Could we preload some 0.9.3 data, please?

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so0pel wrote:

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The only thing that would help those with slower speeds would be to intentionally instate a 1-2 day "download period" where everyone can download the patch, but no one could play it. This would annoy the quick downloaders who want to play as soon as the download is done

Yeah you basicly want those that have faster internet to wait for those that don't. I don't see any other point that your "download period" would have.

You're taking it out of context. I'm not suggesting it. I'm just saying that would be the only fair way to ensure that everyone started off at the same time once 0.9.3 goes beta. I said that to help show my point that there is no way to make everyone happy; some will be able to download and play earlier than others unless a similar system is implemented. Again, I'm not suggesting or endorsing such a system.

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tpapp157 wrote:

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Lace wrote:

I'm not convinced that the patch is going to go live the same day they finish it. It'll probably be at least a day or two before it's passed to the live servers, but that's just speculation on my part.

Like every other patch, the final 0.9.3 patch will more than likely go through a day or two of stress testing on the alpha to find any last minute game-crashing bugs (there always are).

Thanks for the insight.

@Whiteboy88:

The idea is not to equalize anything.
I advanced the suggestion because I was under the assumption that the patch would not be officially pushed to live servers until a day or two after the patch had reached completion (as in, the patches are scheduled to be finished a day or two before they are scheduled to be pushed to live servers -- think about how patches are handled in other games).

Edit:
To make my position clearer, the idea is NOT to push the scheduled patch launch day back; rather, to use the empty time between patch completion and patch launch for preloading -- which, apparently, is not entirely possible.

I understand your point.

I just highly doubt they would release any of the updated files before others, or allow people to download a patch that is still undergoing alpha testing, as things might require last-minute changes. If they expected no changes, they would probably go ahead and push the entire patch.

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whiteBoy88 wrote:

I understand your point.

I just highly doubt they would release any of the updated files before others, or allow people to download a patch that is still undergoing alpha testing, as things might require last-minute changes. If they expected no changes, they would probably go ahead and push the entire patch.

In my experience, that doesn't really happen; World of Warcraft, for example, always pushes patches on Tuesdays and I somehow doubt that their content patches are finalized Monday night.

But, well, GGG is an indie dev and as a result, I suppose, this can be a different ball game.

Come on, folks, let's keep this non-confrontational.

I originally suggested this because I don't like having to download an entire gigabyte in a single day. For some of you this is nothing-bandwidth, but for me it's something-bandwidth.

I'm sure that at least SOME of the data in 0.9.3 is final. I understand that a fair bit of it probably isn't, but surely a couple of things are. It's unlikely that the entire patch is going to be redone this late in the development cycle, so out of the bits that are going to go in, I would appreciate being able to nab them.

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Lace wrote:

World of Warcraft, for example, always pushes patches on Tuesdays and I somehow doubt that their content patches are finalized Monday night.

I'd actually take the opposite bet. I bet that a good portion is 'finalized' Monday night, and pushed Tuesday. I suppose it depends on our definition of finalized here though... I think they probably give it a final pass on Monday, and begin new work on Tuesday while it's going out.

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whiteBoy88 wrote:

I understand your point.

I just highly doubt they would release any of the updated files before others, or allow people to download a patch that is still undergoing alpha testing, as things might require last-minute changes. If they expected no changes, they would probably go ahead and push the entire patch.

I know World of Warcraft was brought up in this thread, and I know that seems to be a sore subject to most of the gaming community... however, it is a fair example to use in this case. Their big 4.3 patch is coming up likely in the next few weeks, and they are doing what is called "pre-downloading" starting today: all the big assets (art for the new raid and dungeons, new music, new loading screens, etc.) are all able to be downloaded in the background, and Blizzard will be using the next few weeks to fiddle with class balance, dungeon balance, raid boss damage balance, and such.

For them, it's going to be a numbers game until it is finalized, so they are able to push all the art assets out now and will update finalized files in the next few weeks. It will sit in the downloader, ready to use, and will automatically complete with a small download on patch day to add all the number fiddling for balance.

So it's easy to say that, with the right tech it is certianly DOABLE, but in this case it's clear that GGG does much, much faster transparent iterating than Blizzard does (I'm sure they are constantly iterating in-house, but the player never sees it so clearly as we do for GGG). In their case, these art and music assets were in the works for a very long time: this patch alone has been in public test for far longer than I have been a member of this forum (admittedly, only the month and a half since PAX).