Give us the option to play before complete the download! (Or compress the games)

[Maenor Haeronor]

So, if you are familiar with the Battle.Net desktop App or the classic Blizzard Launcher for different games you know that there is the possibility of playing the game before they are completely downloaded.

Now, i "suppose" this is due to both the Desktop App and the Game's Engine that are featured being both especially made to this end, so i can easily understand the insane amount of effort that it would take to make it a feature of the Steam Client (A new partnership with the main Engines out there Unreal, Unity, etc is already something difficult)
but still it would be nice to at least have the Valve games featuring this "Play while downloading" feature!
AAA games are AT LEAST 15 GB .... Compressed! Not everyone has a Unlimited Permanent Internet Connection! And those who have it may not have the best one! I myself have a metered connection with which i can easily download 15 GB ... on two months! I bought Shadows of Mordor! That's 40 GB! How do you expect me to download that?!?! D:

EDIT: I just went to the internet and found out that Shadows of Mordor can be compresed to have a size of 17 GB .... Done by a woman ... by herself! ... Is this REALLY steam? xP

[Start_Running]

Steam generally does not mess with the files the publuisher sends. And if you're whining about your nect connection and it's metered. Maybe.. maybe you stay away from AAA games. Or yell at you net provider to give you better internet.

[Satoru]

That requires the game itself to actually support that.

Many game engines simply do not work if you try to load the game without the full assett pack

[Gwarsbane]

You should know what the size of the game is before you download, its on every single game page, down near the bottom with the rest of the system requirements.

AAA are generally large.

Oh and there are games that are compressed and they are also a pain in the butt and people complain about them taking so long to update, some people have claimed the large updates can take an hour or more to install AFTER they downloaded it. Thats because if the game is compressed it takes time to uncompress it, install the updates and then recompress it. Payday 2 does this. People complained that it was taking up 20 or 25 gigs at the time, so they compressed it down to 13. Some time after, its now back up to 32 gigs compressed and people complain about how long the patches take to update.

Also with that time they have to keep at least 30 gigs free on that drive, which again makes people made.

Here is the issue, better graphics and models take up large amounts of space. The more you can do in the game, the larger it is. FPS/TPS/Driving/Flying games all generally require large file sizes.






I suggest you avoid Star Citizen, its said that its going to be around 100gigs in size.


Also in most cases no you can't start playing the game before its downloaded or while its patching. Its like trying to drive a car with no wheels and only a partly built engine. Its just not happening.

[The Giving One]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από maenor.haeronor:

I bought Shadows of Mordor! That's 40 GB! How do you expect me to download that?!?! D:

No one forced you to buy that game. If a game is too large for your connection.....then don't buy it or get better internet.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

The fact that Battle.net can do this is pretty awesome, yes.

However, this is something that has to be implemented by the dev themselves.

In the case of Steam, the dev would have to work around by doing the following:
* putting the "bare minimum" game in the main download
* creating a free DLC package containing all the optional stuff such as high-res textures
* asking people to download that package to get the high-res textures

Steam currently does not offer the option to allow playing after a partial download. Perhaps Valve should consider implementing such a feature -- but then again, I don't think many devs will make use of it, so they might not think it's worth their time.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Quint the Globular Springtail:

Steam currently does not offer the option to allow playing after a partial download. Perhaps Valve should consider implementing such a feature -- but then again, I don't think many devs will make use of it, so they might not think it's worth their time.

Mortal Kombat X did it already (granted, MKX's launch was pretty messy from what I hear, but hey). So I gather the functionality is there, but most devs aren't really interested in retooling their game's structure to make it work.

[aiusepsi]

Fun fact: when Steam first came out, it had the capability to start playing Valve games before they were fully downloaded. See for example this page from 2003 listing what Steam does: https://web.archive.org/web/20030806115646/http://www.steampowered.com/index.php?area=features (Shame they never brought the Chess game back...)

It didn't really work out. The essential problem is that you need extremely tight coupling between the game and the distribution system for such a feature to work, and it introduces a great deal of complication into both that distribution system and games. It's one thing to ask developers to introduce achievements, as an example, but changing the entire way their games deal with files completely is another.

For a general-purpose distribution system, it seems to make sense to not try these sorts of excessively fancy things.

And as a sidebar, Steam downloads are compressed.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από aiusepsi:

And as a sidebar, Steam downloads are compressed.

Well, there goes that idea.

[Start_Running]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Gus the Crocodile:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Quint the Globular Springtail:

Steam currently does not offer the option to allow playing after a partial download. Perhaps Valve should consider implementing such a feature -- but then again, I don't think many devs will make use of it, so they might not think it's worth their time.

Mortal Kombat X did it already (granted, MKX's launch was pretty messy from what I hear, but hey). So I gather the functionality is there, but most devs aren't really interested in retooling their game's structure to make it work.

I don't think the consumers would like that either. Has no one figured out the catch-22?
It would mean your play timer would start running before the game has even finished downloading.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Well, "the consumers" need not speak with one uniform voice. Some won't like it, some will, as ever.

Your play timer would start when you choose to start playing, yes, as is entirely appropriate. Nobody's making people play before the game's finished downloading; those who are paranoid about not getting a refund are free to wait. I don't see the paradox there.

[Start_Running]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Gus the Crocodile:

Well, "the consumers" need not speak with one uniform voice. Some won't like it, some will, as ever.

Your play timer would start when you choose to start playing, yes, as is entirely appropriate. Nobody's making people play before the game's finished downloading; those who are paranoid about not getting a refund are free to wait. I don't see the paradox there.

What I do see is a lot of people copmplaining and clogging the system with support tickets. There are games that already do this and guess what.. it causes headaches.

[Gus the Crocodile]

Of course it does, that's the nature of functionality. Any feature will create new problems; as your software grows in scope, so do your support requirements. Valve could reduce support tickets by removing chat, or screenshots, or trading, it's not an indication that those features are problems.

[Tito Shivan]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Gus the Crocodile:

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Quint the Globular Springtail:

Steam currently does not offer the option to allow playing after a partial download. Perhaps Valve should consider implementing such a feature -- but then again, I don't think many devs will make use of it, so they might not think it's worth their time.

Mortal Kombat X did it already (granted, MKX's launch was pretty messy from what I hear, but hey). So I gather the functionality is there, but most devs aren't really interested in retooling their game's structure to make it work.

Specially for a 'feature' that's only going to be used during install. Most of the time is going to be a 'use once or twice' feature.

[The Giving One]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από Tito Shivan:

Most of the time is going to be a 'use once or twice' feature.

I gotta agree with this. Heck, for some people in the world with better internet than the OP, they would not even be able to finish creating their character, setting up the game from the menu, deciding opposing force strenght and composition, etc., etc. (depending on the game of course) before the game would be finished fully downloading anyway, and therefore they could play normally just like now.

Don't think this would be used that often at all myself. Patience is a virtue. I don't mind waiting for the game to fully download now, so I don't think I would even use this ever.

[wuddih]

battle.net is blizzard and everything on battle.net is blizzard. they have full control over everything and that is why they can provide such a feature, which is from my experience not very reliable and can cause problems in which you still end up restarting the game and more then half of the time they provide updates that does not make use of it.

compressing something into the abyss does not mean it is efficient handling of the files.