Basically my opinion is they never understood what they did wrong with Civ6 so they don't understand how they miss the whole point of what makes a Civ game Civ with Civ7. The writing already was on the wall in the way that Civ6 was never actually a finished product IF they were going for single player and moddable.... which is both kinda mandatory for anything even trying to profess being a Civ game. The way they completely stopped caring about whether or not the AI even vaguely understands new features as they are being added should have told everyone enough about future trends."Depressed" is the most succint description of my Civ morale right now (but only in the realm of civ, otherwise my life is going great rn)
I have complained about a lot of things regarding civ6, which I haven't ultimately liked very much, but I have always admitted its objectively a good game with a coherent design that satisfied most people, just not my personal taste. The vibe of a community as a whole was uplifting. Civ5 had a terrible launch with a lot of chaos, but its core gameplay loop was strong enough for it to have a massive army of supporters full of optimism and energy, it ended up being fantastic.
Civ7 seems to be... lost. Not necessarily as in "broken beyond repair", there have been games with even worse reception on release which then slowly become excellent (No Man's Sky is probably the most spectacular example of this). But as in "literally lost its path in the forest and its future is very uncertain". It was born of marriage between the fundamental misunderstanding of the fanbase and a very messy developmental process, with the two probably being interwined. And now it's a messed up child of this dysfunctional marriage and it's trying to figure out what's wrong with its life and what kind of help should it get, while the time is passing quickly and opportunities are passing by,
Civ7 is a Civ-like at best it's not really a Civ game. They are throwing mud and other things against the wall trying to please the LCD demographics at the expense of actually creating something great.... but somehow want to hold total creative control at the same time... as if that has EVER actually worked for anything. This is like the stupid but pretty girl at the party trying to convince everyone she is a theoretical physicist.... because she theoretically does physics.
Or they know what they are doing and it's all on purpose whispers my tinfoil hat tendencies.... but who really knows at this point.
RIP new Civ games.... 3, 4 and 5 each has a mods that are effectively continuing their development so 6+ really does not matter to me anymore. I initially was rather annoyed with 5 but the VP devs are doing an outstanding job with it.