Better Download Client

[SquishyPoetFromBeyondTheStars]

Paizo needs to get a better download client. it should not take me 2+ hours to download the SFCRB when I have a download speed of over 50 Mb/s

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

You're not the only one downloading the book right now.

[Statboy]

@Squisky's point still stands. Paizo was ill prepared for the Starfinder launch. My downloaded has failed once so far due to the Paizo server connection timing out. That shouldn't happen with such a small download, I understand its because so many people are downloading, but that's still a failure on Paizo's part.

[Chris Lambertz]

We've beefed our resources for downloads quite a lot in the last year, especially due to the popularity of our participation Humble Bundles in the past. However, we have an incredibly, incredibly large number of folks all downloading at the same time today for one of our biggest releases ever. I agree that a queue system or ETA feedback from the downloads page would be ideal for users, but it is unfortunately not a situation where we can plug in a new system in any short order. We will take this feedback into account for how we can improve in the future and apologize for the inconvenience.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

The Core book is not a small download though.

Edit: Ninjaed by the Roobit herself.

[Drejk]

120 Mb/second here.

Expected time to download: 4-6 hours... Until the download stopped with network error.

*sigh*

Maybe later.

[Statboy]

I appreciate the apology, I am up to attempt number 4. It just keeps network erroring out.

[Gorbacz]

Statboy wrote:

I appreciate the apology, I am up to attempt number 4. It just keeps network erroring out.

You might want to curb your enthusiasm for getting the PDF quickly a bit. I usually get my download done in 48h. There are likely hunderds of thousands of people hammering Paizo's server right now.

And in before "but Paizo should have prepared for this", there's an old rule that if you're not a major IT company which can just pretty much pull servers out of thin air, you'll *never* have "enough" bandwith/servers for digital product launch. Governmental websites go down on day 0, commercial websites go down on day 0, ticketing services go down on day 0, it's A Fact of IT Life.

[David knott 242]

I must admit that things have turned out better than I expected. I was predicting that I would be seeing nothing but goblins on this site by now. At least the smaller downloads seem to be working.

[Faelyn]

I, too, am experiencing the lagout issue while trying to download the Starfinder Core Rulebook. Hopefully the issue will be fixed later this evening.

[John Napier 698]

Gorbacz wrote:

Statboy wrote:

I appreciate the apology, I am up to attempt number 4. It just keeps network erroring out.

You might want to curb your enthusiasm for getting the PDF quickly a bit. I usually get my download done in 48h. There are likely hunderds of thousands of people hammering Paizo's server right now.

And in before "but Paizo should have prepared for this", there's an old rule that if you're not a major IT company which can just pretty much pull servers out of thin air, you'll *never* have "enough" bandwith/servers for digital product launch. Governmental websites go down on day 0, commercial websites go down on day 0, ticketing services go down on day 0, it's A Fact of IT Life.

As a programmer with an interest in Operating Systems, I agree. There's no way to predict how a system behaves when stressed. All IT professionals can do is react to an ever-fluid situation.

[henkslaaf]

This can be solved though, without any extra servers. Just push the rendered zip files to S3 and send the S3 link to the customer. They could easily expected these numbers. The bandwith for this is just too high for a normal company to handle, so just don't.

[Statboy]

Gorbacz wrote:

Statboy wrote:

I appreciate the apology, I am up to attempt number 4. It just keeps network erroring out.

You might want to curb your enthusiasm for getting the PDF quickly a bit. I usually get my download done in 48h. There are likely hunderds of thousands of people hammering Paizo's server right now.

And in before "but Paizo should have prepared for this", there's an old rule that if you're not a major IT company which can just pretty much pull servers out of thin air, you'll *never* have "enough" bandwith/servers for digital product launch. Governmental websites go down on day 0, commercial websites go down on day 0, ticketing services go down on day 0, it's A Fact of IT Life.

Actually with current tech it isn't too difficult to "rent" extra bandwith/servers to allow for increased download demand. It just takes extra forethought and the will to adapt your product to it. Honestly it isn't unreasonable to expect a company to deliver a product they sold to you. Just because everybody else does it is no excuse to do it yourself; regarding failure to adequately plan for high demand.

Side note, your "in before" was already too late

[Helic]

henkslaaf wrote:

This can be solved though, without any extra servers. Just push the rendered zip files to S3 and send the S3 link to the customer. They could easily expected these numbers. The bandwith for this is just too high for a normal company to handle, so just don't.

Wouldn't personalizing the file make this the same problem? Basically, Paizo makes every PDF unique to the purchaser.

[Chris Lambertz]

Given how thinly our staff is spread right now, we'd appreciate curbing the back and forth re: technology. Without knowing the systems we have in place, debating speculation isn't the most productive. We are acutely aware of solutions to the problem and do appreciate your feedback—the issue Paizo has comes down to weighing those against everything else in the hopper and the resources we have available.

[John Napier 698]

My apologies.

[Euan]

I think what the community is trying to say is, with utmost respect (on my part anyway) we'd like Paizo to devote some additional resources to the web site.

I've seen herculean efforts by the current staff, pet projects that really should be mainstays, piling on the hours. You guys are great. But it seems the web site and the resources applied to it, are simply too thin.

The current problem is, to some degree, predictable. And sure, you don't want to devote huge resources for what boils down to a 24 hour problem. But it's a recurring problem, and shreds the patience of new customers and old timers alike.

So please pass the word up the food chain. We're desperate down here in the trenches. Please devote more resources to the web site generally.

And a BIG thank you for all you do, and for keeping us well informed, even when there's nothing that can be done. It's a huge help to know that you're aware of it and not just ignoring us.

[William Andrews]

We understand that you are busy, and naturally you cannot fix these issues immediately. That being said, the web site does need work.

One suggestion: there are download managers that you can incorporate into your site, that would allow partial downloads to be resumed when they fail, rather than start all over.

[Vic Wertz]

Our resources are limited by money and people. Successes like Starfinder help with the former. If you can help with the latter, let us know—the tech team currently has two open positions.

[Charles Wentzell]

Yeah my download has failed 3 times and even at 150 mb/s internet, it's scheduled to take 8 hours...

I really appreciate that y'all have download services, but this is pretty frustrating. That said I understand with all of us interested it's probably a real bottleneck right now.

[Stagazer]

Chris Lambertz wrote:

We've beefed our resources for downloads quite a lot in the last year, especially due to the popularity of our participation Humble Bundles in the past. However, we have an incredibly, incredibly large number of folks all downloading at the same time today for one of our biggest releases ever. I agree that a queue system or ETA feedback from the downloads page would be ideal for users, but it is unfortunately not a situation where we can plug in a new system in any short order. We will take this feedback into account for how we can improve in the future and apologize for the inconvenience.

Count me in among those that think this is not really good planning and frankly queue systems and ETA announcements are more a slap in the face than a solution. It basically sends a message, 'yeah we knew this was going to happen but couldn't find a way to handle it ourselves so we're going to plan to make it your problem.'

While I understand your personalization system prevents just adding resources as others suggested, this was predictable enough that it should have been fairly easy to work a temporary deal with another provider like DriveThruRPG where you setup pre-orders with the expectation that pre-orders get DTRPG links with the understanding that their Paizo accounts would be updated 2-3 weeks after launch. If i had that option, I'd have jumped on it as the humblebundle mess made clear how bad this would be. I would imagine DTRPG would have offered a good deal on it for the opportunity to push 3rd party products through their site during the launch period. And you would keep the PDFs marked to discourage piracy.

[LeeSw]

Chris,

At the end of the day folks can not get a product they paid for.

That should be a major concern for Paizo, yet you seem to think it is not a big deal.

I tried for a few hours this morning, and still trying now, if it was just dead slow it would make it over time, but it actually times out stopping the download.

We all know tons of money got blown on the Online MMO, and things are tight now. But if your going to sell PDF products you need to be able to handle the load.
Or move the downloads to a company that can do so.

Some is StarFinder, and some is Gen Con prep and setup I would guess as well, I do hope someone has checked to see if there is not another issue at play as well though and not just decide it is just StarFinder causing it, without being sure.

I hope it is just the demand for StarFinder, but you did know how many bundles were sold, and if you at let the folks who just wanted the PDF to pre-buy it you would have had a decent idea of the bandwidth needed, and perhaps made plans.

It does feel like you have just said oh well, our customers will take it as they have no choice.
Which is true, this time.

[Raven Gravehart]

I realized a little too late, that trying to download today was a bad idea. It's like trying to get onto a hyped up game's server the day of release. Yeah if the setting was ideal you would have either been able to account for the bandwidth drain or have another solution in place but I am sure you got hit a great deal harder than expected, especially since your not like some of those companies that purposefully keep stock small on something just to be able to keep the price up.

[GreatGorilla]

I have to agree with the above posters. For months, you good folks at paizo have hyped up the game and made us salivate over it - which is a good thing.

Now, given that player feedback can be gauged rather effectively these days, this dilemma was to be expected but apparently, no one took it into account or tried to prevent it.

I am at my 6th download attempt and there is no telling when I will get the product that I paid for. Slow downloads I could deal with, then i could at least download at night. But the downloads keep failing, often after I already spent two to three hours downloading.

And to simply shrug and say " yeah...can't do anything about it, it's your problem" is not exactly good customer service given that you already got our money.

In short...I really would like to get this book before the weekend is over, given that I already paid on Thursday, thank you very much.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

"yeah...can't do anything about it, it's your problem"

They haven't said that at all.

Yes they've hyped Starfinder for awhile. It's success is still far more than they expected and unprecedented (they completely sold out of the Core Book and Dead Suns the first day of Gencon. Completely.)

I know it can be frustrating not being able to download the thing you paid for, just like it is frustrating not being able to get onto your WoW server. But it does happen.

[Browman]

regardless of how well you expect something to do, sometimes it does far better than expected. Also regardless of indications Paizo had to be somewhat conservative with launching starfinder, the company isn't huge and renting a ton of un-needed server space (or printing a ton of books that don't sell) could be problematic or impact the viability of future releases. After all why make a product if you don't make any money off of it because of all the server space you had to rent short term.

[Stagazer]

For those saying that this was "unprecedented" and "unexpected", that would be credible if they didn't have the HumbleBundle mess as a guide about how much their demand could explode and how much excitement was obviously brewing. The fact that it would be massive was obvious and should have been better prepared for.

[AJCarrington]

My perspective: they did anticipate increaed demand and made changes to accommodate (Vic commented in another thread about simply be able to process the number of transactions the did yesterday when the CRB sold out st GenCon). However, actual demand exceeded even these expectations...hence the issues experienced yesterday (I was able to download thus morning with no issues; didn't even try to download yesterday as I expected the servers to be slammed).

[SheepishEidolon]

Maybe it makes sense to add a warning to the page on such days. This way people can postpone their downloads on their own, meaning less frustration.

[Rysky the Dark Solarion]

They took the Humble Bundle event into consideration as Chris noted above and upgraded accordingly (they've been upgrading the site over the past couple of weeks).

This still blew that out of the water.

BUT, the servers were in fact better able to handle this event as a lot more people were able to download stuff and the servers were not crashed for hours on end.

[Stagazer]

Okay, I hit them pretty hard in my earlier comments, so I will give them kudos where earned as well. I was just able to download my book within a couple of minutes, reasonably within what should be expected in such a major launch. If the issues are resolved, then kudos to the tech team for being able to turn it around within a day, which is a huge improvement from prior performance.

[Chris Lambertz]

Folks should be experiencing faster speeds today. As a cautionary measure, we are keeping the 60 second watermarking message in place over the weekend.

[Gorbacz]

Back few launches ago, the site would go out and I would need at least 2 days for the download. Now I've managed to get it done over 3 hours in first night, learning how to set Windows 10 to shut down on timer by the way ;-)

[Drejk]

Cheater.