Expect 100 GB Install Size, 6 GB Patches For Star Citizen

[infohippie]

Everytime I hear about Star Citizen I feel like im watching a trainwreck slowly happen. This game just seems crazy, too ambitious to believe.

Perhaps you should follow development, then? It's actually progressing well and we are getting regular detailed updates about exactly what each of the involved studios is doing every month and what challenges they must overcome. I am impressed by all the information that is flowing out of Cloud Imperium Games about this and how much they are keeping us all in the loop. It's incredibly ambitious, yes, but it looks like they are going to achieve most or all of that ambition.

Maybe I just don't know what the hell I'm talking (it's true*) but shouldn't they be able to find a way to make it not so space inefficient?

It's not so much that it is "inefficient", but just that it is so damn enormous. The sheer scope of this game utterly dwarfs anything we have seen before, and since there are no plans to bring it to consoles the developers don't have to hold back at all. They're able to genuinely push the limits of PC gaming to a level that we have never seen before.

 

[TT Kairen]

It's a developer who's ambition is driven by passion, this is the game he's making because it's the game he and his backers want to play. Not because some corporate asshole at a publisher sees dollar signs.

Eh? I'm having a bit of a cognitive dissonance here because in other forums I peruse Star Citizen is pretty much the poster child for greed and dodgy practices in regard to ships sold.

Seriously, the drama surrounding this game and the ships have become quite the topic in other forums, has made for some enjoyable reading.

Then they're misinterpreting the point of such packages. As is obvious, the game is being developed for those with the highest echelons of hardware. Some of those people have a lot of money, and a lot of desire to see such a game come to fruition (it's been years since the last great space sim). Chris Roberts has stated these packages are not for BUYING SHIPS. Pledge money only if you wish to back the game. The ships are simply the reward and the thank you for supporting the game in such a huge way. (All of the packages in your screenshot have many ships, all with lifetime insurance so they will be replaced for free, as well.) ALL ships shown will be available for in-game money once the game launches, and ships will NO LONGER be available for real money. It is purely to show support.

 

[infohippie]

It's a developer who's ambition is driven by passion, this is the game he's making because it's the game he and his backers want to play. Not because some corporate asshole at a publisher sees dollar signs.

Eh? I'm having a bit of a cognitive dissonance here because in other forums I peruse Star Citizen is pretty much the poster child for greed and dodgy practices in regard to ships sold.

Seriously, the drama surrounding this game and the ships have become quite the topic in other forums, has made for some enjoyable reading.

Then they're misinterpreting the point of such packages. As is obvious, the game is being developed for those with the highest echelons of hardware. Some of those people have a lot of money, and a lot of desire to see such a game come to fruition (it's been years since the last great space sim). Chris Roberts has stated these packages are not for BUYING SHIPS. Pledge money only if you wish to back the game. The ships are simply the reward and the thank you for supporting the game in such a huge way. (All of the packages in your screenshot have many ships, all with lifetime insurance so they will be replaced for free, as well.) ALL ships shown will be available for in-game money once the game launches, and ships will NO LONGER be available for real money. It is purely to show support.

Not only that, but the bigger ships in those packages in the screenshot are designed for an entire organisation (guild) to operate and maintain, not a single pilot. The actual required cost to get on board with Star Citizen is $45 for a starter package, which will give you all the chapters of the single player Wing Commander style campaign as well as a small "starter" ship to begin exploring the shared persistent universe. EVERY OTHER SHIP (and weapon, clothing article, device, pet fish, and everything else) is obtainable in-game without requiring the outlay of any more real world cash. Anyone claiming you need to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on Star Citizen is either being disingenuous or literally does not know what they are talking about.

And a 100Gb download with patches close to 10Gb? That's just...not feasible for a large part of the PC audience. You can have the most kickass PC imaginable, but the game is gated by having fast internet or you'll be sitting around for three days waiting for the base game, and everytime they decide to patch it is another half day of doing nothing else. It's a waste of time as far as I'm concerned and I was somewhat interested despite all the other crap I'd heard about the game, but this is honestly the nail in the coffin for me, and for all the talk of hating, looks like it was for alot of other people too.

You do realise PCs can multitask, right? It's not like a console where you have to sit around and wait for the patch to complete, and you literally cannot do anything else while you wait. I routinely have my computer downloading truckloads of data, while it is also re-encoding video, streaming another video file to a TV in my loungeroom, while I am still using it to read articles on the internet. So if a patch comes out you can't play THIS ONE PARTICULAR GAME for half a day, so what? Let it download while you are at work, or play something else for a couple hours, or something. Honestly guys, it's hard to believe how pessimistic you people are, and how unwilling you are to think outside the box.

And any interest I might've had just went down the drain. Seriously, what the fuck are they doing that takes that much space?!

Games like EVE, X3 and/or WoW give entire worlds or galaxies to play with and they're only in the 15-30GB range.

Elite: Dangerous was around 30GB, and it was a world the size of our ENTIRE GALAXY. This better be the real-life size of a galaxy super-cluster at the very least.

With this degree of ignorance about the difference in scale and scope of the two games, you really can't make any comment that can be taken seriously. Do you even realise the difference between procedurally-generated bland nothingness, and hand crafted, highly detailed game worlds?

First off, those that buy into in now or have bought into in already are going to get the game piece meal over 2 years.

Okay, good for them. What about the rest of us?

Well, to be honest... What ABOUT the rest of you? You're not backers, you're declaring that you're probably not even going to be customers, and you're doing nothing but oozing negativity. Should you expect anyone to care that you would have to strain your poor connection to the limit to download the game?

If it turns out that despite all your wailing and gnashing of teeth you actually DO want the game in the end, then here's an idea - PLAN AHEAD. Put a little thought into something for once. Buy the game right near the end of your monthly connection cycle and grab half of it right away and download the rest a day or two later when your limit resets. Or consider the thought that CIG might have actually considered this issue and might offer physical media for sale. Is it really that hard to find some way to handle a large amount of data?

 

[RedDeadFred]

First off, those that buy into in now or have bought into in already are going to get the game piece meal over 2 years.

Okay, good for them. What about the rest of us?

Well, to be honest... What ABOUT the rest of you? You're not backers, you're declaring that you're probably not even going to be customers, and you're doing nothing but oozing negativity. Should you expect anyone to care that you would have to strain your poor connection to the limit to download the game?

If it turns out that despite all your wailing and gnashing of teeth you actually DO want the game in the end, then here's an idea - PLAN AHEAD. Put a little thought into something for once. Buy the game right near the end of your monthly connection cycle and grab half of it right away and download the rest a day or two later when your limit resets. Or consider the thought that CIG might have actually considered this issue and might offer physical media for sale. Is it really that hard to find some way to handle a large amount of data?

I believe I said multiple times already that if the game ends up being as good as it has promised, I will absolutely buy it, and it will probably be one of my favourite games of all time. I however am familiar with developers making promises that they don't keep.
Assuming that a developer cares more about money than its customers is more than negative, it's realistic. I know many of you want to believe that this is some wonderful passion project of the developers, and maybe it really is, but until it's done, it sounds more like an extremely effective sales pitch.

As for the rest of your post. No, why would I expect you to care? I'd expect the developers to care. Though it seems like you actually care more since you've jumped to their defense before they've said anything on the matter. Jumping past the rudeness in the last part of your post (though it does seem odd that you mention gnashing of teeth when your comment is easily the closest anyone's come to that), I wasn't aware that they were splitting the game up into multiple downloads for convenience sake. That seems like something they'd want to announce along with the actual size of the game, so that people don't outright dismiss it like what is happening now. I realize that they've released individual modules of gameplay for people to demo, but have they actually said that they're splitting their game in such a way so that they can accommodate for people with lower data caps? It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Game developers do stupid things all the time.

Anyway, sorry if people being pessimistic about game developers has ruffled your feathers. I realize that people being skeptical about any crow-funded project can come across as being skeptical about the backers' financial decisions themselves, but it's really not about that. Try not to take it personally. In the end, most of us I assume really do want the game to succeed. The industry just seems to be moving towards increasingly shitty practices so I'd rather assume the worst than get my hopes up.

 

[JaceArveduin]

Maybe I just don't know what the hell I'm talking (it's true*) but shouldn't they be able to find a way to make it not so space inefficient?

It's not so much that it is "inefficient", but just that it is so damn enormous. The sheer scope of this game utterly dwarfs anything we have seen before, and since there are no plans to bring it to consoles the developers don't have to hold back at all. They're able to genuinely push the limits of PC gaming to a level that we have never seen before.

Eh, you're probably right, it's just I'm trying to figure out if this is the estimated file size before or after all of the little tricks to trim it down...

*shrug* I not particularly interested to begin with, so it's not a huge deal for me.

 

[TT Kairen]

snip

If it were a normal developer, or even some random guy making a crowdfunded project, I might be more along your mindset. However, you must be unfamiliar with Wing Commander or Freelancer for some reason or another. This is CHRIS ROBERTS we're talking about. Along with Richard Garriot, also of Origin, one of the oldest, most respected names in the industry for being passionate about his work. They were also a couple of the first victims of EA. But there is one thing you can be sure of when it comes to Chris' name, and that is quality. Not perfection, but you can expect a great space game because he loves great space games. Now that passion and drive is being put to a project with more technology and funding than he's ever had, without the stranglehold of any publisher.

 

[infohippie]

I wasn't aware that they were splitting the game up into multiple downloads for convenience sake. That seems like something they'd want to announce along with the actual size of the game, so that people don't outright dismiss it like what is happening now. I realize that they've released individual modules of gameplay for people to demo, but have they actually said that they're splitting their game in such a way so that they can accommodate for people with lower data caps? It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't. Game developers do stupid things all the time.

They're not splitting it into multiple downloads, no. But the launcher/patcher is smart enough that you can just close it at any time, then when you next run it it will resume from where it left off.

 

[Ugicywapih]

The game is currently sitting at around 20Gb

/thread

Seriously, people read about the 100Gb install, jump to ridiculous conclusions based on outdated information (Surely the audio is uncompressed. Or maybe the game is just poorly optimized overall...) and the result is a massive weepfest.
The game, at this point in time, with the existing content and solutions, weighs in at 20 gigs. This includes small scale space combat simulator (AC is still fighter only iirc, also I don't think you can have more than 1 person in a given craft but I don't actually own the game myself... Yet.) as well as noncombat FPP mode and the ability to control certain systems, such as turrets, in the hangar and on landed medium-sized ships. Full version will include, in addition to that, multiple players per ship, AI controlled hired hands, an FPS combat mode (this was already demonstrated at some point and people complained how the 0G motion looked very wooden. I imagine a large amount of new animations for 0G might get added), massive capital ships with a lot of detail and a massive open world, featuring large celestial bodies, detailed economy and a single player campaign (which takes place before the MP part chronologically, but I'd imagine most of the SP locales will remain available in multiplayer).
Oh and a gimmicky facial recognition system, which will use your webcam to have your avatar's face mimic your real one.
Between that and extra work on the existing modules, I'm actually expecting that remaining 80Gb of Roberts' estimate to be fairly well spent (at the very least, I doubt he expects poor optimization on his own side, so if the code gets compiled poorly, I'd expect a bigger install, actually).

At any rate, I can see how this might smell a bit of the old Molyneux cheese, the game promises a lot and a good number of features has not yet been delivered, but I think there are two important details to consider:
- Peter Molyneux is known equally well for making a couple brilliant, visionary games a long time ago and for overpromising on his projects. Chris Roberts has only earned a reputation for the former, so far.
- The development process of Star Citizen is extremely transparent. RSI offers regular updates, with *several* web video series available to compliment them. Working modules are being constantly being tested by the backers and new modules like the FPS combat and the flight sim (before it actually got released to the backers) are being demonstrated as soon as they're presentable.

All in all, this may well ultimately tank for all I know, but so far, it looks like it's on the right track, so I'll be staying optimistic for the time being, though I AM pretty damn stoked for this game, so it may be a bit of a fanboy effect. Now I just need to upgrade my rig since my net's up to par...

As an afterthought:
I hear RSI is fairly receptive to player input. If you're concerned with install size, register on their forums and request, that they release the installer data as an alternate burnable package when the game ships (Maybe updates too? Dunno.). Then you can just contact someone with an uncapped connection and a burner, pay them for the CD and shipping and get your files quick and dirty while bypassing the cap. I bet it'll be cheaper too, since most companies seem insistent on putting their disks in flashy boxes, a sentiment few disk-burners seem to share, and it'll probably end up being much more convenient (and thus more acceptable) for RSI as well, since this way they won't have to bloat their inhouse shipping department.

Edit: Third point to consider, both Molyneux and Roberts are one trick ponies - one has enjoyed exceptional success with strategy games, god genre in particular, the other with space sims. That does leave me somewhat concerned about the quality of the FPS module, which looked very generic during the presentation, but this is still much more within Roberts' specialty than Fable was within Molyneux's and it's not like Fable turned out all that bad either. Oh and if we're comparing those two guys within their respective fields, I feel it bears mention that I do not consider Roberts to be, in terms of his contribution to the genre, the Molyneux of space sims. That guy, within the scope of his niche, is nothing short of Sid Meier or John Carmack IMO, as he has created many if not most of the defining works of the space sim genre.

Edit2: Proofreading

 

[Strazdas]

Looks like this won't be the Eve killer after all (not that the mechanics of the game ever made that a possibility anyway).

But seriously, who is going to download that in an age where the majority of us still have caps? I know I'm not even considering it now (I was before) and I have a 250GB cap, about as high as they get.

uh, what? Majority? i dont know a single person in rl that has caps. In fact i was amazed to learn that there still exist caps in 2013 when i heard people complaining. caps were abolished in 2008~ here. this shows less of a problem with people willing to download and more of a problem of some ISPs being utterly incompetent.

And EVE is one of the smaller ones nowadays anyway.

I wonder if they will consider burning the game to multiple blu-rays? Yeah it might be expensive, but how many people would be able to set aside 100gb plus the veritable Day 1 patches? Not a lot would be my guess.

Its not hard to set aside 100gb when the total is infinite. the question is more about traffic time. It would definitely be an overnight download or limited speed multiday downloads and thats a lot.

a more interesting question would be about peoples SSD sizes, as many people i know use the 120/128gb ones and this would mean the game would take the entire SSD.

o-o-o-o-h-h n-o-o-o... what ever will I do with only 3TB's of harddrive space...

Not everything needs to be on an SSD folks. Well, actually for this game I'd buy a 4 or 500GB SSD and dedicate it.

if a game is this big it will need to stream large textures very fast, and thus SSD will likely be a significant performance boost.

WoW is also just over a decade old, with four expansion packs. And yet they've managed to keep the game from ballooning much beyond 30 GB over all of that time, despite it getting consistently larger and receiving improved assets.

Wow is over a decade old with over a decade old graphics and this is a game that is supposed to have "The best graphics ever".

And multi-GB patches are extremely obnoxious, because it means that when I get the feeling to play something that needs to update before I'm allowed to play, I have to spend hours waiting and by the time it's finished I probably won't feel like playing it anymore.

If you need to wait hours for downloading of a 2gb patch something is extremely wrong with your internet connection.

100GB is a lot for a game, but not enough to require a particularly big HDD. Even my mother's 5 year old piece of shit laptop has a 500GB HDD. Any computer nowadays can fit that easily.

Yes, but people with shitty ISPs can't be expected to download that. That's the issue at hand, here.

Yes, the problem is that shitty ISPs havent been laughed out of the industry yet, though thats none of Star Citizens fault.

And a 100Gb download with patches close to 10Gb? That's just...not feasible for a large part of the PC audience. You can have the most kickass PC imaginable, but the game is gated by having fast internet or you'll be sitting around for three days waiting for the base game, and everytime they decide to patch it is another half day of doing nothing else. It's a waste of time as far as I'm concerned and I was somewhat interested despite all the other crap I'd heard about the game, but this is honestly the nail in the coffin for me, and for all the talk of hating, looks like it was for alot of other people too.

[/quote]
That does not make sense. My computer is downloading and uploading traffic daily. Some days as much as 1TB of data in a day. thats 1024GB in case you didnt knew, in a day. Meanwhile i play Online games while that happens without any problem. thats because PCs can multitask. you can do whatever you want while the download happens on the background. i could easily leave the download for an entire week while not changing my schedule at all, though not like that 100gb would take me that long. If you stare at steam while its downloading a gmae your doing it wrong.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Its not hard to set aside 100gb when the total is infinite. the question is more about traffic time. It would definitely be an overnight download or limited speed multiday downloads and thats a lot.

a more interesting question would be about peoples SSD sizes, as many people i know use the 120/128gb ones and this would mean the game would take the entire SSD.

With 6gb patches... that 120gb drive would get filled up on Day 1.

 

[Strazdas]

Its not hard to set aside 100gb when the total is infinite. the question is more about traffic time. It would definitely be an overnight download or limited speed multiday downloads and thats a lot.

a more interesting question would be about peoples SSD sizes, as many people i know use the 120/128gb ones and this would mean the game would take the entire SSD.

With 6gb patches... that 120gb drive would get filled up on Day 1.

Just because Ubisoft games dont work without 5 patches does not mean its true for everyone else.

 

[BoogieManFL]

Didn't know that many people had caps. That's kinda shit. I have Bright House Networks in central Florida and I have the medium package which is 80Mbit and unlimited. I can't imagine having a cap. That sucks.

 

[Zipzip the Penguin]

Well, guess I'm looking for it on a disc set then.

 

[Zontar]

Looks like this won't be the Eve killer after all (not that the mechanics of the game ever made that a possibility anyway).

But seriously, who is going to download that in an age where the majority of us still have caps? I know I'm not even considering it now (I was before) and I have a 250GB cap, about as high as they get.

uh, what? Majority? i dont know a single person in rl that has caps. In fact i was amazed to learn that there still exist caps in 2013 when i heard people complaining. caps were abolished in 2008~ here. this shows less of a problem with people willing to download and more of a problem of some ISPs being utterly incompetent.

And EVE is one of the smaller ones nowadays anyway.

Here in North America, caps are the rule, not the exception. This applies as much to Canada as it does the United States. It has to do with a multitude of reasons (in the US it tends to be because of de-facto monopolies in place, while in Canada it's due to our internet infrastructure being unenviable due to our low population density).

I also wouldn't call Eve "one of the smaller ones" when it comes to MMOs (I assume that's what you're talking about) what with it managing to be the second largest MMO which has managed to make the subscription model work after WoW, and has managed to keep steady player growth despite the high learning curve. Though in all fairness I only bring it up because a fair deal of SC fanboys (who knew you could be a fanboy of something that's not even out yet?) have called the game an Eve killer, much in the same way SW:ToR and countless others where going to be the WoW killer (and it's going to turn out the same).

 

[shrekfan246]

Snip

This entire post is literally a shining example of the first thing I was talking about. You have the most amazing internet in the world, good for you.

Guess what?

Not everybody is quite so lucky. The entire point is that a lot of people still have to get their connections through incredibly terrible companies, and it would be nice if video game developers had the presence of mind to remember that. But hey, if they don't want to give a toss then that saves me money in the end, so win-win all around.

 

[Coruptin]

That does not make sense. My computer is downloading and uploading traffic daily. Some days as much as 1TB of data in a day. thats 1024GB in case you didnt knew, in a day.

Okay, now I'm curious. How the hell are you spending a terabyte of data in a day?

 

[Robert Marrs]

They should sell the game on an ssd. Really though its not that bad I need another hdd anyways so this will be a good chance to pick one up. So long as the game actually pans out and doesn't fall apart over the next few years.

 

[Kahani]

Can't say I'm particularly surprised. The big selling point of the game has always been that it will be incredibly detailed, with extremely high resolution textures and ridiculously detailed models with tons of polygons and moving parts. I already have games that easily take up 20-30GB, especially if you start adding graphics mods to add exactly that sort of high resolution textures (check out some of the Skyrim graphical mods). 100GB for a game specifically billed as pushing that end of things to the extreme is exactly what we should expect.

As for whether it's reasonable, again I really don't see an issue. It wasn't at all unusual for games to fill an entire box of 3.5" floppies, and I still have games that take 4 or 5 CDs or more than one DVD. A standard blu-ray disc can hold 50GB, with the latest format able to hold up to 128GB. And of course 100GB is absolutely nothing in terms of hard drive space. So again, based on past trends of game size to the storage media available, 100GB is exactly the sort of size we should expect to be seeing.

Sure, it sucks for people who have crap internet and no blu-ray player or hard drive. The ability to play every game released is not an inalienable human right. This game was always advertised as having silly graphics requiring a high-end PC to play, and while drive space and optical drives are among the cheapest components, they're still part and parcel of having a high-end PC. Of all the issues this game might end up having, the space required to install it is not one of them.

Edit: Holy crap, I just got Rick-rolled by captcha.

 

[catalyst8]

Certainly I can understand why there might be limits in places too remote for fibre-optic, but surely that must only be in extremely isolated places. I had no idea that download speeds or data caps were an issue anywhere in the developed world (unless you're using a 'phone perhaps), let alone HDD space. Is it really a concern?

 

[Yan007]

Come on now people. If the download is what really scares you, I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find other users who will gladly sell you a cheap SSD with the game files on it or send you a couple usb drives with the files for cheap.

That's what I used to do as a kid when cable/hybrid modems were coming out in the city but my town only have 28.8k .

Heck, if you pay me the postage and usb drives, I'll copy the files I'll have downloaded on them and send them to you. Bear in mind the game is not coming out for at least 2 more years and data caps will surely go up and prices for storage will go down in that time.

I'd say your biggest worry should be whether your machine can run the game at all.