SiliconScout
10-06-2015, 01:57 PM
So sitting in a hotel room for a conference and I figure I will toss DDO on through Steam. WOW this has been an adventure.
Down load the game while I slept. started it this morning. Had to say no to the hi res download it was 3Gb more and I didn't feel like waiting for hours.
Game starts up lickity split and does its file check where it learns that there are not only patches to awesomium and the exe and a half dozen dll's and lets not foreget all those splash screens either. But hey I figure first time launch it only took about 10 minutes so no biggie. And then the fun stats as there are "8495 forward iterations" to update. Now ASSUMING this is it and the game will start after this it going to take, judging from the progress percentage, the better part of an hour to an hour and a half to get the game up and running. I would not take bets that this is the only patching needed though and honestly I expect that the most recent update at least will need to go on yet.
Now even if these files are the last needed you are looking at the better part of 2 hours AFTER the game download to even begin to play and that is using the lo-res version of the textures.
If I were a new player to this MMO I would have walked by now, especially if I was planning to just running Free-to-play to give it a test run. I would consider this a true barrier to entry for new players, never mind the complexity of the MMO they are trying to wade into. I would hate to think we have lost some people who may have been good community members because the install was too big a hassle.
Might I suggest you look at updating the steam installer. You either need to make the installing version the most recent OR allow steam to process the updates to the game. If steam could have processed the update it would have been done while I was sleeping like every other game I have on there.
Down load the game while I slept. started it this morning. Had to say no to the hi res download it was 3Gb more and I didn't feel like waiting for hours.
Game starts up lickity split and does its file check where it learns that there are not only patches to awesomium and the exe and a half dozen dll's and lets not foreget all those splash screens either. But hey I figure first time launch it only took about 10 minutes so no biggie. And then the fun stats as there are "8495 forward iterations" to update. Now ASSUMING this is it and the game will start after this it going to take, judging from the progress percentage, the better part of an hour to an hour and a half to get the game up and running. I would not take bets that this is the only patching needed though and honestly I expect that the most recent update at least will need to go on yet.
Now even if these files are the last needed you are looking at the better part of 2 hours AFTER the game download to even begin to play and that is using the lo-res version of the textures.
If I were a new player to this MMO I would have walked by now, especially if I was planning to just running Free-to-play to give it a test run. I would consider this a true barrier to entry for new players, never mind the complexity of the MMO they are trying to wade into. I would hate to think we have lost some people who may have been good community members because the install was too big a hassle.
Might I suggest you look at updating the steam installer. You either need to make the installing version the most recent OR allow steam to process the updates to the game. If steam could have processed the update it would have been done while I was sleeping like every other game I have on there.