7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[Krikkit1]

No, criticism of Civ7 consists of analysis about preferred gameplay styles im balance vs roleplay, immersion breaking of various mechanics, railroading vs sandbox, etc. People discuss lack of polish, or reversion on various game mechanics, or whether certain perceived problems were false complaints or valid pain points in need of work.

When people question why the criticism exists and it's broad appeal, people revert to statistical analysis to prove the validity and general agreement of that criticism. No one is criticizing a game by saying it sold poorly - that doesn't even make sense because sales numbers isn't a thing inherent to a game and a game can be good or bad independent of sales.

This gets to the point.

Some aspects of Civ 7, poor UI, bugs, lack of polish, etc. are BAD, no one likes them and everyone would be happy for them to be removed

Other aspects of Civ 7 are liked by some people and disliked by others (and other people don't care)

Taken as a whole, Civ 7s features don't get as many people buying it or recommending others to buy it as Firaxis/2K would like. Therefore they are going to be changing things.

So what should get changed... bugs should be fixed, UI improved.... however

Some people are unhappy that the maps are too small, should Firaxis
A) Recognize small maps was a mistake and make all maps 2x bigger
OR
B) Put in an Option for bigger maps.

They are going for option B because smaller maps isn't bad game design, some people like to play on smaller maps, some on bigger and the game design can accommodate both (with some tweaks)


So for some things they need to add more options. (degree of map balance seems like a good thing there)

For other features, they need to think carefully about....
What aspects do people actually like/dislike about this... can we change it so that it isn't worse for people who like the way it is but it is better for people who dislike it (ideally you make it better for everyone, but no change is going to do that)

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Yes, yes, criticism of the game consists of repeating "Civ 7 has fewer players than Civ 5" ad nauseam. Awesome critique.

Ahh yes because no one has ever complained or criticized any thing about Civ VII other than the fact that it has fewer players than Civ V.

 

[aelf]

I think it's also pretty self-evident that attributing Civ7 having fewer players than Civ5 to Firaxis choosing some option A over some option B in map generation is bad criticism in that it doesn't necessarily follow in a logical sense, for one.

But I guess the prevailing opinion on this forum is criticising criticism means shutting down criticism. Expecting some standard in discussion is bad and will kill the forum or something.

Ahh yes because no one has ever complained or criticized any thing about Civ VII other than the fact that it has fewer players than Civ V.

Wait, do you stand by your statement that "most users dislike" Civ7. Have you read my reply? What do you think of that?

 

[UWHabs]

I like the game even though it’s unpopular and poorly reviewed, but for whatever reason a lot of people seem to need to convince themselves that actually it’s popular and well reviewed we just can’t prove it for some strange reason. And because of this, any discussion about why it’s unpopular and poorly reviewed is taken as a personal attack on their worldview and cannot be tolerated.

Whatever interesting conversation starts to happen about what people like or don’t like and how the game could be improved gets near instantly shut down by people trying to use their reality distortion fields on it.

It may work if you’re a super fan and you just want to be king of an empty forum, but lashing out at new members just because they have complaints is not going to create a great civ community, and I saw this happen yesterday. I’m trying to stand up for listening to each other instead of boring sarcastic fart-sniffing comments like above, but I’m ready to give up too. I guess that’s what the sarcastic jerks want anyway.

At the same time, there seem to be a number of "fans" of the franchise who almost seem to gather some sort of schadenfreude at the game having bad reviews/low player counts/etc... I have a feeling that a lot of those posters seem to be cheering for the game to fail, since they think it means civ 8 would come sooner maybe with features they'll like better.

 

[user746383]

Sure, but who cares? They can have their opinion too. Pop quiz, your favorite game is getting terrible reviews on the platforms it’s released to and player counts are low. People are discussing this. Do you:

A - not notice because you’re too busy having fun playing
B - go participate in the strategy forums where people are focused on strategy and not talking about the reception
C - participate in the forums where people are talking about the reception and share your point of view and learn what other people like or not
D - participate in the reception forums complaining about complainers and trying to prove that actually the game is well received and popular somehow, using bullying and sarcasm and straw manning to silence the haters

Of course, it’s a trick question. The only possible answer is of course D. C would require intellectual curiosity, nobody is doing B or A since it doesn’t let you get the dopamine hit of acting out your insecurities publicly. So here we are.

 

[Krikkit1]

At the same time, there seem to be a number of "fans" of the franchise who almost seem to gather some sort of schadenfreude at the game having bad reviews/low player counts/etc... I have a feeling that a lot of those posters seem to be cheering for the game to fail, since they think it means civ 8 would come sooner maybe with features they'll like better.

They could also want Firaxis to make big changes making it more of what they want. (which is essentially the same thing but more in the short term)

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Wait, do you stand by your statement that "most users dislike" Civ7. Have you read my reply? What do you think of that?

I did read your reply and thought it was nothing but wishful thinking on your end considering Steam isn't the only medium on which this game has terrible review scores.... The game has a abysmal user on metacritic (3.8 yikes) and its reviews on Xbox and Playstation stores are also mediocre (and graded on a 1-5 scale)

Steam review metric are typically very generous because they operate as binary recommend/not recommend system. Having mostly negative score is a sign that things are really not going well. It takes a lot for the majority of people playing your game leaving reviews to not recommend and that's without again reminding you that the game has less average players than Civ V by ten thousand....

Firaxis wouldn't be scrambling about the games features not landing and 2K wouldn't be publically talking about having to win back old players, if things were sunny in Civ VII land.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

At the same time, there seem to be a number of "fans" of the franchise who almost seem to gather some sort of schadenfreude at the game having bad reviews/low player counts/etc... I have a feeling that a lot of those posters seem to be cheering for the game to fail, since they think it means civ 8 would come sooner maybe with features they'll like better.

Why do you put "fans" in quotation marks?

is liking Civ VII a requirement for being a fan of the series? Also like that other user mentioned, it could be they want the game to fail or maybe they want Firaxis to walk back design choices they do not like. You know the design choices which are preventing them from actually enjoying and wanting to play the game (again the user review scores and player counts speak for themselves)

 

[Kev1916]

Some people are unhappy that the maps are too small, should Firaxis
A) Recognize small maps was a mistake and make all maps 2x bigger
OR
B) Put in an Option for bigger maps.

They are going for option B because smaller maps isn't bad game design, some people like to play on smaller maps, some on bigger and the game design can accommodate both (with some tweaks)

Point in question, poster just make that up it is not real.

Firaxis would not entertain option A in fact there never was an option A, it's misleading at best or just like a politician lie, who ever said smaller maps were a bad design !?
.
The quote should have been

Many people are unhappy that there is no option for any Map size above standard

Firaxis have noted that, and will add "several long-awaited features" including Large and Huge maps, new advanced game options, very soon

 

[aelf]

I did read your reply and thought it was nothing but wishful thinking on your end considering Steam isn't the only medium on which this game has terrible review scores.... The game has a abysmal user on metacritic (3.8 yikes) and its reviews on Xbox and Playstation stores are also mediocre (and graded on a 1-5 scale)

Steam review metric are typically very generous because they operate as binary recommend/not recommend system. Having mostly negative score is a sign that things are really not going well. It takes a lot for the majority of people playing your game leaving reviews to not recommend and that's without again reminding you that the game has less average players than Civ V by ten thousand....

Firaxis wouldn't be scrambling about the games features not landing and 2K wouldn't be publically talking about having to win back old players, if things were sunny in Civ VII land.

Sorry, but your claim was "most users dislike" the game, not that the reviews are "terrible" (a term that seems highly subjective here, but we'll let that go). Can you be specific about how those scores support that statement?

Okay, so you seem to have conceded somewhat that the Steam reviews don't support that claim, at least not with any confidence. I grant you Metacritic, but that's based on 345 user ratings, a drop in the bucket where the playerbase is concerned and isn't a randomised sample, so it can't be generalised to the whole playerbase. So that data point alone doesn't support your claim. What other ratings can you cite?

I don't know your background. This sort of misinterpretation or misuse of data is I guess pretty common. I would expect people who know data to be wiser, but human foibles like tribalism might influence how they read data, so who knows?

But a pretty galling trend I see on this forum is to conflate one thing with another. So let's say I disagree with a particular criticism. It suddenly becomes me disagreeing with another (possibly unrelated) criticism, or in fact with all criticism. That's sloppy discourse and careless at best and intentionally provocative at worst. That I think anyone should be able to steer clear of unless they're not approaching the discussion in good faith or just have a really bad time comprehending arguments in general.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Sorry, but your claim was "most users dislike" the game, not that the reviews are "terrible" (a term that seems highly subjective here, but we'll let that go). Can you be specific about how those scores support that statement?

Okay, so you seem to have conceded somewhat that the Steam reviews don't support that claim, at least not with any confidence. I grant you Metacritic, but that's based on 345 user ratings, a drop in the bucket where the playerbase is concerned and isn't a randomised sample, so it can't be generalised to the whole playerbase. So that data point alone doesn't support your claim. What other ratings can you cite?

I don't know your background. This sort of misinterpretation or misuse of data is I guess pretty common. I would expect people who know data to be wiser, but human foibles like tribalism might influence how they read data, so who knows?

But a pretty galling trend I see on this forum is to conflate one thing with another. So let's say I disagree with a particular criticism. It suddenly becomes me disagreeing with another (possibly unrelated) criticism, or in fact with all criticism. That's sloppy discourse and careless at best and intentionally provocative at worst. That I think anyone should be able to steer clear of unless they're not approaching the discussion in good faith or just have a really bad time comprehending arguments in general.

A lot of words to stick to your delusion that the game is doing well and everyone secretly loves it

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Sure, but who cares? They can have their opinion too. Pop quiz, your favorite game is getting terrible reviews on the platforms it’s released to and player counts are low. People are discussing this. Do you:

A - not notice because you’re too busy having fun playing
B - go participate in the strategy forums where people are focused on strategy and not talking about the reception
C - participate in the forums where people are talking about the reception and share your point of view and learn what other people like or not
D - participate in the reception forums complaining about complainers and trying to prove that actually the game is well received and popular somehow, using bullying and sarcasm and straw manning to silence the haters

Of course, it’s a trick question. The only possible answer is of course D. C would require intellectual curiosity, nobody is doing B or A since it doesn’t let you get the dopamine hit of acting out your insecurities publicly. So here we are.

You forgot E: Ignore all the arguments because they remind you of dancing angels and pins, and are about as important.

 

[aelf]

A lot of words to stick to your delusion that the game is doing well and everyone secretly loves it

Sorry, but I make no such claim. You, on the other hand, claimed that "most users dislike" the game and are unable to back it up with any worthwhile evidence. Therefore, if we consider this criticism of the game, it's not good criticism of the game.

Now cue someone jumping on the soapbox to justify criticism of the game as a whole and how the target of their tirade is silencing people or engaging in whatever similar exercise.

 

[Bug Repellent]

Anyone who knows data shouldn't make a mistake like that.

I'm afraid you simply prefer to build a virtual reality for yourself and call it the real world. That's all good, but for those of us that prefer the hard truth, there are like for like objective comparisons between Civ6 and Civ7 to be had. Not just player retention numbers, but also user reviews on Steam. Yes, I remember critiques of Civ6 when it came out. But they are not as brutal as they are for Civ7 and more importantly, they were not aimed at many of the game's core mechanics. Four months post release we have over 40k reviews to compare the two installments. You want to see how bad things are for Civ7? Below you can see a comparison of user reviews in the first 4 months post release for Civ6 vs. Civ7.

When it comes to sales of entertainment products, user reviews matter. Yes, you can find people that really liked The Last Jedi, Star Trek Discovery, Thunderbolts*, or Black Adam. But this doesn't mean Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel and DCU aren't in deep trouble and have an identity crisis that lead to poor sales. I love Civ as a franchise and I would have been thrilled to spend another 4,000+ hours immersed in it like I did - and still do - with Civ6. But for me, and I need to emphasize this again - FOR ME, the game is currently a hard pass. I'm very happy for those of you that enjoy it. I even envy you in a way. But I can't stand its core concepts like civ swapping that generate silly leader/civ combos, hard resets mid-game, the unreadability of city sprawl, and the overuse of non world leaders. I want to take over the world as Alexander the Great/Macedonia fighting against Cleopatra/Egypt, not Ada Lovelace/Greece against Harriet Tubman/Maya and Ibn Battuta/Mexico. For me, the latter is bordering imbecility (game-wise, nothing against these historical figures). For these reasons, for me at least, Civ7 looks like a really, really dumb game that is about as immersive as a new Lord of the Rings installment would be if Huckleberry Finn was the main character. It. Just. Doesn't. Work. Civ1 would have been a disaster w/ Civ7's leaders. The core game should have heavy hitters: Atilla, Genghis, Alexander, Elizabeth, Washington, Darius, Khufu, Shaka and add less significant leaders as DLCs. Civ7 started with Jose Rizal, Harriet Tubman, Ada Lovelace, Ibn Battuta, Machiavelli, Trung Trac, Ben Franklin. It ticks diversity boxes but it lacks gravitas. Maybe their plan was to give us the heavy hitters for $29.99 each, since Jose Rizal for $29.99 would be a difficult sell.

Civ6, 4 months after release. A nearly 4:1 positive to negative review ratio. W/o a doubt, Civ6 was very well received post launch by the fanbase. It was also enticing to new players, since current players overwhelmingly were enjoying the game. With a very positive rating, DLCs sold really well.

Now here is Civ7: Slightly more negative review ratio and getting worse. This is like a 2.5 star rating on Amazon or a 5/10 user review on IMDB. Not good. You think it likely customers that put down the game already will line up to buy the next social activist/poet leading some civ with limited world history significance?

So whatever "data" claims you want to make, this is an objective like for like comparison between the two installments.

 

[aelf]

I'm afraid you simply prefer to build a virtual reality for yourself and call it the real world. That's all good, but for those of us that prefer the hard truth, there are like for like objective comparisons between Civ6 and Civ7 to be had. Not just player retention numbers, but also user reviews on Steam. Yes, I remember critiques of Civ6 when it came out. But they are not as brutal as they are for Civ7 and more importantly, they were not aimed at many of the game's core mechanics. Four months post release we have over 40k reviews to compare the two installments. You want to see how bad things are for Civ7? Below you can see a comparison of user reviews in the first 4 months post release for Civ6 vs. Civ7.

When it comes to sales of entertainment products, user reviews matter. Yes, you can find people that really liked The Last Jedi, Star Trek Discovery, Thunderbolts*, or Black Adam. But this doesn't mean Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel and DCU aren't in deep trouble and have an identity crisis that lead to poor sales. I love Civ as a franchise and I would have been thrilled to spend another 4,000+ hours immersed in it like I did - and still do - with Civ6. But for me, and I need to emphasize this again - FOR ME, the game is currently a hard pass. I'm very happy for those of you that enjoy it. I even envy you in a way. But I can't stand its core concepts like civ swapping that generate silly leader/civ combos, hard resets mid-game, the unreadability of city sprawl, and the overuse of non world leaders. I want to take over the world as Alexander the Great/Macedonia fighting against Cleopatra/Egypt, not Ada Lovelace/Greece against Harriet Tubman/Maya and Ibn Battuta/Mexico. For me, the latter is bordering imbecility (game-wise, nothing against these historical figures). For these reasons, for me at least, Civ7 looks like a really, really dumb game that is about as immersive as a new Lord of the Rings installment would be if Huckleberry Finn was the main character. It. Just. Doesn't. Work. Civ1 would have been a disaster w/ Civ7's leaders. The core game should have heavy hitters: Atilla, Genghis, Alexander, Elizabeth, Washington, Darius, Khufu, Shaka and add less significant leaders as DLCs. Civ7 started with Jose Rizal, Harriet Tubman, Ada Lovelace, Ibn Battuta, Machiavelli, Trung Trac, Ben Franklin. It ticks diversity boxes but it lacks gravitas. Maybe their plan was to give us the heavy hitters for $29.99 each, since Jose Rizal for $29.99 would be a difficult sell.

Civ6, 4 months after release. A nearly 4:1 positive to negative review ratio. W/o a doubt, Civ6 was very well received post launch by the fanbase. It was also enticing to new players, since current players overwhelmingly were enjoying the game. With a very positive rating, DLCs sold really well.
View attachment 734662View attachment 734672

Now here is Civ7: Slightly more negative review ratio and getting worse. This is like a 2.5 star rating on Amazon or a 5/10 user review on IMDB. Not good. You think it likely customers that put down the game already will line up to buy the next social activist/poet leading some civ with limited world history significance?
View attachment 734663View attachment 734673

So whatever "data" claims you want to make, this is an objective like for like comparison between the two installments.

Sorry, but can you reframe your analysis to support the actual claim in question that "most users dislike" Civ7? Are you arguing here that most Steam users dislike the game? Which data here are you using to support that claim? And I don't understand the comparison with Civ6 there since that never came into the picture.

And could you also address my earlier analysis of the Steam reviews vis-a-vis the claim?

Can you be more specific?

I mean, let's take Steam reviews. A Steam review is a choice between Recommended and Not Recommended. Equating a Not Recommended review with disliking the game is a bit of a stretch. You could easily see this by actually reading the reviews, some of which are a lot more nuanced than saying they dislike the game (e.g. maybe they think the game just needs some anticipated improvement or is just too expensive right now). And given that All Time reviews are at 47% positive, concluding that "most users dislike the game" would be categorically wrong if just 3% of the Not Recommended reviews are by players who don't exactly dislike the game.

Anyone who knows data shouldn't make a mistake like that. But, oh well - not even professionals are always competent at what they do.

As for the data on average number of players compared to Civ 5, that also doesn't prove that "most users dislike the game."

 

[bladex1200]

Sorry, but can you reframe your analysis to support the actual claim in question that "most users dislike" Civ7? Are you arguing here that most Steam users dislike the game? Which data here are you using to support that claim? And I don't understand the comparison with Civ6 there since that never came into the picture.

And could you also address my earlier analysis of the Steam reviews vis-a-vis the claim?

aelf said:
Can you be more specific?

I mean, let's take Steam reviews. A Steam review is a choice between Recommended and Not Recommended. Equating a Not Recommended review with disliking the game is a bit of a stretch. You could easily see this by actually reading the reviews, some of which are a lot more nuanced than saying they dislike the game (e.g. maybe they think the game just needs some anticipated improvement or is just too expensive right now). And given that All Time reviews are at 47% positive, concluding that "most users dislike the game" would be categorically wrong if just 3% of the Not Recommended reviews are by players who don't exactly dislike the game.

Anyone who knows data shouldn't make a mistake like that. But, oh well - not even professionals are always competent at what they do.

As for the data on average number of players compared to Civ 5, that also doesn't prove that "most users dislike the game."

Jumping in here as I feel that a lot of this centers on wishful thinking. It's true that he's generalizing whether people like the game or not based on metrics that arguably over-report if people hate the game, but you're basically doing the opposite and arguing that this metric should be taken as most people "not really disliking the game that much".

If someone in a binary system is asked whether they like or don't like something, and the aggregate of factors leads them to report "not liking" that thing, then it's pretty safe to conclude they don't like it. Now, we can argue why they don't like it and some of those factors are easily-fixable and some are not, but it's not really hyperbolic to claim that at this point "most" (simply meaning greatest quantity) steam users who chose to review the game dislike the game. They might not dislike it "that much", there's degrees to like vis dislike, but they certainly dislike it enough to not review it positively. Even if the ultimate reasons for disliking it are fixable - look at Civ5 or 6 on release for examples of how the game can grow - the simple fact of the matter is that this release has generated negative outcomes and by all measurable metrics it's showing that, at this time, potential buyers seem to favor Civ 7 less than its prior iterations (assuming that most of the people who bought Civ 1 - 6 aren't dead, in poverty, stopped playing video games, etc. which I think at the big enough sample size of millions of purchasers is a safe assumption to make).

 

[aelf]

Jumping in here as I feel that a lot of this centers on wishful thinking. It's true that he's generalizing whether people like the game or not based on metrics that arguably over-report if people hate the game, but you're basically doing the opposite and arguing that this metric should be taken as most people "not really disliking the game that much".

If someone in a binary system is asked whether they like or don't like something, and the aggregate of factors leads them to report "not liking" that thing, then it's pretty safe to conclude they don't like it. Now, we can argue why they don't like it and some of those factors are easily-fixable and some are not, but it's not really hyperbolic to claim that at this point "most" (simply meaning greatest quantity) steam users who chose to review the game dislike the game. They might not dislike it "that much", there's degrees to like vis dislike, but they certainly dislike it enough to not review it positively. Even if the ultimate reasons for disliking it are fixable - look at Civ5 or 6 on release for examples of how the game can grow - the simple fact of the matter is that this release has generated negative outcomes and by all measurable metrics it's showing that, at this time, potential buyers seem to favor Civ 7 less than its prior iterations (assuming that most of the people who bought Civ 1 - 6 aren't dead, in poverty, stopped playing video games, etc. which I think at the big enough sample size of millions of purchasers is a safe assumption to make).

I'm not arguing that the metrics "over-report if people hate the game." I make no qualitative judgements on the data, nor on the tenor of people's like or dislike. I'm arguing that the data so far simply doesn't support the claim that "most users dislike" the game.

I don't think you sufficiently addressed my point that not recommending the game is not equivalent to not liking the game. It's reasonable to assume that it is in most cases, but looking at the paradigm of Steam reviews, it is evidently possible that some reviewers don't see it that way. Moreover, we're looking at a 3% gap to 50%, at which latter point it can't be said that most Steam users dislike the game. Could 3% of Not Recommended reviews be made by people who don't actually dislike the game? Very possible. And even if we end up with, say, 51% users actually disliking the game, it's still a stretch to say that "most" users dislike the game.

 

[user746383]

Recent reviews from buyers on Steam since the patches we’ve received so far are 2/3 “don’t recommend”, not roughly 50/50.

 

[aelf]

Recent reviews from buyers on Steam are 2/3 “don’t recommend”, not roughly 50/50.

So your own claim is or you're amending the claim to "most users who recently left a review on Steam" dislike the game? Well, okay, but that's not what was being discussed.

Anyway, didn't you say you deal with data professionally?

 

[user746383]

Yes my claim is that reviews are 47% all time positive on Steam, and 34% positive recently on Steam. As in the picture from the Steam store taken a moment ago.