Migration to PlayStation®4 Version Patch System

[TalithaSolarien]

Great news for PS players.

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

[Kurando]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

Really cause any game I've played on console that required a large download was only limited by the speed of my internet... which is the current situation anyway by doing downloads via the FFXIV launcher.

Being able to set auto downloads is much more useful for me (and maybe others too) and will help a lot to avoid situations in the past when downloads would experience errors in the launcher, forcing players to restart the download. I know it was annoying to deal with when the Shirogane housing first came, was hell trying to download everything because of damn errors.

[Thamorian]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

What are you basing this off of? Why do you think a patcher is bad for larger games?

[TalithaSolarien]

What are you basing this off of? Why do you think a patcher is bad for larger games?

From my personal experience with large games like TESO (which is in the same ballpark figure like FF14 sizewise) or Overwatch. The speed of your internet connection really doesn't matter very much here as the most part is spent checking the existing file and then reassembling them. This will take some time. Smaller patches for TESO (which were 200-300 MB) took 30-90 minutes, depending on if the console was in rest mode or in use (using the console for anything else while downloading/installing a patch will drastically slow down the patch process. Larger patches took from 1 hour (rest mode) to 4 hours (console online).

One other caveat regarding Auto Download: in rest mode the console will only check once every 24 hours at a random point in time if there is an update available. It's not guaranteed that putting the console to sleep means that it had picked up an update a few hours later.

[silverlunarfox]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

The size of most their patches hovers around 1gb. I've downloaded patches of this size before that would download at most in half an hour to an hour depending on how fast my internet was at the time on my ps4 (my lowest speed was 20, highest 100). The bonus now is you can just leave your ps4 in rest mode to download once the patch goes live. I've since moved on to PC but I wouldve loved this option when I was on ps4.

The only downside is redownloading everything first. It will take quite some time.

[Luna-M]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

The re-download will take awhile, yes. Regular patches won't be worse than any game patch.

What is good is the cut of install size.
What is good you won't have to be logged in.
What is good you can get download in rest mode (especially good on exp pre-download)

[KisaiTenshi]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

Time for a SSD upgrade

In all seriousness, most large games don't actually delta-patch, they just replace the entire game binaries. MMORPG's can't do this since it would result in replacing 300MB every patch cycle + up to 2GB per data file changed, even for trivial changes. Hence MMORPG's do a form of delta-patching. However this can result in the asset/package files growing enormously if they don't actually do a delta-delete at some point.

[Niwashi]

Actually it's bad news for PS4 players. The PS4 patcher is ill suited for large games like FF14. Expect regular patches to take anytime from 1 to 5 hours. Any large game on the PS4 takes this long to patch.

The FFXIV launcher that's now handling our patch downloads isn't any better. I'd far rather the console spend 1 to 5 hours while I'm sleeping downloading a new patch than have the launcher spend 1 to 5 hours on it, which, due to the login requirement, has to be done while I'm there ready and waiting to play.

I don't quite get the date? Can we re-download it before september 4th like from august 28th - september 3rd, or does it have to be re-downloaded exactly september 4th to avoid any mistakes or wasting time etc?

We can start downloading the new patches on Aug 28th. On Sep 4th, those (hopefully already downloaded by then) patches will be applied to the game client. It's so that the rather significant download time doesn't interrupt gameplay time. Only the much shorter process of applying them does.

Auto download requires PS Plus which some people do not use to play FF14 though so there is that.

Actually, auto download works either with or without Plus. The difference is that without PS Plus, it requires the console to be turned on, whereas with PS Plus, it can work even while the console is in sleep mode (provided it's configured to keep your internet connection on during sleep mode). But either way it can kick off the download on its own while you're sleeping or at work, which is the real point of it. Those without Plus just have to leave their console running when a new patch is expected.

Will I need to delete the game and redownload it, or will I just have to download essentially a very big patch? Im a little confused. If I do have to download again, just downloading stormblood from my psn library will do it or do i have to download arr and hw as well. If I initiate the download on the 28th will i be ready to go on patch day. Sorry just a little confused on what to do exactly.

For the transition, it's replacing the already applied patches with new versions of those patches. And since it's an MMO, patches comprise the majority of the software, so it's nearly as much as if it were re-downloading the full game. But the patch-applying process (that will happen Sep 4th) will take care of piecing it all together and removing the obsolete bits. Essentially, we're just going to be downloading a really really big patch for the transition to the new version.

The announcement says we need 31 GB of space available on the PS4. Is that going to be the size of the patches that we need to download? If so, I’ll need to plan around it or I’ll be using up my whole month’s bandwidth on that download.

Yeah, we'll have to re-download 31 GB worth of patches. That transition will really suck for those with limited bandwidth internet connections like yours. (Maybe you can get part of that done the end of August and part at the beginning of September if that helps it fit within your monthly limits.)

On the bright side, it sounds like after the transition, new patches will be smaller than they used to be.