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Any hope for us Mac players?
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Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2012-03-30 10:57:11 UTC
Dear all,

First of all yes...I know I should probably play this WONDERFUL game on a PC but guess what...I have only a Mac I discovered this game only few days ago even though I knew of its existence since its conception.

Enough said I simply love it, I think that it is probably the best MMO I've ever played, and I played most of them for many years.

My question is simple The Mac client is going to be broken forever or CCP is planning to actually fix it? I know it sounds a bit harsh but I've been following the Mac forum for a bit and it seems that we have been left a bit in the darkness.

It simply freezes. Sometimes after 5 minutes of play, sometimes after 1 hour. That's it.

I was planning to become a paying customer but obviously this ain't heppening if the client freezes all the time Thanks guys.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#2 - 2012-03-30 11:27:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Mara Rinn
Does any of the advice from the constantly freezing up thread in the Macintosh forum help you at all?

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2012-03-30 11:32:35 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
Does any of the advice from the constantly freezing up thread in the Macintosh forum help you at all?


Thanks Mara for your reply :)

I tried few things but, with all due respect for CCP, it really seems a problem with the client itself.

The most popular advice is to install a Windows partition with Bootcamp and play EVE online on that. Unfortunately that is not an option for me and besides, if there is a Mac client than I think it's fair to demand that it actually works :)

I just wanted to know if there are confirmations on the fact that CCP will fix the Mac client sooner or later.

Then I will be more than happy to join this interesting community of Space addicts ;P
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#4 - 2012-03-30 11:56:18 UTC
It is probably no consolation to know that the Mac client works just fine on my 17" iMac w/x1600 and 11" MacBook Air.

I hope you and all the folks in that thread find a solution soon!

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Khanh'rhh
Sparkle Motion.
#5 - 2012-03-30 12:15:22 UTC
I know this isn't the solution you want, but would you ever consider using bootcamp?

If you actually get into eve you won't be using the computer for anything else anyway (except for winning eve by trolling 3rd party forums) so you may as well turn it into an eve machine.

"Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads -- they are not there accidentally." -Soviet infantry manual,

Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2012-03-30 12:19:54 UTC
Khanh'rhh wrote:
I know this isn't the solution you want, but would you ever consider using bootcamp?


He...I would consider using Bootcamp when CCP will officially stop offering and supporting a client for Mac ;)
Jouron
Hadon Shipping
#7 - 2012-03-30 13:32:16 UTC
I feel your pain.

I played on a mac for the longest time. Then incarna came out. My mac book pro had a video card that supported shader three. Unfortunately apple in its infinite wisdom choose not to release the proper video card drivers for it to support shader 3. In order to continue I HAD TO, had to boot my mac as a PC. CCP is working so hard to make mac a viable game to play on a mac, and the more new and powerful your mac the fewer issues it seems you have. But as a company apple has chosen to make so many poor choices regarding there customer base with things like Final cut X, and manufacturing choices I just gave up on them. Apple has become the new IBM as a company. They became what they sought to destroy.

In january after using a mac for four years and saving up I built a hot rod computer. That means it had to be Windows 7. My computer has never frozen playing eve or other games, and is currently out performing my g5 mac tower I use at work. There are work arounds to make macs work and yes ccp will listen and act on your bug reports. But so far brother I have no bugs with my current pc build they need to be fixed.

As a former Mac user I can only say this:

Good luck.
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#8 - 2012-03-30 13:41:48 UTC
Jouron wrote:
As a former Mac user I can only say this:

Good luck.


He...thanks Jouron,

Honestly I did not want to get a new PC because I would have ended up playing on it only and throw my PS3 out the window (pun not intended).

So I bought a Mac for that reason and because I wanted to try something new. I was not planning to play with it.

Then I encountered EVE online...DAMN! P
Xercodo
Cruor Angelicus
#9 - 2012-03-30 14:25:57 UTC
PC Gamers: "JOINNNNNNN USSSSSSS"

The Drake is a Lie
Madlof Chev
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#10 - 2012-03-30 23:57:57 UTC
Seriously, Bootcamp is your best option. The performance of the Mac client is absolutely terrible in comparison to the Windows client on exactly the same hardware. You might even get the same/slightly better performance than the Mac client by installing Windows into Parallels Desktop and running the client virtualised.
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#11 - 2012-03-31 12:28:44 UTC
Madlof Chev wrote:
Seriously, Bootcamp is your best option.


Problem is that if every time a Mac user has a problem with the client he/she will move to a Bootcamp/Windows environment then...CCP will simply stop releasing patches for the Mac client.

The Mac client exist, it should work...end of story :)

I will follow this forum for a while and see if they are going to do something about it. Then I will decide if becoming a paying customer or not.

Thanks all for your replies.
Runny ElTiburon
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2012-03-31 13:50:28 UTC
Hi,

I am playing EVE for 4 days now on a brand new iMac and I have all those frozen problems. If we pay for a service we should get the same quality for Mac and PC and the is not the case!

The other problem, if you want to run EVE on boot camp, you have to make a clean instal of windows if you want stability and that is another 200$ or more to get the license...

Regards
Khanh'rhh
Sparkle Motion.
#13 - 2012-03-31 15:51:35 UTC
Markus Egdald wrote:
Madlof Chev wrote:
Seriously, Bootcamp is your best option.


Problem is that if every time a Mac user has a problem with the client he/she will move to a Bootcamp/Windows environment then...CCP will simply stop releasing patches for the Mac client.


Whilst I do completely see this point of view, most of the problems with the Mac client come from Apple not giving two ***** about anyone who wants to use the machine for gaming, which echos down to the hardware providers also (nVidia).

For instance, a little after Skyrim was released nVidia released a new driver that increased performance with the game engine by nearly 50% in some situations, by coding around things in the game world that couldn't necessarily be changed easily by Bethesda. The same driver update hasn't been pushed out to the mac, last time I checked.

You will always need to accept two truths:

1) Mac users are in a stark minority

2) People using the mac for gaming are in a minority of mac users

If I were CCP I would certainly release and maintain a Mac client .. but spend vast resources on optimizing for a platform that doesn't want to help itself, and is used by a very small minority? Yeah, I would think twice about it.

If a mac user wants an optimized gaming experience they will need to make it happen for themselves, and this currently is done via bootcamp.

I'm not wailing on the mac (I use one at work) but in respect to it's viability as a gaming machine, dems the way tarps lie.

"Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads -- they are not there accidentally." -Soviet infantry manual,

Jouron
Hadon Shipping
#14 - 2012-04-02 20:27:59 UTC
It should work properly it should. But somethings are out of CCPs hands.

Take Mac laptops for instance.

I had huge Frame rate issues running a mac client. Because with most mac books they have completely inadequate cooling these are older and newer models and especially the mac book airs. There vents are too small there fans are too small as well, all those compromises just so they fit in a shiny seamless Aluminum case...

Apple knows this so if your running a dual core or more if you hit a heat threshold (which by the way eve can get your mac too in no time flat) it will kill one of the cores so it generates less heat and your performance goes through the floor.

Anything bigger then an I book or I book pro I cant speak for. But thats at least one thing that that ccp cant change about a mac computer to get the client to work better on them.

I will say this eve ran smoothest on my mac book pro once I booted it as a PC on an old ass copy of XP I had lying around. Heat was still an issue but I remedied that with some external fans. Once it got to that point I was like ok I need a freaking desktop.

Ps do you have an NVIDIA graphics Card? CCP seems to be awful cozy with Nvidia these days so Radeon cards which usually come with macs tend to suffer as well.
Kahega Amielden
Rifterlings
#15 - 2012-04-02 20:54:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Kahega Amielden
Quote:
Whilst I do completely see this point of view, most of the problems with the Mac client come from Apple not giving two ***** about anyone who wants to use the machine for gaming, which echos down to the hardware providers also (nVidia).


It probably has more to do with the fact that EVE's graphics use DirectX and DirectX is a feature of Windows. The Mac client uses Wine...which is to say, it tries to emulate DirectX (and not all that well).

Thus, the Mac client is -always- going to inferior to the PC client in terms of framerate and bugginess.

That said, I'm not sure what the deal is with specific crash/freezing issues. Presumably they're working on it and will fix it soon™
Marite Maglicoo
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#16 - 2012-04-03 00:47:45 UTC
I spent 5 days downloading this (around family internet use), and needed 30 minutes to set up a character, and I can't even run the tutorial without freezing up my Mac.

Not exactly a great first impression. Never even got to fly anywhere.

What a waste of time and effort.
Mara Rinn
Cosmic Goo Convertor
#17 - 2012-04-03 02:50:53 UTC
When it comes to heat issues, I have used a laptop stand with built-in fan. Alternately have a look at smcFanControl.

Day 0 Advice for New Players
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2012-04-03 06:16:44 UTC
Kahega Amielden wrote:
It probably has more to do with the fact that EVE's graphics use DirectX and DirectX is a feature of Windows. The Mac client uses Wine...which is to say, it tries to emulate DirectX (and not all that well).

Thus, the Mac client is -always- going to inferior to the PC client in terms of framerate and bugginess.

That said, I'm not sure what the deal is with specific crash/freezing issues. Presumably they're working on it and will fix it soon™


Oh yes...Direct X...the legal Microsoft monopoly.

Anyway...I don't mind being inferior, I don't mind bugs...but freezing...THAT I do mind :)

Well...few Euros saved every month I guess. For sure CCP is not going to go bankrupt for few Mac loosers who can't be bothered to install Bootcamp/Windows on their machine.

I bought a Mac for a reason, otherwise I would have gotten a PC. I still use my PS3 as the main gaming platform.
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#19 - 2012-04-03 07:35:20 UTC
Mara Rinn wrote:
When it comes to heat issues, I have used a laptop stand with built-in fan. Alternately have a look at smcFanControl.


Thanks Mara, I will definitely give this smcFanControl a try later on today and see if the problem resides within the dominion of over heating computers...why don't I speak a normal english! ;P
Markus Egdald
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#20 - 2012-04-03 15:49:15 UTC
I tried smcFanControl but somehow it wasn't changing the speed of the fans. It was measuring the temp fine though

It started at around 30 centigrades and after about 15 minutes of playtime the client froze at about 50 centigrades...WOW

I downloaded another software called Fan Control, which sits in the System Preferences. With that I could change the speed fine but it could not show the temp -_-

Anyway...I tried setting the fan speed at around 2500 rpm (is it safe? I don't want to destroy them) and when I could clearly hear the fans making more noise, I started the EVE client.

I could play non stop for about 30 minutes, jumping from place to place...could it really be a temp problem? If it is like that I am gonna laugh my ass off.

Tonight I will test it extensively and see. I have ONE day left from my trial account so I guess that if you see me around after tomorrow that means that everything went fine ;)

Thanks again for the advice.
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