This update is going to kill me!

Post by **Fiye** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:00 am

I'm on a broadband internet connection from CoX... and yet this 100MB update is going to take me four hours.

Half of which I downloaded in two.

Argh! Damn you Square-Enix.

Next time slowly upload the clients with the patch instead of throw a ton of sh*t at us.

Finwich · Post by **Finwich** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:20 am

@ 4 hours and 50 minutes lol

Post by **Fiye** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:23 am

THANK GOD I'm not the only one suffering at the hand sof Square Enix.

This is reminding me fo that time int eh AC2 beta where I had to copy my own father's patch files just to get by the long ass update.

Or that time when Anarchy Online servers were down for an entire day.

Vatrina · Post by **Vatrina** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:18 am

Finally finished. Seven hours...7!...on broadband.

Post by **Fiye** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:19 am

lol.

Still going....

and I'm on broadband... should clear up by tomorrow afternoon

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 3:59 am

I fired up POL and started the update before I took off for the day. Typically, this fails miserably, as the updater process invariably needs to be kicked in the head 3-4 times to get it to keep running.

I got lucky this time. When I got home, it was all done. Now I'm one of about 400 people on the server. I suppose I could have gone to camp some NM somewhere without competition, but FFXI has added a new bug that causes it to randomly crash pretty often. Hopefully fixed soon.

ScarlettPheonix · Post by **ScarlettPheonix** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:47 pm

Going on 15 hrs now ><

I thought I was being smart- I started downloading the update about 3 hrs before the server was due to come up. At the 2.5 hr mark I was barely half way through the download- and then the power went out. And stayed out.

>.<

On top of the aggravation of not being able to finish the update- sub-zero temperatures, a sick child and no heat is not happy making by any sort of definition.

>.<

Power came back on sometime early this morning, and I restarted the update as soon as I got up- but its been an hour and only downloaded 100 files.

>.<

Gonna be a long day...

Post by **Fiye** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 1:54 pm

I think I may be seeing a lack of RMT right now.

Post by **Sugami** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 2:55 pm

Only took me an hour or two

Eviticus · Post by **Eviticus** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 4:42 pm

I'm about...1000 miles away from my computer. (Spring Break visiting my dad in Virginia Beach.) So when I get back provided I can get my computer to work...it shall be interesting to see how long it takes me to update my computer on the campus net.

ScarlettPheonix · Post by **ScarlettPheonix** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 4:51 pm

Despite the fact that you will be using a campus net- it probably won't take you that long.

Of course, since I'm now going on Hour 20 from when I started this last night, my idea of what takes a {long time} is probably a bit skewed at the moment. Let's just say the 3 ft of snow in my front yard is melting quicker. And its only 9 degrees (or -12.8 C for you strange metric users) outside.

/sigh

Post by **Tivia** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:31 pm

Well, nice to see SE's Patcher still sucks after 4 years.

ScarlettPheonix · Post by **ScarlettPheonix** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:44 pm

Well, to be fair- the power outage where I am wasn't their fault. That was due to some downed power lines early yesterday afternoon which took a hell of a long time to fix.

SE's updates over the past year have actually been very quick to down load, not taking more than an hour or two as Sug reported already. Even the Update that came along with the ToAU expansion didn't take very long all things considered. This is just an abnormally slow one. /shrug

Post by **Tivia** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 5:51 pm

An hour or two for 100mb sounds pretty bad to me.

Pheonixhawk · Post by **Pheonixhawk** » Thu Mar 08, 2007 9:50 pm

Took My Compy 3 and a half hours to download. Luckily for me I had to go back to work, so I just left my compy on. Only 800 ppl were online when I logged in last night. Pretty cool, but 0 party invites for any of my jobs.

Thu Mar 08, 2007 10:26 pm

Took me only about an hour, but I cheated. I downloaded the update in the late AM when everyone was still at work or school even if they live in EST.

Hours later I got on when there were less than 300 people on Garuda, didn't figure I could get to any interesting NM before the server was bursting with activity. Imagine my surprise when 1/2 an hour later, I found that fewer than 100 more had logged on.

WoW has some kind of torrent thing with their updates so the more who are downloading the faster it runs.

/sigh

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:30 am

Torrent is really ugly -- it's NOT firewall friendly. Anyone that benefits from torrent is basically wide open to having their system hacked. Also, the problem isn't with the bandwidth or the actual downloading in FFXI. It's with the stupid patcher algorythm.

It can't restart itself. You have to click things to tell it to restart. And, it will go through the entire file check on every restart. For a large patch, the file check itself will take 5-20m depending on patch size and disk speed. This means you have to establish a connection with their DL server *twice* at a minimum.

The DL failure and user intervention always occurs at the connection attempt.

Anyway, this was another item that I posted bugs for *years* ago in detail and sent them the same information in feedback -- including precise information on how to fix the problem. I've sent it in more than once, too. IIRC, there was a blurb a year or so ago about them wanting more feedback. LOL. Shouting down a well.

Post by **JediKitsune** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:38 am

I feel really smart for reinstalling FFXI around the time of this patch and having to update from a fresh install.

Post by **Sugami** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 12:51 am

Hehe Ozuka you seem to be shouting at a lot of wells recently

I started the download before you could get into the game and finished an hour before the update/maint was meant to finish.

My friend, a software engineer, has commented on the poor design of their update software or whatever. Seems bit silly it has to check through everything first, which adds more time to the process. That and it does seem to take a long time to actually copy files across

Keavy · Post by **Keavy** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:32 pm

Man, there was an update?

I'm dealing with a bit of insomnia right now. Since last Friday I've slept a total of ten hours. I was reading "Fight Club" again at work and now I'm freaking out thinking that my body has been taken over by a separate personality that's creating an underground boxing league in order to train a militia to bring down corporate america.

Worst part of all is that if it is really happening everyone's gonna give me a hard time for ripping off the movie. YOU ILLITERATE BASTARDS, IT WAS A BOOK FIRST! A BOOK!!!

ScarlettPheonix · Post by **ScarlettPheonix** » Fri Mar 09, 2007 1:51 pm

/passes over her bottle of sleeping pills.

/comfort

I get insomnia myself, so I know how you're feeling. My insomnia attack books lately have been rereading the (admittedly small) collection of Star Wars books my husband has.

Yes, there was an update. DRKs got some nice new spells, and there was the usual assortment of missions and quests. More details in the March Update Info topic.

Bitneko · Post by **Bitneko** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 1:02 am

The computer I have to play on now can't play FFXI, but I can still update it.

May not seem as long when there's nothing to look forward to on the other side of it.

Keavy · Post by **Keavy** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:05 am

ScarlettPheonix wrote:/passes over her bottle of sleeping pills.

/comfort

I get insomnia myself, so I know how you're feeling. My insomnia attack books lately have been rereading the (admittedly small) collection of Star Wars books my husband has.

Yes, there was an update. DRKs got some nice new spells, and there was the usual assortment of missions and quests. More details in the March Update Info topic.

I called in sick today and got to my doctor's office as she opened. She gave me some sleeping pill samples and scheduled me for an appointment. Thanks to the pills I got the best seven hours of sleep I've ever had.

As for the update, I did it but I got a weird issue and I was wondering if any other 360/PS2/PS3 users are experiencing the same issue: The left thumbstick no longer controls the pointer or can be used to select menu options when starting up. The digital pad does, but not the left stick. The left stick does work because I tried it on some other games and even tried the controllers from the living room 360 and got the same problem.

I sent SE an e-mail about it because I woke up well after the call center closed.

Post by **JediKitsune** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 3:44 am

I think that it's always been like that on PC. I don't remember the numpad controlling the menus at startup, just the arrow keys...

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 2:21 pm

Sugami wrote:Hehe Ozuka you seem to be shouting at a lot of wells recently

Heh. Yeah, but it's one of those things like voting. One vote doesn't count at all really, but if you don't vote, you can't really bitch about the political situation. Besides, someday they might actually listen.

I'm mostly playing VG nowadays and only doing FFXI for dynamis twice a week. In VG they actually seem to be listening to my bug reports. I'll report a bug and then next patch or two will see it fixed. Pretty damn cool. 'Course some of my "bug reports" might qualify as rants. Most of those have been ignored, but even a few of the "ok, this has gone on long enough" bug-rants have gotten some attention.

LOL. What if the next thing SE/FFXI does is add a player-configurable XML style interface? That would be just too much to hope for, though -- and it would mean they'd have to rewrite a lot of their UI. It needs it and it would be great to see, but I don't think it will happen.

Post by **JediKitsune** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 6:53 pm

The problem with FFXI is that SquareEnix does as much as they can to make the experience between platforms mostly the same, save resolution and performance. Otherwise, they'd probably be more open about allowing FFXI to be modded.

Post by **Fiye** » Sat Mar 10, 2007 8:10 pm

SE is a smart company, besides the problems that we give it xDD.

The FPS cap is there because of the PS2, and if we were to raise it. Lets just say that it'd be like using Intel Hyperthreading technology on UT2003.

You'd like like you were hacking.

Igihstehr · Post by **Igihstehr** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 7:41 pm

Well... I cannot get onto the game. I get to the screen where it loads the info - just before the screen where you choose your character - and it freezes at "Aquiring player data" and then times out...

I am suffering from withdrawl!

I've unblocked all the ports on my router, bypassed my router, checked all the files, etc... I'm going to have to call SE support tonight and try and iron it out...

Post by **Fiye** » Tue Mar 13, 2007 11:30 pm

Might want to change your ISP.

that might fix the problem in any case.

Okuza · Post by **Okuza** » Fri Mar 16, 2007 1:47 pm

I've got a strong hunch that SE changed some of the particulars for their network protocol and the changes make it really hard for weak NAT routers to function. Everyone I've talked to that has connectivity issues after the recent patch is using one of the cheaper NAT routers.

My bet is that if you connect your comp directly to the internet instead of through your router, FFXI will work. Of course, for anyone that wants a system that isn't attacked and infected with various malware, this is a really bad idea.

You could try a router with very good NAT support, like Cisco (not linksys). Unfortunately, a good router costs about $750. You could also check to see if there are any firmware updates available for your router and/or try reconfiguring it.

BTW, waaay back near NA release, FFXI had some problems due to setting the TTL too low. You could edit the various IP settings in your registry to make sure that particular bug isn't happening again.