I'm clicking the "retire" button on Civ VII

[Gorbles]

There are, presumably, an infinite number of changes one could make in moving from one civ # to the next.

There aren't, in fact. The game only has room for so many units, so many buildings, so many abstractions. There are always limits. Games designers tend to work better because of them. A lack of a limit leads to infinite scope, and reduced decisionmaking. It's the same in software. It's why we have specifications.

If the appetite for dramatic change doesn't widely exist, then that's just the way it is. It doesn't mean this lack of appetite is wrong. It's just not a demographic I'm a part of.

This can be seen as a positive as well. The developers now have a much better sense of the expectations, desires, and red lines of the wider Civ/4X fanbase. There is still a lot of potential design space in this formula; some of it is being explored by other developers now. Surfacing some of the soft limitations may help feed into future success.

It can be, for sure. Everything is useful data.

But it's very muddled by the state of the game on launch. People were baffled by transitions eating units for months, due to the complete and utter lack of ingame signposting. Regardless of anyone liking the mechanic or not.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I really hate when people dismiss genuine criticism as hate, hate for the sake of hate. Or that people are stuck in their ways. Personally not an old man that's been playing Civ since the first entry who is stuck in his ways, I'm actually a newer fan compared to people in this forum. But I still don't like them changes** (made my reasoning clear over time)

What I do hate is people who can't accept the criticism and they just dismiss it. Maybe you see something other people don't see - that's great! But if the majority are sinking a game, then something is objectively wrong with how the end product puts itself together to the end user.

I AM an “old man” who’s been around since the goddamn Avalon Hill board game that started this whole franchise.

I have to say a recent trend I’ve noticed over the last few years is the onslaught of PC Babies who seemingly cannot handle any sort of criticism or even disagreement, and their go to response seems to be various ways of avoiding or shutting down discussion via labelling people haters or whatever, or “everything is subjectice”, or other nonsense.

This is what happens when you stop teaching critical thinking in schools and everyones feels and stupidities have to be validated. From the POV of someone schooled by his literally Prussian grandparents it’s appalling.

I know. I said as much!


I think opposition to significant change is real, especially in the strategy space. RTS has a similar trend.

But that's not me dismissing it as "hatred". Recognising it exists is not a negative, and shouldn't be taken as one. Support for change, similarly.

Nor, I think, are VII's issues wholly mechanical. The state of the game at launch was very rocky, put mildly. First impressions stick.

"core identity" means different things to different people. It's an inherently subjective interpretation.


One of my bugbears is when people invent others doing this, sans evidence.

If Civ7’s dismal performance was wholy mechanical, how do you explain the equally rocky launches of Civ5 and Civ6 not gutting the franchise?

This is what…the 4rth time I’ve pointed it out?

There aren't, in fact. The game only has room for so many units, so many buildings, so many abstractions. There are always limits. Games designers tend to work better because of them. A lack of a limit leads to infinite scope, and reduced decisionmaking. It's the same in software. It's why we have specifications.

If the appetite for dramatic change doesn't widely exist, then that's just the way it is. It doesn't mean this lack of appetite is wrong. It's just not a demographic I'm a part of.


It can be, for sure. Everything is useful data.

But it's very muddled by the state of the game on launch. People were baffled by transitions eating units for months, due to the complete and utter lack of ingame signposting. Regardless of anyone liking the mechanic or not.

Stop making this excuse. Civ5 and 6 were equally guilty of this.

Hell the majority of the top ten mods for 6 on the Steam Workshop are invariably UI fixes.

What is this, five now?

Civ7 is Hindenburging because it dumpstered the core identity of the game, and the implementation is also terrible. Same story with Fallout76, and with Halo Infinife

The latter two resulted in a fire sale of the devs to Microsoft in the former case, and Microsoft shuttering the dev house in the latter, so I’d be a little nervous if I was in the Civ dev team.

 

[James_Champagne]

Just checked, and found that the last time I played Civ 7 was on 3rd June. That's an indication of the apathy I have with this version.

That's nothing. I STILL haven't completed my first playthrough of the game, that I started way back in early February. Every couple of weeks I load it up, play a few minutes, then get so irritated/annoyed I need to walk away for a few weeks. I did finally reach the modern era recently though so maybe in a couple of months I'll finally complete it. (It doesn't help matters that my PC REALLY struggles to play this game, granted)

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

While I still heavily disagree with a lot of the criticisms held here and on social media, I think I've come to an understanding about my feelings for this game: I still enjoy playing a game of VII, but I'm not as hooked on it as I am of VI.

I think the main thing is that VII hasn't given me any reason to get hooked. I might want to play a game or two after a patch or after watching a video on it, but it's not popping into my head when my thoughts are starting to wonder like it does with VI.

I had this same thing with VI at launch, where I came into the game and dropped off, but that was mainly because I was playing VI at the time as a "I'm waiting for something else" game, waiting for the Switch 1 and Breath of the Wild, waiting for Pokemon Sun and Moon, but once I started getting back into VI in the pre-launch hype cycle prior to GS's launch, I was hooked. My hope is that something in the first expansion will hook me.

 

[Gorbles]

If Civ7’s dismal performance was wholy mechanical, how do you explain the equally rocky launches of Civ5 and Civ6 not gutting the franchise?

This is what…the 4rth time I’ve pointed it out?

I said nothing about anything being wholly mechanical.

Nor did VI have anything close to a rocky launch. V did (well, kinda - I'd argue that on the surface it looked better compared to the UI / polish in VI, but the mechanics and stability were poor from memory), but we're going back 15 or more years to when the industry and its relationship to consumers was in a pretty different place. Hard to predict the reaction if V had been released in 2025. People have less disposable on average. There's more quality competition in the genre. Expecations are higher (and not unfairly so, given the pricing of new games).

Civ7 is Hindenburging because it dumpstered the core identity of the game, and the implementation is also terrible. Same story with Fallout76, and with Halo Infinife

You're welcome to your opinion. Repeating it doesn't make it fact.

Your opinion is subjective by definition (which is a different thing to "everything is subjective"), and it's quite funny that you once again repeat the claim that people are labelling others "haters" when I've gone out of my way to insist that's not what I mean. Nor has anyone else here recently used the word. So there's no validity in putting it in anyone's mouth.

Your criticism needs to be more tolerant of criticism in turn. Or mild disagreement, even.

 

[canadamufc]

Just checked, and found that the last time I played Civ 7 was on 3rd June.

March 17th for me.

I haven't seen anything in the updates that can fix the core issues I have with the game. Also I'm not sure I will ever get along with civ switching, for me that's just not civ.

 

[UWHabs]

I said nothing about anything being wholly mechanical.

Nor did VI have anything close to a rocky launch. V did (well, kinda - I'd argue that on the surface it looked better compared to the UI / polish in VI, but the mechanics and stability were poor from memory), but we're going back 15 or more years to when the industry and its relationship to consumers was in a pretty different place. Hard to predict the reaction if V had been released in 2025. People have less disposable on average. There's more quality competition in the genre. Expecations are higher (and not unfairly so, given the pricing of new games).

You're welcome to your opinion. Repeating it doesn't make it fact.

Your opinion is subjective by definition (which is a different thing to "everything is subjective"), and it's quite funny that you once again repeat the claim that people are labelling others "haters" when I've gone out of my way to insist that's not what I mean. Nor has anyone else here recently used the word. So there's no validity in putting it in anyone's mouth.

Your criticism needs to be more tolerant of criticism in turn. Or mild disagreement, even.

V definitely had a rough launch. I know I was so eager for it, but it was so terrible that I put it away for months until they could fix the issues. In the end, I never really got into it (I played it for a few years, sure, and still got 700 hours into it). Life is very different today than it was 15 years ago in the social media sphere, and obviously with the success of civ 6 overall, civ 7 comes as a much more prominent game than the earlier iterations, which despite a long history, were still always in a somewhat niche market. VII is probably the first game in the civ series which you could legit call mainstream, enough that even casual people who don't know much about gaming might even have heard of.

I don't know if I'd call the bad reception to the major changes as mostly related to mechanics, but I do think that if they came out with a great implementation of those pieces, the overall reception for the game would be better. Yeah, there's people who would never like it for a variety of reasons. And that's perfectly fair. There's an awful lot of people that no matter what the devs did, they wouldn't enjoy it.

But if I catch some of your arguments, I agree in general that if they came out with just a solid implementation of them, they could have smoothed over a few more people who are on the fence. There's a number of people who are probably more than fine with the civ switching side of things, but just get turned off by the jarring age transition. Or people who basically can't split their opinion of the 2 because the whole process is murky and jumpy and all.

 

[GeneralZift]

I think Microsoft could actually run the Civ team better than TakeTwo.
They run Age of Empires pretty well. I mean they're hands off with the team. But they then picked out another team to make Age4, who made Company of Heroes. Pretty stupid if you ask me, but I'm getting sidetracked.

Anyway, TT is the one who rushes the team, and probably asks more of the game than the game is strictly able to deliver.
Civ7 has the capacity to be the most profitable game of the group - due to splitting the game into 3 modes with 3 Civs and a Leader choice to be purchased.
Plus you can sell more Ages, campaigns, fog tiles, cosmetics for Leaders. Maybe even Wonders.
The game is simpler so it's easier to play on Consoles.

So what I'm trying to say is, TT probably pushed the game in the direction it was going. (monetisation, cosmetics, ease of play, multi console)
And the design team then came up with these ideas to fit these goals.

Microsoft probably wouldn't have projected the team to do as much. They tend to be hands off.

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

I think Microsoft could actually run the Civ team better than TakeTwo.

I mentally laughed bitterly hard at this. Microsoft has made a ton of layoffs and studio closures since the Activision-Blizzard-King acquisition and Xbox Game Studios has flounder since before the launch of the Xbox One.

And that's on top of the reported push for AI replacing fired workers.

 

[Shirotora Kenshin]

Every couple of weeks I load it up, play a few minutes, then get so irritated/annoyed I need to walk away for a few weeks

Same here, and i only try to play 7 on a friend’s PC, did not even buy it as of today because of Denu…. ah, it doesn’t matter why . But, i wonder if we could fix the game ourselves when the modding tools will release, but for this a LOT of modding capabilities need to be there…

I also started to think what it is about 7 that makes it the opposite of fun.
Civ-switching? Could be resolved with time, with more civs available and therefore then forced „natural“ transitions… Han —> Ming —> Qing for instance is something what i mean, but for all civs. No more „Greece can be Ming in the next age“ etc.
We modders could make civs with little effort now, because we don’t have to make leader art for this task.

Then with more leaders available they could fix the BS that Augustus can lead Ming China and so on… just let us set to force the game that Augustus can only lead Rome, Confucius only can lead the chinese civs (Han, Ming, Qing) and so on.
Maybe all Civ7 needs is time and modders and a future without Denu… uhm… certain things

The UI needs to be improved still. Part of the fun in Civ6 with techs was that i could take a look during my turn, which tech my civ is currently researching and how many turns it will take until researched. In Civ7 there seems to be no such information. This is just an example for little things that have a relatively big impact on the fun, at least for me. Another instance is the writing style, or in other words: the size of the fonts when i want to know what unit or building a city is producing currently. Needs to be bigger. I for one have lots of fun looking at my city, how long it will take until the recruiting of a unit will take, but the fun is dead when the font size is that small.

The unique commanders (Trung Nhi) are great, and if moddable, opens up great potential.

So, long story short: Civ7 is not fun for me, as of today. But maybe it will be, with time, modders and without… you know.

Here is still hope that 7 can be fixed.

PS: And give us back Workers to build improvements… in 7 i really miss them a lot.

 

[Krajzen]

V definitely had a rough launch. I know I was so eager for it, but it was so terrible that I put it away for months until they could fix the issues. In the end, I never really got into it (I played it for a few years, sure, and still got 700 hours into it). Life is very different today than it was 15 years ago in the social media sphere, and obviously with the success of civ 6 overall, civ 7 comes as a much more prominent game than the earlier iterations, which despite a long history, were still always in a somewhat niche market.

>Niche market

Fun fact: Civ5 on release had an almost comparable amoung of people playing it on Steam as Civ7 (it had been like 72k compared to 84k - being within the 20% margin is very very close in this context imo). It is worth noticing that the playerbase had been obviously much smaller and Steam had obviously many times less users than today, and PC gaming was less online, to counteract the "civ7 has many platforms" argument.

Also after 5 months since release Civ7 is played daily by less than 10% of the initial spike of players, whereas the same number for Civ5 five months after release was like 40% In the absolute numbers at this point after release like 3-4x more people played Civ5 than play Civ7 today

A guy posted historical steam stats about it a few pages ago. I'm sorry but this data had made such an impression of me (crushing my own misconceptions) that I have to evangelise. Civ5 objectively had much better player retention which is fairly obvious metric of game's success.
That data shocked me because I remember the maelstorm of early civ5, but then I thought "okay people had roasted civ5 a lot but they still played it in massive numbers and the core radical changes were widely approved". It had been the frustration with "messed up diplomacy, also not too much to do outside developing cities and war" but not civ7 existential angst debates "is the core concept behind the game salvageable". Civ5 transition to hexes, 1UPT and revolutionary graphics (e.g. leader screens) had been widely acclaimed. Civ switching and eras are not...

 

[UWHabs]

>Niche market

Fun fact: Civ5 on release had an almost comparable amoung of people playing it on Steam as Civ7 (it had been like 72k compared to 84k - being within the 20% margin is very very close in this context imo). It is worth noticing that the playerbase had been obviously much smaller and Steam had obviously many times less users than today, and PC gaming was less online, to counteract the "civ7 has many platforms" argument.

Also after 5 months since release Civ7 is played daily by less than 10% of the initial spike of players, whereas the same number for Civ5 five months after release was like 40% In the absolute numbers at this point after release like 3-4x more people played Civ5 than play Civ7 today

A guy posted historical steam stats about it a few pages ago. I'm sorry but this data had made such an impression of me (crushing my own misconceptions) that I have to evangelise.

Yeah, I mean it's still a pretty niche market. There's more users of Euro Truck Simulator 2 right now than civ 6. Even if you added up all users of civ 5+6+7 together, it might crack the top 25 on Steam? It might not even make it there - in 2024 Civ 6 was only in the 3rd group of games on Steam's most played list, with at least 22 games above it in most concurrent players. I always feel like there should be more, since I love the franchise. Now, granted, it's not always a fair comparison, just because most of the top games on Steam seem to be FTP/IAP model, rather than your options like Civ or Football Manager, COD, etc... which have a large cost.

So yeah, maybe even calling civ 7 mainstream was being optimistic. It's big enough to be in the top sellers on Steam around launch, but I bet if I asked all my friends, there's probably very few who have heard of the game but never played it.

 

[GeneralZift]

I mentally laughed bitterly hard at this. Microsoft has made a ton of layoffs and studio closures since the Activision-Blizzard-King acquisition and Xbox Game Studios has flounder since before the launch of the Xbox One.

And that's on top of the reported push for AI replacing fired workers.

Well despite that, I maintain what I said. If the series is going well, usually Microsoft is hands off, which would be better for Firaxis than TakeTwo.

They laid off some studios and they cancelled a lot of games, but they don't usually turn off powerhouses unless they flounder quite hard. Halo floundered quite hard and I think it's still active. Aoe is still running. Minecraft is still running. There's a light stench of that AAA push for profit but it's still okay.

Not perfect by any means but I think TT is more predatory (just look at GTA online and their sports games).
Just because MS cancelled a few (a lot of) games doesn't make me think they would cancel Civ.
Civ is extremely profitable. It would be hard to get Civ wrong as a publisher. I can't imagine MS would muck it up. But TT did. So there's that.

 

[Atchulhu]

You're welcome to your opinion. Repeating it doesn't make it fact.

Your opinion is subjective by definition (which is a different thing to "everything is subjective"), and it's quite funny that you once again repeat the claim that people are labelling others "haters" when I've gone out of my way to insist that's not what I mean. Nor has anyone else here recently used the word. So there's no validity in putting it in anyone's mouth.

This is such a worthless statement. All opinions are automatically subjective. That doesn't invalidate them or make it wrong to voice them. The undeniable fact of the matter is that VII has been an enormous failure that almost all players rejected, to the point where the previous game in the series currently has like six times as many players. VII is dead on arrival because it's a bad game, and it is absolutely correct and necessary to criticize it. "VII bad" is self-evidently the majority opinion. That makes it wildly irrational to attack people for having that opinion. On the other hand, the people fighting against the criticism are doing the game and its community a disservice. Nobody benefits from someone defending an objectively flawed product and trying to stop people from pointing out what's wrong with it.

At this point, it can very much be called an established fact that VII is not a good game. If it was, it wouldn't have been roundly rejected by nearly all fans of the series and performing astonishingly poorly in every measurable chart and metric. The entirety of human society hinges on people's ability to voice their objection to things that aren't good enough. That's where every form of progress comes from. Getting upset and fighting back against that is deeply irrational and borderline insane.

 

[SemiLazyGamer]

Well despite that, I maintain what I said. If the series is going well, usually Microsoft is hands off, which would be better for Firaxis than TakeTwo.

They laid off some studios and they cancelled a lot of games, but they don't usually turn off powerhouses unless they flounder quite hard. Halo floundered quite hard and I think it's still active. Aoe is still running. Minecraft is still running. There's a light stench of that AAA push for profit but it's still okay.

Not perfect by any means but I think TT is more predatory (just look at GTA online and their sports games).
Just because MS cancelled a few (a lot of) games doesn't make me think they would cancel Civ.
Civ is extremely profitable. It would be hard to get Civ wrong as a publisher. I can't imagine MS would muck it up. But TT did. So there's that.

Might want to talk to Toys For Bob (went independent), Tango Gameworks (shut down just over a year after successful release), and King (devs training their replacement AI before layoffs).

 

[GeneralZift]

Might want to talk to Toys For Bob (went independent), Tango Gameworks (shut down just over a year after successful release), and King (devs training their replacement AI before layoffs).

Unfortunately haven't heard of any of those, so perhaps they have escaped my scope of knowledge. Training replacement AI sounds crazy if true

 

[Gorbles]

That doesn't invalidate them or make it wrong to voice them.

I didn't invalidate any opinion about VII or say it was wrong to voice criticism. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Why are you putting words in my mouth?

"VII bad" is self-evidently the majority opinion.

And? VI was a good game, especially by "majority opinion". Does that mean all other opinions about that game get to be ignored? Or be called irrational?

How does your post in any way relate to what I was talking about? Other than to say people aren't allowed to "defend an objectively-flawed" product?

Very few would disagree that VII needs work. The disagreement is often over what that work needs to be. Which is the subjective part.

 

[j51]

Unfortunately haven't heard of any of those, so perhaps they have escaped my scope of knowledge. Training replacement AI sounds crazy if true

Especially because should be a lot easier to deliberately train an AI poorly, or even maliciously than a human replacement!

 

[bluesboy67]

I was finally able to play VII after the 1.2.2 update and wow, boring. I think I'm hitting the 'retire' button on this one too for good. I'll stick with V and VI, they still keep my interest, and I enjoy playing them. I found Civ VII to be boring and there was really nothing there that gives me the just one more turn feeling.

 

[Skojardu]

I also disagree that negative reviews and other numbers show that this approach was wrong. According to analysis of steam reviews, civilization switching doesn't appear in top reasons for those negative reviews.

Looking at Steam doesn't show people like me, who instinctively disliked the way Civ switching was proposed and have yet to buy Civ 7. Listening to EmotionalHusky narrate his Civ 7 games on YouTube with mixed up leaders and civilizations felt like a stupid joke.

The Devs misunderstand the motives of people regarding their civilizations. Did the Phoenicians settle all around the Mediterranean knowing that their colonies would "flip" to Rome, Spain, Carthage etc? Did Erik the Red go to Greenland expecting it to fail and "flip" to the Inuit? Did the Moroccan conquerors of the Iberian peninsula have sort of a fatalistic attitude that they knew they would "flip" to Spain? Did Champlain claim places in the New World for France knowing that in the future it would "flip" to Britain and later Canada?

Leaders (and their agents) want their countries to persist, so a forced change triggered by an age change feels extremely artificial. It seems like civ switching in 7 has the sort of weirdness of *poof!* aliens replacing everyone in your old civ