Question for people who use GOG (Good Old Games)...

[Rath Darkblade]

Oh! OK, I must say I'm surprised. I thought the point of GOG was to provide old games. Never mind, then. Thanks!

[MusicallyInspired]

Originally it was. But they found there was more money to be made in a wider market. They also sell a certain category of gamer-related movies too.

Even Humble Bundle went beyond joint-charity-profit-sharing indie game bundles to having a full out digital store and selling AAA games. And then were bought out buy IGN.

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmmm. Well, I finally installed GOG Galaxy last night... I tried the Downloader, but it didn't do anything. So after a few tries, I finally got GG to install.

I must say I'm impressed. The download speed is fairly slow, but DPX warned me to expect that, so I'm not fussed. I installed a couple of games (CivCity Rome and Grim Fandango Remastered), and I've looked at two or three others (Freddy Pharkas, Empire Earth 2 and NWN2, which I never beat).

Has anyone played any of the Witcher games? How do they compare with other RPGs, like NWN, Dragon Age etc.?

[MusicallyInspired]

I've heard nothing but praise about the Witcher games. I tried the first one but I couldn't stand the gameplay. The second one is more traditional RPG, but it seemed rather complicated when I first started it and at the time I wasn't in the frame of mind to learn something new. I haven't touched the third one. I'll get to it eventually. I'm too busy with Skyrim again (except on my Switch) at the moment.

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmmm... when does GOG run their sales? *curious* Or do they run all year round? I'm simply trying to see when the games I quoted (above) will be on sale - or is that impossible to predict?

[MusicallyInspired]

They recently had a sale I think but it's over now. Might not be until around Christmas when they do another one. Sometimes they do flash sales out of the blue like Steam. Sometimes over a random weekend. Sometimes for a random publisher. Kind of similar to Steam. I don't know exactly when their next sale will be, though. I don't know if there is a way to know. If there is I don't know it.

[Rath Darkblade]

Hmm, well, I bit the bullet and got Empire Earth 2 and Neverwinter Nights 2, even though they weren't on sale. I never finished either of them. Should be fun (I hope).

One thing I noticed about GOG Galaxy: the download speed is slow as dirt. Slow dirt. But the GOG Downloader never worked, and DPX warned me about GOG Galaxy, so that's my own damn fault. Even so, EE2 is 1.5 Gb and NWN2 is 7.5 Gb, and together they took from about 8pm to 3:30am - that's 7.5 hours.

Rather than leaving it on overnight and checking this morning, I stayed up and stuck around in case of issues, so It's a good thing I have a day off today so I can rest and recover.

It was also my own damn fault that I got bored and started playing Grim Fandango for an hour and a half, so that paused the download while it was running. Yes, stupid me. D'oh. So it should have taken 6 hours, or about 1.5 Gb/hr on average.

I'm not sure what GOG Galaxy's problem was. If the average download speed was 1.5 Gb/hr, that equates to (1.5 x 1024 Mb/Gb) / (60 min/hr x 60 sec/min) = 0.426 Mb/s, on average. That's too damn slow.

Now, my download speeds ranged from 0.2 Mb/s to 1.5 Mb/s. I'm not sure if the top speed is quick (it seems pretty slow to me), but it was lightning fast compared to 0.2 Mb/s...

What have your experiences been like?

[DeadPoolX]

Rath, when you downloaded and installed the GOG Downloader, what did you do then?

In my experience, the process to download games using the Downloader is the following:
1. Go to your game library on the GOG website.
2. Choose a game you want to download and click on it.
3. Click on the downwards-facing arrow to the right of the word "More" and select "GOG Downloader Links."
4. You should now be at the GOG Downloader link page. Click on the "English installer" link and the GOG Downloader should automatically start up and begin downloading your game.

If that doesn't work, then it's possible the program somehow installed incorrectly or the install file became corrupted during your initial download. If it's the former, you can try uninstalling and reinstalling it; if it's the latter, you'll need to re-download the Downloader itself.

Assuming the Downloader works, make sure to fully exit out of it when you're done. Clicking the red "X" to close it will simply minimize it to the SysTray. You need to right-click on the icon in the SysTray and select "exit" and then it'll actually close.

As for GOG sales, usually GOG runs its seasonal sales a week or two before Steam has theirs. Usually GOG and Steam stagger their sales, but they didn't do that for their Black Friday/Autumn sales, so the timing may differ this year around Christmas as well.

[MusicallyInspired]

I wonder why Galaxy is so slow...

[Rath Darkblade]

Sorry, DPX - I just can't remember. That was 3 days ago... IIRC, the Downloader kept crashing whenever I pressed the downwards-facing arrow, and after that, then the download was cancelled. (I'm using Firefox Quantum 63.0.3 (64-bit), the newest version).

So I thought, "S**** this", downloaded and installed Galaxy, and went ahead. The Galaxy install and games installs went off without a hitch, so I think I prefer Galaxy to the Downloader. It's much slower, sure, but at least it works. *shrugs*

When do seasonal sales usually take place? Sorry - Australia obviously in a different hemisphere to you folks in Canada and the USA, so our seasons are the other way around to you guys!

Also, I'm curious about the Witcher games. Are they an RPG like TES, Dragon Age, NWN etc., or are they a "sneaking-and-fighting" game like "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor", etc.? I liked the RPGs, but couldn't get into M-e:SoM and just gave up on it.

I wonder why Galaxy is so slow...

Was it slow for you as well, MI?

Maybe it was slow for me because the Thanksgiving/Christmas season is here, so a lot more people are on GOG to download stocking stuffers or other kinds of gifts? Or maybe I was just unlucky. Who knows.

[DeadPoolX]

So I thought, "S**** this", downloaded and installed Galaxy, and went ahead. The Galaxy install and games installs went off without a hitch, so I think I prefer Galaxy to the Downloader. It's much slower, sure, but at least it works. *shrugs*

I wonder why it's not working for you. It works well for me, so something's up. I'm not saying it's your fault, but there's definitely something awry here.

When do seasonal sales usually take place? Sorry - Australia obviously in a different hemisphere to you folks in Canada and the USA, so our seasons are the other way around to you guys!

Seasonal sales usually take place around holidays or particular events. For instance, in November you'll usually see a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale or an Autumn sale. In December, you'll see a Winter sale (aka "Christmas sale"). Around June or July, you might see a Summer sale at both Steam and GOG, etc.

These sales times also extend to other sites, like Humble Bundle, Origin, GreenManGaming, or Fanatical.

All of the aforementioned sites — Steam, GOG, Humble Bundle, Fanatical, GMG, Origin, etc — usually have weekly sales as well or, in Fanatical and Humble Bundle's case, special collections of games for sale at low prices. Sometimes Humble Bundle's collections aren't even games, but digital comics, digital books, audiobooks, and so on.

It's also important to note each site's perspective. For instance, Steam is US-based, so it might hold a sale for Independence Day (aka "the Fourth of July") while GOG is based in Poland, so they might be more European-focused. GreenManGaming is in the UK, so they could hold sales on whatever British holidays exist.

Also, I'm curious about the Witcher games. Are they an RPG like TES, Dragon Age, NWN etc., or are they a "sneaking-and-fighting" game like "Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor", etc.? I liked the RPGs, but couldn't get into M-e:SoM and just gave up on it.

Witcher 1 was terrible. I'm sure it had a decent story, but the combat system was almost rhythm-based (and not in a good way, like the Batman Arkham games). The graphics are also pretty bad, but it's a game that's over ten years old at this point and CD Projekt RED's first title, so it wasn't going to be spectacular. The storyline also isn't really important for the other two games which tend to connect more.

Witcher 2 was a HUGE jump in story, animation, graphics, voice acting, and pretty much everything. The combat system and control was also more logical, in the sense that it resembled a more action-oriented style. Aside from the combat, everything about Witcher 2 was classic RPG, such as doing all sorts of quests, talking to people, working alongside people, figuring out things, collecting items (gah!), and above all, making choices and decisions that actually matter.

Witcher 3 expanded on the second game in every way and is, without a doubt, one of the single finest fantasy RPGs ever made. Everything about it is amazing in its style, presentation, controls, characters, story, combat, open-world exploration, etc. There's also a very heavy emphasis on family this time around due to the main character and his love interest (a sorceress) being adoptive parents of a new character, who's more or less a trainee Witcher. I can't give much details without ruining the story, but some of the interactions between all three of them are hilarious and show what might be the best examples of parenting — and all the problems that come with it — in any game.

Something else to note is that you DON'T need to have played the previous games. In other words, although you CAN import your save from Witcher 1 to 2 to 3, you can also make decisions at the beginning of 2 and 3 that take the place of importing your game. They did that for people who lost their saves to import or wanted to continue the story in a different way without replaying the previous titles.

Also, you can save WHENEVER and WHEREVER you want in ALL the Witcher games. I shouldn't have to point this out, but a lot of newer games seem to rely on checkpoint saves. Yes, this brand of laziness has even extended to some RPGs, so always check to see if you can save-at-will before purchasing any game.

Maybe it was slow for me because the Thanksgiving/Christmas season is here, so a lot more people are on GOG to download stocking stuffers or other kinds of gifts? Or maybe I was just unlucky. Who knows.

Galaxy is incredibly slow for me all year around, and we normally have super-fast download speeds. The Downloader is much faster, but for some reason or another, it's not working properly for you.

Off-hand, I'd say bypass Galaxy altogether if the game you're downloading is relatively small (such as older adventure games) since you can download games through the browser. That said, I wouldn't trust a browser's capability to download a large game (certainly anything over 10 GB) without something messing up in the process, so it'd be best to use the Downloader or Galaxy.

[MusicallyInspired]

I did some tests and wasn't using any bandwidth for anything else while testing.

I don't get slow downloads with Galaxy at all, I guess. I downloaded Shadow Warrior 2013 (which is 7.7GB) and it downloaded at ~20MB/s (which is basically my nominal download speed with my current ISP plan) and finished in about 6 or 7 minutes.

I downloaded the installer (which was 7.43GB) with GOG Downloader just to see what that was like and most of the time (in the beginning) I actually got about ~7MB/s. It dropped like a stone down to ~3MB/s a lot, though. It bounced up to 13MB/s for a second or two every now and then (rarely) and one time it even got to 19MB/s, but that was only once it shot down to as low as 3MB/s again. It was very unstable but mostly stuck around the 3-8 MB/s range from about a third of the download time in and onward. That took about 18 minutes to download. Considering that doesn't even cover installation time, Galaxy actually works a lot better and faster for me. *shrug*

I couldn't find any options in either Downloader or Galaxy to choose a download server region like Steam has, so I guess it's just whatever you're closest to automatically, which is unfortunate.

Also, thanks for the breakdown on the Witcher games, DeadPoolX. I was really discouraged after trying out the first one. I'll just skip it.

[Collector]

I wonder why Galaxy is so slow...

Perhaps it is intended to be a downloader in the background and throttles itself to not eat up your bandwidth. This would seem to be reasonable for an automatic updater, but silly for a game that you just purchased and want to play as soon as possible.

[DeadPoolX]

Are you saying MBs (megabytes per second) or Mbps (megabits per second)? Usually download speeds are shown in Mbps, which is a lot different than MBs.

Maia and I have the highest speed tier at Telus and the speed test I just took says we currently max out at 60.77 Mbps (aka 7.6 MBs).

Regardless... on Steam, I get lightning-fast downloads (assuming I'm not doing something dumb, like trying to watch Netflix while downloading a large game) and my speed is really fast using the GOG Downloader as well, although not as quick as on Steam.

Whenever I tried Galaxy, however, the speed plummeted. I've tried downloading the SAME game (same version and everything) using both the Downloader and Galaxy, and it's literally taken me over twice as long using Galaxy.

Apparently, this isn't all that unusual. People complain regularly about Galaxy's slow download speeds (on GOG's forums) and usually recommend against using it as anything other than an update service (although the updates are also downloaded slowly, at least you don't need to seek them out). To be fair, people rarely post about something that's working well or as expected for them.

Still, it's odd that the Downloader would be faster for me and Galaxy faster for you. Theoretically, neither should be faster than the other.

[MusicallyInspired]

Yes, MB/s. Not Mb/s. That's how Galaxy and Downloader displayed it. My internet speed plan is with Shaw and is 150Mbps (it was the fastest for my area, but I think they have 300Mbps now). A speed test tells me I actually get around 175Mbps (22 MB/s), though. And 16Mbps for uploading.

It is odd that download speeds react oppositely for me. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I don't know what else is different.