Any plans to reduce game file sizes?

Troneon

Leocaran wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

It's a big game guys.
We arent exactly playing Pac Man here.

Guild wars 2 takes 34 Gb (not up to date but still). Is it a small 'Pac Man' game with very old graphics?
I can manage with 90 Gb of ESO, but it's worth investigating if they could make it less.

Not a question of IF, they can do it they just probably won't as it means "investing" money into it.

Lake

Leocaran wrote: »

Katahdin wrote: »

It's a big game guys.
We arent exactly playing Pac Man here.

Guild wars 2 takes 34 Gb (not up to date but still). Is it a small 'Pac Man' game with very old graphics?
I can manage with 90 Gb of ESO, but it's worth investigating if they could make it less.

Yes. GW2 looks old and the graphics are poor. Not comparable.

Gatviper

Frankly, most game developers don't bother as much with space lately anymore, since storage size is growing all the time. Sure you could optimize the compression and the game, but since it can run anyway on most today's graphic cards, CPUs, and storage got enough space, why bother.
I'd wish as well they took the effort to make the game smaller, even on my 1TB non-SSD hard drive it's quite a chunk for a single game, but realistically I wouldn't hold my breath.

ArchMikem

Isbilen wrote: »

idk wrote: »

What games is OP speaking of? The second responder compares ESO to a game that is not an MMORPG, just has a little grouping available, so it would and should be smaller.

The download time for ESO is long because it is slow for whatever reason and seems to come in pieces.

Black Desert patch notes:

In addition, a notable announcement we want to make is that our game client has tremendously reduced in size where its 27 GB now

It used to be 77 GB.

Needs to happen with ESO too!

You're telling us the graphical monstrosity that is Black Desert is about 70 gigs smaller than ESO?

Ashilda_Dragonheart

idk wrote: »

Ashilda_Dragonheart wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Ashilda_Dragonheart wrote: »

Rex-Umbra wrote: »

Get faster internet.

That's hard when you live in the middle of nowhere and can't afford better internet anyway. If the file size can be reduced, then it should be.

and it is quite possible that it would reduce the quality of the graphics and other aspects to reduce size of the game.

Is it though? Other games have reduced file sizes.This game is huge and it takes up half the space on my PS4. When I look at other huge games, they don't take up nearly as much space and still have much better graphics. I do agree that they shouldn't do this if I will reduce the quality of the graphics though.

You say other games but yet to actually offer any real comparisons. Do you really have the knowledge to even make a comparison as you would have to compare engines, graphics quality and much more.

It is easy to be an arm chair critic yet have no basis for what is being critiqued.

Edit: Warframe mentioned above is a great example of a bad comparison. It is not a true MMORPG for starters. WoW would be another great comparison since it has pitiful graphics.

The game takes up too much space. It takes up more space than Far Cry 5 on our Ps4, which has much better graphics.
Let me put it this way; it takes up almost half the space on our PS4. The other half is a bunch of other games, including Far Cry 5, Fallout 4, Fortnite, Battlefield 1, Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, Black Ops 3, and Skyrim Special Edition. How is it possible that ESO takes up that much space? We have a PS4 with around 500 GB. No other game took as long to download as ESO did, I had to re-download and it takes almost double the time of our other games.

Edit: it takes up between 100-150 GB. It still takes up way too much space compares to our other games.

kypranb14_ESO

I read online somewhere a while back that the reason "next-gen" console file sizes are so huge is because the have to leave them uncompressed, because compressing them would decrease performance, which the "next-gen" consoles already lack in.

Sylvermynx

The folder is 90 gig on my PC - before Monday's content patch of course.

Alinhbo_Tyaka

Gatviper wrote: »

Frankly, most game developers don't bother as much with space lately anymore, since storage size is growing all the time. Sure you could optimize the compression and the game, but since it can run anyway on most today's graphic cards, CPUs, and storage got enough space, why bother.
I'd wish as well they took the effort to make the game smaller, even on my 1TB non-SSD hard drive it's quite a chunk for a single game, but realistically I wouldn't hold my breath.

Because is isn't all about cheap storage. Obsolete or inefficient code can slow things down by excess code execution paths or unnecessary loading of modules/dlls that will never be called. While reducing the size of the client might help with downloading it would likely have a larger benefit of speeding up the game. In fact given what I've seen download speeds are throttled on the ZOS download server side so unless the client could be reduced in size significantly folks might not perceive any improvement. On the other hand small changes in code can result in major performance gains. Something the game really needs.

I'm sure ZOS already knows all of this though and it is just a matter on not wanting to spend money on something that isn't content. A not uncommon stance in businesses who are primarily entertainment content companies and not IT firms. The platform is pretty much ignored as long as the content can be delivered.