SimCity for Mac Plagued by Various Teething Issues [Update: Resolved]

[bbeagle]

Don't blame the workers at EA. I think the issue is management. I believe EA spends the majority of their resources on marketing and doesn't care about making things work particularly well. They have no incentive to do so - the average consumer will hear the marketing and buy the game long before hearing about everyone else's woes. By the time they realize they've bought crap, it's too late.

Sorry if you misinterpreted what I said - I wasn't blaming the employees, I was blaming the culture, which has a lot to do with management.

If management gives their employees incentives to make sure the game works well across all platforms, and relatively few bugs occur at launch, there are less likely to be bugs at launch. If the employees feel that they will get paid the same whether the software is great or crap, the employees will do just what the management says, which is usually bad. Most managers don't understand all the inner workings of everything, or understand that the low level employees might have much better ideas than they do.

 

[Cougarcat]

I'm not sure why the game gets all this hate for the small city size. It's not like you can't build another city in your region. The cities in the region can actually talk to each other now (unlike previous incarnations) and share some resources.

Put it SimPly (sorry), it limits your creativity. What's the point of having all these great curvy road tools when they just end up being wasted space? Especially when so many of the ploppables are huge.

I was hoping that city communication would solve this (i.e have a residential city and a separate industrial city) but city communication was broken much of the time. (I haven't played since launch, so this might be better now.) Also, you end up having traffic nightmares because there is only one entrance-exit on most maps. You should be able to create highways on the region (like the hack sort of enables).

There was intercity communication in SC4, too, though it wasn't as feature-filled.

 

[thatisme]

Well, I'm glad I have a PC to use to play this... It is wholly unplayable at any resolution / quality setting on a MBA. It "runs", but you can't control anything since the screen is jumpy, and the navigation is jumpy.

As stated before, I didn't expect much from this title on a MBA, but my machine is within specs lists, so I would think it would at least be playable on low.

 

[3282868]

Plus a free game from EA if you were an early adopter. We all got a choice of games to have for free due to the cockup. I stupidly picked SimCity 4 thinking it would work on the Mac - it does not. It didn't include the Aspyr port of the game.

Ugh, that's a shame. I haven't played games in a long time (36 now, not since my early/mid 20's). SimCity was one of my favourites, this news piqued my interest. Thank god for online forums .

 

[sfmountainbiker]

Just a correction - its not a port. For once they actually made 2 copies of the game instead of sticking it in a bottle or wrapper. From that side of things its good, but only if it's going to work correctly. Hopefully they will sort out the resolution issue.

Not sure if its worth trying but the game UI is very easy to modify - might be worth poking around in the SimCity.app/Resources directory - there should be a config text file in there. On the Windows version I believe that stores the resolutions.

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Plus a free game from EA if you were an early adopter. We all got a choice of games to have for free due to the cockup. I stupidly picked SimCity 4 thinking it would work on the Mac - it does not. It didn't include the Aspyr port of the game.

Wow, I don't know if that makes me feel better or even more angry that the Mac version is so bad. It's a lot of work to build two games, but then as others have noted you would think the Mac version would be much more optimized given the set of hardware is much more limited.

 

[notabadname]

I avoided this problem simply by not purchasing. Really disappointed in the on-line requirement. Before that tidbit of info was released, I was so excited to buy this game when it was first announced. You can have effective DRM, which I support, without requiring always on-line. You are dead to me EA. I wish you were to everyone, so you would be forced to change your ways.

 

[MeUnix]

Because it's EA. They pump out crap. SimCity is a waste of money.

Agreed. I bought this game the day it came out through Origin. Instant regret. 6 months later and it is horrible. Also, while downloading it to install, I kept getting error messages and it would just randomly pause itself. Shortly after messing around with it, I gave up.

At least my wife plays it on her desktop PC (win7) so I don't feel like EA/Origin robbed me of $60.

 

[Zellio]

Oh please, what a tremendously mean-spirited way of looking at it. So EA screw up months and months after the Windows version is fixed and you say the consumer deserves it?

If you ignored all the bad press this got, as well as the fact that the patches did not fix the broken gameplay, then yes you deserve it.

 

[dysamoria]

The whole connected online for single player immediately caused me to lose interest.

Same here. The whole "piracy ruins the market" myth is just like the whole "we're at war to protect America" lie.

 

[Zellio]

Same here. The whole "piracy ruins the market" myth is just like the whole "we're at war to protect America" lie.

Neither are myths by any means. The problem is, always on makes it inconvenient for paying customers.

 

[negativzero]

Resolved my foot!
Origin still doesn't load properly. And when it does load, the game client crashes.

Its absolute wank still.

 

[thatlittletv]

Works reasonably well on my Early 2011 13" MBP (2.3 GHz i5, 4 GB RAM, HD 3000 Graphics, OS X 10.8.4). It automatically put all settings on low but I'm going to mess around with them today to see what kind of results I get. I did up the resolution to full (1280x800), and it performed about the same as it did in the lower resolution that it defaulted to.

It's definitely playable, but I suppose that may not be true even on newer Macs for whatever reason.

 

[stuaz]

It plays ok on my RMBP but what is more annoying is the mouse and keyboard are sooo laggy!

You have to press multiple times for things to get recognised. This is with the built in or external mouse/keyboard.

Seems to get worse the longer you play it.

 

[Michael Goff]

These threads will always devolve into the "cool kids" hating EA.

 

[Zyphras]

If you ignored all the bad press this got, as well as the fact that the patches did not fix the broken gameplay, then yes you deserve it.

You deserve it? Deserve it? Well I'm sorry Mrs. Ayn Rand but you're proving my point on mean spiritedness.

 

[Battlefield Fan]

You paid $70?!

You do realize you were able to get it for $26 at launch dont you?

Not on PC. The digital deluxe with tax was close to $70...

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If you bought the PC version you also bought the Mac version...

??? How does this relate to what I said? Because it doesn't...

 

[Zellio]

You deserve it? Deserve it? Well I'm sorry Mrs. Ayn Rand but you're proving my point on mean spiritedness.

Uh, yes you do. You need to take more responsibility for yourself.

If lots of people tell you that a scammer is a scammer, but you choose to get scammed, it's not your fault? It's not your fault if you ignore all the bad press and everything about a game that is just plain crap?

If people tell you a stove will burn if you touch it, and you choose to touch it, is that also not your fault? If they tell you jumping off a cliff will kill you and you do it anyway... And etc etc?

 

[otismotive77]

thank god the issues have been resolved. time to get this game.

 

[egoistaxx9]

meh... useless game. there are tonnes of better alternatives out there. i'm just gonna go for the PS4 and play the best games on it.

 

[JAT]

You deserve it? Deserve it? Well I'm sorry Mrs. Ayn Rand but you're proving my point on mean spiritedness.

Yes, entertainment is a choice, not a basic need. Entertainment like this, that has been discussed for years and even made national news seems like you could plan ahead.

Virtually all accidents are preventable.

 

[Darien Red Sox]

Yes there is room for improvement, but the game is fun and if you are not careful it will eat up much of your day. Too bad it did not come out for Mac before the summer, now that it is fall I don't know how much time I will have to enjoy it.

 

[Zyphras]

Uh, yes you do. You need to take more responsibility for yourself.

If lots of people tell you that a scammer is a scammer, but you choose to get scammed, it's not your fault? It's not your fault if you ignore all the bad press and everything about a game that is just plain crap?

If people tell you a stove will burn if you touch it, and you choose to touch it, is that also not your fault? If they tell you jumping off a cliff will kill you and you do it anyway... And etc etc?

*Barf*

Are you seriously comparing an outright scam and serious physical self-harm and suicide to a legally commercially released video game from a big (semi) competent developer whose very game in question now functions in a much more competent manner than the original release? Seriously?

Do people who use iCloud services also deserve it? After all Apple are trying their best and it's not like using iCloud is like burning or killing yourself. *Double barf*

None of this even touches on my point about the deserving.

This tendency in people to gain satisfaction, as well as those people who claim that victims are the deserving party, is the single most socially, culturally, psychologically subtle evil alive today. It's a really disgusting attitude and yes, it is mean spirited 100%.

You can tell an awful lot about a society and its people based on their attitudes and treatment of individuals who are victims and are down in their lives, and are victims and are down in their lives because of being innocent human beings in the first place. Your all-too-prevelant attitude tells me absolutely everything I ever need to know about the United States, its society and its people.

 

[Zellio]

*Barf*

Are you seriously comparing an outright scam and serious physical self-harm and suicide to a legally commercially released video game from a big (semi) competent developer whose very game in question now functions in a much more competent manner than the original release? Seriously?

Do people who use iCloud services also deserve it? After all Apple are trying their best and it's not like using iCloud is like burning or killing yourself. *Double barf*

None of this even touches on my point about the deserving.

This tendency in people to gain satisfaction, as well as those people who claim that victims are the deserving party, is the single most socially, culturally, psychologically subtle evil alive today. It's a really disgusting attitude and yes, it is mean spirited 100%.

You can tell an awful lot about a society and its people based on their attitudes and treatment of individuals who are victims and are down in their lives, and are victims and are down in their lives because of being innocent human beings in the first place. Your all-too-prevelant attitude tells me absolutely everything I ever need to know about the United States, its society and its people.

And your inability to accept the fact that it would be your fault when you ignore all the warning signs tells me everything i need to know about you. All you want is a scapegoat for your bad decisions, and you expect other people to fell sorry for you after you make them while ignoring the obvious.

Well I myself can accept that it is my fault if I make bad decisions. And all of my examples are very much part of this since again, a very focal crowd told people this game was bad, the same as all of the other examples I gave.

You simply want people to sugar coat things, and if they don't they are a big meanie. You wish to ignore the warning signs and then play the victim. Well the truth is, they are telling you the truth.

 

[Zellio]

Yes, entertainment is a choice, not a basic need. Entertainment like this, that has been discussed for years and even made national news seems like you could plan ahead.

Virtually all accidents are preventable.

I know right? What's worse is that this isn't like Far Cry 2, or Diablo 3, games that were heavily hyped, hoped for, given good ratings, and turned out crap (Now that is definitely not the gamers fault), this is a game that the majority has hated for over 6 months! Which is game time is around 5-10 years give or take!

Even if you have fun you will eventually notice that the main game mechanics are broken. This is more or less the Paris Hilton or Miley Cyrus of video games.

The worst part of all isn't the fact that all of this is completely obvious, it's that my examples went straight over Zyphras's head. This game's problems are about as obvious at this point as a nigerian scammer or the fact that heat burns.

This Zyphras guy is the reason why you have warnings on labels. Hardheaded people who ignore warning signs and then try to blame other people. If this guy lived in America he would be hiring a lawyer if he burned himself on a stove after being warned not to.

 

[rmwebs]

Not on PC. The digital deluxe with tax was close to $70...

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??? How does this relate to what I said? Because it doesn't...

Sorry to tell you this, but (at launch) I paid £17 for the digital deluxe edition. It was a well publicised workaround. If you entered the origin store through their indian site, it let you buy it for a LOT less - still works and is in full English.

There was a loads of info on Reddit about it.