So... about that patch.

Iduyenn

Next gen?

Next Gen would be to preload the patch while playing...
oh wait... i already exists.

Its 10 am here and we didn`t even get to start downloading...

Razzak

Iduyenn wrote: »

Next gen?

Next Gen would be to preload the patch while playing...
oh wait... i already exists.

Its 10 am here and we didn`t even get to start downloading...

How long was maintenance yesterday, on US server?

Iduyenn

I dont know... but they are maintaining for 6 hours now...

HansK

Is this NA-server only or will this double download issue apply to the EU server also @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ ?

zaria

Iduyenn wrote: »

I dont know... but they are maintaining for 6 hours now...

Yes, unusual long downtime for an patch.

And yes, the client should be able to download the patch wile the game server is down. Might delay installation in case of rollback but just downloading and storing the files should be no issue.

Razzak

HansK wrote: »

Is this NA-server only or will this double download issue apply to the EU server also @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ ?

I would also like to know that, but unfortunately it's still night over there and we will see the result ourselves before anyone could answer that.

HansK

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there are CS-reps in the EU too. So answering during EU daytime shouldn't be a problem. .

Razzak

HansK wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there are CS-reps in the EU too. So answering during EU daytime shouldn't be a problem. .

Yes, but I think they can act only in times of emergency. Like that Sunday's bugged patch, some time ago. I hope we'll not have to go through that again.

Sindala

New levels of incompetence from your game provider. lol and you thought they had already sunk as low as they could.

Take the keyboards away from the "professional's" and let the trained monkeys have a go....they couldn't do much worse.

Enodoc

Razzak wrote: »

HansK wrote: »

Is this NA-server only or will this double download issue apply to the EU server also @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ ?

I would also like to know that, but unfortunately it's still night over there and we will see the result ouserlves before anyone could answer that.

Razzak wrote: »

HansK wrote: »

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there are CS-reps in the EU too. So answering during EU daytime shouldn't be a problem. .

Yes, but I think they can act only in times of emergency. Like that Sunday's bugged patch, some time ago. I hope we'll not have to go through that again.

Worth a try though. I believe @ZOS_MichaelServotte‌ is on the EU team and may therefore be around...

Edit: The extended downtime may be a result of them trying to fix the issue so that it doesn't recur during the EU download. We're coming up on 6+ hours when the NA maintenance only lasted 3.

Cherryblossom

SO it's been about 2 weeks since your last Patch mess up, did you not do an internal review of process!
Can we have an answer to the EU customers as to whether or not we will have the same issue.
If yes, is it worth us waiting a week for another patch to fix the mess of this patch?

HansK

OK, so it's clear now. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/141190/11-25-patch-1-5-6-not-live-on-eu-megaserver

Guess it will come later this week.

AngryNord

Cherryblossom wrote: »

SO it's been about 2 weeks since your last Patch mess up, did you not do an internal review of process!

Did you really seriously believe they would???

GamerzElite

Patch cancelled in EU, Server up.:)

Syntse

HansK wrote: »

OK, so it's clear now. http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/141190/11-25-patch-1-5-6-not-live-on-eu-megaserver

Guess it will come later this week.

This starts to get epic. One would assume the EU and NA are pretty much identical as would be the patches applied to the servers.

Slurg

Sounds like they tried to fix the patch so EU players would get one build instead of two (at twice the size) but it didn't work. Since it sounds like European ISP have more data limits that's a nice gesture. Sorry it failed.

What is up with the people suggesting all this is all the users' fault somehow for not testing on PTS? I thought ZOS didn't put incremental patches on PTS so how would that even help?

AngryNord

Slurg wrote: »

What is up with the people suggesting all this is all the users' fault somehow for not testing on PTS?

It's called being a fanboi. Also known as Brown-nosing.

eventide03b14a_ESO

Nylan wrote: »

go outside

Go outside in the middle of November at 6:00 p.m. on a weekday in CT when it's 43 degrees outside and pitch black.... Your comment was so darn clever though!

eventide03b14a_ESO

When I played EQ2, you only needed to download a small portion of the essential files after an update and the patcher would continue to run while you played the game. We never waited hours after an update to download the files. It was actually a very smooth process.

smee_z

And I thought since I patched late I would not get that GINORMOUS 13GB download.

Effin great. Hit 90% after 1 GINORMOUS 6GB completed. And there's another GINORMOUS 6GB just started. GG. No play time tonight.

Thank you ZENIMAX!

zaria

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

When I played EQ2, you only needed to download a small portion of the essential files after an update and the patcher would continue to run while you played the game. We never waited hours after an update to download the files. It was actually a very smooth process.

Yes WOW also do something like that. However it sounds a bit problematic to me.
Someone logs in after some days off an at once he see people with the new armor, and get an invite to an place under download.

Download ahead of patch would be far easier to implement. Yes it would get other to scream as its some risk that the game will download patches and then drop them and re-download.

eventide03b14a_ESO

zaria wrote: »

eventide03b14a_ESO wrote: »

When I played EQ2, you only needed to download a small portion of the essential files after an update and the patcher would continue to run while you played the game. We never waited hours after an update to download the files. It was actually a very smooth process.

Yes WOW also do something like that. However it sounds a bit problematic to me.
Someone logs in after some days off an at once he see people with the new armor, and get an invite to an place under download.

Download ahead of patch would be far easier to implement. Yes it would get other to scream as its some risk that the game will download patches and then drop them and re-download.

EQ2 handled most of those things in the background. In fact if you didn't read the patch updates it was easy to miss that they had fixed something because often you didn't even realize it was broken. That's the difference between the way these games are handled though. Sony had a lot of experience by the time EQ2 was launched in 2004, but it feels like ESO grabbed some people fresh out of college who had absolutely no practical experience. I say this because each patch and each update is an utter disaster and these mistakes happen that really just shouldn't. I would say it's sloppy, but honestly I am starting to think they just don't know what they are doing and they are figuring it out as they go along.

Broko

SlaaMM wrote: »

I did not realize so many peeps are trying to play a next gen MMO on a allowance of bandwidth. Isn't that kind of like buying a Ferrari and telling the oil change guy to put generic conventional oil in. Opening a bottle of Dom Perignon and drinking it from a plastic cup.

It's like you with your mind of 12-year-old boy playing what should be a mature game.

wolfydog

Yes this patch was abominable. This is the second time I got hit with a big patch for no reason. It also happened a couple months ago. Wifes computer downloaded it no problem, regular incremental patch and mine is 6 gbs. And to add insult to injury its downloading these 6gb's super slow, like 2mbs per second and normally even patching spends are faster then that on the big updates.

Samadhi

Samadhi wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Samadhi wrote: »

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hey guys,

While you will need to download 12GB for today’s patch, the exceptionally large size was unintentional and is not typical for an incremental patch. While preparing for today’s maintenance, we needed a second build internally to fix an issue we encountered. Unfortunately, this means you are actually downloading both builds which is required for today’s patch to run. In the meantime, we do have a couple workarounds that you can try that may be faster and not as large:

1. Cancel the patch and run a repair instead, or…
2. Delete the folder titled “vo_en” and restart the launcher.

We apologize for the inconvenience that this is causing, and will do everything we can to ensure it won’t happen again in the future.

Thank you for the heads up on the issue.

Are we looking at a 12GB minimum regardless of the workarounds, or do the workarounds have potential to cut that size down?

Am currently looking at 71% completion bar with 4.5GB remaining to download. Prior to this, had a couple of small downloads around 90MB-100MB but have seen no sign of this ominous 6 remaining GB...not sure if it is best to leave the patcher to run its course at this point, or try one of the other options.

The workarounds will likely cut down the size that you'd need to download.

Cancelled and ran a repair. Went from 4.5GB left to download at 71% to 5.8GB left to download at 0%.

Closed launcher, deleted vo_en, reopened launcher and same 5.8GB download remaining but % jumped up to 25%.

Won't know until about midnight if there's more to the download than that.

@ZOS_GinaBruno appreciate you taking the time to give some suggestions about possible courses of action.

Just decided to come back quick and update on this.

Patch finally finished around 4am.

Only ran for the 6GB instead of the full 12GB.

It's the little things that keep me sane.

Thank you again @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ for the workaround advice.

grimsfield

boggie wrote: »

Excessive_Evil wrote: »

unintentional... man you guys should have a server made to test this stuff out before u implement it like a public test server.. or something like that would be great so we don't have these problems every other week... oh wait we have a public test server... must be broken

See... the thing with a public test server, is that people have to actually log in and use it to test the game. Since (aside from a few hardcores who want to be the first to take a crack at new endgame content) virtually no one does this, bugs slip through the cracks. For example, if no one logs in and actually plays through, let's say the mannimarco fight on the pts after 1.5 is uploaded there, but before it is loaded to live, then how exactly is the existence of a test server supposed to let them know that some random change they made to a probably completely unrelated (at least on the surface) line of code is going to cause people to drop through the floor and bug out the fight?

They've given us the tools to help them test for bugs. We just don't use them. And seeing as they'd pretty much have to play through every quest using every possible race/class/skill combo to be 100% sure they didn't miss anything, it's not something even remotely possible to do, even with a large testing staff.

Should something be done to make running on the pts more appealing to the run of the mill playerbase? Probably. I wouldn't want to see anything that gave a real gameplay advantage, but something like a vanity reward/pet/color/title for players who have completed x number of hours or a certain number of quests on the pts, or better yet, some kind of reward based on the number of legitimate bugs found and reported wouldn't be a horrible idea.

In the mean time though, if you personally haven't spent a chunk of your time testing on the pts, crying "why didn't they catch this on the pts" is more than a little bit hypocritical.

Just to be clear, I'm not implying you personally haven't done this. If you have, I (and the rest of us lazy scrubs who haven't set foot in there) thank you for the time you spent trying to make the game better for the rest of us. But if you, like 99% of the rest of the playerbase, has never tested... you really have no grounds to complain.

First of all, its not the players' job to test this game for them. Second, I know plenty of people who log into the PTS and report stuff. A lot of those reports just don't get paid attention to. As a result less people log into the PTS because they feel like there's no point. As paying custumors, we all expect a reasonably(<Key word there) bug free experience, so we have plenty of reason to complain lately. And people like yourself who excuse the kind of negligence of late on part of the devs, are not helping to make this game better.

Solariken

Yes, PLEASE make changes to the way patches are deployed. I'm on a 1.5mbps T1 connection - patches usually take most of the day to download but in this case it's looking like over TWO DAYS download time, maybe more. It's ridiculous.

I would rather see smaller patches more frequently than these massive patches once a month.

Savinder

I have to question how the game manages to run given the level of competence displayed.
And speaking of running the game, after the launcher insisting that I have to download yet another 6gb worth of patch, I just killed it and booted the game manually from the .exe
Turns out that the game runs just fine even when the launcher insists that I still have a patch to download.

Unbelievable

Laggus

Robocles wrote: »

spryler wrote: »

Thank you ZOS for listening to your (ungrateful) player base and fixing things in a timely manner. You are very responsive to what the (spoiled) player base asks about. It is ironic that many of the things the (whiney) player base complain about are a result of you listening to them and implementing changes based on that.

Thanks, I will download the large patch and not let I ruin my entire life.

How exactly are you helpful?

It's a 12gb patch... to fix almost nothing. We're already downloading 6gb of sound files for no reason, and have to do it twice.

So, since we're so ungrateful, tell me what we should thank them for?

Thank them for the 90 meg patch today to fix the sounds the 12 gig patch was a patch for...lol..no wait..now i'm confused....

Calluna

WHY another patch today on the NA server? I downloaded it yesterday and then played this morning just fine but when I go to get online this afternoon it says I have an out of date client and I have to download 12 gig again... Some of us have slow connections and limited bandwidth for the month and double downloading patches that are already huge is definitely an issue.