I quit for now

[stealth_nsk]

That's a rather strange viewpoint. There certainly is enough about the game that they don't enjoy that they'd give a negative review. So there is a clear lack of enjoyment.

People give reviews when they feel strong emotions. For negative review the trigger is often frustration - from not getting the game they wanted, UI preventing them from doing something or just abrupt end of the age when you was about to capture a city. But having strong negative trigger really doesn't always mean the person don't enjoy the game in other time.

However, based on ChatGPT analysis, we could see that positive reviews acknowledge game problems, while negative reviews are often strictly negative. This could mean significant amount of people really not enjoy the game at all, but it's still a matter of interpretation. Based on review text only it's really hard to say.

 

[King Flevance]

I believe they started hiring staff to work on Civ 7 in the middle of 2023, so I think it's only been in meaningful development for 2-3 years. The wish list thread on this forum was started in August 2023 around the time the news broke that Firaxis was hiring people for this project.

Also, Humankind was released in the second half of 2021, and it would seem Civ VII must have been conceptualized after that given the clear influences of that game.

Actually, now that you mention it, I remember seeing that it was officially claimed that the design development began in 2019 and Humankind's design was mere coincidence.

Although I do agree that I think the actual physical development had to be pretty short for this level polish to be missing. It actually goes beyond just polish but also finer details and even some framework of the design disconnected or missing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Actually, now that you mention it, I remember seeing that it was officially claimed that the design development began in 2019 and Humankind's design was mere coincidence.

Although I do agree that I think the actual physical development had to be pretty short for this level polish to be missing. It actually goes beyond just polish but also finer details and even some framework of the design disconnected or missing.

It didn't began in 2019. In 2019 design was presented to 2K, which means it was already in development for some time. I think the release of Civ6 GS is where the heavy work started, but some conceptual work was likely happening in parallel.

Actually in such processes you often gather ideas for your next release while working on previous one. I totally see the concept of Civ7 ages first appearing during making Civ6 R&F ages.

 

[King Flevance]

It didn't began in 2019. In 2019 design was presented to 2K, which means it was already in development for some time. I think the release of Civ6 GS is where the heavy work started, but some conceptual work was likely happening in parallel.

Actually in such processes you often gather ideas for your next release while working on previous one. I totally see the concept of Civ7 ages first appearing during making Civ6 R&F ages.

Yeah, that's basically what I meant by my post - that the design was being developed before Humankind's announcement but not any code or anything. I wasn't really sure the best way to word it. I don't think any actual tangible work started until at least 2020ish. But even then, it is very likely that covid halted any development for a bit until some sort of procedure for working from home or something was put into place. It sounds easy but that can cause a lot of complications for various reasons.

 

[Atchulhu]

The big issue for me is that even if I imagine that they fix all the bugs, make the UI good and address some of the more obvious design flaws, I'm not seeing a good game. There are far too many things I don't like about it. I have 2000 hours in Civ5 and 2500 in Civ6, but I don't find Civ7 fun at all. It's tedium and boredom basically from the first moment. Slow, dull, uninspiring, annoying to play, full of very poor design choices, and I don't like the age transition at all.

They also completely abandoned the symbolic realism that the series was known for by letting any leader lead any civ. Even if Civ games were obviously never meant to represent an accurate portrayal of real-world history, they did have a certain symbolic realism which this new civ/leader mixing completely erases. There's no sense of identity, no real flavor. I don't feel some kind of familiarity towards leaders anymore. I used to have a fondness/rivalry/whatever with the various leaders in 5 and 6, but in 7 that's completely gone and I just associate them with a list of abilities. That's not to mention that so many of these leaders were never really leaders in history. Ada Lovelace to lead Britain? What? What even is that? They're just randomly selecting historical celebrities at this point. The symbolic realism of the Civ series did matter, it kept away the feeling of playing in an arbitrary fantasy universe and it made it fun when things in the game happened to actually coincide with the course of history. Abandoning it is not an improvement. It's just a case of pointlessly removing one of the charms of the game, and nothing whatsoever is gained in return. If they wanted us to be able to customize our "build," they could just have let us select abilities similarly to how the memento feature works.

On that note, I also hate mementos. What a terrible concept. You now have to play the same civs over and over in order to unlock power? If you don't, you're playing a scuffed version of the same leaders? It fiercely punishes trying different leaders and instead encourages just playing the same ones repeatedly, which is not a good design pattern. It also takes a steaming dump on players who prefer to play random, because not only will you absolutely never unlock all the mementos that way, you also can't really utilize them properly.

That's just a couple of examples of what I hate, and there's so much more. Too many to describe without writing a whole essay. All in all, I do not enjoy this game. There are so many design choices that I can't stand, and the general overall gameplay is also just boring and unimaginative. It's slow, sluggish, a chore to get through, and on the rare occasion that I'm able to force myself to play until the first age transition, I'm immediately hit by an overwhelming desire to abandon the game and do something else.

 

[Gorbles]

If you don't, you're playing a scuffed version of the same leaders?

I haven't felt this once, but at the same time the optics of gameplay unlocks can often be negative, and to avoid issues I'd prefer it if they were simply optional flavour or cosmetics to some (?) degree.

 

[Yzman]

I haven't felt this once, but at the same time the optics of gameplay unlocks can often be negative, and to avoid issues I'd prefer it if they were simply optional flavour or cosmetics to some (?) degree.

Mementos are completely optional and many select not to use them. You arent using a worse version at all. That is so silly. It is no different than getting upgrades in any game. I like it. Gives me something to keep playing to get.

Once again I struggle with understanding when people complain about optional features.

 

[Yzman]

The big issue for me is that even if I imagine that they fix all the bugs, make the UI good and address some of the more obvious design flaws, I'm not seeing a good game. There are far too many things I don't like about it. I have 2000 hours in Civ5 and 2500 in Civ6, but I don't find Civ7 fun at all. It's tedium and boredom basically from the first moment. Slow, dull, uninspiring, annoying to play, full of very poor design choices, and I don't like the age transition at all.

They also completely abandoned the symbolic realism that the series was known for by letting any leader lead any civ. Even if Civ games were obviously never meant to represent an accurate portrayal of real-world history, they did have a certain symbolic realism which this new civ/leader mixing completely erases. There's no sense of identity, no real flavor. I don't feel some kind of familiarity towards leaders anymore. I used to have a fondness/rivalry/whatever with the various leaders in 5 and 6, but in 7 that's completely gone and I just associate them with a list of abilities. That's not to mention that so many of these leaders were never really leaders in history. Ada Lovelace to lead Britain? What? What even is that? They're just randomly selecting historical celebrities at this point. The symbolic realism of the Civ series did matter, it kept away the feeling of playing in an arbitrary fantasy universe and it made it fun when things in the game happened to actually coincide with the course of history. Abandoning it is not an improvement. It's just a case of pointlessly removing one of the charms of the game, and nothing whatsoever is gained in return. If they wanted us to be able to customize our "build," they could just have let us select abilities similarly to how the memento feature works.

On that note, I also hate mementos. What a terrible concept. You now have to play the same civs over and over in order to unlock power? If you don't, you're playing a scuffed version of the same leaders? It fiercely punishes trying different leaders and instead encourages just playing the same ones repeatedly, which is not a good design pattern. It also takes a steaming dump on players who prefer to play random, because not only will you absolutely never unlock all the mementos that way, you also can't really utilize them properly.

That's just a couple of examples of what I hate, and there's so much more. Too many to describe without writing a whole essay. All in all, I do not enjoy this game. There are so many design choices that I can't stand, and the general overall gameplay is also just boring and unimaginative. It's slow, sluggish, a chore to get through, and on the rare occasion that I'm able to force myself to play until the first age transition, I'm immediately hit by an overwhelming desire to abandon the game and do something else.

I'm genuinely curious what gameplay you find boring that wasn't in the previous games...

And regarding mementos and unlocking...i play civs once and get to level 6/10 with them. I will likely be at level 50 after playing each leader...once. I get the string impression you don't even play the game. You make it sound like you need to play Ada 10 times to get some thing from her and that is simply not the case. Mementos are only a few if the unlocks anyway. Most levels are badges and other useless items.

 

[Thormodr]

People give reviews when they feel strong emotions. For negative review the trigger is often frustration - from not getting the game they wanted, UI preventing them from doing something or just abrupt end of the age when you was about to capture a city. But having strong negative trigger really doesn't always mean the person don't enjoy the game in other time.

However, based on ChatGPT analysis, we could see that positive reviews acknowledge game problems, while negative reviews are often strictly negative. This could mean significant amount of people really not enjoy the game at all, but it's still a matter of interpretation. Based on review text only it's really hard to say.

Not a big fan of AI analysis, to be honest.

I do wonder if they could make AI actually play 1UPT effectively, though.

 

[Thormodr]

The big issue for me is that even if I imagine that they fix all the bugs, make the UI good and address some of the more obvious design flaws, I'm not seeing a good game. There are far too many things I don't like about it. I have 2000 hours in Civ5 and 2500 in Civ6, but I don't find Civ7 fun at all. It's tedium and boredom basically from the first moment. Slow, dull, uninspiring, annoying to play, full of very poor design choices, and I don't like the age transition at all.

They also completely abandoned the symbolic realism that the series was known for by letting any leader lead any civ. Even if Civ games were obviously never meant to represent an accurate portrayal of real-world history, they did have a certain symbolic realism which this new civ/leader mixing completely erases. There's no sense of identity, no real flavor. I don't feel some kind of familiarity towards leaders anymore. I used to have a fondness/rivalry/whatever with the various leaders in 5 and 6, but in 7 that's completely gone and I just associate them with a list of abilities. That's not to mention that so many of these leaders were never really leaders in history. Ada Lovelace to lead Britain? What? What even is that? They're just randomly selecting historical celebrities at this point. The symbolic realism of the Civ series did matter, it kept away the feeling of playing in an arbitrary fantasy universe and it made it fun when things in the game happened to actually coincide with the course of history. Abandoning it is not an improvement. It's just a case of pointlessly removing one of the charms of the game, and nothing whatsoever is gained in return. If they wanted us to be able to customize our "build," they could just have let us select abilities similarly to how the memento feature works.

On that note, I also hate mementos. What a terrible concept. You now have to play the same civs over and over in order to unlock power? If you don't, you're playing a scuffed version of the same leaders? It fiercely punishes trying different leaders and instead encourages just playing the same ones repeatedly, which is not a good design pattern. It also takes a steaming dump on players who prefer to play random, because not only will you absolutely never unlock all the mementos that way, you also can't really utilize them properly.

That's just a couple of examples of what I hate, and there's so much more. Too many to describe without writing a whole essay. All in all, I do not enjoy this game. There are so many design choices that I can't stand, and the general overall gameplay is also just boring and unimaginative. It's slow, sluggish, a chore to get through, and on the rare occasion that I'm able to force myself to play until the first age transition, I'm immediately hit by an overwhelming desire to abandon the game and do something else.

Good post. Yes, the most troubling part of 7 goes well beyond the crappy UI and half baked design but that at its core, it just is a boring game.

 

[Yzman]

Good post. Yes, the most troubling part of 7 goes well beyond the crappy UI and half baked design but that at its core, it just is a boring game.

What makes it boring compared to civ 6 let's say? I am not understanding this complaint. Are you missing worker micro management etc? Because those were boring to me.

 

[King Flevance]

Yeah momentos I just ignore completely. They are more like cheats anyways. Not powers that have been stripped away. Like giving George Washington a minigun. Some people like power fantasies, I like even playing fields and challenges.

I also find 7's core design more dynamic than 6's by a lot. I was originally excited for Civ 6's design with districts but ultimately it ended up just feeling tedious and constrained. There are aspects of 6 I really liked but, for me, Civ 3 has almost all of those aspects and none of the drawbacks. Loyalty was a neat mechanic but it needed some flavor tuning.

I would like to see culture play a bigger role in 7 rather than just "science 2.0". But I would first like to see all the blemishes fixed.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I think the games lack of Polish is mainly down to 3 reasons;

1) ...

2) I think humankind came out and firaxis got nervous about the competition.

3) The lack of real world maps and historical scenarios also shows that firaxis simply didn't care about the people who wanted to play the game for historical accuracy.

2) They got nervous also when Call to power 2 came out. It was also called Civilization too and they had a legal battle to take it out of the title. But internally they copied the hell out of it. Some maps and art sprite graphics were still superior in C2P2. CIII was vastly superior in almost all compartments, for example you could use the num pad to move units, but in C2P2, you could combine all units into armies up to 12 units per tile... anyway it's incredible that 25 years later, they are still copying some of the stuff C2P2 did...
like the no workers - instant tiles improvements... it was there...

3) I a am one of those. I LOVE good scenarios. I cannot comprehend how C7 has been launched without a single scenario.
I simply can not. I'm on standby mode untill I don't see some actual effort put into this category. It's an Historical game.
I can understand fascism is just a socialism kind of government, a Tyranny if we like, but that doesn't erase history and its consequences, kids still have to learn that parts of history at school. WWII scenario without Nazi germany or fascist Italy or Imperial Japanese or Communist Russia... what kind of historic game can it be?

 

[Thormodr]

2) They got nervous also when Call to power 2 came out. It was also called Civilization too and they had a legal battle to take it out of the title. But internally they copied the hell out of it. Some maps and art sprite graphics were still superior in C2P2. CIII was vastly superior in almost all compartments, for example you could use the num pad to move units, but in C2P2, you could combine all units into armies up to 12 units per tile... anyway it's incredible that 25 years later, they are still copying some of the stuff C2P2 did...
like the no workers - instant tiles improvements... it was there...

View attachment 726580

3) I a am one of those. I LOVE good scenarios. I cannot comprehend how C7 has been launched without a single scenario.
I simply can not. I'm on standby mode untill I don't see some actual effort put into this category. It's an Historical game.
I can understand fascism is just a socialism kind of government, a Tyranny if we like, but that doesn't erase history and its consequences, kids still have to learn that parts of history at school. WWII scenario without Nazi germany or fascist Italy or Imperial Japanese or Communist Russia... what kind of historic game can it be?

I always liked PW (Public Works) in the Call to Power series. Call to Power 1&2 definitely deserved a better fate.

 

[Thormodr]

What makes it boring compared to civ 6 let's say? I am not understanding this complaint. Are you missing worker micro management etc? Because those were boring to me.

Extremely restricted streamlined gameplay. Railroading on a whole new level. The real "fun" being mixing and matching up 'leaders" and civs by throwing them all into the blender.

All hallmarks of a poor game.

 

[Siptah]

hm... more streamlined? In a way yes (it's generally less clunky). More railroading? Also, in a way yes (e.g., distant lands that you can't interact with even if you manage to get there in antiquity). It depends a lot on the play style how negative that is, I think. If your goal is to fulfill the legacy goals asap, then it probably feels more railroaded. However, if this is why you play civ, the previous games in which you decided on victory condition at the civ selection screen aren't really better imho.

But interestingly, some of the streamlining also give a lot of freedom to the player. Now that you can't beeline through the whole tree and try to rush through the ages as fast as possible, you can actually enjoy the ages much more and get a lot of flexibility for "what do I want to do/achieve" for the next 100 turns. In the previous games (at least for me), this often came down to the steps I felt necessary to achieve a victory at the end or to stay generally competitive. Now, I feel much less restrained and choose more diverse goals for the ages (settle and conquer that whole area, get maximum culture output, try to keep city count low, be a trade master for one age, be a builder for one age, etc.), and often ones that won't be absolutely necessary or even much helpful for the next age. Civ 7 allows these sidesteps easily: I was Carthage and focused on coast, exploration, colonization, and trade. Somehow, the coast had many mountain ranges, so I chose to go with Inka and my goal for the exploration age was to grow my cities as much as possible. Then I go Siam to capitalize on this growth and wrap up the game in any way I want. In the mindset of an earlier civ title it would have been more like: I was X and started with Z, so my next civ choice needs to be about Z as well, otherwise I won't stay competitive in Z, and without being competitive in Z, I can't win W. To me, there is less freedom there (as long as you care about staying competitive/victories - if you don't, then neither is very limiting of course).

And as a self-observation: I went from trying to achieve the legacy goals in the first games to playing how I felt in the moment. Now, I set up 1 or 2 legacy paths but then actively avoid finishing these too early to enjoy the present age in a deeper, prolonged way.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

3) I a am one of those. I LOVE good scenarios. I cannot comprehend how C7 has been launched without a single scenario.

Unfortunately you are in a tiny minority, scenarios are the least popular part of the game and I wouldn't be surprised if we never see them in Civ 7.

 

[Gorbles]

I am also a member of that tiny minority. I loved the Aussie scenario in VI and was surprised to learn (at the time) they weren't actually all that popular overall.

 

[UWHabs]

Unfortunately you are in a tiny minority, scenarios are the least popular part of the game and I wouldn't be surprised if we never see them in Civ 7.

I remember back in the like civ 2 days, I'd occasionally play some of the scenarios. But yeah, since then I don't think I've really cared much about them.

I do think we'll get a few of those little mini-game scenario setups like we had in 6 with the Outback scenario, although I never really played that. I would guess they'll lean more into those monthly challenges like they had at the end of 6 (they already announced them, but ended up delaying them in 7 to focus on bug fixing it looks like). Those were nice for a change, and I think the time limited aspect of them leaned a bit more into the FOMO feeling for gameplay users. Along with a little bit of the like GOTM challenge aspect.

 

[Gedemon]

scenario are quite important for modding, as examples and source of exposed functions.

there is a <ScenarioScripts> action in the .modinfo that registers files in game, so I do think they plan to add some at some point.