328MB again?

[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.