Massive update, taking FOREVER to patch

[ahelpinghand4slapping]

It's been updating and patching since last night, ffs. Square-Enix, there are already things about this game that annoy me. This is not helping.

[Jorffa]

I found out the hard way that if you turn off your pc while it's downloading, it breaks the update, I now have to redownload the entire game again

[John Doe]

This has nothing to do with SE. The speed of the update has to do with your pc.
1. You need a fast internet to download the files.
2. You need a fast CPU to speed up the unpacking & packing of the downloaded files,
3. A SSD or NVME.

[GrandTickler]

Originally posted by Jorffa:

I found out the hard way that if you turn off your pc while it's downloading, it breaks the update, I now have to redownload the entire game again

thats what file verification is for.. so u dont have to do that.

[Noxedwin]

Originally posted by John Doe:

This has nothing to do with SE. The speed of the update has to do with your pc.
1. You need a fast internet to download the files.
2. You need a fast CPU to speed up the unpacking & packing of the downloaded files,
3. A SSD or NVME.

Absolutely none of this is responsible for such a terrible delay. It's true in general, but it is most definitely not the case here.

I get 150Mb/s, and Steam reported using 30 at peak. I have an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and an NVME m.2 drive.
The game was patching for about seven hours before I gave up and uninstalled.
And after doing that, it downloaded and installed in about an hour-and-a-half.

This is not poor hardware. It is Steam's update system being completely unfit for this purpose.

[Shadowlet]

Originally posted by Noxedwin:

Originally posted by John Doe:

This has nothing to do with SE. The speed of the update has to do with your pc.
1. You need a fast internet to download the files.
2. You need a fast CPU to speed up the unpacking & packing of the downloaded files,
3. A SSD or NVME.

Absolutely none of this is responsible for such a terrible delay. It's true in general, but it is most definitely not the case here.

I get 150Mb/s, and Steam reported using 30 at peak. I have an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and an NVME m.2 drive.
The game was patching for about seven hours before I gave up and uninstalled.
And after doing that, it downloaded and installed in about an hour-and-a-half.

This is not poor hardware. It is Steam's update system being completely unfit for this purpose.

Seven hours? It's definitely you.

[GrandTickler]

Originally posted by Shadowlet:

Originally posted by Noxedwin:

Absolutely none of this is responsible for such a terrible delay. It's true in general, but it is most definitely not the case here.

I get 150Mb/s, and Steam reported using 30 at peak. I have an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and an NVME m.2 drive.
The game was patching for about seven hours before I gave up and uninstalled.
And after doing that, it downloaded and installed in about an hour-and-a-half.

This is not poor hardware. It is Steam's update system being completely unfit for this purpose.

Seven hours? It's definitely you.

yeah, people dont take "SSD Required" seriously

[Noxedwin]

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

yeah, people dont take "SSD Required" seriously

Do you even know what an NVME drive is?

[GrandTickler]

Originally posted by Noxedwin:

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

yeah, people dont take "SSD Required" seriously

Do you even know what an NVME drive is?

that was in response to the OP. i know in a lot of cases thats the issue with modern games, people ignoring ssd reqs. no idea what the issue is in your case. but it doesnt make sense to say steam update system is unfit for this if youre just a tiny minority having this issue. maybe a janky anti virus slowing the patch progress down?

[Noxedwin]

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

Originally posted by Noxedwin:

Do you even know what an NVME drive is?

that was in response to the OP.

Cool. It was unclear - you were replying to someone who had replied to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Originally posted by GrandTickler:

but it doesnt make sense to say steam update system is unfit for this if youre just a tiny minority having this issue. maybe a janky anti virus slowing the patch progress down?

Sure, normally. But there are folks complaining left and right in the update thread. Folks who have a 17GB update take hours, people who get a 128GB update, and people who have a 128GB that needs twice that for staging the update. And just as many people who aren't complaining about it.
Those who have done rummaging through the Steam depot have found that the big, substantial PAK files are getting tiny updates, so it needs to unpack them to make changes, and that is what is taking forever (or at least a demographically inconsistent amount of time).

If it were just me, then that's peaches. But there are two other examples in this thread alone of the download/update being botched enough that redownloading the game over again is the most realistic (if not the only) solution.

[tpowl1400]

How big is the update patch?

[Noxedwin]

Originally posted by tpowl1400:

How big is the update patch?

Smallest estimates in the comments put it around 17GB.
Functionally? As large as 270GB, because it - for some reasons of update ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ - needs to make an entire second game on some peoples' drives, and then slowly and laboriously merge the two.

[Zakky.V]

Well I’m glad I’m not alone. It’s driving me crazy.

[Zbejas]

Same issue. NVME, Ryzen 7 5700, yet I get about 10MB/s disk usage.
https://i.imgur.com/1npy1Xn.png

[m477z0r]

Originally posted by Noxedwin:

Originally posted by tpowl1400:

How big is the update patch?

Smallest estimates in the comments put it around 17GB.
Functionally? As large as 270GB, because it - for some reasons of update ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ - needs to make an entire second game on some peoples' drives, and then slowly and laboriously merge the two.

So I have the same behavior observed with the same specs as you a (a Ryzen 5950x and a 4TB SN850X nvme). I believe I've found a fix and am going to try testing it. Steam has a goofy behavior if you have multiple drives with SteamLibrary on it.

Because of the way it updates the .PAK files, if it doesn't think you'll have enough free space available it will use temporary storage to replace all of the delta files (the ones changed). It will select the next largest drive with a SteamLibrary by available space on that drive (without respect to the drive's performance).

So to update a game like FF7 Rebirth (currently around 160GB on disk) you would need double the install size: at least 320GB + the size of the update (11.2GB for patch 3). If you don't have that it will download to another disk with a SteamLibrary then update each PAK there and copy them to the install dir.

This user reported the exact same behavior with CP2077 several years ago. This bug has been around for ages and is 100% to do with how Steam handles PAK files. https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/2996547001734030941/

Edit: So as a quick/dirty recommendation, I would say keep no less than 400GB free space on your NVME if you want Steam to download/patch appropriately. With game install size and patch size scaling ever upwards, that might actually be too conservative of an estimate as well.

[Noxedwin]

Originally posted by m477z0r:

[snip]

Dang, that's good academic process you got there.

As ever and always, optimisation is sacrificed at the altar of bigger and better games. Because saying "as a quick/dirty recommendation, KEEP NO LESS THAN 400GB FREE SPACE ON YOUR NVME" is an absolutely ABSURD thing for say, never mind lowballing it as you think you may have.

It feels equivalent to saying if you want to reduce the wear on your superyacht's engines, you should only take it out sailing no more than three times a week, and switch to using fuel made from oil that is pillaged only from countries with a rock-bottom war economy. Like it's a problem we all can afford to have.
It is a disgustingly decadent, wasteful charade of prudence because publishers think that everyone has hardware nowadays that can take that one for the team.

I'm not even trying to shoot the messenger, but having that much space to be frivolous with is seen by the industry as paltry is revolting.

Heinous. Have some points. I'd be interested in the results of your test should you decide to share them.