Civ VII Post-mortem: Crafting a redemption arc

[Leucarum]

Leader/Civ separation - REMOVE

I think this is a really awesome feature. Gives us civs with no attested leaders. Leaders who never led a civ. Bravo Firaxis for this one. I think it would have been enough novelty by itself without the rest.

Ages - FIX OR REMOVE
Civ change - REMOVE
Legacy paths - REMOVE
Crisis - FIX OR REMOVE

The ages and associated features as implemented in Civ7 I think are too difficult a landing for Firaxis to pull off. They got very ambitious, but bit off far more than they can chew. I do think if the scale of what they were trying isn't heavily toned back they're not going to pull it off. Better that they get something playable than something fancy.

Narative events - REMOVE
Districts/Buildings - FIX
Cities/Tows - FIX
Diplomacy - FIX

I love all these, sorry... That said. I agree the game has fundamental flaws. The age system I don't think can be salvaged in its current framework. So we're left with Antiquity as the only fun part of the game, and that doesn't have staying power. I haven't fired up 7 in weeks, and R2R isn't exactly tempting me.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Not to mention I think leader switching means more cost to do than civs because of animation and voice acting. Unless they make them static leaderheads?

Maybe. Though to me it feels like these leaders have less animations and voiced lines compared to Civ 6, so it could be more doable.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Maybe. Though to me it feels like these leaders have less animations and voiced lines compared to Civ 6, so it could be more doable.

Civ7 leaders have more animations and those animations are more detailed. They have less voicelines, but it's smaller issue - one you found translator and voice actor, the difference between, say, 40 and 60 seconds is not that big.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

Narative events - REMOVE

i think it’s ok to have narrative events, they just need to be good, and avoid railroading the player too much.

 

[marius_kaparius]

OP: I am still trying to find the time/intelligence to wrap my head around your initial analysis. An example would help. How would the 1.2.5 updates that have been announced break down in terms of solving the issues identified? I felt like a lot of it was around meaningless numbers/mechanics? Does the Settlement UX clarifying things improve things or will it make issues more obvious?

 

[tman2000]

i think it’s ok to have narrative events, they just need to be good, and avoid railroading the player too much.

I have a concept where the antiquity military legacy is replaced entirely by a system of "feats" which generally correspond to tactical events that would most naturally happen if you're having big warfare and winning it. So, in antiquity, there would be less emphasis on conquering all of another player's cities and more on military prowess and maybe the exchange of a couple of settlements on average (without removing the conquest victory at the base).

One feat would be "win a decisive battle." So I have this vision of a simple algorithm that is troops concentration within a certain tile radius, and it triggers the decisive battle, and then once a certain number of troops leave the radius, are defeated, or a timer runs out, then the battle is over with a winner declare (earning the "feat") or the battle becomes "ultimately indecisive".

The point is that while you're naturally playing, "a decisive battle is occurring" would be a narrative event that circumscribes whether you get the feat or not.

Another feat could be having an epic siege of a citadel, etc.

With this in mind, you could have non-military events. I think the easiest way to integrate these would be to have complementary events. If I trigger an event from having lots of active trade routes, then my leader's event would increase the likelihood of other leader's complementary events being triggered (such as culture from trade). It should be made clear what the trigger and complementarity was in the dialogue.

These events should be about half as good as government/celebration bonuses, over one category rather than two. But, you could strategize how to stack them and get multiple triggered at once.

There should also be a menu panel that shows which events are nearing potential trigger, including a window of all inactive, possible events. I suppose events can have a success bonus, a prestige bonus, and a failure bonus depending on how you manage the event. Failure bonus means something that's not a total punishment (because you'd fail a path only after already taking a blow to your plans), but a weaker bonus in a different category than the event's (like a dark legacy path) tied to a slight nerf of the event's category.

The system feels analogous to the Civ VI civic boosts, except with potential for nice historical flavor which does, however, depend on good writing.

 

[Kenshiro70]

However, if you're making a $130 million game with thousands of employees, can you like hire quality designers?

Apparently not. I just worked through most of the LinkedIn pages of current and past designers, and the decline in quality is striking.

The Designer role in Civ VI versus Civ VII​

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In Civ VI, the Designer role was called "Designer/Programmer" while in Civ VII it was "System Designer". That change alone speaks volumes about the erosion of the role. From Civ I to Civ VI, design has been done by someone who is also an experienced coder. PowerPoint jockeys will work miracles in Marketing, and Spreadsheet sorcerers will dazzle the finance people. But in keeping with the tradition of Civilization designers, you needed to be able to get down and dirty with the details of garbage collection.

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Only 43% of the Civ VII designers would have qualified to be designers on prior versions of Civilization. All of those people had worked on Civ VI; none of the new Designers had coding experience on a AAA game.

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Similarly, in terms of experience, 75% of the Civ VI designers had previously been on a design team for a major game. For Civ VII, that number fell to 29%. In fact, for 58% of the Civ VII designers it was their first major game - their primary experience was in the classroom at graduate programs.

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This may seem elitist. But it has already had severe consequences. Nowhere is this more evident than the recent the Modern Age Yield disaster, where the designers' lack of technical ability and ignorance of basic software processes led to them bypassing standard bug evaluation procedures and jumping straight to nerfing Cultural and Economic Legacy Path progression, squandering months of precious time. It will require even more to reverse those blunders.

 

[Gorbles]

You're assuming a lot about the technical details of previous roles.

I'm a programmer. A senior, competent programmer. I don't need to worry about garbage collection.

The original analysis was good. The tone seems to be shifting into "let's find ways to interpret my predetermined conclusion", where that conclusion is attacking competencies due to opinions held of the end result.

Like, sure, Modern Age yields have been a point of discussion. But let's not pretend previous Civ games didn't have balance or design issues that required significant overhauls.

 

[Thenewwwguy]

You're assuming a lot about the technical details of previous roles.

I'm a programmer. A senior, competent programmer. I don't need to worry about garbage collection.

The original analysis was good. The tone seems to be shifting into "let's find ways to interpret my predetermined conclusion", where that conclusion is attacking competencies due to opinions held of the end result.

Like, sure, Modern Age yields have been a point of discussion. But let's not pretend previous Civ games didn't have balance or design issues that required significant overhauls.

Also don’t think it does any favors to the analysis to start criticizing designers/developers for life choices like going to grad school or how many games they had the chance to work on prior to civ 7

Edit: Just to expand on this because it’s not evidently clear: the gaming industry has experienced serious brain drain in the past decade or so because working conditions are awful, the big wigs keep demanding more, and workers are becoming increasingly overworked. As I alluded to earlier in the thread, the gaming industry doesn’t provide the same level of protections to their employees as other entertainment industries do.

Not just that, but money is tightening everywhere, for everyone, and that means jobs are harder to find, harder to get, and harder to retain. Meaning that anyone with experience will go to high-paying, senior positions, leaving many studios, even a AAA studio like Firaxis, forced to hire whoever they can.

Especially in a time when we’re seeing layoffs, targeting workers and game staff is wholly inappropriate.

 

[Kev1916]

In fact, for 58% of the Civ VII designers it was their first major game - their primary experience was in the classroom at graduate programs

We can blame those “kids” again, Scobby Doo moment

 

[itix]

Isnt Civ written in C++ anyway? Modern C++ requires IMO more specialization and I find it natural to split roles.

That may lead to other discussions though... Old World is developed in C# and i believe their small team is more agile, developing new features quicker than C++ devs ever could.

Seniority also helps but I know senior devs who are against everything and are just a dead weight. So it works both ways. Jumiors can bring new ideas and technologies, fresh up the team.

 

[Leucarum]

Apparently not. I just worked through most of the LinkedIn pages of current and past designers, and the decline in quality is striking.

The Designer role in Civ VI versus Civ VII​

View attachment 743615

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-

In Civ VI, the Designer role was called "Designer/Programmer" while in Civ VII it was "System Designer". That change alone speaks volumes about the erosion of the role. From Civ I to Civ VI, design has been done by someone who is also an experienced coder. PowerPoint jockeys will work miracles in Marketing, and Spreadsheet sorcerers will dazzle the finance people. But in keeping with the tradition of Civilization designers, you needed to be able to get down and dirty with the details of garbage collection.

​

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Only 43% of the Civ VII designers would have qualified to be designers on prior versions of Civilization. All of those people had worked on Civ VI; none of the new Designers had coding experience on a AAA game.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Similarly, in terms of experience, 75% of the Civ VI designers had previously been on a design team for a major game. For Civ VII, that number fell to 29%. In fact, for 58% of the Civ VII designers it was their first major game - their primary experience was in the classroom at graduate programs.

​

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This may seem elitist. But it has already had severe consequences. Nowhere is this more evident than the recent the Modern Age Yield disaster, where the designers' lack of technical ability and ignorance of basic software processes led to them bypassing standard bug evaluation procedures and jumping straight to nerfing Cultural and Economic Legacy Path progression, squandering months of precious time. It will require even more to reverse those blunders.

I'm sorry, but while I respect the effort you've put into creating a critique of the game thus far, to me this particular critique seems like quite a mean spirited thing to do. A linkedin profile does not encapsulate someone's capabilities and this feels like it veers towards a more personal attack on the devs. I'd personally encourage you to remove this.

 

[itix]

I agree with @Leucarum.

Looking at this from another perspective, I would like to ask, how many developers in AAA studios are over 40? I have no backing evidence, but I envisage they are mostly around 25-35. The industry is unpredictably cyclical, with the relative lack of job security, working conditions due to overtime hours, making it less appealing as you get older. You have kids and so on; this is when you appreciate being an unknown office dev with 9-to-5 working hours. The AAA game industry just isnt a place to be.

 

[Gorbles]

The industry is unpredictably cyclical, with the relative lack of job security, working conditions due to overtime hours, making it less appealing as you get older. You have kids and so on; this is when you appreciate being an unknown office dev with 9-to-5 working hours. The AAA game industry just isnt a place to be.

This is exactly why I'm in regular software instead of games. And even software isn't exactly stable at the moment either. Fun times! :/

 

[AD1730]

I'm sorry, but while I respect the effort you've put into creating a critique of the game thus far, to me this particular critique seems like quite a mean spirited thing to do. A linkedin profile does not encapsulate someone's capabilities and this feels like it veers towards a more personal attack on the devs. I'd personally encourage you to remove this.

I completely disagree. It's a macro analysis and wasn't focused on any particular person. I fail to see how this could possibly be seen as a personal attack.

 

[Leucarum]

I completely disagree. It's a macro analysis and wasn't focused on any particular person. I fail to see how this could possibly be seen as a personal attack.

I said "Veers towards." It's on the border of being unpleasant.

 

[AD1730]

I said "Veers towards." It's on the border of being unpleasant.

The truth is often unpleasant, doesn't make it any less true. Unless you allege that something Kenshiro says is untrue or is irrelevant to the quality (or lack thereof) of the game, I don't really think calling it unpleasant offers anything of value.

 

[Leucarum]

The truth is often unpleasant, doesn't make it any less true. Unless you allege that something Kenshiro says is untrue or is irrelevant to the quality (or lack thereof) of the game, I don't really think calling it unpleasant offers anything of value.

All good. No accusations of mistruth. I value the civility of Civ Fanatics, so I wanted to say something about the original post, but I'm not here to sway your opinion. Have a great weekend.

 

[itix]

Overanalyzing the staffing is not fruitful. This thread exists only because this game has design issues. Issues, which were poured into concrete early in pre-production. That is the nut that should be cracked, why the design failed. Why did playtesting with the early prototype mislead designers. Ed Beach was initially cautious/suspicious about civ switching (*) or was the design altered after prototyping and playtesting. When Firaxis went to hire more staff, the house was already on fire. They just didn't see that.

(*)

Spoiler :

I believe the issue is not in the civ switching but in the ages system.

 

[Leucarum]

Ed Beach was initially cautious/suspicious about civ switching

I'm curious where you'd read that one?