CoD Warzone dev echoes community sentiment, admits install sizes are "f*****g crazy"

Humza

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Bottom line: In an in-depth YT interview with TeeP about the future of Warzone, Josh Bridge, CoD's live operations lead, acknowledged Warzone's huge install size and shared that the game lost players every time a major map update was pushed. Pulling out Caldera for Verdansk, Bridge remarked, was essentially like re-downloading an update the size of Warzone.

Keeping content fresh is vital for live service titles like Warzone, but CoD's free-to-play BR has particularly suffered from massive file sizes, both while installing (175GB on PC) and during season updates. More if you've got Modern Warfare installed as well.

Although multiple patches have trimmed GBs from the game's overall size, the bloated state of Warzone means that it's still a challenge for devs to balance map rotation while keeping update sizes manageable.

Ever since the introduction of Caldera, Warzone's big map that replaced Verdansk late last year, players have (unsurprisingly) wished for the latter map to return. Cycling between the two areas is also what Josh Bridge, his team, and everyone else wants, but it is simply not feasible due to technical limitations.

While map rotation is certainly possible in Warzone's current state, which already gets regular season updates, actually taking out Caldera and putting back Verdansk would essentially result in a download "like, the size of Warzone," commented Josh. The move also threatens a declining Warzone's playerbase, as gamers simply quit or uninstall the game when they're forced to download a major update, not to mention the frustration of last-gen console players with storage constraints.

Josh shared that the devs were putting a lot more effort into how they can make map rotation possible by sorting it out on a technical level, ensuring that Warzone remains fresh and has variety of experiences to offer.

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I uninstalled GTA for being too much of a hard drive hog and it's 75gb less than what CoD expects you to have.

There is no way the assets look *that good* and even if they do they should have done separate download for separate quality assets at this point: 1080p low or medium quality even by not changing their super inefficient file formats, would be cut down to like 50gb install if you don't plan on installing the higher quality assets then just download them on demand and program a small disclaimer that says "Assets are downloading and you will be prompted to apply the changes to ultra once they're downloaded" or something like that.
 
Lol yeah I downloaded this game about a month ago and was stunned that my 100 GB free space was only half of what I needed. In my case it was easy enough to clear up the rest of the space though.
 
I had a couple of friends that played the game from time to time and they were bugging me to download it. I looked at it and said hell no. I wasn't waiting for 175+GB game to download to play something that doesn't really interest me.

Anyway, 175GB is 15% of my monthly data and I wasn't going to sacrifice that much data for a game I'd probably play a couple of rounds and confirm my thoughts that I hate these type of games and stop playing.
 
I only like CoD for its "regular" multiplayer, Warzone is trash yet it's required to have while campaign, multiplayer, special ops and survival are not necessary. Wish I could exclude Warzone from the install and just have MP.
 
If you can't afford the HDD space or the connection to download it then you probably shouldn't be playing video games but working instead.
 
If you can't afford the HDD space or the connection to download it then you probably shouldn't be playing video games but working instead.
This. A 2TB SSD costs $150. A GPU to play these games, over a grand. I couldn't care less about install sizes.

Also not sure what's so interesting about asset sizes growing. Resolutions are growing, so assets are growing too. It's cubic growth as you have 2 axes, I.e. 2160p takes four times more pixels than 1080p. 4160p is 4 times more in size compared to 1080p and 16 times more than 1080p.

That's elementary math for you.
 
Rephrase:

Quote from dev states:

"admits install sizes are f****** lazy"

Optimization can be done, it's simply 'too much' effort from Activision & co. to perform. Everyone will continue to suffer until companies learn to innovate.

See Blizzard's entire file structure overhaul about 7 years ago - reducing patch sizes, total game size, patching speed and effeciencies:

https://wowdev.wiki/CASC

You wouldn't need to buy a new HD if some companies tried harder.
 
If you can't afford the HDD space or the connection to download it then you probably shouldn't be playing video games but working instead.

Depending on where you live, you can limited to single internet choices available to you.
 
This. A 2TB SSD costs $150. A GPU to play these games, over a grand. I couldn't care less about install sizes.

Also not sure what's so interesting about asset sizes growing. Resolutions are growing, so assets are growing too. It's cubic growth as you have 2 axes, I.e. 2160p takes four times more pixels than 1080p. 4160p is 4 times more in size compared to 1080p and 16 times more than 1080p.

That's elementary math for you.
Too bad your math is wrong, stay in school kids. Maybe you'll be able to understand the concept of value when you actually work for your money instead if spending your parents.

I hate the "if you can't afford it you need to be working more" crowd. People don't build wealth by spending all their money.
 
I uninstalled GTA for being too much of a hard drive hog and it's 75gb less than what CoD expects you to have.
Same here. I solved that problem by purchasing a 6TB HDD for game installs. Still, not everyone can or would do that. Game devs need to find a way to trim things down dramatically.
 
Same here. I solved that problem by purchasing a 6TB HDD for game installs. Still, not everyone can or would do that. Game devs need to find a way to trim things down dramatically.
I thought about it and probably will run a server and low capacity NAS at some point (something along the lines of 8 to 16 tb without redundancy since none of the files are all that important cause of the following point) but truth is that with my current connection at 200Mbps if I want to play GTA Online again, I can just re-download it on steam.

And the reason I don't really need a more robust NAS is the same: most of the files I want I can usually just stream, The NAS would be nice for some of the harder-to-find stuff and to have something to do in case of ISP outages and such but honestly I don't *really* need even 8tb of data it's just as a nice-to-have to offload some stuff if/when I feel like it like backups, VMs, etc. Nothing really essential just miscellaneous.

I honestly think most people are on the exact same boat I am if they live in cities and such and if I run a NAS it would be mostly for optimizing things a bit more but the usual 1tb m.2 drives are just ok for most people and simple external usb 3.0 drives for some larger files or family videos and such work out fine enough if not entirely on stuff like cloud storage for something modest like 1 tb.
 
No ones talking about the hundreds of cosmetics bloating this game. All these silly stickers, effects skin and the like take up space. Along with their lazyiness and the fact this game must run on a base ps4 or xbox because that is 90 percent of the playerbase means pc players get screwed over.
Edit: And having content from three games.
 
I've uninstalled and reinstalled all 3 and luckily my internet connection is beastly. CoD is the largest game I've ever downloaded to date.
 
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