SimCity Update 5 + Mac Delay

[macscfan 117]

http://www.simcity.com/en_US/blog/article/simcity-mac-update-and-beyond

 

Hi, Mayors – today we are announcing that we are moving the release date of the Mac version of SimCity to August. We have made this tough decision because we do not believe it is ready for primetime yet. We want to ensure the Mac is a great experience for our players and that is why we are taking more time.

 

In the meantime, on the PC side, we are currently working on a series of multiplayer and multi-city fixes and improvements that will be available in Update 5. To give you a preview of what’s to come, see the notes below.

 

You can expect Update 5 to hit in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned for more info on that. In addition to Update 5, we are already beginning work on Update 6, which will focus on RCI improvements, a lot of which we’ve gathered from fan feedback on our forums. Once we have the notes locked down, we’ll release them in our “Currently in Development” thread, like we’re doing today with Update 5.

 

One final note for our Mac fans: As a sincere thank you for patiently waiting to play, we are going to extend the availability of the SimCity Launch Park (released in Update 4) to all players who have purchased the Mac version. Now you, too, can launch a Llama balloon. Because who wouldn’t want to do that? Thanks again for your patience and understanding. See you in August!

Update 5 is focused on improvements to Multiplayer and Multi-city Play

• New: Historic Price charts for Global Market resources are available from the SimCity World button on the main menu.
• New: The Region Wall chat has been completely updated with a new look and new functionality! Chat functions more efficiently and it’s much easier to communicate with other players. Time stamps show on chat messages on rollover. Regional events are easier to read and can be toggled on and off.
• New: Added a filter for friends’ regions in the join region section.
• New: Trading control. Added feature to give players more control over their utilities. Players can now choose whether or not to keep their power, water, or sewage local. This setting can be found on the information panel accessible by clicking on the power plant, water tower, or sewage pipe or plant. Sharing with the region is on by default.
• New: Regional Missions: Added seven new regional missions: Drink It Up!, Plug In, So Stoked, The Wheels on the Bus, Ferry Dust, Station to Station, and Riding Coach.
• New: Regional Achievement: Added a new regional achievement, Field Trip!
• Gifting Improvements: Cash gifts are now delivered electronically, not by truck. This should improve the efficiency of gifting.
• Resource gifts: Resource gifts will happen more reliably. Multiple trucks can make deliveries at once if they are available in the sending city and the truck capacities have been increased.
• Great Works Improvements: Delivery trucks will mark their resources as dropped off as soon as they reach the Great Works, instead of when they arrive back in the city. This will make tracking time more reliable.
• Great Works Improvements: Update to have all resources at Great Works handled at the regional level. This will address players in different cities seeing different resources once the server has processed the region and cities.
• Great Works Improvements: Fixed an issue where an Arcology would maintain power from the region and fixed an issue where shoppers would not increase at the Arcology as it was leveled up. This will update in both existing and new Arcologies.
• Great Works Improvements: Tuned the Solar Farm.
• Regional Unlocks: The advanced coal mine unlocks regionally. Fixed issue where the Trade HQ sometimes did not unlock.
• Fire Advisor Trading clarity: Tuned the Fire advisor so they do not tell you that neighbors are sending fire trucks when your neighbor has no fire stations.
• Trading: School buses that travel from a neighbor’s city will show that city’s avatar.
• Regional Commuting: Fixed an issue where Sims would not be able to take transit out of cities with lots of streetcars or shuttle buses. This could cause some cases where commuting Sims could not return home and their homes would go abandoned.
• Garbage Trucks and Recycling Trucks: Fixed an issue that some cities experienced where garbage and recycling trucks do not leave their buildings or disappeared when trading service with neighbors. Existing cities who have trucks that have disappeared will have to demolish their missing trucks’ garages and plop new garages.
• Text Clarification: The “Out of Money” message now says “Can’t find work” when appropriate in rollover feedback and the approval rating UI. This is to clarify your Sims’ actual need.

 

Not too happy about the Mac, but at least they stated that it was not ready so they were going to hold off on launching it.

 

Lot of improvements both under the hood and with the visuals and gameplay itself.

[Jons511 12]

I read this as: "Hi, we realize that Sim City is still broken, and don't want to have a repeat of the PC launch."

[cirugo 1,889]

"Now you, too, can launch a Llama balloon. Because who wouldn’t want to do that?"

 

Me, for one.

[macscfan 117]

I'm hoping they will have modding and larger cities by the time the Mac version launches.  And since the Mac version is native and not a wrapper around the Windows version, it's possible that might happen, but I don't know anymore.  I don't know though.  I'll pick it up again when they add larger cities and modding.

 

And I don't know why they all of the sudden decided to announced that the Mac version would not be ready until August - they waited until right before all of the Mac players thought it would be launching, I know they had to have known this a few weeks ago.

[BravoGreenONE 120]

This is actually good to hear they are working on this. Shouldnt have to be this way but at least better late than never

[ChrilleT 2]

So if this update that is out in a couple of weeks is about multiplayer and update  6.0 is gonna be about RCI can we hope for major traffic fixes in update 7.0?

Maybe it´s because I only play singleplayer but I got disappointed in this update (if it´s not fixing alot of stuff not mentioned).

[simmfx 34]

I read this as: "Hi, we realize that Sim City is still broken, and don't want to have a repeat of the PC launch."

 

Maxis said they learned what their mistakes were and that they would not make them again, only after being bombarded with flooded negative reviews from fan and gaming sites.

 

Maxis knows good and well they can not afford for lightning to strike twice in the same place because they know deep down the fans will not tolerate another train wreck!

[Ohadi195 30]

Will this work well on my 2011 13" MacBook Air?

[FourWinds 29]

• Resource gifts: Resource gifts will happen more reliably. Multiple trucks can make deliveries at once if they are available in the sending city and the truck capacities have been increased.

 

 

So resources will still need to be gifted. To me this breaks any single player experience. Why on earth do they only 'simulate' some aspects on single player neighbour cities and not others. If you're going to have commuters, shoppers, students, shared utilities and the rest why must any resource production stop dead when the city's not live? On one hand they want me (the single player) to produce things from the ground up, and on the other hand they won't let me do it because I can't automate the supply chain due to 'gifting.'

 

Please EA give me some resource production based on a historical average of trade receipts - make a periodically required review to stop cheats if you want - and the tools to automate distribution around the region. I know you say you made a multiplayer game, but as a single player I want to be able to play the game too.

 

I won't swear, I'm tempted but I won't do it.

[Yaffle 29]

 

• Resource gifts: Resource gifts will happen more reliably. Multiple trucks can make deliveries at once if they are available in the sending city and the truck capacities have been increased.

 

 

So resources will still need to be gifted. To me this breaks any single player experience. Why on earth do they only 'simulate' some aspects on single player neighbour cities and not others. If you're going to have commuters, shoppers, students, shared utilities and the rest why must any resource production stop dead when the city's not live? On one hand they want me (the single player) to produce things from the ground up, and on the other hand they won't let me do it because I can't automate the supply chain due to 'gifting.'

 

Please EA give me some resource production based on a historical average of trade receipts - make a periodically required review to stop cheats if you want - and the tools to automate distribution around the region. I know you say you made a multiplayer game, but as a single player I want to be able to play the game too.

 

I won't swear, I'm tempted but I won't do it.

 

 

I agree with you, and it's not just single player, but multiplayer too.

 

I think Maxis' viewpoint is that there is "no arbitrage" so you cannot sell from one of your cities to another at below global market price, so there is no point setting up a inter-city supply chain - just have one sell to the global market and the other buy from it, both at the same price. In other words "no arbitrage". As a result, just gift money and have them buy the stuff with that money at the same price you would sell it to them. There are no transaction or transport costs in SimCity to defray either.

 

It's a bit of a mess with the devs saying "it's an MMO" when quite clearly it's not massive, multiplayer doesnt work very well, and it's only online because of some bizarre decision within the EA/Maxis axis.

[surfer_brett 2]

Wow, five days before Mac release date and "hey guys, two more months, mmmk?"

[simmfx 34]

Releasing a bugged ridden Mac version would just kill Maxis, atop of the fact that the PC users are watching very closely. Maxis just can not afford to have both sides of the computer medium corrupted with bugs.

[infoman96 27]

My god, I just want a free game now because of this.. I purchase simcity for my stupid PC just because I wanted to play it so badly and I thought the release date was soon for Mac, so now after waiting all these months for a Mac release, it's being pushed back? Ok EA, you won't be seeing another dollar out of me because of this one.

If you knew that the Mac version wasnt going to be coming out any time soon, they just should've said that. I could've spent the $80.00 on Tesla stock, plus I spent $10 the other day on the amusment park expansion and I barley play the game now because of my slow computer.. In fact, I would just like my money back, I wouldn't mind them erasing all my cities because this is flat out ridiculous.

[Revyzer 252]

Their trying to help them out. I like that. They would hate to see them over loaded with bugs and errors like when PC users had it.

[VanGioRobNelli 29]

Their trying to help them out. I like that. They would hate to see them over loaded with bugs and errors like when PC users had it.

You are right on that!  I know this may upset some people with MAC waiting for this game... Trust us PC users... the wait will be worth it.  You do not want to go through what we have the past 3 months.  I bet between all the servers I have already built over 100 city tiles... easily.  

 

I will say, it is MUCH better now.  I can pretty much have fingertip control of everything if I plan my roads/mass transit correctly.

[FourWinds 29]

 

Their trying to help them out. I like that. They would hate to see them over loaded with bugs and errors like when PC users had it.

... Trust us PC users... the wait will be worth it...

 

 

 

 

VanGio mate, I don't want to be negative, but in all honesty I couldn't recommend this game as is, or as advertised post update 5.0! I think saying things like 'trust US.. it will be worth it' is going way too far. These new guys who haven't spent their money yet need to look around the internet and sites like this to get a feeling wrt if they want to buy into this game as it is. I think you are being over partisan here. It's not a bad game, but given the cost of SC4 (with rush hour included) on Steam...would I recommend this one as strongly as you do: no I would not. I'm not ditching the game, but I am saying that your saying 'trust US it's way cool' is way over the top bro.

[heat33330 26]

 

Their trying to help them out. I like that. They would hate to see them over loaded with bugs and errors like when PC users had it.

You are right on that!  I know this may upset some people with MAC waiting for this game... Trust us PC users... the wait will be worth it.  You do not want to go through what we have the past 3 months.  I bet between all the servers I have already built over 100 city tiles... easily.  

 

I will say, it is MUCH better now.  I can pretty much have fingertip control of everything if I plan my roads/mass transit correctly.

 

 

It's spelled as "Mac" not "MAC". It's an abbreviation (of "Macintosh") not an acronym.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[cyruskafaiwu 29]

WTH! I WAS ABOUT TO GET MY WALLET OUT!!!!!!!!

i was counting down till june 11.

[TWiCS 2]

But will we have to re-buy it to run it on my MAC? I only have a PC for games and own Simcity, it will really suck if I can't use my copy.

[GoingNumb 3]

Everybody knows this game is still messy so who cares about a messy mac version too.. Sorry but i think the simcity hype (outside the simcity community ofcourse) will be over in august. So if they think about money, they could better release it now. mac user already play it in bootcamp or whatever. Oh well, i just have to wait a bit longer but its all good because i can launch a freaking balloon in the air.

[baertooth 330]

But will we have to re-buy it to run it on my MAC? I only have a PC for games and own Simcity, it will really suck if I can't use my copy.

 

 

From what I understand if you buy the PC version you will have access to download the Mac version for free.

[ForensicCRAFT 9]

Ok EA, you won't be seeing another dollar out of me because of this one.

Well, luckily you don't have to because it's free for PC users already. Slowly step away from the ledge.

[Screwballl 196]

 

• Resource gifts: Resource gifts will happen more reliably. Multiple trucks can make deliveries at once if they are available in the sending city and the truck capacities have been increased.

 

 

So resources will still need to be gifted. To me this breaks any single player experience. Why on earth do they only 'simulate' some aspects on single player neighbour cities and not others. If you're going to have commuters, shoppers, students, shared utilities and the rest why must any resource production stop dead when the city's not live? On one hand they want me (the single player) to produce things from the ground up, and on the other hand they won't let me do it because I can't automate the supply chain due to 'gifting.'

 

Please EA give me some resource production based on a historical average of trade receipts - make a periodically required review to stop cheats if you want - and the tools to automate distribution around the region. I know you say you made a multiplayer game, but as a single player I want to be able to play the game too.

 

I won't swear, I'm tempted but I won't do it.

 

Because when a city is not "active" as in not actively being played, it does not consume any resources like coal, ore, oil, water, etc out of the ground. If they had it set where the cities were always active 24/7, not only would it be massive server drain on their end (unless they simulated it the next time you loaded it based on the amount of time between the last time it was played) but also your cities would run out of the in ground resources in a matter of a day or two instead of a week to a month (depending on how often you play the city).

The trucks leaving your city exporting the products and disappearing is the equivalent of selling on the global market, not selling it to the neighboring city... Since you cannot have more than 1 city played at a time in a private region with no other people playing, there is no way to actively sell resources from one city to another, thus the gifting. Granted if 2+ people were active and playing in a region at the same time, AND have a connection in use via rail, road, boat or plane, they should be able to actively buy/sell the resources without the need for gifting.

[infoman96 27]

Ok EA, you won't be seeing another dollar out of me because of this one.

Well, luckily you don't have to because it's free for PC users already. Slowly step away from the ledge. Yeah I know it's free for Mac users, but what I'm saying is that money could've been spent differently. I'm a reasonable guy, if the Mac version wasnt ready at the same as the PC version it's cool, but considering my PC is incredibly slow and I was only intending to use it on PC for a few months at the max, the delay of the Mac version again warrants anger out of me.