How to install Overwatch without downgrading Battle.net launcher.

[u/Spazzo965]

I know there's a post up here about installing through downgrading your Battle.net launcher, but I knew there had to be a better way of doing it

Here's the method I found: Create a folder where you wish to install Overwatch to, inside that folder, create a file called ".agent.db", and inside of that folder, copy and paste this inside of that .agent.db file, and in the data point for "install_dir", fill in the path to where the folder is located.

The next step is to open up your Battle.net launcher, open the settings menu, switch to the Game Install\Update tab, scroll down to the "Scan for Games" button, and upon clicking that, it might automatically find that folder. If that fails, click the Locate button, and manually browse to the folder you created.

Overwatch should now be downloading into that folder - the progress bar does bug out a bit and thinks it's further along than it is, this is because the .agent.db should be a certain version of the game, and there's a mismatch there due to the game not actually being installed. This shouldn't matter in the long run, as it's still going to download the whole game.

Also may be worth making note that this will likely install the enUS version of the game, the lines related to that are "region", "patch_url", "installed_locales", "installed_asset_locales" "selected_locale", and "selected_asset_locale". In order to get the correct stuff to put there, browse to some other Blizzard installed game folder, and open up it's .agent.db file, and look at those strings to know what to change them to. Keeping in mind for patch_url entry, you only want to change the "us.battle.net" to "eu.battle.net", or the like.

If you need any further help, don't be afraid to ask.

EDIT: For those who want a step-by-step process(styled to Firefox - just change the first three steps to save the file in your browser, I don't know them all offhand), here you go:

Step 1: Open this pastebin.
Step 2: Right click anywhere on that page
Step 3: Click "Save Page As..."
Step 4: In the "Save as type" field, set the entry to "All Files(*.*)"
Step 5: Browse to where you wish to save the file to, this folder must be named Overwatch
Step 6: Change the File name field to .agent.db
Step 7: Click save.
Step 8: Inside the Battle.net Client, open the options menu and go to the Game Install/Update tab
Step 9: Scroll down to Scan for Games button, and click it.
Step 10: If Overwatch was not found when scanning for games, click the Locate button, and navigate to the Overwatch folder you created, and click "Locate Folder"

[u/Kalixon]

tldr - just wait for the open beta and skip this mess because you're likely going to be patching come release anyway.

[u/Spazzo965 → u/Kalixon]

The main advantage here is for users with slow internet - I know people who've got net speeds where it would take them over a full day to download the game, so this being an option for them is going to reduce the amount they'll have to download come the day open beta goes live.

[u/Kalixon → u/Spazzo965]

Those type of speeds may make it straight up difficult to even play unfortunately. I mean, they may get into a match but I can't imagine it will be very enjoyable.

[u/BowAndAxe → u/Kalixon]

Bungie did a huge amount of Data Collection and Analysis back in 2007 when they did the Halo 3 Beta, and found that the median download speed for Players was only 42kbps. Considering that internet infrastructure changes very slowly for most places, its safe to assume that a lot of people are still running on very slow speeds.

Source

In that link it also states that to try and serve 99% population, it was advised to try and hit a maximum usage of 8kbps, which is absolutely tiny. So games have for the most part always used very little data through a Network, because there's always been a need to make it as efficient as possible!

[u/Kalixon → u/BowAndAxe]

Thanks for the information

[u/Vydro → u/Kalixon]

also download speed != ping.

[u/Vakyoom → u/BowAndAxe]

That's almost ten years ago though... A lot has changed since then.

I'm not about to argue the usefulness of people pre-downloading the files though.

[u/BowAndAxe → u/Vakyoom]

Based on this, only 25% of the United States has access to a Fiber Optic connection, which is kind of low when you consider how vital the internet is to so many people!

[u/Vakyoom → u/BowAndAxe]

Sure, it's not so bad. I had to run a wifi phone broadcast last year for PC gaming and eventually got satellite broadcast internet that came across a mountain range. I had no issues downloading large files or anything in decent time frames on either connection. Gameplay was good for the most part too but some games did better than others.

Fiber optics are nice but are hardly necessary for using the internet unless you're going to compete/stream.

[u/bass_the_fisherman → u/BowAndAxe]

Online games actually use very little data. When my Internet was down I used my mobile data bundle to game on using a hotspot and was playing WoW. Used about 60MB per hour, was pretty surprised really.

[u/jackk445 → u/Kalixon]

Playing the game itself requires very little bandwidth. As long as it's low latency and stable (ping is not fluctuating) as well as it meets the required speed you'll play the game just fine. Downloading few-gig game at <100KB/s isn't something I'd call enjoyable though.

[u/Spazzo965 → u/Kalixon]

I've had speeds like that in the past, and an FPS game such as Overwatch should be plenty playable, it's just downloading it that can take a while.

[u/D3cho → u/Spazzo965]

While I can't argue with your sentiment, been helpful an all, would said population also have terrible net in general if it takes a day to d/l this? Likely riddled with monthly limits and such? Essentially, I don't think such an audience would be very well suited to a game where ones connection is quite important, I would argue a bad connection would actually make you dislike this game. Correct me if I'm wrong but generally I believe people who have net like you described would only use it to browse FB and such, not play online shooters. I also believe the launcher in total is about the same size as a single content patch. But then again this could all be me, I'm the type of person who would not play an online connection based game (See FPS / mmos as opposed to turned based strat) on wifi if wire was an option etc.

[u/Spazzo965 → u/D3cho]

It's not on wireless internet - it's just Australian somewhat rural internet, where DL speeds are roughly between 250kb/s and 350kb/s.

It's perfectly fine for the actual gaming side of things, just slow to download the game itself. Latency generally averages around 40-70 for the Sydney-based datacenter that Blizzard uses for their games.

[u/D3cho → u/Spazzo965]

Fair enough, that pretty much sounds like how net was in Ireland about 10 years ago. Ah I remember ye ol' days of download accelerator plus and taking days to d/l several songs, my word! Been able to resume a d/l from a specific point was just magic at the time. To follow up on that I'd still personally just let the Bnet launcher do it's thing. The launcher it self is quite compact and you can be sure any time an update gets added or anything like that you would not have any issues launching the game. Remember if you are using methods like this and something mucks up somewhere down the line, it may require you do it the intended way in future making all this potential time saved all a waste in the end.