7 Myths About CIV Players That Fooled Developers at Firaxis

[Gorbles]

I've been playing since civ1, and never even noticed that I wasn't having fun because I started a new game when the current one became a sure thing. But I guess the developers know best.

I also started with Civ 1, and the endgame tedium was real for me. YMMV.

 

[protocol7]

It was real for me too but that’s why I started a new game instead of solemnly going down with the ship. I never wished for something that would force me to do it, much less to do it three times per game. I rarely finished a game but never cared either.

I’m not quite following though how your opinion being different than mine means my mileage may vary?

 

[Kwami]

Exactly, they should stick to their guns and improve what they have instead of going back on civ-switching or any of the new things they've introduced

Precisely this!

 

[jdevo]

The endgame tedium that's been in Civ since the beginning was always a UI issue. They need to introduce more ways to automate small decisions, have an ai governor take over cities that aren't important. The introduction of 1UPT made it much worse.

 

[disjointaccount]

I think it matters for players who role-play history or care about a sense of historical immersion.

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me, though. Role-play, sure, but having Rome collapse and give way to Normans/HRE/Byzantines/whatever and then into modern-day European nations is more historically immersive than it was before. Obviously not a perfect 1:1 representation of real world history, and the leaders potentially not lining up is still weird, but closer to reality than how things were previously. Surely seeing Rome led by an immortal Caesar neighbouring Lincoln's America is very immersion breaking?

Not to say people can't dislike the ages system; everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just that the specific historical immersion point hasn't made much sense to me.

 

[Leucarum]

Well, it's not really altering how players play the game. It just replaces one word with another basically, though I know that matters to people.I do thnk that the main reason it got the backlash it did was how it was intruduced. People decided from the start that they wouldn't like it, and weren't going to be convinced otherwise.

I definitely felt my heart sink when they announced civ switching, but I put it down to my disillusionment at how badly Humankind handled the mechanic and gave it another chance. I do think they did it better than Humankind, but that's a low, low bar.

Introducing it differently might have won over a set of players, but I suspect there'd still be a large cohort of players who can't be won over to civ switching by any means. That being players who like to "main" a specific civ. This isn't necessarily for nationalistic reasons either, I know plenty of players who found the civ in 6 that just *fit* their playstyle and they didn't want to play anything else. So, I suspect there is some overlap with the group that would complain about political choices in Civ7, but that it is a separate bloc to a reasonable extent. In my regular MP group, those players they make up about 1/3 of the group, they unanimously will not switch to Civ7 as long as civ switching is in there, and I wouldn't be surprised if that proportion translates to the wider community...

I agree with comments about eras being something that will eventually become normalized in some form in 4X games. But, I think there are enough players who connect with only one civ, and even for those who don't there is an emotional gut punch that comes with civ switching, that I don't think devs can solve it as a mechanic. It feels like a loss, not a gain, in the majority of Civ7 games I've played, and I enjoy Civ7 - I should be the target audience that likes it.

For me, personally, eras and civ switching also have an awkward interaction in 7 where the civs that I am excited by are not evenly distributed. I like all but a couple of the antiquity civs, about a third of the exploration civs, and among the modern civs, Siam is probably my only "hit" - the other 2 that excited me thematically, don't excite me mechanically. As the game goes on I really lose my excitement to play. I imagine though that there are plenty who go the other way and feel like it's an uphill struggle to reach their civ of choice.

 

[McSpank01]

This doesn't make a ton of sense to me, though. Role-play, sure, but having Rome collapse and give way to Normans/HRE/Byzantines/whatever and then into modern-day European nations is more historically immersive than it was before. Obviously not a perfect 1:1 representation of real world history, and the leaders potentially not lining up is still weird, but closer to reality than how things were previously. Surely seeing Rome led by an immortal Caesar neighbouring Lincoln's America is very immersion breaking?

Not to say people can't dislike the ages system; everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just that the specific historical immersion point hasn't made much sense to me.

I'm less worried about historic immersion than I am role playing immersion. I do think that taking my civ away, changing some stuff and presenting it back to me in a different form, does feel like its breaking my immersion. They can fix it I think by keeping the era system but making the transition less dramatic. Let me keep my units, make them outdated, let me keep my cities and all my building adjecencies, but make it so new buildings are more powerful. I am less worried about the snowball effect.

 

[disjointaccount]

I'm less worried about historic immersion than I am role playing immersion. I do think that taking my civ away, changing some stuff and presenting it back to me in a different form, does feel like its breaking my immersion. They can fix it I think by keeping the era system but making the transition less dramatic. Let me keep my units, make them outdated, let me keep my cities and all my building adjecencies, but make it so new buildings are more powerful. I am less worried about the snowball effect.

That's fair, and makes total sense to me. It's just people who specifically mention they want immersion with regards to real world history that confuse me.

 

[j51]

I definitely felt my heart sink when they announced civ switching, but I put it down to my disillusionment at how badly Humankind handled the mechanic and gave it another chance. I do think they did it better than Humankind, but that's a low, low bar.

Introducing it differently might have won over a set of players, but I suspect there'd still be a large cohort of players who can't be won over to civ switching by any means. That being players who like to "main" a specific civ. This isn't necessarily for nationalistic reasons either, I know plenty of players who found the civ in 6 that just *fit* their playstyle and they didn't want to play anything else. So, I suspect there is some overlap with the group that would complain about political choices in Civ7, but that it is a separate bloc to a reasonable extent. In my regular MP group, those players they make up about 1/3 of the group, they unanimously will not switch to Civ7 as long as civ switching is in there, and I wouldn't be surprised if that proportion translates to the wider community...

I agree with comments about eras being something that will eventually become normalized in some form in 4X games. But, I think there are enough players who connect with only one civ, and even for those who don't there is an emotional gut punch that comes with civ switching, that I don't think devs can solve it as a mechanic. It feels like a loss, not a gain, in the majority of Civ7 games I've played, and I enjoy Civ7 - I should be the target audience that likes it.

For me, personally, eras and civ switching also have an awkward interaction in 7 where the civs that I am excited by are not evenly distributed. I like all but a couple of the antiquity civs, about a third of the exploration civs, and among the modern civs, Siam is probably my only "hit" - the other 2 that excited me thematically, don't excite me mechanically. As the game goes on I really lose my excitement to play. I imagine though that there are plenty who go the other way and feel like it's an uphill struggle to reach their civ of choice.

The distribution of interesting civs to play in each era is definitely a problem. I love almost all of the antiquity civs and most of the modern ones interest me too, but exploration for me is really lacking in interesting civs to play. It really needs the Aztecs, Byzantines, feudal Japan, something Central European, and a second Subsaharan civ. I haven’t played most of the modern civs that interest me because I can’t get through exploration. Greater civ choices in exploration would help that. (Exploration had other problems too, but that’s for another thread.)

 

[Gorbles]

It was real for me too but that’s why I started a new game instead of solemnly going down with the ship. I never wished for something that would force me to do it, much less to do it three times per game. I rarely finished a game but never cared either.

I’m not quite following though how your opinion being different than mine means my mileage may vary?

Our difference in opinion here is how we value the tedium. How we choose to deal with it. I dislike abandoning games just because they seem foregone. This applies to winning as much as it does to losing. Irrespective of the genre.

tl;dr: both opinions are valid; our mileages vary r.e. the principle of when to quit a game. But the developers are only making one game. In another reality maybe they made a different one. Design isn't necessarily about knowing best, it's about making the best choices with the data you have.

 

[aelf]

I think this was a situation where the devs listened and believed players way too much. They heard fair and true complaints like "a game lasts too long / the end game is boring", but in reality players are happy to stop the game and reboot when it goes on too long - it doesn't actually stop them from playing. They were complaining, but it wasn't stopping anyone from playing the game. They heard that "Civs aren't balanced" and thought that players wanted equally powerful Civs, when actually players meant "my favorite civ doesn't get to shine enough." The solution wasn't to make every civ equally strong because then no one's favorite civ gets to shine.

It's unfortunate because I'm sure the devs thought they were doing the right thing, but players are famously good at complaining and awful at solutions.

The funny thing is there are those who claim the devs didn't listen to players and that's why they introduced eras and civ-switching.

I do agree that customers are good at complaining and bad at coming up with viable solutions. Which suggests to me that there would, at some point, have been those who complained that the Civ franchise is stale had Firaxis made something similar to Civ 6.

 

[protocol7]

Exactly, everyone can have an opinion. Where the rubber meets the road is things like sales, player numbers. You can always find any person with any opinion if you want, but if you’re making a product for people to buy and use, what matters is if people buy and use it. You can make every “bad decision” in the world according to the peanut gallery, but if people buy and use it you did your job. It’s also why people who can consistent get results make a lot of money.

 

[GeneralZift]

The funny thing is there are those who claim the devs didn't listen to players and that's why they introduced eras and civ-switching.

I do agree that customers are good at complaining and bad at coming up with viable solutions. Which suggests to me that there would, at some point, have been those who complained that the Civ franchise is stale had Firaxis made something similar to Civ 6.

They listened, just to the vocal minority, addressed the surface level symptoms, instead of the root causes. It's commonplace with many Devs.

 

[Gorbles]

It’s also why people who can consistent get results make a lot of money.

I wish

But more seriously, I don't think this is true at all. A lot of people who get results have their achievements stolen by their superiors - see the myth of the auteur vs. the hard work of the people under them that enable the actual product to be a success. But that's all pretty off-topic.

 

[protocol7]

IMHO someone who had their ideas stolen did not, in fact, “get results.” But yeah, that’s neither here nor there for the topic and wasn’t my main point.

 

[Sostratus]

It feels like a loss, not a gain, in the majority of Civ7 games I've played, and I enjoy Civ7 - I should be the target audience that likes it.

I’m not staunchly against Civ switching, although this single aspect is definitely the riskiest change they made.

Where I think they made a mistake is the starting roster. If you want to sell civ switching to people on the fence, you need to pack that launch roster with as many “3 stage evolutions” as possible. (Or 2 stage where appropriate.) India and China show this off, but it should be most of the civs. And every leader at launch should lead a civ.

Putting the Byzantines in the exploration age at launch is the single biggest thing they could have done, because then players could do Rome->Byzantium. It’s hard to explain the influence Rome has on the player base at large, but a lot of “I only want to play Rome” types would have been assuaged if they could go to Byzantium right away.

And announce pairings or triplets as DLC. The actual plot of Civ games has always been the memetic fiction of taking a Civ through the ages. The way you do that in VII is by saying “now you can play Celts>Normans>Great Britain,” not “you can play Britain in the last 1/3 of the game.”

You have to sell civ switching as civ evolution- “history is built in layers” means emphasizing the layers of history. None of what I am saying has any bearing on the gameplay mechanics; you can still have the ability to swap to any civ, but those players don’t need to be sold on it like the “I want to play Rome the whole game” crowd.

 

[Gorbles]

IMHO someone who had their ideas stolen did not, in fact, “get results.” But yeah, that’s neither here nor there for the topic and wasn’t my main point.

I understand. I don't agree with your measure of results in that case, but agreed on the entirety of your last sentence

 

[Kwami]

I’m not staunchly against Civ switching, although this single aspect is definitely the riskiest change they made.

Where I think they made a mistake is the starting roster. If you want to sell civ switching to people on the fence, you need to pack that launch roster with as many “3 stage evolutions” as possible. (Or 2 stage where appropriate.) India and China show this off, but it should be most of the civs. And every leader at launch should lead a civ.

Putting the Byzantines in the exploration age at launch is the single biggest thing they could have done, because then players could do Rome->Byzantium. It’s hard to explain the influence Rome has on the player base at large, but a lot of “I only want to play Rome” types would have been assuaged if they could go to Byzantium right away.

And announce pairings or triplets as DLC. The actual plot of Civ games has always been the memetic fiction of taking a Civ through the ages. The way you do that in VII is by saying “now you can play Celts>Normans>Great Britain,” not “you can play Britain in the last 1/3 of the game.”

You have to sell civ switching as civ evolution- “history is built in layers” means emphasizing the layers of history. None of what I am saying has any bearing on the gameplay mechanics; you can still have the ability to swap to any civ, but those players don’t need to be sold on it like the “I want to play Rome the whole game” crowd.

And what you do with civilizations that don't have a path like that? For example, where does Hawaii fit in?

And wouldn't that really limit who qualifies as a "leader" again? Who's going to lead the Mississippians? Would we really like Ada Lovelace if she was meant to be the British "leader" instead of just another leader who happens to be from Britain?

The developers explained why they did what they did. It makes sense to me. Your suggestions seem very constraining.

 

[AD1730]

For example, where does Hawaii fit in?

Simple, Hawai'i would be the modern civ for a Polynesian group of civs.

Who's going to lead the Mississippians?

Just don't have them in the game. Problem solved.

Would we really like Ada Lovelace if she was meant to be the British "leader" instead of just another leader who happens to be from Britain?

Don't have the ridiculous developer self-insert in the game and you don't have to worry about that. There are tons of great options for England, Britain, etc., they didn't have to make an awful choice.

Your suggestions seem very constraining.

Some ideas are bad, and it's a good thing when the design of the game is constrained to exclude those.

 

[Kwami]

Simple, Hawai'i would be the modern civ for a Polynesian group of civs.

That's not really how it works? Who's the antiquity one? Who's the exploration one? Why do you think they should be linked together?

Just don't have them in the game. Problem solved.

Don't have the ridiculous developer self-insert in the game and you don't have to worry about that. There are tons of great options for England, Britain, etc., they didn't have to make an awful choice.

Some ideas are bad, and it's a good thing when the design of the game is constrained to exclude those.

So, as I said, it's much more limiting.