So CoH doesn't run so well on Mac?

I need a new computer and I was thinking of buying a Mac Mini or Airbook when the new ones come out with the Lion operating system.

I just took a look through the posts here and it looks like there are a lot of problems running City of Heroes on Macintosh? Is that right?

Would a mac mini be powerful enough to run the game well?

I have few-to-no problems running CoH on my Macbook. It is the model released summer 2009, I am still running regular Leopard (not Snow Leopard), Nvidia, and 2 gigs of RAM. So I cannot speak for those with the upgraded operating system, nor for those on different machines, but I love it.

I would definitely go with the Mac Mini, unless you need the Air's portability. The Air might become uncomfortably warm during play. On my Macbook, the fan comes on within minutes of me starting to play, and I usually have to put some kind of cloth or tissue between my hand the hand rest by the keyboard while playing. You may have to customize the Mini a bit (i.e. upgrading to a larger RAM than the default), but any computer with the right specs should run it fine. If you have a choice between Nvidia or ATI, I suggest Nvidia simply because there seem to be less problems.

It should be noted, we do not yet know how CoH will run on Lion. It could very well be fine, but as far as I know, there hasn't been a test run.

I run CoH on a MacBook Pro. I have no issues with it that I don't have using a Windows machine. For example I can't run content using wireless when their is a high population on a given server. I guess mapservs don't discriminate, so I would caution getting an Airbook as I think they are only wireless.

I'm running COH on both a 2010 MBAir and a 2010 MBPro i7. I have TONS of issues with the Mac COH client running on BOTH machines. If you turn down the graphics detail to "stick-figure-simple" levels, its fairly stable as long as you remember to type in /reloadgfx ever so often (I built a bind for that purpose). Otherwise, I'll crash with an "Exception error" or straight up crash to desktop/no warnings or errors given. Its very simply been the single worst behaved application in my 10 years of using a Mac. Seriously....its terrible for ME. I don't know what I'm doing that others aren't but its just not worth playing for more than an hour or so on either machine unless you just like random crashes.

My MBA is my primary travel machine and it also runs Bootcamp (I run VMWare on the MBP). COH via Bootcamp/Windows runs rock-steady at high graphics detail, etc. Given this is the same machine (2010 MBA 13" 4GB/2+GHZ), I think its pretty obvious that the Windows version is just better behaved than the Mac port. There's lots of reasons for this but I'll let you read those elsewhere.

The MBA's fans will scream after only 15-20 minutes of COH play. I also use an external keyboard/mouse combo since I don't want to wear out the keys on the machine. But other than for the random crashes, it runs COH acceptably enough as long as you don't mind everyones' head looking like squashed pixels until you get within 2 feet of them.

So my recommendation...buy whatever Mac you want, install Bootcamp and use that partition for your Windows gaming experience. Its quite decent that way. And for COH, its the only stable way to play with all the bells and whistles enabled. For me anyways. YMMV but it really shouldn't...these are MACS.

I also have no unusual problems with the Mac client for CoH - I use a Macbook Pro core i7.

There are some memory usage issues that may crash the game, but that only seems to happen to me once or twice a night (on the Windows PC, it crashes once a night too). I use /reloadgfx a couple of times an hour to slow the effects of the memory usage issues.

Thanks for the replies, folks!

I've two auto-load software apps:

MSN Messenger
Canon's PrintSuite app (allows control of scanning/printing/faxing of network-attached printer)

I've disabled both before to try and see if one/both of those apps impacts COH. No difference...crashes with or without those apps.

Its frustrating as my Mac is such a rock-solid machine for every other app under the sun BUT COH.

Try this next:

1. Delete the folder Users > (yourname) > Library > Preferences > City of Heroes, and also Users > (yourname) > Library > Preferences > Cider.

2. Delete the folder Library > Application Support > TransGaming.

This will reset all the game preferences like the first time CoH was launched (it won't re-download the game files though).

Here are my current CoH for Mac settings for reference:

FSAA - Off

Environment Reflections - High Quality
Water Effects - Ultra Quality
Shadow Quality - High
Ambient Occlusion - Off

Suppress FX When Close - Off
Particle Physics - High
World Texture Quality - Very High
Character Texture Quality - Very Hight
World Detail - 100%
Character Detail - 100%
Max Particle Count - 50000

Vertical Sync - Enabled
Mouse Cursors - Color
Use Geometry Buffers - Disabled
Anisotropic Filtering - 4x
Texture Crispness - Smooth
Shader Quality - High

Sound Playback Mode - Performance
3D Sound - Enabled