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Helping users lower bandwidth usage.
goad136
Member Posts: 19 Arc User
Hi everyone I'm not sure this is the correct place to post this but if not feel free to move it to the correct place.
Well to start I live in an area of the country that has no broadband.There is no cable or dsl.
The only option for those like me are companies like Verizon,Sprint,and AT&T.My family
uses Verizon's 4g network with one of their jetpacks.It works great with fast speeds.All 4 of use are able to play STO with no lag.
The problem comes in when we play the entire month on STO we hit about 20gigs usage for the month.Our limit is 12gigs.For every gig over we pay 15 dollars.So so that adds up to 120 buck just for the overage not counting the 91 bucks for the service.
We have played many mmos in the past but most have never come close to hitting the 12
gig cap.I admit most of these are older games such as eq2,wow,coh,***,and swg.
I believe some of this usage could be stopped or at least lowered with a simple toggle in the game options to choose weather to load into the lowest or highest availabe instance of a zone.Having to load 70 some odd players and their ships is a huge data draw.
I'm sure there are other things Cryptic could do to help out those who have a data limit fully enjoy the game.But that one seems the easiest to implement.But I would be happy with anything.
I hate the idea of leaving the game.It really is a great mmo but I can't justify the cost.
I have double checked all my pcs to make sure the Pando media booster is uninstalled.
If anyone else can come up with any ideas for Cryptic or myself to help with this I would be greatful.
On average the 4 of us play about 4-5 hours a day.
Well to start I live in an area of the country that has no broadband.There is no cable or dsl.
The only option for those like me are companies like Verizon,Sprint,and AT&T.My family
uses Verizon's 4g network with one of their jetpacks.It works great with fast speeds.All 4 of use are able to play STO with no lag.
The problem comes in when we play the entire month on STO we hit about 20gigs usage for the month.Our limit is 12gigs.For every gig over we pay 15 dollars.So so that adds up to 120 buck just for the overage not counting the 91 bucks for the service.
We have played many mmos in the past but most have never come close to hitting the 12
gig cap.I admit most of these are older games such as eq2,wow,coh,***,and swg.
I believe some of this usage could be stopped or at least lowered with a simple toggle in the game options to choose weather to load into the lowest or highest availabe instance of a zone.Having to load 70 some odd players and their ships is a huge data draw.
I'm sure there are other things Cryptic could do to help out those who have a data limit fully enjoy the game.But that one seems the easiest to implement.But I would be happy with anything.
I hate the idea of leaving the game.It really is a great mmo but I can't justify the cost.
I have double checked all my pcs to make sure the Pando media booster is uninstalled.
If anyone else can come up with any ideas for Cryptic or myself to help with this I would be greatful.
On average the 4 of us play about 4-5 hours a day.
Post edited by goad136 on
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Hope that helps
Love my MiFi4620L
Proud Leader of the Massive Chaos Group
Proud Listener of Subspace-Radio.net The Voice of Star Trek Online.
[SIGPIC]http://massivechaos.enjin.com/[/SIGPIC]
But its still great advice for those who hadn't thought of it.
To disable on demand patching click on options in your main STO launcher and check the box that says disable on demand patching.This way the pc will download all files in advance so if you are patching your game using public wi-fi it will get all the files for free instead of continuing to download on your limited usage connection at home.
If you are on a limited bandwidth usage isp you may want to avoid foundry content and exploration systems.These tend to have a long load time because they need to download the entire mission to your pc.I'm not 100% sure on this though.So if someone could confirm that these two type of missions require extra downloads that would be great.
Also it would be nice to have a devs opinion on this subject.To hear if there is anything they could do from their end.I know Cryptic is a great company and cares about all its users.And to them every customer is important.
Maybe something like City of Heroes did.By allowing an option to not send buff data if you are on a slower or data limited connection.Or the toggle for loading into the lowest populater instance of a zone.
Wow - I have a setup w/Verizon - Cradlepoint router/Pantech modem/exterior antenna, with a 10 GB limit.
I maxed out the limit to 12 GBs the last 2 months (mine is "only" $10/GB), directly due to Season 7/New Romulas/Tribble testing, etc.
I can't imagine going over a 200 GB limit. I can't imagine HAVING a 200 GB limit for that matter. lol I think there's got to be more going on with your setup than STO. Do you watch a lot of youtube videos or stream music or anything else like that?
To the OP, we have similar setups, except I've never been able to download any of the patches via free wifi, so can't compare there, but one more thing that might help would be to reduce your graphics options (in STO) to a more balanced config, between speed and quality, or reduce to speed-optimized if you're already balanced.
This will only make a difference if you're using the STO options, don't change your video card settings. (I'm sure you already know this, but for the sake of someone who might not realize the difference, STO will still download the high-quality, high-bandwidth video even if you change your video card. You'll just put up with less graphics quality because the card will render it poorly)
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
More or less, PMB is a Peer to Peer (P2P) file sharing program, essentially like most torrent software. This thing, as long as it's installed on your computer, will allow others to connect to you and download the game files off your computer, the same as any other torrent program. I have not found any way of configuring PMB and the only way to keep it from connecting and allowing others to download from you is to remove it.
PMB is only used when downloading the game, it isn't used for updates/patches so getting rid of it causes no problems.
This may also explain the lag that some people report about experiencing, since PMB can and probably will eat up as much bandwidth as the individual connection will allow. Even when not playing STO/CO.
Losing faith in humanity, one person at a time.
I've always wanted a mirror site or two or three that has the patches zipped and available for download. Would take a load off the patchserver on patch days, and let people save some bandwidth as well
Aliella Hawklight, Divine Oracle Devoted Cleric
"Whenever a time arises where clarity is desired, it is always wise to reflect on the sage within."
― Sereda Aleta Dailey
DaiMon Moogie, U.S.S. Acquisition
Rule of Acquisition #57: Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.
STO LTS since launch; NW player since 2014; ARC user - only when I have to put in codes for free stuff
If the OP really is eating up a 200 gig limit, STO isn't doing it. My business line has a 150 gig limit, and even with major data recovery and two client databases, plus a terabyte shared drive I access from home hosted here I've never hit it. And I download all my STO patches and many of my other major downloads here to save on my 15 gig limit at home.
Note I should add to this I run 4 computers on this and 2 roku's for netflix's LOL along with PS3 and Xbox. But in the last 4 months I have started to go over the 200gb's
I use a usb dongle with 15gb allowance with 10p per mb (upto ?20) after, the last paragraph would definately be a good idea considering I use just under a gb for full day play
Well now this is interesting I don't feel like I am using 200 gbs a month but Cox Usage meter says that I am. In fact I am over this month right now by 16 gbs only odd Down loads was PS3 update STO's Patches and SWTOR game down load.
--> To acquire and upgrade bigger weapons
I've tested STO usage with just one pc connected and on demand patching disabled.
On everage with regular play you use about 25- 30 mb per hour.It doesn't sound that bad.
But add in 4-5 hours thats 125mb per day.Add 4 other users 600mb per day.
For a month for 5 people to play is 18gigs.Thats not counting any extra time you spend in places like ESD or First City.These areas use a lot more bandwidth because of the shear amount of people who are always there.
I usally load into a lesser populated instance of ESD when I get there but that fact that it auto loads you into the highest pop instance means you've already wasted your data loading 70 some ships and what they are doing all the customizations that are done to each ship and any buffs they currently have on.
Thats why a toggle to choose weather to load into the highest or lowest pop instance seems to me like an easy way for the devs to give us a little help with our usage caps.
The choosing to send buff data as I said was a feature that City of Heroes had and since I heard a few of their devs where now working on STO.They may be able to throw that in too.
The main thing I'm looking for is some options that wouldn't hurt players with no usage cap but would allow those who have one to lower their usage to the average of most other mmos(around 8-10 mbs per hour)Though I would be happy with around 15mbs per hour usage.
You guys have made some great suggestions we can do ourselves though so if anyone has anymore keep them coming.
I was hoping we could get the community behind this so we could help out all our friends and fleetmates who have this problem and keep them in the game.It's sad to think how many we may have lost that we have never known about because they decided no one cared and just moved onto another game.
So devs I'm not giving up you guys have made a great game and I know that you can help us out.Even in a small way.A couple of mbs per hour and we would be very greatful.
Proud Leader of the Massive Chaos Group
Proud Listener of Subspace-Radio.net The Voice of Star Trek Online.
[SIGPIC]http://massivechaos.enjin.com/[/SIGPIC]
STO isn't what causes a person to eat up that much data though, nor is "normal" web usage. It's video. This is especially true with those of us who are "cable cutters", those who have abandoned traditional cable TV service in favor of getting everything online. The problem multiplies when you have multiple people in the house. Note, I was pushing that much data sometimes basically by myself. A little bit would've been if my girlfriend came over for a weekend. If you had both of us there full time, we'd smash that 250GB cap since she also is a heavy online video user.
Data caps are BS, and are being used unfairly to stifle online video and preserve the traditional cable TV provider's business. But that's another issue.
Regarding the OP's data usage, I did notice an uptick when I started playing STO. More than I thought I would see for an MMO. Only thing I can think is that it's due to STO being so graphically rich. I would think most of the textures, models and whatnot would be stored locally though, as would static maps. Procedurally generated maps (like exploration) may not need to be downloaded either, as the client might be able to generate them itself if supplied with the same PRNG results the server is using. Maybe that is all done server side and sent to the client, hard to say. Foundry maps I'm sure are loaded on the fly, there's no way our game clients contain all that.