Any small patch of PoE requires WAY TOO MUCH free disk space

Hey,

I wasn't sure where to post this, so i will do it here in the "bug reports" section of the forum.

I am playing Path of Exile on Steam, so maybe this problem happens only there.

Now the (big) problem:
Any small patch (today's patch had less than 195mb) requires/uses additional space on disk equal to the whole installed game. Today the game required ~40GB free space on my SSD to install a 195mb patch. I also checked the last few patches and all had the same problem.

GGG can you please make the game ask for less free space for any small patch? Another issue can be the useless writes on SSDs, but for me at the moment the free space required to install a patch is the problem.

Thank you

"

v3nomu wrote:

Hey,

I wasn't sure where to post this, so i will do it here in the "bug reports" section of the forum.

I am playing Path of Exile on Steam, so maybe this problem happens only there.

Now the (big) problem:
Any small patch (today's patch had less than 195mb) requires/uses additional space on disk equal to the whole installed game. Today the game required ~40GB free space on my SSD to install a 195mb patch. I also checked the last few patches and all had the same problem.

GGG can you please make the game ask for less free space for any small patch? Another issue can be the useless writes on SSDs, but for me at the moment the free space required to install a patch is the problem.

Thank you

It's a steam issue, not the game's. It's the way how steam handles updating/replacing files within compressed folders it does not know how to access.

there are updates coming in the future to change this, when the change is deployed all steam users will have to reinstall the entire game though.

Steam updates by creating a backup of the file it is patching, applies the update to file, verifies no issues, deletes backup. This is why it takes so long, especially on slower drives. It is not as above said. This method also protects file integrity on case something happens while patching a file(such as power loss) so you don't have to redownload an entire game because a single update got screwed up.

you can switch to standalone client to enjoy fast patching until the big steam update.

"

dorkdude2 wrote:

there are updates coming in the future to change this, when the change is deployed all steam users will have to reinstall the entire game though.

Steam updates by creating a backup of the file it is patching, applies the update to file, verifies no issues, deletes backup. This is why it takes so long, especially on slower drives. It is not as above said. This method also protects file integrity on case something happens while patching a file(such as power loss) so you don't have to redownload an entire game because a single update got screwed up.

you can switch to standalone client to enjoy fast patching until the big steam update.

Actually it is. It's why for most games it's not an issue, otherwise you'd get a stroke every time your 160GB Red Dead Redemption II would get a 10 mb update.
Verification is done manually, in case installation gets corrupted.

This isn't a Steam issue. You're defragging the GGPK. ONLY EVER DEFRAG THE GGPK with a STANDALONE installation. NEVER WITH STEAM.

The updates coming to Path of Exile's Steam version won't fix this. Never can, never will.

"

v3nomu wrote:

Hey,

I wasn't sure where to post this, so i will do it here in the "bug reports" section of the forum.

I am playing Path of Exile on Steam, so maybe this problem happens only there.

Now the (big) problem:
Any small patch (today's patch had less than 195mb) requires/uses additional space on disk equal to the whole installed game. Today the game required ~40GB free space on my SSD to install a 195mb patch. I also checked the last few patches and all had the same problem.

GGG can you please make the game ask for less free space for any small patch? Another issue can be the useless writes on SSDs, but for me at the moment the free space required to install a patch is the problem.

Thank you

This isn't a bug and this is why it have been moved away from the bug section.

Again this is a steam client issue (steam issue) so you can change to the stand-alone client to fix this.

"

Daiena wrote:

"

dorkdude2 wrote:

there are updates coming in the future to change this, when the change is deployed all steam users will have to reinstall the entire game though.

Steam updates by creating a backup of the file it is patching, applies the update to file, verifies no issues, deletes backup. This is why it takes so long, especially on slower drives. It is not as above said. This method also protects file integrity on case something happens while patching a file(such as power loss) so you don't have to redownload an entire game because a single update got screwed up.

you can switch to standalone client to enjoy fast patching until the big steam update.

Actually it is. It's why for most games it's not an issue, otherwise you'd get a stroke every time your 160GB Red Dead Redemption II would get a 10 mb update.
Verification is done manually, in case installation gets corrupted.

and that is because other games don't have everything in one giant content file, rather have them as thousands of significantly smaller files, you don't notice it when steam makes a backup of a 50MB file that is about to be patched, you notice it when it backs up a file that is the entire game in size.

POE was not made with steam in mind. Steam patches every game as mentioned above.

GGG has stated they will be changing the games file structure to be similar to consoles to improve this in the future, no set ETA from what I have seen(most likely with POE 2 release)

I understand what happens and i don't think Steam will change how they patch games anytime soon. So until(or if) GGG changes the structre of PoE and splits Content.ggpk in more smaller files, all i can do is use the standalone client.

Does anyone know if i can patch the game through the normal client and play it on steam after that?

"

v3nomu wrote:

I understand what happens and i don't think Steam will change how they patch games anytime soon. So until(or if) GGG changes the structre of PoE and splits Content.ggpk in more smaller files, all i can do is use the standalone client.

Does anyone know if i can patch the game through the normal client and play it on steam after that?

not sure if it works, but to test
install via Steam, set standalone client install path to same folder and have steam set to not auto update, launch standalone for updates once done launch through steam and see if it works.

"

v3nomu wrote:

I understand what happens and i don't think Steam will change how they patch games anytime soon. So until(or if) GGG changes the structre of PoE and splits Content.ggpk in more smaller files, all i can do is use the standalone client.

Does anyone know if i can patch the game through the normal client and play it on steam after that?

the standalone client can use the steam installation including the resource file to run the game if you disallow the content.ggpk patching with a special command line parameter.
just copy the standalone pathofexile.exe into the steam installation folder and run it over a link to the exe which has the commandline parameter (from the wiki).


the steam installation can't use any of the standalone installation cause it can't handle this version of content.ggpk


--

what you can do is: run the standalone installer, interupt the installation when it says "allocating resources".
copy content.ggpk from your steam install over to the folder of the standalone install.
run the standalone client, it should patch the file for some minor updates and run the game.