PC games patches Consolidation

[WantoN]

Whilst I don't play on it 100% I have pretty much made the switch to PS5. Obviously it depends on what type of system you are running, but for me I don't see any difference.

Maybe I'll switch back in a few years when PC prices are a bit more affordable.

Don't blame you mate. 3 years ago I thought people were mad to switch. Now, I don't know why anyone would go PC, unless they have money to burn and love the hobby.

I've got a setup I'm particularly happy with, and I very much enjoy ultrawide 120hz. Otherwise I'd switch.

With the insane pricing, the complete mess of platforms & publishers, and the death of exclusives, I don't think I could recommend PC gaming to anyone anymore. Can you imagine introducing your console buddy to PC?

"You'll need 10 programs with 10 logins, each with 2FA. You'll probably want to compare half a dozen sites to buy games... Oh and hardware's going to cost you £4k"

In fact the more I think about it, the more I reckon the OP is onto something:

• Simple interface; think win2k detailed list
• Advanced sorting; installed, update size / time, date added, platform
• Batch updating / installing / uninstalling
• Search all games; check if you already own something
• Open & Close platforms automatically

I reckon I'd pay money for that actually.

@smogsy you're a genius!

 

[smogsy]

Don't blame you mate. 3 years ago I thought people were mad to switch. Now, I don't know why anyone would go PC, unless they have money to burn and love the hobby.

I've got a setup I'm particularly happy with, and I very much enjoy ultrawide 120hz. Otherwise I'd switch.

With the insane pricing, the complete mess of platforms & publishers, and the death of exclusives, I don't think I could recommend PC gaming to anyone anymore. Can you imagine introducing your console buddy to PC?

"You'll need 10 programs with 10 logins, each with 2FA. You'll probably want to compare half a dozen sites to buy games... Oh and hardware's going to cost you £4k"

In fact the more I think about it, the more I reckon the OP is onto something:

• Simple interface; think win2k detailed list
• Advanced sorting; installed, update size / time, date added, platform
• Batch updating / installing / uninstalling
• Search all games; check if you already own something
• Open & Close platforms automatically

I reckon I'd pay money for that actually.

@smogsy you're a genius!

well i don't claim to be... but we all know i am

tottally agree with switching to console though after my 3090 cant do 4K id certainly consider switching & buying all 500+ games i have on PC it WOULD still be cheaper than buying a 4080/4090

 

[WantoN]

well i don't claim to be... but we all know i am

tottally agree with switching to console though after my 3090 cant do 4K id certainly consider switching & buying all 500+ games i have on PC it WOULD still be cheaper than buying a 4080/4090

The thing is I still get great performance on my 1080 overclocked, most games are around 100fps with dips smoothed by g-sync. A 3090, whilst obscenely priced, should see you right for years.

Like you, I have hundreds of games, and frankly I could probably never buy another game, and just play what's in my library, in addition to the freebies

 

[smogsy]

The thing is I still get great performance on my 1080 overclocked, most games are around 100fps with dips smoothed by g-sync. A 3090, whilst obscenely priced, should see you right for years.

Like you, I have hundreds of games, and frankly I could probably never buy another game, and just play what's in my library, in addition to the freebies

indeed, 4K 120hz is a bit hard though glad got my 3090 when i did i get it for 1300 now their like 3K

 

[loftie]

sad fact even on optics at 90Mbps games takes ages to update in a household as Users are watch Netflix/Amazon prime video which takes priority

Division was 50GB that took me 9 hours to download, internet is decent when house is empty but with a full house patches take ages, so scheduling them over night is a good method specially being a game hopper

It's a shame there isn't a way to run the launchers in a "patch" mode, which just downloads any patches for those games (without the need for the whole game to be installed) that could then be served to computers on your network. Would be even more awesome if it could be run on a Pi, you could have a low powered Pi just download stuff over night and then when you run the launcher on your PC it pulls the update over the network.

 

[V F]

Remember when you could just install a game on your hard drive and play it? I remember...aah simpler times.

Was it really? So many games didn't install and just "work".

To a degree yes and no. I always remember scouring Gamespy or Fileplanet then to find you had a client mismatch to get online as you could have been running one patch old. Then faffing about with Punkbuster and its updates through command prompt.

Or issues with the CD/DVD drive reading the disc or the disc itself. This was usually rare but sometimes issues happened or an issue with a patch checking for the disc.

Oh as well as you could have updated but the servers weren't patched yet. So you may have had to wait a few hours or half a day or to the following day. Dependant on how fast the server admins were.

 

[montymint]

https://playnite.link exists to have all your games in one place

 

[TheVoice]

It's a shame there isn't a way to run the launchers in a "patch" mode, which just downloads any patches for those games (without the need for the whole game to be installed) that could then be served to computers on your network. Would be even more awesome if it could be run on a Pi, you could have a low powered Pi just download stuff over night and then when you run the launcher on your PC it pulls the update over the network.

It would be such a niche feature though, and given how games are installed/updated these days I'm not sure it would work that well.

As someone with slow internet (at least until Hyperoptic pull their finger out), the PS5's ability to run updates automatically overnight is a total godsend.

 

[loftie]

It would be such a niche feature though, and given how games are installed/updated these days I'm not sure it would work that well.

As someone with slow internet (at least until Hyperoptic pull their finger out), the PS5's ability to run updates automatically overnight is a total godsend.

It would be fairly niche, but as you pointed out, the PS5s ability to update overnight is a godsend. What about how games are installed and updated would make it not work? AFAIK there are round about ways of doing it currently (at least with steam) - spare PC with the games installed set to download updates after a certain time, with a steam cache to cache the updates. Main PC turns on and asks for the update and it pulls the files from the cache.

@smogsy idea would be usefull some of the time for me. As I generally only run Steam, and when we kinda get a few of us on TS to play a game, I'll log into Battlenet (overwatch), Epic (Killing floor 2, WWZ), Origin (BF3, BF4, Battlefront 2) ,Ubisoft connect (Anno) or Rockstar Launcher (GTAV), to find that there's a patch for one of those games. So knowing in advance, assuming our gaming session is kinda planned, that a game needs an update would be helpful. But I suppose I could plan things a bit better and just open all the launchers a couple of days before hand to have them all update.

 

[smogsy]

It would be fairly niche, but as you pointed out, the PS5s ability to update overnight is a godsend. What about how games are installed and updated would make it not work? AFAIK there are round about ways of doing it currently (at least with steam) - spare PC with the games installed set to download updates after a certain time, with a steam cache to cache the updates. Main PC turns on and asks for the update and it pulls the files from the cache.

@smogsy idea would be usefull some of the time for me. As I generally only run Steam, and when we kinda get a few of us on TS to play a game, I'll log into Battlenet (overwatch), Epic (Killing floor 2, WWZ), Origin (BF3, BF4, Battlefront 2) ,Ubisoft connect (Anno) or Rockstar Launcher (GTAV), to find that there's a patch for one of those games. So knowing in advance, assuming our gaming session is kinda planned, that a game needs an update would be helpful. But I suppose I could plan things a bit better and just open all the launchers a couple of days before hand to have them all update.

you can setup a steam cache server, which can be the server your connect to for all your games, (this then pulls the games) and your network then gets local network speeds.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...m-caching-server-to-ease-the-bandwidth-blues/

or easier to follow:
https://linustechtips.com/topic/962655-steam-caching-tutorial/



virgin Media actually have a ton of these in London canary wharf. found this out from a VM employee when we was troubleshooting connection issues

VM steam downloads can be insane, i was maxing a 500MB/S connection back then so much so my ryzen 1800X was hitting 40-60% usage decrypting these SSDS were going nuts too

 

[loftie]

you can setup a steam cache server, which can be the server your connect to for all your games, (this then pulls the games) and your network then gets local network speeds.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017...m-caching-server-to-ease-the-bandwidth-blues/

or easier to follow:
https://linustechtips.com/topic/962655-steam-caching-tutorial/

From what I understood (I was looking at the same Arsetechnica link), you need to have one of the PCs download the files first. I could dump the games on a laptop, and have it on over night, but then I'd need more space on the laptop for all the games. Which is why it'd be nice to only need to download the patches without the game being installed. TBH, unless things have changed the launcher that would benefit from this idea the most would be Epic, since they had it so that if you closed the launcher while it was downloading you'd lose the download. Hopefully they've changed that now.

VM steam downloads can be insane, i was maxing a 500MB/S connection back then so much so my ryzen 1800X was hitting 40-60% usage decrypting these SSDS were going nuts too

Now I'm just jealous

 

[smogsy]

From what I understood (I was looking at the same Arsetechnica link), you need to have one of the PCs download the files first. I could dump the games on a laptop, and have it on over night, but then I'd need more space on the laptop for all the games. Which is why it'd be nice to only need to download the patches without the game being installed. TBH, unless things have changed the launcher that would benefit from this idea the most would be Epic, since they had it so that if you closed the launcher while it was downloading you'd lose the download. Hopefully they've changed that now.




Now I'm just jealous

yeh those were the days, moved and now on 50mbps

I used to be a Virgin media Beta tester, they selected me due to my high usage & that the green box was literally at the end of my drive my noise margins were so good they had to put 20Db reduction on my line as it would kill my router

I was paying for Virgin media 100Mbps but they gave me 500Mbps down/500Mbps up. i used to have lot of netflix/Youtube/PC games running with ton of automation. so used to rack up to anywhere from 2TB-10TB per month data
(i think this is why they wanted me testing) reported a ton of router bugs as well. but moved house