I know it might be expensive, but can't you guys spin up some EC2 servers for patch day?

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verminoth wrote:

I know it would be a hefty amount, but it would make people able to download at better than 50kb/sec...

You already partially mentioned the problem. It would be expensive.

They already have quite a few patching servers that they're using. Part of the problem is the sheer number of users as you alluded to, but also part of the problem is just the overhead of downloading a bunch of tiny files.

When you transfer 1000 tiny files, it takes a lot longer than downloading 1 file that is the cumulative size of the 1000 tiny files. This is because of the overhead in setting up connections and initiating requests to download files. The process of initiating the 1000 tiny files takes up a good amount of time and can slow the process down slightly.

That isn't to say you wouldn't be able to download it faster during off-peak hours or in 12 hours from now... but I'm not sure exactly how much benefit they would get for the cost in that type of system. *shrug*

Just start the download and go watch a movie or TV show or something. It will be done before you know it. A watched download never... downloads? *grins*

Good luck.

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Daksa wrote:

Its called torrent. Most MMO's use other players to speed up delivery. It usually is listed under options and can be enabled/disabled.

This negates the cost of servers/bandwidth, but adds to development.

They can't use straight torrent because of their patching method.

Their current patching method just downloads individual files from the webservers (patching servers). Your client looks which files you need (based on the list of patched files, and list of hashes you have which could be wrong) and then it creates a list of these files and asks for them from the server. When it gets the file, it stuffs it into the Content.ggpk archive and moves on to the next file.

Most other games use torrents because they either don't use archive formats and can just put up the whole patch and let the torrents grab them, or they use "patch" files which modify the content based on a series of patches. This CAN be bad in some ways for new players because you have to download a lot of "patch" files to update.

As an example... lets say that PoE used "patch" files for each patch. Lets even say they started with version 0.10.1. What would happen to new players is they would download the base 0.10.1 install, then download every single patch SINCE then and it would apply the "patch" to the base install. So it would have to download a LOT of these "patch" files until it eventually was able to get to 0.11.4. This can be pretty daunting for a lot of players and is prone to a lot more problems with maintenance.

With the current system, new players only need to download what is "current". So if a new player just started with 0.11.4, they would only need to download the files required for 0.11.4 and wouldn't have to worry about all the prior patches.

While I hope GGG can eventually work in a better patching system, their current system doesn't actually suffer from as many drawbacks as a lot of other systems.