[Patcher] A few things for SE to consider

[Soukyuu]

The biggest problem about the patcher is that the devs seem to not understand they are crippling it themselves. I think someone thought it would be smart to offload some bandwidth usage to the users, but what they didn't think of is that once someone finishes downloading, s/he drops out of the swarm.
Torrents live from big swarms, so giving people the option to seed after finishing downloading would increase speeds for everyone.

Another problem is that on ADSL (~90% of people in Europe), using unlimited upload speeds as it does now, clogs the whole line, because there is no bandwidth left for sending ACK-packets - download speed falls. Simply doing a speed test and setting the upload @70% of the total would be completely sufficient. Just don't forget to save the test results and not waste our time on every boot.

Then there are people who can not use torrent because of ISP blocking or throttling P2P traffic. If you go as far as to forbid hosting patches ourselves, (which is pretty stupid imho, since it costs you nothing) then at least host the files yourself.
Of course, people still continue to host those files anyway... for those who find them it's a way out, but many don't even know manual patching is possible. Those players are essentially lost as customers, SE.

Yes, there is another thread about this issue, but it's already derailed

edit: adding other points mentioned in the thread (to summarize)

Allowing other torrent clients into the official swarm would be great too. SE seems to forget that there is no way to smuggle modified data into a torrent swarm. So there is definitely no harm in allowing us to use our own torrent clients. (Cutriss)

Introducing incremental updates. There is no reason having to re-download all the files if only a few of them were actually modified (Renshi)

edit2: another point:
You could fix 2 problems by making the patcher a hybrid; meaning providing the patch via http and torrent. That's how Blizzard does it and it works quite fine. That way people who can't use torrents will be able to at least leech via http, albeit slower, and there will be less load on your servers.

Additionally, you should give us an option to seed after finishing the download, reducing the load on your servers even further.

edit3: Something else that should be in a patcher is a possibility to run a filecheck and fix any damaged files. The implementation is simple, you host a checksum file on your server that lists all the correct md5 hashes for the latest version of each file. This file is downloaded by the client when the user clicks "filecheck" and then feed this list to your md5 checker. If a hash mismatch occurs, the patcher downloads this file from the server and runs the check again.

[Cutriss]

Yes, there is another thread about this issue, but it's already derailed

And what makes you think she won't post here?

Anyway, I just downloaded all the patches yesterday in uTorrent and I'm seeding them via PEX/DHT. If SE would allow non-XIV clients to legitimately acquire the patches, then I think the problem would partially sort itself out. I mean, the client is still pretty bad, but at least you can let users fix their own problems rather than stopping them upfront. It's not like you're preventing malfeasance by blocking other torrent clients.

[Soukyuu]

And what makes you think she won't post here?

Nothing. But if i was to post these suggestions in that thread, it would just go largely unnoticed. The other thread also just gives an example of patcher not working, no suggestions on how to fix it.

And yes, allowing other torrent clients into the official swarm would be great too. SE seems to forget that there is no way to smuggle modified data into a torrent swarm. So there is definitely no harm in allowing us to use our torrent clients.

Still, that doesn't solve the problem for people who can't use torrent period.

[Renshi]

Heya!

Adding on what Soukyuu said, if this has been voiced as truth, I would vote for a system where you can only download a little of the entire patch, and not the total content.
I bet that in a future the patches will reach the Gig, so always downloading the same packet of gigs every time a patch comes out is really counterproductive.

I just wanted to point that, even if the rumors about the patches being re-downloaded is false. Even if I know that they'll sort it out, I think it's better ask for it than remaining silent =)

[darkstarpoet1]

i can completely agree with renshi. to me one of the biggest problems with the patch is that each patch should not have to be the entire patch. in alot of the games i have played they do a version check and only download the new files that are different than what you have.

[Cutriss]

Adding on what Soukyuu said, if this has been voiced as truth, I would vote for a system where you can only download a little of the entire patch, and not the total content.
I bet that in a future the patches will reach the Gig, so always downloading the same packet of gigs every time a patch comes out is really counterproductive.

It only started in April, so I truly think it's just an oversight on someone's part.

I just wanted to point that, even if the rumors about the patches being re-downloaded is false. Even if I know that they'll sort it out, I think it's better ask for it than remaining silent =)

I think I proved quite conclusively that the patch contains redundant data in the other thread. You can check yourself right now. Search the entire XIV folder for any files modified on or after the patch date. The total size of all affected files is only 27 MB.

[Soukyuu]

Heya!

Adding on what Soukyuu said, if this has been voiced as truth, I would vote for a system where you can only download a little of the entire patch, and not the total content.
I bet that in a future the patches will reach the Gig, so always downloading the same packet of gigs every time a patch comes out is really counterproductive.

I just wanted to point that, even if the rumors about the patches being re-downloaded is false. Even if I know that they'll sort it out, I think it's better ask for it than remaining silent =)

Do you mean incremental updates? I thought they were already incremental already, if they are not (i didn't check it myself), then it's another point to add to the list.

[Cutriss]

Do you mean incremental updates? I thought they were already incremental already, if they are not (i didn't check it myself), then it's another point to add to the list.

It was until April. Since April, the updates have included a lot of extra data that isn't updating anything. All the patches have been approximately 320 MB.

[Soukyuu]

Yay for bandwidth wastage. -_-

[Soukyuu]

With 1.18 coming out today, I can imagine a lot of people either being frustrated or getting the patch elsewhere.