Airport City 2015

[Free2Play]

Hi everyone,

My name is Ivan, and I'm Airport City producer and game designer here at Moscow, Russia. I've been with the team since September 2011, but the game itself is in a continuous development since March 2011. We're a studio called Road 404 that is a subsidiary of Game Insight. Our other released games are Sunshine Bay (Dave, if you wanted Airport City about yachts - that's about as far as it gets! You won't believe it, but by now it has submarine missions instead of space missions, too), Sky Adventures (this one didn't exactly become a hit, but had some fun things nonetheless; it's about planes and talking cats, check it out in the App Store), and Transport Empire (steampunk railroad management, if you are into it).

But first things first: thanks for your feedback and support! Throughout the years it was an immense help. You often wonder, why certain things don't get fixed fast, or why updates aren't coming sooner. Well, that's not because we don't want to, but rather we just have a small team: at no point there were more than six people working at Airport City, and this includes both all mobile versions and several versions for social networks (Facebook, and regional Russian, Chinese, Korean and Japanese ones).

Well, it's Christmas and New Year is coming soon, and I've thought it'd be a perfect time to share some of our plans with you for the coming year. That's "for your eyes only" as our most loyal fans!

1. We will add new land expansions, but you have to understand: as greensmith correctly guessed, it is the limits of our game architecture that prevent us from doing it easily. Facebook and mobile versions are too very different games at its core, that's why there are more expansions there. We don't want to rush this and get any profiles corrupted.

2. Some of the features of Facebook version will make it to mobile, like Reserve Hangar.

3. Some buildings will start giving bonuses to the buildings around them. For example, parks will boost number of passengers in residential buildings nearby. This one is coming soon.

4. We have new bonuses coming soon as well, and I mean entirely new, not a rehash of the old ones with slightly different numbers. Save up your tokens for those.

5. Level cap will be raised, new planes are coming along with new destinations and collections. New planes don't necessarily mean they'll be bigger than Giant and consume all of your passengers for a single flight. The first one of this new pack is Falcon, try to guess which plane it is based on

6. New space missions! We are going to Mars, folks, and with some luck building a habitable base there. This is a major update, our own Half Life 3 so to speak, and it will take awhile to get done. We're taking any suggestions into consideration.

7. More co-op and plaver-versus-player gameplay with unique rewards. We hate cheaters that screw up ratings as much you do, and we'll try ensure they don't spoil the fun for all of us, especially when you and your friends are having your own aviation alliance and compete with other alliances.

8. We have a new cleaner interface coming soon, so if you are that kid on a block with iPhone 6, you won't be ashamed to play Airport City any more.

9. You'll be able to store buildings in inventory.

10. I hope, you do like our quests, because big story from Facebook will be continued and brought to mobile.

I can't tell you a release date on any of this, because as I've said - we're a small team actually, and the 3+ year old game tends to break a lot (yes, we're aware of the Quantum Leap issue) which really distracts us from making new features. But if you do have a must-have feature in mind that's not mentioned above, be it a major or a minor one, post it in the comments. Please limit it to one feature per comment, so that others may upvote it with likes (Dave, that's a nice feature!).

If you are still reading this, here's a little Christmas present for you: add a promo-code / friend "AirportCityRocks" before January 1st. This should work on iPad, iPhone, Android, Amazon, Windows Store and Windows Phone. And while we're at it: we'd love to give you guys who play on iPads / iPhones weekend promo-codes, but Apple's policy prohibits us from it, and we can't risk an app getting removed because of it.

If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them as well.

Best regards and Merry Christmas!
your Airport City development team.

 

[ItsRalphy]

The game is great, and your insight really helps - keep up the fab work, and Merry Christmas and thanks for the gift!

 

[Theo1977]

Hello Free2Play
Merry Christmas and a happy new year to you too!
Thanks for posting and keeping in touch with your players.

A couple of suggestions in addition to the indeed exciting news you gave us.

1. Some of the space buildings (Alien Legacy, Astronaut Academy, Planetarium, etc.) and some reward buildings that make sense (flight school, etc.) can be allowed to be placed on the airport side of the city - I think that would solve a LOT of issues related to the land expansion that like you said it's not a simple challenge to solve.

2. You need to "ease" up on the time traveling I believe. While I agree that time travelers and cheaters are indeed ruining the game (especially those who chase the top 100 rankings), accusing players that use their mobile device for work as well as for leisure, at their every step that they have been time traveling, doesn't do much other than to alienate these players. I personally have been accused a couple of times, and this was because my work forces me to travel almost once or twice every couple of months, and in various destinations across the globe. You have to understand that somebody that is "willing" to cheat either via time travel or via other hacks, will most likely do it no matter what measures you can take, primarily because his or her goal is to cheat. Hence, instead of accusing the innocent players, and basically driving them away from playing the game, you are better off tracking the ones that make the top lists every week, and then check only those (i.e. see their purchases, see what, if any, items they have accumulated, etc.). If my neighbor is at Level 50, and has 400 stars for example, I won't mind if it s/he cheated to get there, as long as it doesn't stop ME (or the other players for that matter) for getting there. And this is basically done through space launches (that the neighbor joins and steals 1st place from the players) and the top 100 rankings. However, since each of us can DELETE these neighbors, all you need to do is monitor the people that hit the top 100 list (either through space or through flights) and hold detailed checks on those games. The people that are deleted because they "hijack" space launches will pay by losing their neighbors, the people that get top 100 and are checked clean deserve all the rewards, and the people that are found guilty, you can simply delete/remove their game from the online part (or Duke or the limited item offers such as gold planes, etc.) and thus essentially protecting the good players.

The rest of the items you mention are really exciting and we are waiting for them! Oh, and please make sure when we use golden dice, or other bonuses, that the drop rate increases. For example, if I purchase a golden dice and I sent 30 planes to a destination (adventure for example), and all 30 return without any drop, that does NOT feel good...

Thanks and thanks for the generous bonus too!

 

[Phlflyer1]

If my neighbor is at Level 50, and has 400 stars for example, I won't mind if it s/he cheated to get there, as long as it doesn't stop ME (or the other players for that matter) for getting there. And this is basically done through space launches (that the neighbor joins and steals 1st place from the players) and the top 100 rankings. However, since each of us can DELETE these neighbors, all you need to do is monitor the people that hit the top 100 list (either through space or through flights) and hold detailed checks on those games.

Not sure if things work differently on the other platforms but on Windows 8 I have noticed that even though I can unilaterally delete someone from my neighbor list if I think they've unfairly hijacked one of my launches it does NOT delete me from their neighbor list. At least not right away as that same individual was able to get into another of my launches even after I had deleted them.

Edited to add a hearty thank you to Ivan for posting here and showing that G! is willing to take suggestions and is working on enhancements to the game. Thank you!

 

[greensmith]

Not sure if things work differently on the other platforms but on Windows 8 I have noticed that even though I can unilaterally delete someone from my neighbor list if I think they've unfairly hijacked one of my launches it does NOT delete me from their neighbor list. At least not right away as that same individual was able to get into another of my launches even after I had deleted them.

I found the same thing to be true on iOS. I deleted a neighbor a while ago because he hijacked my launch twice in a row, in spite of me politely reminding him of launch courtesies. Later on he joined another launch but this time I was too far ahead in fuel for him to take the #1 spot. Never saw him again.
Cheers,
Tom

 

[Theo1977]

i did not know that. But I guess it does need some sort of GI server update when a neighbor is deleted, so if this is a lag on behalf of the server (i.e. Refresh both games) then it may be doable.

 

[dchesn08]

Thank you, Ivan for the update! Very excited to hear about the things coming in 2015. The gift was much appreciated! Like some others have stated on this thread about time traveling I must concur with them. I have been accused twice on my android and both times I did nothing wrong. I never changed the time on my device.

The other request I would have is to keep watch on those placing on the world map. I have tried numerous times to get that number one spot only to be overtaken by someone who has jumped an astronomical number of places in a short period of time.

Once again thank you and happy holidays!

 

[Robby Kusuma]

Thank you for the information. And also the gifts. Now, everyone can activate sometime and surprise me. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

@greensmith , Tom, hijacker or not, you have to see from different point of view. You can call some people hijackers but I call some people Trappers, the one who open the launch and leave it for hours with minimum fuel. Anyway, I decided already not to join any launches. I just open my own to avoid this things. But still, in my opinion, the opener should not be the first. You have to see the situation. Or, you can avoid this by putting green 800+180+1 Blue 1000+180+1 Red 1500+180+1 to avoid this. I joined you couple times and lucky I did not hijack you. It would be a great lost to lose you as a neighbour.

 

[GamingSwiftie]

Ivan - Like the others, I thank you for the information and the Christmas gift!
As others have mentioned, some loyal players have been unfairly accused of "time travelling". Myself included. This is what ultimately caused me to take an extended leave of absence from the game. (And I'm still not sure if I will come back. But, the information you provided and the gift may help me stay.)

My "time travelling" story: Ultimately my "time travelling" experience was apparently (never confirmed by support, but strongly alluded to after several rounds of emails) caused due to the import of purchased greens to a new game. It says a lot when you "reward" players by calling them cheaters simply because they got a new device and then want to transfer previously purchased items to it.

 

[Suresh]

Free2Play wooov thank you for the generous gift. And really nice to know that this game is going to be revived in the coming year with new features. Really looking forward to it.

 

[Diabloscort]

Happy Holidays Ivan and thanks alot for the great news about what is planned for next year The idea of doing a vs each other quests is not a good idea.... drop rates for some of the bonuses are very lacking, we should be able to visit more than 12 friends per day and also more than 20 gifts per day would be better..... thanks a lot for the generous holiday gift keep up the great work and thanks for listening to all of us here

 

[Tecmage]

Free2Play , Ivan thank you for the information and generous gifts! I hope some new features are coming to Amazon in 2015 as well.

 

[AJ]

I liked the feature of night mode in Pc version, you must make this feature available on android platform.
Thank you

 

[Free2Play]

Hi Free2Play, привет Иван!
Are you planning these features in the near future for Windows AC? Is there any chance we can start having the Weekend bonus code?

Hi GiftXchange!
I can't promise any dates, but Windows version is going to be updated with features and content that are already present on Android & iOS.
Yes, there is a chance for weekend codes on Windows. Keep a close view on https://www.facebook.com/AirportCityOfficialPage
Happy New Year!

 

[Free2Play]

I understand the concept of creating new challenges, but pitting neighbor against neighbor just seems outside the spirit of the game.
Tom

Hi Tom,
I agree with you, that's why it's going to be rather "your team of neighbors" against "random people from Internet".

 

[Free2Play]

Free2Play I may be wrong, but I would guess that over 95% of those accused have in no way cheated. There has to be something that can be done to correct this injustice. I have several great neighbors that are blocked or restricted because of this and did absolutely nothing wrong!!!

Hi LAX,
we'll try to update the ban system to have less false blocks. It is very irritating to be banned for doing nothing wrong, we fully understand that.

 

[Free2Play]

Dear Robby,
will all due respect the Christmas promo-code is for visitors of this forum only, because we love you. Otherwise we'll post it on every corner ourselves, right? Cheers!

 

[Free2Play]

Free2Play
There are flights for many destinations, and please dont forget Portugal to a new destination one day

Hi InCoNvEnIeNtE,
we honestly try to have a flight for every part of the globe. The idea that thanks to the planes you can get to any place in the world in less than a day amazed me as a child, and still does. Portugal is coming

 

[Free2Play]

Hello Free2Play ,
Is there a way some of us can become beta-testers for the game?

Hi flip,
unfortunately, no, because of the legal complications.

 

[Free2Play]

Oh, and please make sure when we use golden dice, or other bonuses, that the drop rate increases.

Hi Theo,
it does! But if the chance is fairly low to start with, even with the bonus activated it might not bring the immediate results.

And it depends on the luck, too. Like, for example, if you have 1000 chests with 50/50 chance of getting item A or B, when you open them in a row, you'll have roughly 500 of A and 500 of B. But if you have just 10 of the same chests, it's entirely possible first 8 of them will be only A or only B.

 

[Free2Play]

I liked the feature of night mode in Pc version, you must make this feature available on android platform.
Thank you

Hi Abhishek,
besides night mode pc version also has a lot more daytime animations. We'd love to have them all on mobile, but there's a perfomance issue: the game will become unplayable at low-end Android devices and iPad 2 (you'll be surprised how many people still use it).

Improving perfomance is one of our top priorities. It takes my own 3-year old Android phone about 2 minutes just to load the game completely, for example. We have some perfomance tweaks in the coming January update, one of those "major technical improvements" we all joke about.

And thanks everyone for all the kind words!