7 Certainly Has A "Vibe" That Puts People Off But Also Might Make It Great

[Babbalanja]

Have you tried playing without consciously aiming to complete legacy paths? In Antiquity particularly I don't really check my progress anymore, since all legacy paths are things I'd do anyway in normal gameplay (less so with a couple exploration and modern ones) and it feels less game-y imo as a result

I've tried but I find it difficult. Typically in any age I play the first half just responding to the game context and then around halfway through I'm looking at path progression. Completing their portions confers what I consider to be pretty tremendous benefits in the next age, and I want those benefits.
Still, maybe I'll try playing a game or two where I just force myself to completely ignore it and let the historical chips fall where they may. Thanks for the advice.

 

[marius_kaparius]

The game is definitely better once you understand it. That’s the biggest failure of the UI, it doesn’t explain the game mechanics

 

[McSpank01]

I totally understand this 'vibe' idea, and it gets at the heart of maybe some of the key issues people are having with the game, myself included.

I have always enjoyed the Civ games because they were essentially creative games, they allowed me to let my imagination run wild, create a civ in the way I wanted, be given freedom to play it in the way I wanted, and have the opportunity to make it work no matter what I did.

Civ 7 has made it very much 'feel' like that isn't what you are supposed to do now. Legacy paths and victories feel like box ticking exercises, micro games I need to win at. Any game that gives you a numerical goal for something in order to win feels bad. If I am playing an RPG and it tells me I need to kill 20 goblins, that isn't fun; it's work. So when Civ 7 tells me I need to build 7 wonders, make 20 relics or Treasure Fleets, that doesn't feel fun. It also doesn't feel immersive. Was Rome a great empire or civilisation because it created 7 wonders?! On top of that, it's an incredibly passive experience, I don't feel like I need to bother interacting with other civs to win the game, or I am competing against them at all.

The other part of this 'vibe', is something I think they are fixing. I really think Quick Movement has improved the game massively, and so has 'Repair All'. The first few weeks of the game, it felt slow, sluggish, tedious. Over time it is becoming smoother and more user friendly.

It still has a terrible interface, it still doesn't explain what things do, and that all leads to this feeling that it is work, not fun.

 

[marius_kaparius]

I don’t want to quote such as a long post but what is said above about check listing is true about Civ 6 and its age points and Eureka’s much more so than the legacy points of Civ 7.

 

[MutilationWave]

I don’t want to quote such as a long post but what is said above about check listing is true about Civ 6 and its age points and Eureka’s much more so than the legacy points of Civ 7.

While true, the rewards in 7 are so much better. Eurekas especially, for me, were just a happy bonus a lot of the time, even on deity. And era score just happened from playing the game well, I didn't have to metagame it much.

 

[Sagax]

I don’t want to quote such as a long post but what is said above about check listing is true about Civ 6 and its age points and Eureka’s much more so than the legacy points of Civ 7.

Eurekas did not feel as impactful in my games (unless it’s Babylon), but I indeed found age points in Civ 6 annoyingly gamey. And I do see the Legacy paths and crises of Civ 7 as the spiritual successors of the Era scores. So to me personally, your argument isn’t really a defense towards Civ 7, it’s a showcase of an ongoing issue that carried over from Civ 6.

(Yes, I hated Civ 6 Rise and Fall)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Eurekas did not feel as impactful in my games (unless it’s Babylon), but I indeed found age points in Civ 6 annoyingly gamey. And I do see the Legacy paths and crises of Civ 7 as the spiritual successors of the Era scores. So to me personally, your argument isn’t really a defense towards Civ 7, it’s a showcase of an ongoing issue that carried over from Civ 6.

(Yes, I hated Civ 6 Rise and Fall)

If we speak about quest systems in general, they add to overall interest of the game. Each quest adds some strategic decisions about whether you want to pursue it and if yes, how. Civ6 had eurekas and city-state quests and they were quite fan.

If we speak about bigger and more impactful quests like Civ6 era scores or Civ7 legacy paths, they are a bit more controversial. On one hand, they are designed to reward achievements in playing the game naturally. On the other hand, their big consequences enforce gaming the system (like delaying the progress in Civ7 or delaying era score once you fill the meter in Civ6), and it's not great.

 

[Taefin]

I got busy with work after pausing my last game, before 1.2, so the vibe I’m feeling is either getting my butt kicked by RHQ AI mod after a mediocre antiquity start, or that the the game is feeling super repetitive.

I don’t know that the legacy points are the ultimate problem. I love ticking boxes in old world to get ambitions, and the legacies are so much more achievable than era score in 6. But while the legacy rewards have a huge impact on exploration, my excitement is deflated by the awareness that nothing I do in the first two eras really impacts the feeling of modern, except shaving a few turns off which doesn’t motivate me. The more games I played the less I could maintain the illusion that the end game would be a nail biter where my actions all game mattered.

Adding to this, while I overall appreciate the settlement limit, and how it takes away the need to keep the conquest rolling, the limit at the start of exploration really feels like it kills momentum. There are so many places to settle, let alone conquer, that it feels like the moment you do something meaningful, you need to artificially stop. I have been skeptical of ideas like counting towns as half, but at least this would let you expand more aggressively at the end of exploration.

I don't see myself picking up another game anytime soon.

 

[GIO888]

Having dropped in for the first time in ages and having read all of the above;

My decision (as a Veteran of '91 I might add) not to buy until at least the end of Summer '25 appears vindicated!