused by the announcement that the problem had been "resolved" (i.e. most people had finished the download) and the subtle implication that they'd actually fixed something?

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Then they'll hope we forget about it till next update when the exact same thing happens all over again.