328MB again?

[AngryNixon]

Guys, the patch is 328 MB so that folks that just installed the game don't have to run though multiple patches to be able to play.

I just reinstalled windows on one of my PCs, when I was installing the patch last night on that computer, I was thanking SE for taking the approach they did.

Again, and I could be wrong, are people in your situation the majority? It could be that a tiny fraction need to fully reinstall all the patches, another small minority lie anywhere in between (in that case they're still worse off because they don't need the whole thing either), and the rest of us are up to date as the new patches come. For most people reinstalling everything is a complete waste.

[Cutriss]

Again, and I could be wrong, are people in your situation the majority? It could be that a tiny fraction need to fully reinstall all the patches, another small minority lie anywhere in between (in that case they're still worse off because they don't need the whole thing either), and the rest of us are up to date as the new patches come. For most people reinstalling everything is a complete waste.

Agreed. The needs of the many, etc. If you have to redownload patches, you're already looking at several gigs of transfer. A few hundred more won't break you.

With current numbers, there might be 10 people a day that are fully patching. Versus several thousand that are downloading data they don't need.

[Viridiana]

Could always compromise: patcher only downloads new info, but the most recent "complete" patch is up on Lodestone for returning players and fresh installs.

[viion]

What is the difference between

New person downloading 360mb
or new person downloading 300 then 30 then 30?

NOTHING same amount, same time, so this whole "its for the new people" argument is stupidly invalid because they're still going to be downloading the same amount regardless of how its done. Only WE have to keep redownloading.

[Mieck]

I recognise the convenience of BitTorrent for the developer - it's saving them a ton on update servers. But there are ISPs out there in the world that throttle BitTorrent traffice (specifically this traffic as opposed to other internet traffic) at peak times.

Now, I know there are answers - download during the day. Get another ISP, etc etc.
I don't think those are decisions I should have to make just because my ISP decides to can one type of traffic between 5pm and 1am.
I'm currently downloading all 300+ meg (as has been already pointed out, I have 99.9% of this data already), at a snail-like 5.2kb/s (1.9% currently done, and has been going for about ten minutes so far). The client currently estimates a whopping seven hours, ten minutes to complete this. If this was a download only for the data I required, I'd be fine with it.

[Viridiana]

What is the difference between

New person downloading 360mb
or new person downloading 300 then 30 then 30?

NOTHING same amount, same time, so this whole "its for the new people" argument is stupidly invalid because they're still going to be downloading the same amount regardless of how its done. Only WE have to keep redownloading.

As far as download time, you're right. Problem is that it would likely look more like: Download 300 MB, install, check version, dowload 30 MB, install, check version, download 30 MB, install.

[Warlyx]

if the updater didnt suck......300m is a blink........but since the updater takes hours ............

[Jennestia]

so this whole "its for the new people" argument is stupidly invalid

You seem to love considering logic invalid. In theory it's the "same amount and same amount of time" but think about the PS3 and new PC users who join today or when the PS3 version is released -- given the the time of disk pressing for the PS3 they'll have to download a year or so worth of updates...or they can just download the initial patch and the latest patch skipping the year worth of updates.

[Chrees]

What I don't understand is why they don't have multiple files for multiple upgrade paths. For new players or people who are reinstalling the game? Great, the system they have now is awesome! When I had to reformat last week, I was thankful to only have to download a few patches (even though viion brings up a good point; current players downloading 300 + 30 + 30 MB is still the same as new players downloading 360 MB total).

But why not have separate patch files for current players that are 5-30 MB in size? The patcher could just run a quick check to see what version you're currently on and download the appropriate patch. I'm no professional programmer, but a lot of other games do this. Surely it can't be too hard. For example (and I'm completely making these values up):

Current player:

1.16 - 300 MB
1.16a - 10 MB
1.16b - 5 MB (Milestone)

1.17 - 300 MB
1.17a - 20 MB
1.17b - 10 MB
1.17c - 5 MB (Milestone)

1.18 - 1 GB
1.18a - 50 MB
1.18b 10 MB (Milestone)

New player:

1.16 - 315 MB
1.17 - 335 MB
1.18 - 1.06 GB

As you can see, the new player model works almost exactly as we have it now, except that they've been compressing patch data from when Yoshi-P took over into this same patch we've been downloading since January. In the current player model, players only download what's changed (and yes, we've debunked the "in order to even change something small, they have to edit one large .dat file, hence the 300+ MB patches" theory), thereby saving everyone in the process bandwidth.

[Jaide]

My internet gets cut off whenever I use bit torrent, so I get about 1 percent of this download every five minutes while my cable modem searches for the signal again. Not only does forcing me to re-download 300MB worth of data waste an hour plus of my time - it also prevents anyone in my house from being able to use the internet. At least other games that use bit torrent in their patch client allow you to shut off peer connections.

Also I fail to understand how forcing everyone to re-download everything is a convenience for new players. They still have to download the same amount of data and the client can be made to check the version after each patch and start downloading the next one automatically. Other games have done it so why can't FFXIV? The new user would simply start the patch and walk away until it's done in both cases.