Civ VI reviews on Steam

[Victoria]

I absolutely had no idea what you said, but mental gymnastics means self manipulating and deception

I know what you meant, what I mean was that

1. If you say you get pleasure out of a game someone cannot disagree with that nor can you measure pleasure between 2 people as they experience it differently. Pleasure is at the end of the day the main thing someone should get out of a game to make it worth buying.

2. In online forums and reviews people use highly emotional language to be negative much more often that positive statements are used, by a huge amount, even for popular games. You need to balance those comments by coming to a fanatics site where of course some people will also be biased the other way... but it gives you balance. The more balance you have in your views the more closer you will get to an objective view

There have been many posts on peoples opinion of the game and I always try and be as objective as possible.

The UI has way too many clicks, it is not efficient and not all information is displayed. What is displayed can be poorly done so although patching is slowly improving this area.
The cartoony nature , the music and the quotes are not to everyone's liking
Diplomacy is clunky and currently broken as in it is too easy to exploit.
1 UPT (although this is not strictly 1 UPT) is not to everyone's taste. Other design issues can be put here also, you really need to look at some online games if you are cautions about spending some money.
The AI is fairly poor at war and often makes very odd decisions

But the game does have some addictive qualities.
If you like exploration and immersion the game has some great points and generally a lot of people of that type will like it
If you like challenging war flavoured games this is not for you as its too easy to outsmart the AI
If you are accepting of faults you are more likely to like this game and it may be worth a go. The combat system can still be fun.
If you are fussy and critical and dislike micromanagement this game is unlikely to please you

 

[calad]

I think that is indeed how it works. Just that 'next' is defined differently for some people. I think the code can help here.
Or is it just more total envoys sent?

Shared border or some hex distance depending size of map... this should not be too difficult!

I know what you meant, what I mean was that

1. If you say you get pleasure out of a game someone cannot disagree with that nor can you measure pleasure between 2 people as they experience it differently. Pleasure is at the end of the day the main thing someone should get out of a game to make it worth buying.

2. In online forums and reviews people use highly emotional language to be negative much more often that positive statements are used, by a huge amount, even for popular games. You need to balance those comments by coming to a fanatics site where of course some people will also be biased the other way... but it gives you balance. The more balance you have in your views the more closer you will get to an objective view

There have been many posts on peoples opinion of the game and I always try and be as objective as possible.

The UI has way too many clicks, it is not efficient and not all information is displayed. What is displayed can be poorly done so although patching is slowly improving this area.
The cartoony nature , the music and the quotes are not to everyone's liking
Diplomacy is clunky and currently broken as in it is too easy to exploit.
1 UPT (although this is not strictly 1 UPT) is not to everyone's taste. Other design issues can be put here also, you really need to look at some online games if you are cautions about spending some money.
The AI is fairly poor at war and often makes very odd decisions

But the game does have some addictive qualities.
If you like exploration and immersion the game has some great points and generally a lot of people of that type will like it
If you like challenging war flavoured games this is not for you as its too easy to outsmart the AI
If you are accepting of faults you are more likely to like this game and it may be worth a go. The combat system can still be fun.
If you are fussy and critical and dislike micromanagement this game is unlikely to please you

Problem is that most of negative reviews were not emotional at all but shorting out flaws logically, while most of positive reviews clearly are emotional. You can see that by going into steam reviews and looking the most helpful... you dont see any positive helpful reviews because they dont have any info to convince people to buy it. While it makes no sense that those players have played +100 hours and then decide game is bad makes me wonder how slow they are.

But as said, there actually are games that are better and dont have those flaws you mentioned. Now I believe Firaxis is getting this far only because they are riding on famous brand and there is little competition on this market sector. But I also believe people are getting tired of lowing quality.

I was unable to find full history of CiV5 sales on steam, but some data:

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/43507/sid-meiers-civilization-v/Global/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/112497/sid-meiers-civilization-vi/Global/

In first ten weeks CiV5 sold 450,571 and CiV6 sold 351,171, trend is clearly going down.

 

[Rosty K]

I dislike Qin Shi Huang's wonder one and Pedro's Great People one. I always get denounced by them once I build more wonders/gain more great people than them.
I'm able to stay friendly with Frederick in my recent game, despite becoming CS suzerain.
I think Pericles' agenda should be annoying as well, but I don't remember getting denounced by him that often.
Alexander's Agenda pretty much made him denounce everyone in my game. He's the only Civ to lose his capital.

Speaking of agendas, which Civ had the relationship bias between certain civilizations? Like Rome and Carthage would always seek to destroy each other if in the game. Was it 2 or 3? Just remembered that because playing as Trajan, I met Frederick who introduced himself as 'Holy Roman Emperor'. I felt the shame there is no 'I am the Roman Emperor, and who the hell are you? Ad leones!' reply, and 20 turns later Aachen was renamed to Aquae Something (well, it being too close to Rome also played a part in that decision, but there was no doubt that he had to suffer after he said that ). So I just thought that maybe adding this would make diplomacy even weirder, but on the other hand, changing the 'you occupy one of their cities' and such to something like 'historical rivalry' would make sense. Using an awkward real-life example, instead of having the English want Calais back, it'd be more like 'we dislike the French, but we forgot why', just as it appears now

Sorry for the OT.

 

[Victoria]

Problem is that most of negative reviews were not emotional at all but shorting out flaws logically, while most of positive reviews clearly are emotional.

You know I have never looked at the reviews, this thread seemed to indicate they were all bad....

What you say is incorrect and speaks volumes. Lots of emotive negatives and lots of positives that say yes things are crap in certain areas but I like the game. Its a mix and it does make me wonder how you expected me to believe such a thing without looking.

To me this is the most telling set of statistics. I do feel Firaxis is not testing or fixing things fast enough and I doubt all your efforts will make the tiniest difference to their planned budgets and shareholder margins. They have done this long enough to know we are sucker enough to spend additional money for a more finished game later.
I'm happy with the money I spent and came in knowing what I was getting.
Maybe you should be angry at yourself for buying it too early?

'we dislike the French, but we forgot why'

We do not dislike the french, we just like making fun of everyone including ourselves....and the French are an easy target, I mean they do not even fight back

 

[Zuizgond]

I love the "LOL you are stupid because you bought the game at release. Everybody knows civ games are released in an unfinished state!" argument in this forum...

 

[Karpius]

We do not dislike the french, we just like making fun of everyone including ourselves....and the French are an easy target, I mean they do not even fight back

The French seem to have a tendency to be at least one war behind in strategy and tactics. Just saying!
(I know, I know! I'm going back over 70 years just to make fun of the French military. Its just so easy!)

 

[Victoria]

No, we all make mistakes and have the right to be angry at ourselves for doing so, it does not makes us stupid.
That word is overused, incorrect and unkind.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Well, Civ 5 has been out for 7 years, and most definitely has a huge base.

But maybe people stuck with 5, because it's 5, and 6 was too different? Reddit does have a very heavy Civ 5 bias from what I've seen. (most of their reasoning is centered around that game's standards). And that's perfectly fine, but it's not the whole picture.

 

[Karpius]

Problem is that most of negative reviews were not emotional at all but shorting out flaws logically, while most of positive reviews clearly are emotional. You can see that by going into steam reviews and looking the most helpful... you dont see any positive helpful reviews because they dont have any info to convince people to buy it. While it makes no sense that those players have played +100 hours and then decide game is bad makes me wonder how slow they are.

I don't care if the entire Civfanatics community decides to trash and deride this game, I like it!
You can list all the flaws you want, I like it!
You can laugh at me for my comments, but I like it!

The review of any product in the entertainment world (of which computer gaming is a part) is emotional and subjective. In the end, all that matters to the individual is their own personal enjoyment of said product. While reviews may help some people decide on a purchase based on the information they glean from reviews, you cannot call a product unplayable and broken when there are thousands of people playing it. Even if the "numbers" are currently fewer than Civ5 (though I would love to see a similar comparison between Civ5 and Civ4 a year after Civ5's release) people are obviously playing it for some reason. Its much like any art form..... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Its all a matter of personal tastes and preferences and that is inherently emotional. There are plenty of people who hate the Civ franchise completely because they do not like grand strategy games. They prefer one person shooters with lots of explosions. Or perhaps they prefer game simulations. Or flight simulators. Whatever their fancy, its all good!

So now I see people here who like 6 better than 5. Some who like 5 better than 6. If I go back in the older forums I see similar comments between 4 and 5. Its a never ending argument, when in reality it is no argument at all. I like vanilla, she likes chocolate, and Bobby likes strawberry. There's a flavor for everyone!

 

[Archon_Wing]

You won't be able to compare 4 and 5 accurately because 4 only became available on steam long after its initial release; a lot of people had the disc version.

 

[calad]

You know I have never looked at the reviews, this thread seemed to indicate they were all bad....

What you say is incorrect and speaks volumes. Lots of emotive negatives and lots of positives that say yes things are crap in certain areas but I like the game. Its a mix and it does make me wonder how you expected me to believe such a thing without looking.

To me this is the most telling set of statistics. I do feel Firaxis is not testing or fixing things fast enough and I doubt all your efforts will make the tiniest difference to their planned budgets and shareholder margins. They have done this long enough to know we are sucker enough to spend additional money for a more finished game later.
I'm happy with the money I spent and came in knowing what I was getting.
Maybe you should be angry at yourself for buying it too early?

View attachment 478182

Thank you for providing data that perfectly fits on your agenda and ignoring my point complitely.

How about you close that graph and scroll a bit more below to see the most recent helpful reviews. Now all of them are negative and not emotional at all. And pretty much every game has overhelming number of positive reviews in Steam. Beyond Earth also has more positive, Starships is only I could quickly find has more negative reviews. So overhelming amount of first day and first sale reviews are not a good indicator of anything. If man has decided beforehand to but something he likely wont complain afterwards how stupid his purchase was, that would just point out his sillyness.

So if you want to live in your bubble I wont bother you anymore.

And no I did not buy CiV6. I just read data and make conclusions from it.

 

[calad]

I don't care if the entire Civfanatics community decides to trash and deride this game, I like it!
You can list all the flaws you want, I like it!
You can laugh at me for my comments, but I like it!

The review of any product in the entertainment world (of which computer gaming is a part) is emotional and subjective. In the end, all that matters to the individual is their own personal enjoyment of said product. While reviews may help some people decide on a purchase based on the information they glean from reviews, you cannot call a product unplayable and broken when there are thousands of people playing it. Even if the "numbers" are currently fewer than Civ5 (though I would love to see a similar comparison between Civ5 and Civ4 a year after Civ5's release) people are obviously playing it for some reason. Its much like any art form..... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Its all a matter of personal tastes and preferences and that is inherently emotional. There are plenty of people who hate the Civ franchise completely because they do not like grand strategy games. They prefer one person shooters with lots of explosions. Or perhaps they prefer game simulations. Or flight simulators. Whatever their fancy, its all good!

So now I see people here who like 6 better than 5. Some who like 5 better than 6. If I go back in the older forums I see similar comments between 4 and 5. Its a never ending argument, when in reality it is no argument at all. I like vanilla, she likes chocolate, and Bobby likes strawberry. There's a flavor for everyone!

My point was not to point out why you cannot play and enjoy CiV6 but why fewer players bother to buy and play it.

 

[HEF]

All I wanna know is...
---can the player rename each City founded in Civilization VI?

 

[Karpius]

And no I did not buy CiV6. I just read data and make conclusions from it.

My point was not to point out why you cannot play and enjoy CiV6 but why fewer players bother to buy and play it.

So if I understand you correctly, your entire opinion of the game is based on the negative opinions of others without having experienced the game yourself?

Fascinating!

 

[Siptah]

All I wanna know is...
---can the player rename each City founded in Civilization VI?

Yes!

 

[Victoria]

So if I understand you correctly, your entire opinion of the game is based on the negative opinions of others without having experienced the game yourself?

That's his bubble, yup.

 

[bbbt]

I was unable to find full history of CiV5 sales on steam, but some data:

http://www.vgchartz.com/game/43507/sid-meiers-civilization-v/Global/
http://www.vgchartz.com/game/112497/sid-meiers-civilization-vi/Global/

In first ten weeks CiV5 sold 450,571 and CiV6 sold 351,171, trend is clearly going down.

Afaik vgchartz doesn't include purchases direct from Steam, so they are going to be down regardless (as more and more people buy directly from Steam). I.e. it says 1.69 million of civ 5 sold to date, while Firaxis said at the beginning of last year that it's sold about 8 million. Steam Spy guesstimates that there are currently about 10.5 million owners of Civ 5 on Steam total, and about 2 million owners of Civ 6.

Steam charts doesn't go back far enough to compare directly post launch Civ 5 to post launch Civ 6 in terms of players unfortunately. The first stats they have for civ 5 are right after gods and kings launched, so we can get a good comparison next July (especially if they keep with the similar expansion timeline). That would be easiest comparison.

I'd be very curious about the real sales numbers, and a lot of general play statistics - i.e. what is the percentage of the installed base playing Civ 6 now vs Civ 5 a year after launch. What's the average game session of 5 and 6. For players who own both Civ 5 and 6, what percentage still play 5 more, etc. Sadly they do share these statistics publicly, even though I'm sure they know them!

 

[Victoria]

thanks @bbbt just another person abusing statistics.
There are few players here who do not admit its got problems but still enjoy it and do not need to perform statistical gymnastics to rationalise their decision.

I do know both my sons play civ V because the majority of their friends have civ V based on price.
There are so many things that skew statistics.

 

[HEF]

Yes!

Thank You!

A trillion percent guaranteed future purchase!

 

[Victoria]

A trillion percent guaranteed future purchase!

You can rename captured ones also, any city can be renamed.... On the flip side before you spend your hard earned cash, be aware .....Units can currently only be renamed once and only when they have 2 promotions