How Much Data Does CoH Utilize To Play?

[DsgtDave]

I moved rural and only have a mobile hotspot for now. About how much data per hour can I expect to use playing?

[EmmySky]

I dont know the numbers so I may be no help at all.  I have unlimited from TMob.  The downloads are painfully slow but play seems to use hardly any data at all.  While they call it unlimited, it will slow down after 50gig and I have never reached that point.  My son is on my account and I have no clue how much he uses but for a month I think we have topped out at 30gig.  Definitely doable.

[Hardship]

I don't have any network monitoring tools loaded, but Resource Monitor shows that cityofheroes.exe uses about 10,000 B/sec. So, a rough estimate would be 10,000 * 60 *60 = 36000000 B/hour.  Divide by 1000 a couple of times and you end up with about 36 MB / hour.

 

Interesting to note that as the mission went on, the B/sec decreased.  Down to about 1/2 of that. It did spike up to around 12,000 B/sec at times right at first.

 

I also only ran 1 AE mission to look at this, so your mileage may vary, but I'd say on the outside 50 MB / hour would be a conservative guess. That does not include any download of files due to patching, those could significantly increase the usage.

 

[Troo]

It does use a ridiculous amount of resources and bandwidth.

[GM Tock]

METERED CONNECTIONS

A general guideline for folks using a Metered Connection is one hour of City of Heroes play averages 50 to 100MB an hour.  This largely has NOT changed from the Live Game back in 2012.

 

For folks with a prepaid Hotspot with 2GB a month, that means about 20 to 40 hours of remote play away from home, with 20 being a safer bet than 40+.    This is also considering ONLY City of Heroes.  If Windows Updates, web browsing or other Internet activity occurs, even less time.  If you do a lot of farming and raids, more data will be used.  If you do an 8-person team or solo missions in less than max difficulty, less data.  One strategy to consider is sticking to small team and solo play when "on the road" and saving raids and leagues for when you return home.  (There's folks who have Mobile Hotspots as their sole connection, unfortunately, so that's not much help.  Public Hotspots sometimes works, but some prohibit gameplay or limit customer time to 1 hour or less... the time it takes to eat a meal.)

 

The only way I'm aware of to reduce bandwidth use includes setting "Stop Sending All Buffs" to ENABLED for windows you can live without (Group Window, Pets Window if you're not a MM or Pet Toon) in options.  You'll still get HP, End and Death notifications for your team and toons with Buff display turned off.  This sends a bit less data across the feed in teams and league play.  The majority of client options reduces impact on your own computer, not your network connection.

 

UNLIMITED HOTSPOTS

"Unlimited Hotspots" may be able to play the game if they run out of LTE data at the reduced speed of 600Kbps, but expect a lot of rubberbanding and lag when that connection is not at it's full capacity (which often happens: keep in mind that 600Kbps is a maximum, not a promise).  There will be "good days" and "bad days" under the reduced speed mode that you can play mostly unhindered, or you can't stay on longer than 30 seconds even with the game patched and other apps not drawing any other bandwidth from the connection.

 

PATCHING DOESN'T COUNT

As Hardship mentioned, patching the client does NOT count, which is 4.6-5GB of space if you're doing a fresh install.  Patch sizes vary and can be as small as 50MB for minor changes all the way up to 3GB if it's a major release.  (If there's one or two changes in a 700MB .pigg file, or hundreds, the effect is the same to Tequila.  The entire 700MB needs to be downloaded again.)  If patching is needed, we strongly recommend disconnecting from your mobile hotspot immediately and using an Internet Connection that isn't metered to patch.

Edited June 7, 2020 by GM Tahquitz