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

[Gorbles]

The sudden-ness of transitions and the accompanying lack of a lot of flavour has contributed to this disconnect.

The new (voiced) loading screens, better UX and more game settings / options will to reduce it. That's a bit pain point, imo. One of the biggest. The "feel" of the transition.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

The sudden-ness of transitions and the accompanying lack of a lot of flavour has contributed to this disconnect.

The new (voiced) loading screens, better UX and more game settings / options will to reduce it. That's a bit pain point, imo. One of the biggest. The "feel" of the transition.

It does absolutely nothing to help I'm afraid. Doesn't even push the needle.

Source: am a person who is put off by the transitions

 

[James_Champagne]

To me, the civ switching is the thing I just can't get past. I recall being very excited last year about following CIV VII's development, as this would be the first CIV game I could track in real time (I started playing V and then VI around the time shortly after the RISE & FALL expansion pack came out), and I remember when the big gameplay reveal trailer landed in August just feeling all my enthusiasm dry up when they announced the civ switching feature. Just gutted ha ha! I still tried to go into it with an open mind when the game launched, and I could even maybe see myself going along with it if there was a bit of realistic coherence (like I could see an Aztec civ in the middle era transitioning to Mexico in the modern), but . . . no, I just couldn't accept it.

There are a lot of other things that bug me about the game, even beyond the UI issues (it still boggles my mind that the first released version of the game didn't even tell you what buildings/units your cities had just completed work on) and the narrative incoherence. Graphically I find the leaders very bland and indistinct and even kind of cheap-looking, and the map ends up looking very cluttered. I know people like to jump on VI's art style but at least with that game I could look at both my cities or that of the AI and very quickly identify their key components. I hate there are only three eras, I miss having distinct ones like the Medieval era and things like that . . .

Musically the game seems quite limited as well. It's not that the music is bad, in fact some of it is quite good, it's just there's not all that much of it. Each civ only gets one theme, and each era has, what, 4 generic ambient themes? That leads to a LOT of repetition. Contrast this to VI, where each civ got a main theme with 4 variations, plus a number of ambient/alternate themes, with the end result of a lot less repetition. But I knew there was no way they could possibly replicate the epic nature of VI's soundtrack, which they really did seem to go all out on in the time/effort department.

 

[aieeegrunt]

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?

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.

You can play all the silly word games with semantics you want, the literal bottom line is that the game failed hard, because civ switching and having your empire deleted offscreen via developer fiat is something nobody asked for and just about everyone dislikes

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

People who looked at this hot mess and passed are reflected in the terrible sales figures

 

[Gorbles]

It does absolutely nothing to help I'm afraid. Doesn't even push the needle.

Source: am a person who is put off by the transitions

I get that. Like I've said a bunch of times - for some, only removing the feature would be good enough.

This has been repeatedly twisted as a negative, instead of the simple observation it's meant to be. There's nothing wrong if person A wants it removed. There's nothing wrong if person B wants it kept. The problem is for Firaxis, to understand how to weight persons A, B, and C through Z1001010, with regards to their roadmap for the game and the design principles they want to bring forwards. It's purely a problem for them, in the long run. We'll play what we enjoy, and not play what we don't.

If you don't want it removed, then by all means say how you'd want it changed.

You can play all the silly word games with semantics you want

I'm not playing any word games, and I would respectfully ask that if that's all you're going to characterise my posts as, that there's no point continuing with whatever this is. Your opinion has been repeatedly noted!

 

[aieeegrunt]

I get that. Like I've said a bunch of times - for some, only removing the feature would be good enough.

This has been repeatedly twisted as a negative, instead of the simple observation it's meant to be. There's nothing wrong if person A wants it removed. There's nothing wrong if person B wants it kept. The problem is for Firaxis, to understand how to weight persons A, B, and C through Z1001010, with regards to their roadmap for the game and the design principles they want to bring forwards. It's purely a problem for them, in the long run. We'll play what we enjoy, and not play what we don't.

If you don't want it removed, then by all means say how you'd want it changed.


I'm not playing any word games, and I would respectfully ask that if that's all you're going to characterise my posts as, that there's no point continuing with whatever this is. Your opinion has been repeatedly noted!

Civ7’s performance being abysmal is not an opinion, it is a well documented fact.

 

[Gorbles]

That isn't the opinion that I was noting. Feel free to take it to PM if you want to continue; I don't want to derail this further. Cheers!

 

[GeneralZift]

It does absolutely nothing to help I'm afraid. Doesn't even push the needle.

Source: am a person who is put off by the transitions

I thought about this, and while I agree, I think it would do something to help newer players on the transition.
But think about it, as much as you dress it up, the people who were already put off won't change their mind because they can figure that it's still the same.
New players don't have that experience of the janky transition, so maybe they'd be sold on it more. If all they know is the three mini games, the transition, splitting the flow is normal to them, then maybe they'd be ok.

Even so, I, when brainstorming, cannot personally think of a way for them to dress it up well enough...
Regardless. If it was there on release maybe they could have saved a few people.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I guess the difference in our positions is that I think it's a bad decision implemented badly. If they change the implementation, it's still a bad decision.

You could throw a custard pie in someone's face really slowly telling them it's coming, and they'd hate it. Or you could do it really fast before they've realised, and they'd still hate it because it's a custard pie in the face.

I personally think the problem is the forced switches and the transitions themselves, it's mechanical and flavour driven, not context driven, and no amount of dressing will help that

 

[fantsu]

Using kitchen science, I found out that every other Civ game is just worse than others.

II was fantastic, III not so much, IV really good, V just a disaster, VI was decent, VII bad.
This is an promising that VIII will be a mash hit.

 

[Hawke9]

Using kitchen science, I found out that every other Civ game is just worse than others.

II was fantastic, III not so much, IV really good, V just a disaster, VI was decent, VII bad.
This is an promising that VIII will be a mash hit.

V is great, especially with Vox Populi, it just had a really rocky launch and pre-expansion era.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I thought about this, and while I agree, I think it would do something to help newer players on the transition.
But think about it, as much as you dress it up, the people who were already put off won't change their mind because they can figure that it's still the same.
New players don't have that experience of the janky transition, so maybe they'd be sold on it more. If all they know is the three mini games, the transition, splitting the flow is normal to them, then maybe they'd be ok.

Even so, I, when brainstorming, cannot personally think of a way for them to dress it up well enough...
Regardless. If it was there on release maybe they could have saved a few people.

If you could actually play through the crises in a manner like Rhys And Fall, and make a decision to switch or not I think Civ7 would have had a much, MUCH greater reception, pronably closer to Civ6 numbers

 

[GeneralZift]

If you could actually play through the crises in a manner like Rhys And Fall, and make a decision to switch or not I think Civ7 would have had a much, MUCH greater reception, pronably closer to Civ6 numbers

Not familiar with Rhys and Fall. Can you explain?

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

If you could actually play through the crises in a manner like Rhys And Fall, and make a decision to switch or not I think Civ7 would have had a much, MUCH greater reception, pronably closer to Civ6 numbers

Should've done something like the Revolutions mods for IV. Organic and dynamic internal management that could lead to secession wars and full blown revolutions hat could bring down mismanaged Civilizations is much more preferable to arbitary crisises and black screens that make you switch civs for reasons.

Moderator Action: quote/response removed. -lymond

 

[Hannibal XIII]

Rhyes and Fall was a scenario in Civ IV, and I think originally a mod, that took place on an Earth map.

You'd start with one of the earliest civs and, when time came for another to arise, could choose to switch i.e. from Egypt to the Greeks.

In addition, there was an internal stability mechanic; if a civ was unstable, it was easier fora new civ to conquer.

The switching wasn't mandatory, though -- you could ride out your chosen Civ to the end if you wanted to

 

[aieeegrunt]

Rhyes and Fall was a scenario in Civ IV, and I think originally a mod, that took place on an Earth map.

You'd start with one of the earliest civs and, when time came for another to arise, could choose to switch i.e. from Egypt to the Greeks.

In addition, there was an internal stability mechanic; if a civ was unstable, it was easier fora new civ to conquer.

The switching wasn't mandatory, though -- you could ride out your chosen Civ to the end if you wanted to

Excellent summary

My favorite scenario from that mod was Fall of Rome; you start out with Rome in the I believe it was third century or so, and them all hell breaks loose, so it’s do you try and keep Rome going as long as possible, or say screw it and switch to the Franks or Goths

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

Rhyes and Fall was a scenario in Civ IV, and I think originally a mod, that took place on an Earth map.

You'd start with one of the earliest civs and, when time came for another to arise, could choose to switch i.e. from Egypt to the Greeks.

In addition, there was an internal stability mechanic; if a civ was unstable, it was easier fora new civ to conquer.

The switching wasn't mandatory, though -- you could ride out your chosen Civ to the end if you wanted to

Rhys and Fall should, I believe, be the model for how historical-themed Civ games should work.

It was great because if you weren't doing too well (which happens to me a lot in Civ games), you could just switch to an emerging civ--more modern ones usually had more starting settlers and such units.

I'd only criticize the stability mechanic because it wasn't very informative as to what was wrong with your civ...at least I couldn't figure it out...

 

[spaghetti cat]

This game was released in an incomplete state and has essentially been crowd-sourced ever since. They consistently rely on "community feedback" to make even the most obvious of design changes. They have made it explicit now, by marking the patch notes to denote which entries were suggested by users.

I blame agile.

The creators are no longer treated as artisans but commodities, low bid wins. Their work is forced as quickly as possible, then our lords rely on "the process" to fix up whatever stuck to the wall.

 

[Gorbles]

Would folks rather they didn't solicit community feedback?

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Would folks rather they didn't solicit community feedback?

Whatever feedback they did solicit was either skewed or ignored pre release