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

[Leucarum]

I don't find it boring, at least not most aspects of the game, just a few things I find boring. I find it can be fairly addicting in a couple ways. But that's once I start playing. When I'm not playing, sometimes I just don't get excited to start a new game. Most of my games I go through the same exact tech paths. The only difference is I may do sailing early depending on my starting location. It's just not as fun as Civ 6.

Well... I think my tech path varies a lot in the first few turns, as start location/barb intensity definitely influences the order you want your basic techs. And the other variation which I find comes up a lot is how early you want to rush your uniques. For civs like Songhai or Maya you get a lot of benefit rushing to the finisher early, for civs like Greece there's one thing to beeline early, and for others like Khmer the civic tree is better.

That said, exploration is the worst for me on this front, as to make your life easier you just need to rush piety and cartography since there's such a big first mover bonus.

 

[canadamufc]

I think there is an emotional response to age transitions which most players seem to feel. There is this sense that the game just took your stuff and 'messed it up' and now you need to spend time starting from scratch and tidying it all up again, just to get back to where you were.

For me, if Firaxis are going to fix the game, that is the feeling they need to get rid of.

If I have built this lovely antiquity age civ that I am kind of proud of, that looks nice, is bringing in some beautiful yields. If I have this army I have constructed that feels very powerful and I have sacrificed money and effort into building... then how am I meant to feel if the game just arbitrarily takes it all away and leaves me with something worse. I could deal with that if there were events in the game that meant I needed to downgrade or retreat slightly (which I guess is what they imagined crises to do, and one reason why turning them off might make the game even worse) but to just hit a switch and 'bye bye' all your nice stuff simply feels horrible.

It's so directly antithetical to basic game design that I am shocked how it was approved. A toddler could have told anyone that players don't like when they are setback, losing what they worked for with no way to fight back. You wonder sometimes what in the world they were thinking?

 

[m_mus]

It's so directly antithetical to basic game design that I am shocked how it was approved. A toddler could have told anyone that players don't like when they are setback with no way to fight back. You wonder sometimes what in the world they were thinking?

I actually like it and rather belong into the "fresh start!"-camp. But this may be due to me playing mostly Multiplayer, where snowballing was a real problem in Civ6. Age transitions combat this to some extent. And I also find it to be an intriguing strategic questions which leader to pair with which civ, and which sequence of civilizations will get the me the best kit to compete with my fellow human players.

 

[McSpank01]

I actually like it and rather belong into the "fresh start!"-camp. But this may be due to me playing mostly Multiplayer, where snowballing was a real problem in Civ6. Age transitions combat this to some extent. And I also find it to be an intriguing strategic questions which leader to pair with which civ, and which sequence of civilizations will get the me the best kit to compete with my fellow human players.

I wonder just how much of Firaxis' design decisions were based on the ambition to turn Civ into a multiplayer franchise. That always feels like a trap to me, trying to force gamers into one style of playing. I think Civilisation has always struggled to be a multiplayer game, which makes sense, games take too long.

That, I think, is maybe why they tried to crowbar 3 ages into the game. They wanted players to be able to jump into Civ to have a quick game and jump out again.

I just don't think most players want that, and they never have. So this seems like a case of trying to chase new customers rather than placate your current ones.

 

[Niallism]

It's so directly antithetical to basic game design that I am shocked how it was approved. A toddler could have told anyone that players don't like when they are setback, losing what they worked for with no way to fight back. You wonder sometimes what in the world they were thinking?

Games aren't about giving you what you like.

I play a lot of board games, and I've been playing videogames for as long as they've existed. I can't count how many games I've played that have taken things away from me in the pursuit of an interesting game.

I like many games that set me back, and take away what I worked for... if Civ 7 is even doing that. I certainly don't feel 'Oh no, the age is ending, my civilization is collapsing!' when I am playing this game.

Also, people don't agree on what 'basic game design' even is.

 

[Niallism]

I wonder just how much of Firaxis' design decisions were based on the ambition to turn Civ into a multiplayer franchise. That always feels like a trap to me, trying to force gamers into one style of playing. I think Civilisation has always struggled to be a multiplayer game, which makes sense, games take too long.

That, I think, is maybe why they tried to crowbar 3 ages into the game. They wanted players to be able to jump into Civ to have a quick game and jump out again.

I just don't think most players want that, and they never have. So this seems like a case of trying to chase new customers rather than placate your current ones.

There are so many people here who say that Civ has somehow been taken away from 'us' and is pandering to console gamers, or a niche market, or mobile gaming, or the lowest common denominator, or children, or multiplayer fans, or people who've never played Civ.

They certainly can't all be true, since so many of them are contradictory, and of course there is massive overlap - many many people own both a PC and a console/handheld, it can't be niche/woke AND designed for mass appeal.

There seems to be a feeling that this game series was taken from us, that Civ was ours and now it's not, because of the changes in VII.

And sorry, but I just don't think it's rational. It belongs to me as little as it ever did. I just buy it and play it.

 

[m_mus]

I wonder just how much of Firaxis' design decisions were based on the ambition to turn Civ into a multiplayer franchise. That always feels like a trap to me, trying to force gamers into one style of playing. I think Civilisation has always struggled to be a multiplayer game, which makes sense, games take too long.

That, I think, is maybe why they tried to crowbar 3 ages into the game. They wanted players to be able to jump into Civ to have a quick game and jump out again.

I just don't think most players want that, and they never have. So this seems like a case of trying to chase new customers rather than placate your current ones.

I see your reasoning, and it may have been the case to make Civilization also more appealing to MP-players, but given that the overwhelming majority of fans play in Singleplayer, I don't think this has been their primary motive (as it appears to me as a predictable net loss to build Civilization up mainly for a MP-community), though me and the boys are profiting from it.
I feel that Ed Beach and the people making the decisions around him really believe in the "history is built in layers"-narrative as an innovative and historically plausible way to approach the evolution of civilizations throughout time. And to me it is, though I admit that the theoretical vision lacked (and lacks) the necessary implementation in practice in many domains of the game.

 

[McSpank01]

There are so many people here who say that Civ has somehow been taken away from 'us' and is pandering to console gamers, or a niche market, or mobile gaming, or the lowest common denominator, or children, or multiplayer fans, or people who've never played Civ.

They certainly can't all be true, since so many of them are contradictory, and of course there is massive overlap - many many people own both a PC and a console/handheld, it can't be niche/woke AND designed for mass appeal.

There seems to be a feeling that this game series was taken from us, that Civ was ours and now it's not, because of the changes in VII.

And sorry, but I just don't think it's rational. It belongs to me as little as it ever did. I just buy it and play it.

While I don't enjoy the way people get hyperbolic and feel like they 'own' or 'deserve' a franchise, I do understand the sentiment.

And yeah, Civ might have different player bases, but primarily it has a history as a single player strategy game for PC. That in of itself has a significant meaning. Those type of players tend want to take games at their own pace, they appreciate at least some level of complexity (maybe not too much) and don't mind having to think. There is clearly a line that people draw in their heads between PC and Console games. I would suggest 'console' games to most people are simplified or dumbed down for players who has smaller attention spans and desire bigger thrills.

That isn't traditionally what Civ is about, even if there are some scaled down versions of the game in existence.

So when people complain that the game is pandering to console players, I can see the argument, because in many ways Civ 7 reduces complexity and strategic thinking, it makes choices more simplistic. I don't think it's really a console game at all, but it doesn't feel like you need to think too hard when playing it.

I see your reasoning, and it may have been the case to make Civilization also more appealing to MP-players, but given that the overwhelming majority of fans play in Singleplayer, I don't think this has been their primary motive (as it appears to me as a predictable net loss to build Civilization up mainly for a MP-community), though me and the boys are profiting from it.
I feel that Ed Beach and the people making the decisions around him really believe in the "history is built in layers"-narrative as an innovative and historically plausible way to approach the evolution of civilizations throughout time. And to me it is, though I admit that the theoretical vision lacked (and lacks) the necessary implementation in practice in many domains of the game.

I doubt we will ever know, but from experience with other games in the industry, there does seem to be this corporate sense that 'live games' and 'multiplayer' is where the long term profits are, and it wouldn't have surprised me if orders were given to people like Ed Beach to cater for that audience and try to grow it. Sure I guess they have had to balance it all out, but I think some of the core issues with the game is that there are conflicting aims as to what it should be and they end up with a middling product that doesn't satisfy anyone.

 

[user746383]

if Civ 7 is even doing that. I certainly don't feel 'Oh no, the age is ending, my civilization is collapsing!' when I am playing this game.

Isn't this quite explicitly, literally what the game is trying to communicate to you? That there was a big crisis, now all the civilizations in the world are simultaneously going to collapse off-screen and be replaced by new ones who move in over the ruins of the old ones, but don't worry because your eternal leader functions as a bridge and you get to take back over once the offscreen part ends after the new civ is safely moved in, having possibly moved some units and things around in the interregnum? Even if you turn off the crisis, there's no way to turn off the big global off-screen collapse and replacement.

 

[Kev1916]

It's so directly antithetical to basic game design that I am shocked how it was approved. A toddler could have told anyone that players don't like when they are setback, losing what they worked for with no way to fight back. You wonder sometimes what in the world they were thinking?

I dont think they cared , or the powers that be dont , the state that the game was released in and the insidious DLC carve up points to a company that just doesn't give a flying about "customers", and put a cash grab at the front

 

[UWHabs]

While I don't enjoy the way people get hyperbolic and feel like they 'own' or 'deserve' a franchise, I do understand the sentiment.

And yeah, Civ might have different player bases, but primarily it has a history as a single player strategy game for PC. That in of itself has a significant meaning. Those type of players tend want to take games at their own pace, they appreciate at least some level of complexity (maybe not too much) and don't mind having to think. There is clearly a line that people draw in their heads between PC and Console games. I would suggest 'console' games to most people are simplified or dumbed down for players who has smaller attention spans and desire bigger thrills.

That isn't traditionally what Civ is about, even if there are some scaled down versions of the game in existence.

So when people complain that the game is pandering to console players, I can see the argument, because in many ways Civ 7 reduces complexity and strategic thinking, it makes choices more simplistic. I don't think it's really a console game at all, but it doesn't feel like you need to think too hard when playing it.

[/QUOTE]
There are differences between dumbing down, and simplifying, yeah. There's always a balance - especially for any game franchise that has been out for 30+ years. As much as I might know how something works, if the game continues to get more complex over time, at some point it just becomes too much of a challenge for new players, and you start to run into a shrinking demographic.

I doubt we will ever know, but from experience with other games in the industry, there does seem to be this corporate sense that 'live games' and 'multiplayer' is where the long term profits are, and it wouldn't have surprised me if orders were given to people like Ed Beach to cater for that audience and try to grow it. Sure I guess they have had to balance it all out, but I think some of the core issues with the game is that there are conflicting aims as to what it should be and they end up with a middling product that doesn't satisfy anyone.

There is a reason why most of the top games are more in the massive multiplayer genre. Civ isn't PUBG, sure, but there is potentially a market for people who like to play against other humans. Whether that's worth "losing" some of the single player gamers, obviously we don't know the internal thinking there.

 

[Wrenched]

if the game continues to get more complex over time, at some point it just becomes too much of a challenge for new players, and you start to run into a shrinking demographic.

From what I have been hearing from previews Europa Universalis V will be an interesting test of this since the major sentiment is that it is far more complex than it's predecessor and will have quite the learning curve, even for those with thousands of hours in IV. Curious to see the results.

 

[Hannibal XIII]

With Civ 7, Civ has become more historically accurate. BUT it's not necessarily explaining that well, with them describing switching Civilizations rather than the well-documented process of one nation rising in power within a state, and describing it as an abrupt change rather than a period of flux.

A big problem is that they have to time-skip at least some amount, because the nations within your state are not simulated in the game. I think they skip too much time, and the cut-scene and info screens between eras should be much more detailed about the historical processes they're trying to simulate.

In regards to accuracy I still think Rhyes and Fall from the Civ IV days is a more faithful representation of what they were going for. Not that it was super accurate but at least rhe switches made sense and you saw the old civ falling.

To me they sank any hope of representing accurate transitions before they even released when their example of civ changing was Egypt-Songhai-Buganda.

I can't even really "buy" Egypt phasing into an Arab polity (since first they Hellenized and Romanized for centuries) but at least you can point to ancient Egypt interacting with Arab polities and Hellenized/Roman Egypt being so close to the Ghassanids etc.

Egypt (or Aksum!) becoming a much farther away, entirely unrelated Niger River polity and then that polity entering the "Modern" era by regressing into a dime-a-dozen Bantu Great Lakes cattle state thousands of miles away does not represent the historical "mechanic" they were trying to implement very well at all.

While that sequence is to me the most egregious a lot of the others perturb me too -- how do they justify the Mississipians becoming the Inca or the Maya becoming Hawaiians?

If independent peoples conquered a failing Civ and either assimilated or established a new polity outright-- a la the German foederati and the Tai/Thai expansions in Indochina -- that'd be much closer to what they were going for.

The Khmer never assimilated into being Thai, frex -- they got swamped by Vietnamese in what is now southern Vietnam but became a subject people under Siam. Hell, they outlasted the Cholas and their rump state well outlived the Majapahit, two Civ 7 "successors."

And much like in older games, other Civs could spin off these conquered former state-leading peoples into clients or vassals.

 

[sav]

I think I have to quit too. One day Firaxis might fix the "please wait" hang and invisible units, but I'm done with installing, reinstalling, deleting configs, adjusting graphics, whatever - none of it works. Steam won't refund me for the DLCs *that haven't even been released yet* either. Ah well. Guess I got a few hundred hours in before they broke it.

 

[King Flevance]

Games aren't about giving you what you like.

I play a lot of board games, and I've been playing videogames for as long as they've existed. I can't count how many games I've played that have taken things away from me in the pursuit of an interesting game.

I like many games that set me back, and take away what I worked for... if Civ 7 is even doing that. I certainly don't feel 'Oh no, the age is ending, my civilization is collapsing!' when I am playing this game.

Also, people don't agree on what 'basic game design' even is.

Games and game design are all about giving you rewards for problem/puzzle solving. Games are not about taking things away from you.

I also play a lot of board games and have been playing video games as long as they have been around and I can't think of many that take things away to make things more interesting. More likely a time limit makes it harder to achieve something. Keeping things just outside of your reach so that it is a fight for everyone to achieve it. I can't think of many games that strip you of things you achieved in the game to somehow add to the game.

The game Wingspan makes you use one of your turn markers as a scoring mechanism each round, thus making each round have fewer and fewer turns. (This is done to ramp up the pace, not to balance player scoring) But it doesn't remove birds from your habitat -or- reset everyone's eggs to 2 or some other nonsense to "keep it even". 7 Wonders doesn't make you discard down your military cards to simply +1 above you opponents "to keep it interesting". If you want +4, go for it. (It is probably a poor strategy, but I know someone who plays like this.) Honestly, not many games take away things you have chosen to add to your tableau or or game pieces you have invested in to "keep it interesting" the interesting part is actually the design of HOW you acquire and maintain these things. Resource management games use cost vs. reward design to simulate value and many other games do this if you look at every game piece as a resource. The game pieces in Civ 7 have very limited resource value that could carry over or could even be zero. I think that value ends up being low or zero too frequently for many of us according to our tastes. That taste is shared with a large demographic in the market because many high profile game designers will all agree that stripping the player of what they have achieved for an arbitrary reason does not feel good and does not really generate a fanbase.

Not sure what your last statement about people not agreeing on 'basic game design' "even is" means. Many game designers of notoriety do agree on some basic design premises and they have fanbases to back it up. Market studies do show what people trend towards in game design. This could be the very reason behind the multiplayer focus as McSpank points out. Sure, people on the internet squabble over nonsense like "what really makes something a game?" or "games should be designed like this" but actual designers do interviews and panels and all kinds of discussion on game design because they love the craft of it. There is a fundamental crude notion of what makes for a fun mechanic and what makes for a bad mechanic. Random vs. Predetermined is a big one. Something that comes up in these talks often is not taking things away from players arbitrarily because it feels unfair or that you lost due to luck.

You could argue that in Civ 7 you can see it coming so this does not apply - but the actual argument is "I can see it coming and it makes me not care anymore" at least from my point of view. There is a part at the end of every age where I stop caring and just speed through some turns to see my Age transition screens. I stop caring about the current age well before it is over as it is about to be washed like a dry erase board pretty soon. I tally what I need to keep, tuck it away, and click, click, click to hurry up and get it over with. The game design has me wishing it was over, not wanting more. Then a new era starts, I have little investment as I am starting over again but like an advanced start game. Usually, this shift (this large circumstance change) is so disruptive to my immersion and train of thought that I just shut the game down and pick it back up when I am in the mood to start over. But then the appeal of a fresh map entices me, and I have to start over anyways...

Civ 7 has some ideas I really like but this game does feel rushed and in some areas feels like it undermines itself. I do think the updates have been helping but I also think Ages and their transitions need to be really reworked. But I also feel that way about Governments, tile ownership, multiple layers of combat and more. I do have hope for 7's future, it is just always unfortunate to have such rocky launches, this one was pretty rough.

 

[MutilationWave]

I think I have to quit too. One day Firaxis might fix the "please wait" hang and invisible units, but I'm done with installing, reinstalling, deleting configs, adjusting graphics, whatever - none of it works. Steam won't refund me for the DLCs *that haven't even been released yet* either. Ah well. Guess I got a few hundred hours in before they broke it.

That must be so infuriating. I'm no wizard but I ain't a slouch either and I can't imagine what could be causing this BS. I hope it's addressed soon for you and the others that have experienced this.

 

[Niallism]

Isn't this quite explicitly, literally what the game is trying to communicate to you? That there was a big crisis, now all the civilizations in the world are simultaneously going to collapse off-screen and be replaced by new ones who move in over the ruins of the old ones, but don't worry because your eternal leader functions as a bridge and you get to take back over once the offscreen part ends after the new civ is safely moved in, having possibly moved some units and things around in the interregnum? Even if you turn off the crisis, there's no way to turn off the big global off-screen collapse and replacement.

No, to me, this is the predominant ethnic group/nation of my civilization/state changing, due to internal issues. My imaginary nation was led by Greeks, but was the seed of Spain... or to go much more alternate reality, had many tribal groups living within Greece that became the Aztecs as the Greeks lost power.

The game calls each one a 'civilization', but it also calls my civilization the same.

I see it as a change, not a replacement.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

No, to me, this is the predominant ethnic group/nation of my civilization/state changing, due to internal issues. My imaginary nation was led by Greeks, but was the seed of Spain... or to go much more alternate reality, had many tribal groups living within Greece that became the Aztecs as the Greeks lost power.

The game calls each one a 'civilization', but it also calls my civilization the same.

I see it as a change, not a replacement.

What your describing sounds an awful lot like the fall of Rome

 

[Cedbird77]

Anyone who digs through my post history will see that I have always been very optimistic for this game. I initially enjoyed the era changes and other decisions that led me to finish every game I started. It felt fresh and new. However, the more I played, the more the cracks began to show.

This latest version update was a wake-up call for me. 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.

Firaxis doesn't seem to have a vision for the game. Every update brings concessions and changes to what initially seemed to be informed design decisions. I now accept that they are just making it up as they go. Hell, they didn't even have the backbone to stick with their original game icon, changing it immediately at the behest of a single Reddit post.

I didn't buy Civ 7 to "invest" in a future game. I don't play Civ game with the intent of submitting feedback. I signed up for the "content roadmap", but not to be a game designer. I enjoy Civ games when I am learning a particular set of mechanics and improving my play over time. This is difficult in Civ 7, when the game is missing basic functions and repeatedly changing the rules of the game.

I'm clicking the RETIRE button on Civ 7. Fortunately, Firaxis still hasn't added a "hall of fame" feature to record my surrender.

That was well said and hilarious. Thanks

 

[user746383]

Bye everyone, I (protocol7, but my account is being anonymised/deleted at my request) just wanted to wish you all the best also, and figured I might as well use the retire button thread. My perspective doesn't seem to fit in well here on CFC anymore so I'm off to new things, and new games. All the best to everyone and thanks for the conversations going all the way back to 2002, when I was in my early 20s! It was great fun until it wasn't, heh. But I appreciate all the conversations with everyone over the years. For me the highlight will always be when the main topic of conversation was theorycrafting.. good times!