As with others, the 9.8GB patch keeps freezing on me. Right now it's at 18% which is the best I've gotten so far. I followed the suggestions to improve the process, however it's been over an hour and I'm at 18%. Considering my net speed, that's just silly.
So, is there an offline installer/patch file available that I can download and then install? Not keen on waiting 4 hours for this to complete.
AFAIK there is no offline patch available, though I think that Cryptic/Perfect World should consider such an option in the future. Due to the nature of Bittorrent it would be a great way for the developers to push out huge patches like this with minimum impact on their own servers. I know I would download a torrent if it were faster than this molasses-like speed we're now getting from the patch server, and I would keep seeding it as a courtesy to my fellow gamers.
As an aside, I know that some people have been seeing the 9+GB number and others like myself have the 5.8+GB number. I still haven't figured out what the discrepancy is with that. I have never dabbled in the Tribble server but with the older launcher version and the new one which came out earlier today I have always seen 5882MB as the target size for my system...
But for right now I would be very wary of anyone claiming to have a patch file available either from an online file-sharing site or from the torrents. With all of the STO players who are currently miffed at the current patch situation, I wouldn't put it past a script kiddie to throw together some sort of fake patch file containing malware...
Not that anyone should care, but just so you can compare your own patching performance to mine... I got the launcher update, ran STO for a few minutes to enter doff assignments, then exited. It's been just under 2.5 hours and I am at 41.7% progress with the pre-patch (1230MB received / 2450MB patched). So if the current server throughput rate holds, if you have a relatively fast PC and a 20Mbps Internet connection like mine, you're looking at a 6-8 hour process.
Your first instinct might be to say TRIBBLE the pre-patch and wait until the 21st to get the data for LoR after it has gone live. IMHO that would be a mistake -- if Cryptic can't provide decent throughput now, at midnight my time on a Friday night into Saturday morning when most people are either out partying or are asleep, don't think that things will be any better when LoR goes live. I'm willing to bet that they'll be much worse. Remember all the problem we had with server timeouts when Neverwinter Nights came online. If you want to try and press your luck with a (best-case) 6-8 hour patching queue and mix in a bunch of server timeouts, best of luck to you.
I'm going to try and find a three or four hour long video on Youtube to play, so that my PC doesn't put itself on Standby, I'm leaving the system running with the launcher patching, and then I'm going to sleep. I'll cross my fingers in the morning and hope that the pre-patching process completed successfully. And then, lucky me and lucky all of us, we'll need to cross them again on the 21st. I'd almost rather have a static but stable game, rather than dealing with this level of drama. I sure hope LoR will have been worth all of the bother it's been causing everyone...
We've released a new launcher that should address the issue with pre-patch not completing.
You will need to restart your launcher, and the next pre-patch will complete as expected.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them." -Thomas Marrone
I knew you guys changed something, because earlier when I logged out the patch started downloading as usual, but it was coming much slower but at a steady rate. I let it run and was happy to see it get past the 46% mark, and was over 54% when I left the house...
Now I'm back, the window is gone so I presume the download completed successfully. <strike>Yay.
Thank you for responding to our problem.</strike>
EDIT:
Nope, it did NOT work. Launching the game it downloaded another 3615KB. OK fine. But upon exit it again wants to download that #&*%$ 5882MB "prepatch". :mad:
This in spades.
I left it running through the night given the crawl to which everything on the servers seems to have slowed, checking every couple of hours. AFAIK, it got to at least 67% (last check) then the update window closed itself at some point. Logged in and out to check only to be confronted with another from scratch download, though this time it said it was receiving around 1000kb more than it had allegedly patched! Didn't allow it to proceed as like others I can't afford to waste so much data allowance.
This sort of thing appears almost inevitable now, no matter the online platform, Steam, EA origin, windows live, etc all strain and break without fail whenever they try to release something big. Would be preferable if this at least 'saved' download progress as it went as Steam (when it works) or, as others have said, provide alternate hosting or a standalone download & installer. We're now what, 3 days out from 'release' day? Needs to be sorted rather quickly or we'll see an even worse than normal torrent of outrage around here.
There weren't any visual changes, at least not as far as I could detect. I got the usual pop-up window message saying that the launcher was undergoing attempt 1 to update itself. That went away and another similar message popped up. After a few more seconds, that tiny window closed and the normal-looking launcher window opened. I signed in with my usual user name and password, started STO and played for a few minutes. I exited the game and the launcher opened itself and began the pre-patch process, just like it has been doing for the last few nights. But this time (knock on particle board) it has crept its way all the way up to 52% completion after a full three hours of patching.
You might be able to see the exact revision number of the launcher executable if you look into the file properties, but I think that if you have successfully logged into the game and played it, you should be running the updated launcher.
I don't blame you for any confusion or any surfeit of caution however. Things have been rather crazy these last few days. Best of luck to you and please feel free to post any further questions or tell of any experiences you have in attempting to get the pre-patch completed. I think that it was only because of people talking about the patch problem that Cryptic actually started paying attention, and made them release an updated launcher. We need to keep this dialogue going. I felt like a dumbbell when I was one of the first to post a reply about the patch fail -- now nearly everyone has experienced the problem. So keep asking away...
I left it running through the night given the crawl to which everything on the servers seems to have slowed, checking every couple of hours. AFAIK, it got to at least 67% (last check) then the update window closed itself at some point. Logged in and out to check only to be confronted with another from scratch download, though this time it said it was receiving around 1000kb more than it had allegedly patched! Didn't allow it to proceed as like others I can't afford to waste so much data allowance.
This sort of thing appears almost inevitable now, no matter the online platform, Steam, EA origin, windows live, etc all strain and break without fail whenever they try to release something big. Would be preferable if this at least 'saved' download progress as it went as Steam (when it works) or, as others have said, provide alternate hosting or a standalone download & installer. We're now what, 3 days out from 'release' day? Needs to be sorted rather quickly or we'll see an even worse than normal torrent of outrage around here.
I agree. It shouldn't be that difficult to include a resume feature base on the data already downloaded. The emphasis with STO files seems to be on file integrity and ubiquity (i.e. everyone currently online has the exact same software version running). But the pre-patch system is outside of that. It is designed to relieve load on the patch servers on the day of go-to-live rollouts of major updates.
It is downloading files to a temp folder under Steam/steamapps in my Windows machine. On the first afternoon of this pre-patch clusterfreak, I got to the usual 46% and the thing choked. I was scared to do anything about it so I left it idle until the next day, when I got impatient, quit the client and manually renamed the old prepatch subfolder and created a new one in the Steam folder.
The launcher was able to load and play STO as normal, and then after exiting the game it tried once more to load the whole pre-patch. It failed again at 46%. This means that the contents of the prepatch subdirectory in the Steam/steamapps folder are not critical to the game's operation. They are simply a temporary holding cell for data which will be flagged to go live at a future date.
So there is no reason why Cryptic could not employ some sort of download manager or whatever they wish to call it, some feature which would allow the resuming of interrupted or failed downloads from their patch server. In fact it seems to me that it would make economic sense for them to do so. With all of us who've downloaded 2GB+ from their servers, in some cases multiple times only to have the patch process fail, they could save a lot of money in bandwidth charges by spending a little bit on incorporating a resume feature into their game client. Over the last four days I have probably downloaded about 10GB of data from their patch server, when it seems like only 2-3GB is necessary to be decompressed into the famous 5882MB pre-patch that my STO installation demands.
this new launcher does resume download when you close/terminate it. just don't trust the number on the launcher, it will reset to 0% everytime you resume it, but it does resume. see your \Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\prepatch\piggs\ folder, watch the filesize & timestamp on the .hogg files, filesize will increase and timestamp will be updated everytime you close/terminate launcher & resume pre-patch download. there's the prove that the pre-patching works.
btw if you need shortcut for pre-patch download without having launch the game & quit, just make shortcut on your \Cryptic Studios\ folder pointing to:
"Star Trek Online.exe" -prepatch Startrek Holodeck Live Qdashsync_Qdashproject_StarTrekServer_Qdashserver_patchserverQperiodcrypticstudiosQperiodcom_Qdashport_7255_Qdashname_STQperiod30Qperiod20130513aQperiod3 CQcolonQbslashProgram_FilesQbslashCryptic_Studios
this will launch pre-patch download directly
note: assuming your client was installed on C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios\ and is the latest version of client by may 18 (ST.30.20130513a), different version need a tweak on the command line, or update to the latest first before pre-patching. also for different folder location, you need change on that command.
: should be written as Qcolon
\ should be written as Qbslash
(space) should be written as _
so C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios\ should be written as CQcolonQbslashProgram_FilesQbslashCryptic_Studios
Warning: I was trying to be nice about this whole patch fiasco and to give advice to others who were equally exasperated... I saw an offer from Steam to buy Borderlands 2 for 66% the normal price. I bought the game via Firefox, and then, as soon as I maximized the Steam client, which was currently trying to update STO via the pre-patch, it closed the STO launcher and I lost the 52% progress that I'd received over the last four hours.
I am not quick to anger, but this whole thing is a military-grade Charlie-Foxtrot. Steam is supposed to be independent of particular games. STO is supposed to be its own world with patches applied in a fitting manner. To have a new game purchase break an already-ongoing STO patch process is freaking ridiculous.
At this point I am almost ready to abandon my 340+ hours playing STO and waste all my spare time exclusively playing Borderlands 2.
So a friendly warning to anyone out there trying to update your STO installation -- set your system to be in waking status for at least 12 hours to receive the patch, keep your hands off of your keyboard and mouse, then pray to the entity or entities of your choice, and go to bed. Touch nothing.
You now have a chance of your STO install having been properly patched approximately equal to that of you finding a pirate treasure buried in your backyard.
It's not just the pre-patch, the regular Tribble update is a dribble update crawling along at the same speed. With luck maybe the Tribble dribble will finish by the 21th. On second thought, probably not. No doubt the server will crash before that and interrupt the download.
There is two ways to originally install STO - download via steam, or download by the perfect world crappy spyware peer downloader thing.
Then patch via the launcher..
It appears the steam version is about 6 months old; and the spyware peer downloader isn't used once it has first downloaded..
Why don't perfect world just push the updated file to the steam servers? They are fully capable of deploying it off their network? As it was I pulled it down with steam then found the updated launcher off their website before it would even run.
I deleted the spyware TRIBBLE the moment i saw it and downloaded it originally (4 times faster) via steam instead. Even so the spyware TRIBBLE appeared to be some illigitimate child of bit torrent - so surely even that would be an improvement over the launcher patcher?
What are they smoking not to update their steam archive or even get that horrid peer downloader of theirs to re-launch? Surely either of those is going to work better than the single threaded patch launcher for a big download?
Whatever they messed up, I cannot even get the launcher to get as far as the login screen - nor does running the character select client direct seem able to login either. I guess i'll go play rage or read a book instead..
A huge patch with a size of several GB?
Slow Servers?
And you have to download the whole patch all over again if it fails or you stop it?
It takes hours to finish the patch, as long it not fails in the meantime. Some people in my fleet waited half a day, others can't finish it at all.
A way to keep a lot of players out of the LoR Launch!....
If you don't make the patch downloadable and patching in smaller parts, so you don't have to patch from the beginning all the time, you will loose a lot of players with the Launch of LoR!
Tried about 10 times so far and the furthest I've gotten in this patch is about .02% before the thing just shuts down.
So many other ways to spend my time, not sure if this is really worth it.
i think the full patcher is broken everytime i log out the game it starts patching then turns it self off then when i log in it trys to patch but it a stupidly slow rate 1 sec = 1 kb wot the f&^k
Yeah, same issue here. The patching starts post-exit and gets a little downloaded before it quits.
I also think a 5GB (at least that what it says) patch is a little excessive. IMO
Are you using the new STO launcher that zer0niusrex posted in this very thread about using yesterday?
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Are you using the new STO launcher that zer0niusrex posted in this very thread about using yesterday?
I am as it set my firewall off asking for permissions for it. That's the one that got me to 51% then just shut down. Oh well as I said se ehow it goes tonight. Failing that I will just have to do the patch when it is released on the 21st.
Are you using the new STO launcher that zer0niusrex posted in this very thread about using yesterday?
I've just used the launcher linked there and upon logout, no download. I presume that means i'm pre-patched and ready to rock and roll? Or that I still need to keep Tribble updated in order to mirror the files over come launch?
You're just a machine. And machines can be broken.
The idea of pre-patching before the rush is sound, but this has been nothing but a headache for three days now.
Let me explain.
First, the 5.8 gig patch was, for me, as it was for many, freezing mid way through. For me it was 27%. It did not help matters that each time the dl would start over from scratch. I got to 27% three times.
So I combed the forums. I read from a dev that disabling on demand patching will sometimes fix this, so thats what I did. However, I was now for some unknown reason facing down a 9 gig patch!
It didn't help that every time my laptop would go into 'sleep' mode, the dl would stop and have to be restarted from scratch. But I did eventually manage to stay in front of my pc long enough to get that done.
Only to be greeted by the original 5.8 gb dl again! WTF
So I let that run, and the window was gone from my screen when i returned so I assumed it had finished.
But wait, there's more! Now every time I start my client it dls a 3.6 mb patch, and when I exit it again starts the 5.8 gb dl..but cancels out about 5mb in!
Please, someone with a yellow name from cryptic please give me some feedback here, this is making me want to go see if that mythical place called 'outside' exists and forget all about this game.
Craptic. Please just do it the normal way, don't innovate, please..really don't. Your about as successful at pushing new things as N Korea is at following through on threats.
Stop it.. just go with the flow, content, fix content, ignore broken content, make new boxes, put sale on keys... repeat.
Least we can do things then :rolleyes:
PROUD TO PLAY THIS GAME MINUS TO GIVING ANY INCOME TO CRYPTIC
Comments
AFAIK there is no offline patch available, though I think that Cryptic/Perfect World should consider such an option in the future. Due to the nature of Bittorrent it would be a great way for the developers to push out huge patches like this with minimum impact on their own servers. I know I would download a torrent if it were faster than this molasses-like speed we're now getting from the patch server, and I would keep seeding it as a courtesy to my fellow gamers.
As an aside, I know that some people have been seeing the 9+GB number and others like myself have the 5.8+GB number. I still haven't figured out what the discrepancy is with that. I have never dabbled in the Tribble server but with the older launcher version and the new one which came out earlier today I have always seen 5882MB as the target size for my system...
But for right now I would be very wary of anyone claiming to have a patch file available either from an online file-sharing site or from the torrents. With all of the STO players who are currently miffed at the current patch situation, I wouldn't put it past a script kiddie to throw together some sort of fake patch file containing malware...
Not that anyone should care, but just so you can compare your own patching performance to mine... I got the launcher update, ran STO for a few minutes to enter doff assignments, then exited. It's been just under 2.5 hours and I am at 41.7% progress with the pre-patch (1230MB received / 2450MB patched). So if the current server throughput rate holds, if you have a relatively fast PC and a 20Mbps Internet connection like mine, you're looking at a 6-8 hour process.
Your first instinct might be to say TRIBBLE the pre-patch and wait until the 21st to get the data for LoR after it has gone live. IMHO that would be a mistake -- if Cryptic can't provide decent throughput now, at midnight my time on a Friday night into Saturday morning when most people are either out partying or are asleep, don't think that things will be any better when LoR goes live. I'm willing to bet that they'll be much worse. Remember all the problem we had with server timeouts when Neverwinter Nights came online. If you want to try and press your luck with a (best-case) 6-8 hour patching queue and mix in a bunch of server timeouts, best of luck to you.
I'm going to try and find a three or four hour long video on Youtube to play, so that my PC doesn't put itself on Standby, I'm leaving the system running with the launcher patching, and then I'm going to sleep. I'll cross my fingers in the morning and hope that the pre-patching process completed successfully. And then, lucky me and lucky all of us, we'll need to cross them again on the 21st. I'd almost rather have a static but stable game, rather than dealing with this level of drama. I sure hope LoR will have been worth all of the bother it's been causing everyone...
How can I tell if the new launcher has downloaded properly? I don't see any visual changes.
"Critics who say that the optimistic utopia Star Trek depicted is now outmoded forget the cultural context that gave birth to it: Star Trek was not a manifestation of optimism when optimism was easy. Star Trek declared a hope for a future that nobody stuck in the present could believe in. For all our struggles today, we haven’t outgrown the need for stories like Star Trek. We need tales of optimism, of heroes, of courage and goodness now as much as we’ve ever needed them."
-Thomas Marrone
This in spades.
I left it running through the night given the crawl to which everything on the servers seems to have slowed, checking every couple of hours. AFAIK, it got to at least 67% (last check) then the update window closed itself at some point. Logged in and out to check only to be confronted with another from scratch download, though this time it said it was receiving around 1000kb more than it had allegedly patched! Didn't allow it to proceed as like others I can't afford to waste so much data allowance.
This sort of thing appears almost inevitable now, no matter the online platform, Steam, EA origin, windows live, etc all strain and break without fail whenever they try to release something big. Would be preferable if this at least 'saved' download progress as it went as Steam (when it works) or, as others have said, provide alternate hosting or a standalone download & installer. We're now what, 3 days out from 'release' day? Needs to be sorted rather quickly or we'll see an even worse than normal torrent of outrage around here.
You might be able to see the exact revision number of the launcher executable if you look into the file properties, but I think that if you have successfully logged into the game and played it, you should be running the updated launcher.
I don't blame you for any confusion or any surfeit of caution however. Things have been rather crazy these last few days. Best of luck to you and please feel free to post any further questions or tell of any experiences you have in attempting to get the pre-patch completed. I think that it was only because of people talking about the patch problem that Cryptic actually started paying attention, and made them release an updated launcher. We need to keep this dialogue going. I felt like a dumbbell when I was one of the first to post a reply about the patch fail -- now nearly everyone has experienced the problem. So keep asking away...
The process just failed and went back to 0%. It got to 28% before doing so.
Very frustrated right now. I'll try it again later.
I agree. It shouldn't be that difficult to include a resume feature base on the data already downloaded. The emphasis with STO files seems to be on file integrity and ubiquity (i.e. everyone currently online has the exact same software version running). But the pre-patch system is outside of that. It is designed to relieve load on the patch servers on the day of go-to-live rollouts of major updates.
It is downloading files to a temp folder under Steam/steamapps in my Windows machine. On the first afternoon of this pre-patch clusterfreak, I got to the usual 46% and the thing choked. I was scared to do anything about it so I left it idle until the next day, when I got impatient, quit the client and manually renamed the old prepatch subfolder and created a new one in the Steam folder.
The launcher was able to load and play STO as normal, and then after exiting the game it tried once more to load the whole pre-patch. It failed again at 46%. This means that the contents of the prepatch subdirectory in the Steam/steamapps folder are not critical to the game's operation. They are simply a temporary holding cell for data which will be flagged to go live at a future date.
So there is no reason why Cryptic could not employ some sort of download manager or whatever they wish to call it, some feature which would allow the resuming of interrupted or failed downloads from their patch server. In fact it seems to me that it would make economic sense for them to do so. With all of us who've downloaded 2GB+ from their servers, in some cases multiple times only to have the patch process fail, they could save a lot of money in bandwidth charges by spending a little bit on incorporating a resume feature into their game client. Over the last four days I have probably downloaded about 10GB of data from their patch server, when it seems like only 2-3GB is necessary to be decompressed into the famous 5882MB pre-patch that my STO installation demands.
btw if you need shortcut for pre-patch download without having launch the game & quit, just make shortcut on your \Cryptic Studios\ folder pointing to: this will launch pre-patch download directly
note: assuming your client was installed on C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios\ and is the latest version of client by may 18 (ST.30.20130513a), different version need a tweak on the command line, or update to the latest first before pre-patching. also for different folder location, you need change on that command.
: should be written as Qcolon
\ should be written as Qbslash
(space) should be written as _
so C:\Program Files\Cryptic Studios\ should be written as CQcolonQbslashProgram_FilesQbslashCryptic_Studios
I am not quick to anger, but this whole thing is a military-grade Charlie-Foxtrot. Steam is supposed to be independent of particular games. STO is supposed to be its own world with patches applied in a fitting manner. To have a new game purchase break an already-ongoing STO patch process is freaking ridiculous.
At this point I am almost ready to abandon my 340+ hours playing STO and waste all my spare time exclusively playing Borderlands 2.
So a friendly warning to anyone out there trying to update your STO installation -- set your system to be in waking status for at least 12 hours to receive the patch, keep your hands off of your keyboard and mouse, then pray to the entity or entities of your choice, and go to bed. Touch nothing.
You now have a chance of your STO install having been properly patched approximately equal to that of you finding a pirate treasure buried in your backyard.
3 times now i've tried and each time it gets stuck, twice at 46% and the 3rd time it didn't even get to 10%
i've tried various things but nothing is working, what the hell is going on with this thing!???
Then patch via the launcher..
It appears the steam version is about 6 months old; and the spyware peer downloader isn't used once it has first downloaded..
Why don't perfect world just push the updated file to the steam servers? They are fully capable of deploying it off their network? As it was I pulled it down with steam then found the updated launcher off their website before it would even run.
I deleted the spyware TRIBBLE the moment i saw it and downloaded it originally (4 times faster) via steam instead. Even so the spyware TRIBBLE appeared to be some illigitimate child of bit torrent - so surely even that would be an improvement over the launcher patcher?
What are they smoking not to update their steam archive or even get that horrid peer downloader of theirs to re-launch? Surely either of those is going to work better than the single threaded patch launcher for a big download?
Whatever they messed up, I cannot even get the launcher to get as far as the login screen - nor does running the character select client direct seem able to login either. I guess i'll go play rage or read a book instead..
Slow Servers?
And you have to download the whole patch all over again if it fails or you stop it?
It takes hours to finish the patch, as long it not fails in the meantime. Some people in my fleet waited half a day, others can't finish it at all.
A way to keep a lot of players out of the LoR Launch!....
If you don't make the patch downloadable and patching in smaller parts, so you don't have to patch from the beginning all the time, you will loose a lot of players with the Launch of LoR!
So many other ways to spend my time, not sure if this is really worth it.
Why this does not resume your progress after being closed/freezing/crashing i don't know, but i've wasted more time than i feel its worth.
Now to see how it goes tonight.
I also think a 5GB (at least that what it says) patch is a little excessive. IMO
I am as it set my firewall off asking for permissions for it. That's the one that got me to 51% then just shut down. Oh well as I said se ehow it goes tonight. Failing that I will just have to do the patch when it is released on the 21st.
Now when I try to log in I have a 4Gb download just to play the current version.
Except its downloaded 100Mb in 15 minutes.
Yay.
:mad:
At this stage i think i will just wait till after the 21st as this method simply is not working at present.
I've just used the launcher linked there and upon logout, no download. I presume that means i'm pre-patched and ready to rock and roll? Or that I still need to keep Tribble updated in order to mirror the files over come launch?
Let me explain.
First, the 5.8 gig patch was, for me, as it was for many, freezing mid way through. For me it was 27%. It did not help matters that each time the dl would start over from scratch. I got to 27% three times.
So I combed the forums. I read from a dev that disabling on demand patching will sometimes fix this, so thats what I did. However, I was now for some unknown reason facing down a 9 gig patch!
It didn't help that every time my laptop would go into 'sleep' mode, the dl would stop and have to be restarted from scratch. But I did eventually manage to stay in front of my pc long enough to get that done.
Only to be greeted by the original 5.8 gb dl again! WTF
So I let that run, and the window was gone from my screen when i returned so I assumed it had finished.
But wait, there's more! Now every time I start my client it dls a 3.6 mb patch, and when I exit it again starts the 5.8 gb dl..but cancels out about 5mb in!
Please, someone with a yellow name from cryptic please give me some feedback here, this is making me want to go see if that mythical place called 'outside' exists and forget all about this game.
Expect a merge!
Stop it.. just go with the flow, content, fix content, ignore broken content, make new boxes, put sale on keys... repeat.
Least we can do things then :rolleyes: