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Next gen patch sizes are absurdly huge

F

Fracas

#fuckonami
I've been giving my PS4 some more love the past couple weeks and good lord at these patches. BF4 and Killzone have patches of about 2gb each. I installed NFS Rivals and it's got a gig to download. I just bought Wolfenstein and it's got a 5gb patch (seriously, how).

As I'm in rural Kentucky and stuck with an AT&T bandwidth cap, I'm finding myself forced to play these games offline with what I'm guessing is a sub-optimal experience. Is an unpatched copy of Wolfenstein a build from 2 years ago or something? It wasn't a huge deal last gen, since most patches ranged from a few megabytes to 1gb at most.
 
T

TRI Mike

Member
Yeah I'm having the same problem. I live in latin america with a slow connection and downloading patches and PS+ games is becoming quite an ordeal.
 
zeopower6

zeopower6

Member
Yogart said:
It's a good thing that ISPs aren't implementing data caps, right? Right?

I hate Comcast
Click to expand...

Ugh AT&T does it too... thankfully they aren't on U-Verse otherwise I wouldn't be able to download ANY games. :(

Autopatches for PC games can also get annoying.
 
K

kurisub306

Member
I believe SONY said they were fixing this with one of the newer firmware updates. Supposedly now the patch will only download whatever new data needs to be overwritten instead of downloading a culmutive patch that includes everything up to that point.
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
My bandwidth sucks ass, so this is a huge issue for me. What's really annoying is that when you put in an XBone game, it says it's "installing" but what it's actually doing is downloading the patch. It took me almost a whole goddamn day to "install" Dead Rising 3. And I can assure you, it was most definitely not worth the wait...
 
S

shandy706

Member
Expected with the size of games today....and their assets.

There's a reason we've moved to blu-rays.

I don't even consider a 2GB patch big compared to what we will eventually see.
 
R

RM8

Member
I'm terrified :( My internet doesn't advance as quickly as game sizes. I never really got used to 5GB demos last gen, lol.
 
F

FSLink

Banned
kurisub306 said:
I believe SONY said they were fixing this with one of the newer firmware updates. Supposedly now the patch will only download whatever new data needs to be overwritten instead of downloading a culmutive patch that includes everything up to that point.
Click to expand...

Why the fuck did they release the console without having a proper patch system in place?* Ugh

*Rhetorical question, I can think of the reasons why

Hopefully Microsoft will fix this too, the Dead Rising 3 patch sizes look ridiculous.
 
F

Fracas

#fuckonami
Muffdraul said:
My bandwidth sucks ass, so this is a huge issue for me. What's really annoying is that when you put in an XBone game, it says it's "installing" but what it's actually doing is downloading the patch. It took me almost a whole goddamn day to install Dead Rising 3. And I can assure you, it was most definitely not worth the wait...
Click to expand...
Thankfully I bought DR3 during the spring semester and I could use my university's connection. Wasn't it like 8gb?

edit: wait yeah it was closer to 13. What in the world
 
M

mike4001_

Member
They should bring back Delta Patches as XBox 360 does them.

Can´t figure out why they changed that on Xbox One.

If there is a 2 GB File and only small bytes where changed due to a fixed bug, a delta patch would also only have couple of kb.

But insteat they transfer the complete file.

(Only mentioning MS as Sony did not even do this with the PS3).
 
N

nded

Member
The increased fidelity and complexity gamers have come to expect come at a price, and that price is larger file sizes and an increased likelihood of bugs.
 
S

Steelyuhas

Member
Fracas said:
Thankfully I bought DR3 during the spring semester and I could use my university's connection. Wasn't it like 8gb?

edit: wait yeah it was closer to 13. What in the world
Click to expand...
Yeah well that was capcom doing the ol' here's a patch but this is actually all the dlc move.
 
K

kudoboi

Member
zeopower6 said:
Autopatches for PC games can also get annoying.
Click to expand...

you can change the settings
L4XnzfX.jpg
 
U

USC-fan

Banned
kurisub306 said:
I believe SONY said they were fixing this with one of the newer firmware updates. Supposedly now the patch will only download whatever new data needs to be overwritten instead of downloading a culmutive patch that includes everything up to that point.
Click to expand...
Yep fixed with 1.70

Dcuo went from monthly 6GB+ to 1.2 GB.
 
Muffdraul

Muffdraul

Member
To me, the answer is to never let patch downloads prevent one from playing a game. The game should be allowed to run in its current state while the patch downloads in the background. When I put DR3 in my XBone for the first time, it should have installed the disc, booted the game, and then started downloading the patch. Not force me to wait until the patch is finished downloading and installed.

If a game is released which is so fucked up in its current state that the developer refuses to allow it to be played until it's patched, well, then, that's a big part of the problem.
 
P

psylah

Member
It's only absurd in comparison to old technology.

Drives are faster, bus interfaces are faster, throughput is faster.
Installing 40 gig on your PS3 took much longer than on your PS4, downloading 5 gigs took much longer too.

Everything is better, you're just shocked by the numbers.
 
geordiemp

geordiemp

Member
Fracas said:
I've been giving my PS4 some more love the past couple weeks and good lord at these patches. BF4 and Killzone have patches of about 2gb each. I installed NFS Rivals and it's got a gig to download. I just bought Wolfenstein and it's got a 5gb patch (seriously, how).

As I'm in rural Kentucky and stuck with an AT&T bandwidth cap, I'm finding myself forced to play these games offline with what I'm guessing is a sub-optimal experience. Is an unpatched copy of Wolfenstein a build from 2 years ago or something? It wasn't a huge deal last gen, since most patches ranged from a few megabytes to 1gb at most.
Click to expand...

Agree OP went and installed 2GB spinpoints in our 2 x Ps4, could not see them lasting long with all the mega patches and installs.
 
B

Bsigg12

Member
Fracas said:
Thankfully I bought DR3 during the spring semester and I could use my university's connection. Wasn't it like 8gb?

edit: wait yeah it was closer to 13. What in the world
Click to expand...

They patched in most of the DLC so when you bought it, it was ready for you to complain how bad it was.

But really, now that Microsoft and Sony have removed all the fees and size restrictions surrounding updating games and allow for an infinite amount of them, both systems will more likely resemble Steam and the constant patching there.
 
W

Warewolf

Member
I know my perspective on this is shortsighted and exclusionary but Hard Drives are bloody cheap. I'm glad to download hundreds of GB in patches a month with the kind of games we get to play on new consoles/PC.
 
V

Valtýr

Member
Welcome to current gen I guess? It sucks that other technology is falling behind but this is the way things are and it's not going to change.
 
S

Starwolf_UK

Member
I find the whole can't play while patch is downloading a bit dumb (if you were offline and it never knew of the patch you could play fine) but I guess it makes it easier to apply (replacing files).

kudoboi said:
you can change the settings
L4XnzfX.jpg
Click to expand...
I remember on Steam how Dungeon Defenders would ignore the setting (and patches were pretty much download the entire game again) or maybe the setting gets turned off when the client updates...
 
B

birdman

Member
RulkezX said:
Since launch DR3 has had about 21GB of patches , Forza about 15 iirc :)
Click to expand...

Yep, that Forza 5 one is huge. The download took forever on my decent Cox connection. It's unfortunate that the Xbox One seems to have the worst of the offenders, instead of evening out between it and the PS4.
 
zeopower6

zeopower6

Member
kudoboi said:
you can change the settings
L4XnzfX.jpg
Click to expand...

It's still pretty bad after the fact... going over a data cap because someone forgot to turn off their Steam auto-update is just ughhhh.

Warewolf said:
I know my perspective on this is shortsighted and exclusionary but Hard Drives are bloody cheap. I'm glad to download hundreds of GB in patches a month with the kind of games we get to play on new consoles/PC.
Click to expand...

SPACE is not the issue. Bandwidth/speed/caps are the issue. It's why I will probably never go digital tbh...
 
U

U-R

Member
Valtýr;115984541 said:
Welcome to current gen I guess? It sucks that other technology is falling behind but this is the way things are and it's not going to change.
Click to expand...

Changing a few kilobytes to fix a bug and pushing out a 2Gb patch doesn't sound to me like an "advancement" in technology, more like an advancement in not-giving-a-fuck-about-customers.

Indeed nextgen seems to be very advanced in that area.
 
D

dhonk

Member
psylah said:
It's only absurd in comparison to old technology.

Drives are faster, bus interfaces are faster, throughput is faster.
Installing 40 gig on your PS3 took much longer than on your PS4, downloading 5 gigs took much longer too.

Everything is better, you're just shocked by the numbers.
Click to expand...

Too bad ISPs are still stuck in the past. Plenty of people have datacaps now forced upon them. Myself included.
 
dcx4610

dcx4610

Member
This is why physical media will survive this and next gen. Games are getting massive and with more and more ISPs having bandwidth caps and not everyone living where there is fast internet, physical media still has its place.

I'd much rather just let a game install itself from disc and have my copy on the shelf than to waste bandwidth for the month on 50GB+ games.

As for patches, I hope both PS4/XB1 find a way to do it like World of Warcraft where it will scan your installation and only patch the files that need to be updated. It's probably quicker and easier just to give everyone a big patch since it would use up resources to individually scan each game for updates.

Perhaps they could offer incremental patches as a benefit of using Stand By mode. If you don't use Stand By, it could prompt you when an update is available to do the incremental update of full update.
 
E

ElNino

Member
birdman said:
Yep, that Forza 5 one is huge. The download took forever on my decent Cox connection. It's unfortunate that the Xbox One seems to have the worst of the offenders, instead of evening out between it and the PS4.
Click to expand...
Well, in Forza 5's case the majority of that is for the three free tracks they've added so at least it is for content that everyone can use.
 
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