Why bother playing Airport City anymore?

[Canadian Cowboy]

Okay, so the title of the thread is a bit dramatic. I apologize for that.

I finished the Long-Awaited Mail event a few days ago. I started up Airport City today, and my game has been reset back to level 73 from level 75. All my city changes and progress have been lost. Again. All those buildings I bought and land expansions and new reserve hangers. (Sigh)

This is the second time this has happened, and from what I can tell the 'reset point' appears to be the same as before. This morning, I sent an email to GI Tech Support asking for a game restore, as they were able to restore my game last time. I wonder though if they will be able to restore my game and include the successful completion of the event. I will have to wait and see what happens.

Thus I ask the question that is the title of this thread: "Why bother playing Airport City anymore?"

Free2PLay, if you are reading this thread, perhaps you will pick up on the frustration and annoyance that this second reset of my game has caused me. To be blunt, Airport City is no longer much 'fun' anymore. Hence the title of this thread, and the reason why I am giving serious consideration to spending my time elsewhere on some other game. There are other GI games that seem to work well, such as "The Tribez" and "The Tribez and Castle". I have played those games for years and while progress is slow, I have not had nearly as many problems with these games, as I have had with Airport City.

For all the good that it will do (aside from letting me vent), here is a suggestion for GI Tech Support and the developers:

FIX Airport City!

Airport City is broken somehow. I do not know if it is something in the distributed app, or if it is something on the GI servers. I do know that a problem occurring once is an event (no pun intended), but more than once is a definite pattern. Sadly I am not the only player who has experienced this problem more than once, based on what I have read in the threads in this forum.

To all those other long term players who are making progress, keep it up and I hope you continue to enjoy the game. I sincerely wish that the problems I have experience with Airport City resets do not plague you as well.

As for me, I will be in limbo until my game is restored. Not much point in playing now because any progress I make from this point on will be lost when my game is restored. As the old saying goes, "Caught between a rock and a hard place".

Canadian Cowboy.

 

[diwata]

Sending flights using Alliance maps always with sky captain and golden dice, hardly any drops. Do bonuses even work anymore?

Probability of drops so tiny it's not even worth mentioning. The breakdown rate however is through the roof! It would be nice if the drop rates and the breakdown rates are even but they're not even close.

 

[Petapann1]

This is why I quit a month or more ago, all games, all platforms. Players (customers) are not respected.

 

[Kamikaze]

@Canadian Cowboy, it happened to me also last friday, i did send immediately a mail to the team of G!.
It was also the second time for me, but they fixed it the first time, i hope they do the same now.
I do not play and only send my daily gifts out, because i think that playing and collecting is of no use until the game is restored.
But it is very frustrating !

 

[Sv670]

Hardly any point playing now, due to new update. That you pretty much have to pay green cash to fly anywhere now. Hmm GG Airport City

 

[Canadian Cowboy]

Regretfully, I have to agree with you, Sv670. Playing Airport City with the new Weather Station enhancement makes things more difficult and less fun. Looks like I will be popping in to check on a few things in Airport City from time to time, but that's all.

 

[Speed]

Thinking of quitting Airport city too. been dealing with bugs every other day. just to name a few, not being able to send gifts or visit neighbors daily because of the counter not resetting and with the drop rate getting worse. this game is getting more frustrating than fun. and with what I hear about the new update, it's only going to get worse.

with the other online games I play at least they fix their servers or get the game sorted within 24-48 hours and reward all the players with at least $10-20 worth of in game items for the inconvenience. G!'s tech support has been good to me though but it seems like the dev's are slowly killing this game.

 

[Canadian Cowboy]

For anyone who might be interested, it happened for the third time. My game has been reset back to level 73. I have lost all my city improvements, changes updates and event items. There are only 6 days left to complete the current event, so there is no way I can complete it. It usually takes GI Support 4 days to restore my game. I have decided NOT to have GI support restore my game. What's the point? It seems I cannot get past level 75 anyway.

I am have mentioned this third reset of my game to GI Support. I do not expect my email to GI Support to have any effect on GI. As many other have stated here, GI does not seem to be listening to the people playing their games. I will wait for an update to Airport City and hope that maybe someday GI will fix this game. I will drop by my game every day to send back gifts from other players. That's about all that I can do.

For all those other Airport City players out there who are still playing the game and are not having any serious problems such as those I have experienced, I wish you well.

Am I upset about this third game reset? Well, yes I was a first. but now not so much. It's only a game. I will spend my time doing something else, and having fun elsewhere. I will keep monitoring this forum though as it always remains interesting.

 

[Red Fox One]

@Canadian Cowboy do you backup your game files regularly? Do you know how to?

 

[Canadian Cowboy]

Hi Red Fox One.

Actually I do not backup my game files regularly. I have an application on my tablet to backup my apps to my microSD card. Is that what you mean? I am not sure how this would help me, though. The game got 'reset' as soon as I launched it normally. I was playing the game and the battery became low. I exited the game and shut down the tablet normally. Once the tablet was fully charged, I started it up and launched Airport City, which came up at level 73 from several months ago. This reset has happened a total of three times now and each time the game resets it resets back to the same level at the same point.

I do not know why this is happening or how it is happening All I know is that the reset has happened three times. GI Support was able to restore my game, but I cannot seem to get past level 75. The only pattern I have seen so far is that each reset happened during an event when the event had only a few days left to be completed.

I suspect that there is something seriously wrong with the Airport City game code or engine, because the game gets progressively slower when I play it. After about 30 minutes the game will hang when my screen blanker kicks in. When that happens I have to wait from five to 10 minutes for the game to 'catch up' and unfreeze. Or else reboot the tablet, if the game does not 'unfreeze'. This game slowdown has appeared ever since the switch to the new game engine that does not work on older versions of the Android operating system. When I say the game freezes, I mean that all animations in the game stop (the radar, the windmills spinning and so forth). I even have problems with the game thinking I have no internet connection when in fact I have strong active internet connection.

These problems along with the recent game changes have made Airport City 'no fun' to play anymore. This third game reset is the last straw. Why should I spend my time playing Airport City when I cannot make any progress in the game?

All GI Support has been able to offer is a 'restore' of my game. There is no point in doing that anymore because the game is just going to reset again. GI support will not fix the problem. GI Support will not even acknowledge that there is a serious problem with Airport City. GI Support does not care about fixing problems or improving the game. The changes that GI has been making to Airport City make the game more complicated to play, cost more resources, more time, and more money (game money and real money).

One final point that I would like to make. The 'play a video and get something free' option has not been working in Airport City on my tablet for over a year. I did some diagnosis with GI Support about it and sent them some log files. They said that they knew what the problem was and that it would be fixed in the future with an update but they could not tell me when. That was over 12 months ago. The problem is still happening, but is slightly different. When I try to play a video it says 'error something went wrong', then a few seconds later the video plays. I get no free item, and then a window pops up that says the offer is no longer available. End result the 'play a video' and get something for free, still does not work. So much for a solution from GI.

What is even more odd is that the 'play a video' works on my other support games on other tablets just fine. These support games are at much lower game levels (level 7, 23 and 28), though.

This entire situation is confusing. It is frustrating. It is why I have given up on Airport City. It is a game. It is only a game. It is not the end all and reason for my existence.

Sorry for going on and on like this. I told myself that I would not do that, and I went and did it anyway. (Sigh)

 

[Wired Parrott]

@Canadian Cowboy I agree with some of your points. However, I would point out though
GI support has its own shortcomings they have no control over fixing the games underlying issues
and are not free to acknowledge anything that higher ups don't approve of stating. Support
is generally a lower paying job and they are forced in most cases to use an approved script
when addressing issues. They have absolutely no control over fixes or improvements. Do
you really think they enjoy the likely daily barrage of hate sent to them within tickets that
they have no control over? A more accurate statement within your post would be "GI does
not care about fixing problems or improving the game."

 

[Canadian Cowboy]

Hi Wired Parrott. You make a valid point with the statement "GI does not care about fixing problems or improving the game". I think that is the situation in a nutshell. The recent snafu with the current event does not help endear the Game Insight company to the players of their games. I feel sorry for all the tech people at GI having to deal with that mountain of "please restore my game, I lost all event progress" emails and tickets that have probably appeared due to this software snafu. I also feel sorry for the players who were impacted by this situation.

I think the improvements that GI has made to the game over the years, such as better graphics and animations are a good thing. It is encouraging when you see that GI cares enough about the game to keep adding to it and trying to make it interesting for all players, new and old. Some would suggest that some of these improvements and changes (such as the Weather Station) are poor designed money grabs. That is the subject of other threads so I will not mention it any further in this thread.

What GI seems to have forgotten is that without a reliable game engine, a game is not worth playing. I no longer trust that my progress in my game will be saved and will not be 'reset' for a fourth time. Hence I question the wisdom of continuing to play my Airport City game.

So best of luck to all you other Airport City game players. I will be quietly cheering you on from the sidelines. When GI support has a fix for this reset problem or some type of work around, then I will become an active player again.

 

[Canadian Cowboy]

Red Fox One, how does a person backup the Airport City data files? I suppose that if I did that every time after I shut down the game I could 'restore' my game the next time the game resets. I have not determined how to do that with my tablet.