Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[socratic]

The main reason being that there are a huge number of good and older games out there, and despite huge marketing efforts, most gamers stick to 'old' games for most of their playing time.

Yep. Although I’d argue that has more to do with the declining quality and anti-consumer practices of triple A games. The success of titles like BG3 and the plethora of indie games shows that there is still a massive market for new games. People just aren’t buying games that frankly aren’t worth the $70+

 

[Siptah]

Yep. Although I’d argue that has more to do with the declining quality and anti-consumer practices of triple A games. The success of titles like BG3 and the plethora of indie games shows that there is still a massive market for new games. People just aren’t buying games that frankly aren’t worth the $70+

That may be a part as well, whether it‘s the main theme, I can‘t say. I‘m personally looking for innovative ideas in modern games.

If you would ask me to start a new BG tomorrow, I’d probably go for a third (?) BG1 or sixth (?) BG2 rather than an second BG3. But maybe, I’m just too nostalgic with that series and similar games in particular.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Yep. Although I’d argue that has more to do with the declining quality and anti-consumer practices of triple A games. The success of titles like BG3 and the plethora of indie games shows that there is still a massive market for new games. People just aren’t buying games that frankly aren’t worth the $70+

Yeah, but BG3's release was met with resistance *from* the game devs accusing it of "rockstar attitude" for daring to... be polished and finished upon release over profit. Larian's CEO really had to push for a fully completed release, with eight(!) major gameplay patches that came for free. BG3 also released in early access for almost 3 years before it was completed. The game never went for paid DLCs as a deliberate choice, and that led to a fallout between Larian and WotC (who own the D&D trademark) due to 'creative differences'.

It's definitely correct that the gaming industry is suffering hard, largely due to a disconnect between what devs want (create passion projects) and what their publishers want (profit). I suspect the decision for Civ7's rushed release, expensive price and non-interactive gameplay are all symptoms of this. The game had financial targets to hit, and had to be developed with console games in mind, because that is where the publishing companies want the future of gaming to be. Doesn't matter if it's slop, the idiot loser fans will buy it out of brand loyalty anyway.

 

[Core Imposter]

There is certainly an element of old man in me that has no interest in buying every new game they put out but my distain of Civ 5-7 is based purely on the type of product it is. It they put out a true successor to Civ 4 I would happily slap down a thousand dollars for it.

For years every month when I got paid, I would go out of town to GameStop (Best Buy) and buy two or more titles, going back to the days of the original Doom and maybe sooner. I've played many games and I understand what games are. And Civ 5-7 are not the same kind of game that the original Civs were.

The last three games were "honey I shrunk the game". The scale has gotten smaller and smaller and every iteration has less and less game in it. That's the problem and you could also say that the last three titles are children's games or whatever equivalent to the pattern matching games that people play on phones.

Civ 5-7 were made by the TLDR generation for the TLDR generation. That's the problem and it's a shame.

 

[Core Imposter]

Science victory condition for Civ 8: Using ships on the open ocean spell out " I WIN".

Cut to game setup screen.

edit: "Wait, that would be too complex for our audience."
addon: I could see Firaxis doing exactly this and spending millions of dollars programing "I win" in every language know to man. Okay, if I am being honest I would expect them to use "I PARTICIPATED" instead.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yeah, but BG3's release was met with resistance *from* the game devs accusing it of "rockstar attitude" for daring to... be polished and finished upon release over profit. Larian's CEO really had to push for a fully completed release, with eight(!) major gameplay patches that came for free. BG3 also released in early access for almost 3 years before it was completed. The game never went for paid DLCs as a deliberate choice, and that led to a fallout between Larian and WotC (who own the D&D trademark) due to 'creative differences'.

I really like how Larian abused their image of indie company to make a totally predatory business model and people still see them as good guys. They started selling absolutely unfinished game using "early access" excuse to sell it for full price without any discounts for several years, using buyers as free testers. And despite those years of testing, when they released the last act and the game became officially released, this act was full of gameplay and performance problems.

Yes, Larian had to avoid DLCs to keep their "good guys" image, but forcing everyone to buy the game at full price generates even more money. And even now, 2 years after full release, their maximum discount was 20%.

 

[Gori the Grey]

There is certainly an element of old man in me

Never change, Core.

I read your posts in the voice of Jeff Dunham's Walter puppet.

 

[Skojardu]

Science victory condition for Civ 8: Using ships on the open ocean spell out " I WIN".

Cut to game setup screen.

That made me laugh, although I imagined the ships on an arcade game screen made with sprites.

 

[Ellye]

I really like how Larian abused their image of indie company to make a totally predatory business model and people still see them as good guys. They started selling absolutely unfinished game using "early access" excuse to sell it for full price without any discounts for several years, using buyers as free testers. And despite those years of testing, when they released the last act and the game became officially released, this act was full of gameplay and performance problems.

Yes, Larian had to avoid DLCs to keep their "good guys" image, but forcing everyone to buy the game at full price generates even more money. And even now, 2 years after full release, their maximum discount was 20%.

I really think Larian is extremely overhyped and I don't like any of their games, but this post makes no sense.

Selling a game at its full retail price, not doing big sales, is not "predatory business model".
Selling an incomplete game as Early Access, clearly labeled as Early Access, for people that want to purchase it as Early Access, is not "predatory business model".

That just makes the phrase start to sound meaningless.

 

[phoenixician]

I really think Larian is extremely overhyped and I don't like any of their games, but this post makes no sense.

Selling a game at its full retail price, not doing big sales, is not "predatory business model".
Selling an incomplete game as Early Access, clearly labeled as Early Access, for people that want to purchase it as Early Access, is not "predatory business model".

That just makes the phrase start to sound meaningless.

I just want to mention that the Early Access could be refunded if you did not play for more than 2 hours, too. In addition, a big patch with significant amount of new contents (new subclasses) was added earlier this year at no cost for the customers. If anything, the practice of BG3 sale was and still is customer-friendly.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Yeah, it was clearly advertised what you paid for in EA - access to act 1, and about 6 of the available classes with only five of the companions available. You were paying for a demo, and this would result in you getting the full game once development was complete. I bought the EA for €40, and played two campaigns in EA before shelving the game and waiting for the full release.

I'm currently sitting at around 2.4k hours in BG3, with about a dozen playthroughs. Absolutely got my money's worth and more - Patch 8 added a subclass for every main class in the game. That's a lot of additional content already for an already content-packed game you only had to pay for ONCE.

Wording matters. Civ7 branded itself as a 'finished product' upon release when it was not. Its extra content is paywalled. Can Civ7 claw back? Yes. Will it take a lot of time and effort from the devs? Without question. Did the devs wet the bed with releasing an unpolished, half-baked game with poorly thought out mechanics? absolutely.

Larian understand that you need to show respect the playerbase which are effectively, their customers. Without their money and support, there is no future for the company. Their charm offensive was pro-active, and that is something Firaxis can learn from.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I really think Larian is extremely overhyped and I don't like any of their games, but this post makes no sense.

Selling a game at its full retail price, not doing big sales, is not "predatory business model".

This term was used here several times to describe Firaxis DLC model, so I exaggerated here. In my point of view, both pricing models make sense. I just found DLC model to be more... honest.

Selling an incomplete game as Early Access, clearly labeled as Early Access, for people that want to purchase it as Early Access, is not "predatory business model".

When 25-year old commercial company which spent most of its time creating RPG games, positions itself as kind of indie running crowdfunding campaign and built all the media around BG brand being taken from greedy corporations to true fans, this looks not great. And the argument of "people that want to purchase" works for all business models - DLC, freemium microtransactions or just casino. The thing is, people were paying full price for several years before game release and it's a way to get money both early (which increases the actual value of those money) and in significant amount (I guess they got more money per customer than Firaxis from Civ6 even with all DLCs and expansions).

That just makes the phrase start to sound meaningless.

Yes "predatory business model" is a meaningless term.

 

[Core Imposter]

It's an oxymoron.

 

[Krikkit1]

It's an oxymoron.

Actually its a tautology.... if you have a business model it is a way to get cash from someone else ie predation.

 

[Gori the Grey]

"predatory" is redundant

 

[aieeegrunt]

I understand where you're coming from, but why don't they just buff the Cavalry to counter the Archers and bring in unique Anti archer ranged units like Skirmishers? Why not have Archers take bonus damage from artillery since they are not as armoured as infantry formations?
Why not give them a large penalty to defensive combat?

They don't necessarily need to remove the range of the ranged units, or scrap 1upt to fix an issue about ranged units being very good.

Also, the AI sucks, there is a great solution, it's actually called Improving the AI.

And don't tell me it can never play 1upt because it can. The AI sucks in every department not just combat so the underlying issue is that it needs more effort put into it as a whole.

Improving the AI doesnt change the stupidly OP and ahistorical nature of ranged units post Civ4.

Instead of introducing even more mechanics and units, just solve the actual problem and return ranged units to the support/attrition role they had in 4

 

[GeneralZift]

Improving the AI doesnt change the stupidly OP and ahistorical nature of ranged units post Civ4.

Instead of introducing even more mechanics and units, just solve the actual problem and return ranged units to the support/attrition role they had in 4

Well I guess the point of their design is to have a unique aspect of being able to hit from range. If they had '0' tile range then they'd have to open themselves up to counter attacks from infantry when they fire.

Or I suppose this means that they'd be only good to act as turrets, stand still and punish whoever walks into range. But that's boring.

This may work for Slingers or whatever but generally speaking this would make the ranged units terrible as you get later into the game.

Needs stackable armies for it to be good. So that your hoplites could protect your archer for example.

Adding counters to a strong unit type and then teaching the AI to counter is not far fetched you know?

 

[Kenshiro70]

1) personas. The way I read your post it's like gamers come to Civ for 1 thing and 1 thing only, a good strategy game - a puzzle to solve. I think it's borne out quite thoroughly on social media since Civ VII that previous Civ games appealed to multiple personas, but this game alienates some before they even get to the point of finding out it's not fun.

You are absolutely correct. For example, one thing I wasn't able to articulate well was the issue of immersion. Fortunately, The Saxy Gamer just put out a video on that point (link), and I'm going to incorporate a discussion of that into a future version.

That you are speaking to only one of these personas crystallised for me when you put forward the idea that a game without win conditions can't be considered 4x. I think that is demonstrably untrue from the number of players who had enormous fun with previous Civ titles without finishing games.

Guilty as charged. And I actually agree with you - I don't finish most of my games either. The real reason I put that line in was that I did not like that Firaxis put in the option to disable Legacy Paths but removed the win conditions, so that there was never even the option of winning a Science victory. They lawyered the term "sandbox" instead of doing what the previous games did - allow freedom to blaze your own path towards that goal (regardless of whether or not you finish). "Malicious compliance" is the term I used.

I'll think about whether I want to keep that line - I already covered the sandbox point, so it's extraneous, and it does conflict with my later section on "Players don't finish games."

2) marketing. A lot of Civ veterans have outright rejected the vision of Civ VII as not being conceptually a civ game anymore essentially. No amount of making the game fun is going to appeal to this group.

Agreed. All I can do is offer suggestions for making it fun for the people who would accept it if it were well done.

I've got a similar problem with Old World - logically I should like it, as the characters far more deftly implement a gameplay concept of abilities changing over time (i.e., what civ-switching was attempting to accomplish). But I just can't shake the feeling that I'm managing a high-school drama.

Last week on "As the Civ Turns": Tavos the Diplomat doesn't like Rianya the Chancellor because she didn't invite Tavos to her birthday party, so she won't let her son court Tavos' daughter. Will love win the day?​

Civ has rebranded itself for Civ VII because it knows it's competing against Civ VI. The series is a victim of its own success, and because Civ VI is so fun and replayable to many, and has taken almost a decade of development to reach that point, they opted for a different approach this time to capture additional audiences and offer a different style of Civ game, and it's backfired quite considerably.

Oh yeah. My original title for "The Phantom Audience" was "Civ VII: Veilguard" but even I'm not that mean.

The problem for a persona of Civ gamers is baked into the vision statement itself. It's rejected on principle, and they can't be won over by improving the fun. That Firaxis is pivoting to try to win this persona over is not a wrong development, but I would agree they are attacking it in the wrong order. Make the game fun, then appeal to a broader base. As it stands they are trying to appeal to a broader base with a game they won't enjoy when and if they decide to buy it anyway on a 50/50 chance based on the odds of the people who liked it enough to buy it in the first place (so presumably anyone else's odds are on fact lower...)

I didn't intend for it to sound like an outright rejection of their concerns. Those issues are so visible they suck all of the oxygen out of the room, and I wanted to focus on the silent but deadly items that are problematic in their own way. I attempted to acknowledge those issues but perhaps I can strengthen that. But it is already well on its way to being a novella.

I think it's because they've produced the 4X equivalent of new coke.

I might just steal that line. (With proper attribution of course)

Really enjoyed your post though, I think what I'm getting at is I think it should be longer

It's already a cure for insomnia. Any longer and it could get classified as a WMD.

The Google Docs version has another ten pages, mostly focused on the single-stack architecture and how it shaped the game behind the scenes. Good stuff, but only something a Technical Product Manager would love.

Thanks for your awesome comments! I really enjoyed reading them and they've given me lots to think about.

 

[Kenshiro70]

Ok, I think I've got a winner for a section on Immersion and the Diplomacy screen:

Instead of projecting yourself into the role of leader, you’re a spectator, watching your civ being led by a Five Nights at Freddy’s reject voiced by a Minecraft Villager.​

Thoughts? Too on the nose?

 

[GeneralZift]

Ok, I think I've got a winner for a section on Immersion and the Diplomacy screen:

​

Instead of projecting yourself into the role of leader, you’re a spectator, watching your civ being led by a Five Nights at Freddy’s reject voiced by a Minecraft Villager.​

Thoughts? Too on the nose?

I think you should ask the leaders what they think...

"Hrnnghh... Hmmmm.... Mhmmm..."