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

[Gorbles]

And I think that statement there lies into the fact of what constitutes what a Civilization game really is to some people. For the past 6 iterations that has always been the case, so everybody was able to suspend "historical immersion" to allow Abe Lincoln leading America starting from 4,000 BC or allow Ancient Egypt to reach the moon. In Civ 7 they can't fully do that, even if it's more historically accurate.

I prefer not having to suspend as much historical immersion.

For others, the anachronistic combinations are more of a dealbreaker. I do think that if the AI made more historical picks (when the game is loading), it might come across less jarring for some.

But ultimately, I think this iteration simply isn't for some players, and it should try and succeed on its own merits without going back on its own identity to chase them. Even if that means it isn't as much of a success as VI was.

It's frustrating for me, personally. It's shown that the franchise has limits to what can be changed. And that inherently caps how much the franchise can evolve. Which puts a time limit on its existence, ultimately. There's only so many incremental changes you can do before you run out of wiggle room. And then we won't get anything new at all. Hopefully that point is far enough in the future regardless, and I'm worrying about nothing

 

[James_Champagne]

My problem with the Civ switch and Ages isn't strictly here but with the way that they disrupt the narrative flow.

I feel this is one of my chief complaints about the game as well. One thing that interested me about the previous CIV games is that kind of "narrative flow" element, and the way in which the mind of the gamer kind of builds up a personal story in their head as the game progresses, to the extent that I would often not just be interested in the story of my own civ, but also with what the other AI civs were doing, and their relationships not only with my civ but also with each other (which is one reason why I not only miss the timeline of VI, which was a great visual aid for your empire's story, but also the rumors and gossip that your aides would give you in regards as to what the other civs were doing . . . I always felt at least somewhat informed with what was going on in the game world). Or the way you would get somewhat attached to certain units that had been around for awhile and gone through a lot of experiences.

But I do not get this vibe from VII at all. Never mind the great majority of the units just disappearing during the age transitions, there's also the fact that the game jumps ahead over a vast number of years to get to the new age. What happens during those gaps? Who knows? It's very jarring, and as some people in this thread have noted, the game feels less like a grand narrative one can immerse themselves in and more like three schizophrenic mini-games. There are other things that contribute to this feeling as well. Unlike CIV VI, I find in VI the pop-ups informing you of major events in the world are very basic and limited, and again, unlike in VI, the leaders of the other civs in VII seem oddly silent. One thing I liked about VI was the little cut screens that would pop up every now and then, with the other leaders praising you, mocking you, insulting you, whatever. Again, it made me feel more involved, and gave character to the AI. But in VII, it feels like I'm mostly playing in a vacuum. One game review likened the experience to the civs each cultivating their own little zen gardens, but not really interacting with each other. To me, that's exactly what the game feels like, as things currently stand.

 

[itix]

It's frustrating for me, personally. It's shown that the franchise has limits to what can be changed. And that inherently caps how much the franchise can evolve. Which puts a time limit on its existence, ultimately.

It is not that players are against change. They are against changes that are badly executed. I am sure there would be more acceptance if there were no age gaps, units were not randomly destroyed and moved around etc.

I also having a feeling that the general quality has dropped. It feels like the game is developed by a bunch of subcontractors instead of in-house developers.

 

[McSpank01]

Having been playing Civ 6 recently, it is hard for me to see what the justification for a Civ 7 game would have been if they hadn't taken it in a dramatically new direction. Civ 6 had been out for like a decade and had basically tweaked itself into a really good place mechanically. There would be little to no benefit to updating Civ 6 and just remaking it. Civ 7 had to be very different, and had to push the boat out in terms of mechanics.

So I am completely on board with a Civ 7 game that turns the gameplay upside down and does things differently. It had to do that.

The problem with Civ 7 for me is that, firstly all the things it does the same as Civ 6, it mostly is worse at doing them. All the elements you took for granted suddenly feel unsatisfying. Then pretty much all the new features feel undercooked and raw. There are some really good ideas conceptually with 7, but none of them seem to land.

So on one had, I think the game is salvageable. Many of the core ideas like building your civ in layers, using influence, over building, legacy paths etc, I think they can all work. I even think ages can work.

On the other had, the changes to these mechanics seem like so much work, maybe years of development to get them to a place where the game is considered good. I don't know if Firaxis have that level of patience. Is it going to be 2 major DLCs to fix this game? Probably.

 

[aieeegrunt]

No amount of tweaking or polish is going to make this game acceptable to the majority of the playerbase, who indeed seem to be here for the narrative flow, and not three board games human centipeded together.

Civ6 had a LOT of room for growth and improvement. It had a lot of interesting ideas and concepts that were badly executed; I have over a hundred mods installed, and the vast majority of them are basically fixing or tweaking game systems.

 

[Gorbles]

It is not that players are against change.

Some absolutely are. Some will not accept the Ages mechanic in any way, shape or form. The same goes for mix-and-matching leaders.

It's valid. Everyone has a different threshold. But it makes it very tricky to analyse cohesively. Hopefully the developers are allowed to continue adding options and polishing the product, and this has a positive effect over time.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Some absolutely are. Some will not accept the Ages mechanic in any way, shape or form. The same goes for mix-and-matching leaders.

It's valid. Everyone has a different threshold. But it makes it very tricky to analyse cohesively. Hopefully the developers are allowed to continue adding options and polishing the product, and this has a positive effect over time.

I would say that given where Civ7 is now, that group of players can’t be ignored. They basically are the playerbase

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Some absolutely are. Some will not accept the Ages mechanic in any way, shape or form. The same goes for mix-and-matching leaders.

Because those are bad changes, especially as they are designed

The fans criticizing ages, detached leaders, and civ swapping relentlessly have been pretty clear about WHY they will not accept these changes. It's not that they just hate change for change's sake. That's such a silly framing of the criticism

VII didn't flop because people just hate all change without any nuance, it flopped because many of the changes Firaxis made were halfbaked and completely undermine what the fanbase enjoyed about the Civilziation series.

I prefer not having to suspend as much historical immersion

. Playing Ramesses all the way through to a spacecraft launch in Civ 1 sufficiently breaks my own historical immersion. As does seeing Abe Lincoln lead of a tribe of "Americans" in 5,000 BC does. For me, history in layers in an actual improvement, even with the anachronistic choices (that you don't have to pick).

This doesn't make sense to me because 1) the civilization series is literally about building empires that span all of time and 2) what Firaxis has given us in no more historically immersive than past Civ titles. You still have immortal leaders leading from 4000BC, now instead of leading their historical polity, they lead frankenstein abominations like the Greeks into Normans into Americans and Abbasid Buganda. Swapping to often completely unrelated civilizations/peoples because of a completely arbitrary crisis system, which effects the entire world all at the same time.... how is that historically immersive at all?

Also what non-anachronistic choices exist in this game? Even ignoring that there are immortal leaders still and some civs that DO NOT belong in the ages they've been regulated to like the Khmer and Shawnee, the game's lack of civilizations still leads to completely nonsense civ paths and leader combos like the Shawnee into Mexico lead by Harriet Tubman and Buganda lead by Haspheput.

 

[Gorbles]

I would say that given where Civ7 is now, that group of players can’t be ignored. They basically are the playerbase

By definition, they are not the playerbase for this game, and will not accept anything short of an entirely new game. Chasing that is wasted effort. Building out the existing user base and attracting those on the fence is, imo, a better move.

There are plenty of people on the fence. People fed up with the lack of polish. People disappointed with the UI direction. There's a lot Firaxis can work on. And there is even stuff they can probably do to water down Ages, so much as I personally think it's wasted effort.

But none of this will attract people for whom core mechanics are an absolute dealbreaker. And that's fine.

EDIT - if I misunderstood you r.e. the group of players in question, I'm sorry.

Because those are bad changes, especially as they are designed

Agree to disagree.

The fans criticizing ages, detached leaders, and civ swapping relentlessly have been pretty clear about WHY they will not accept these changes. It's not that they just hate change for change's sake. That's such a silly framing of the criticism

Please do not put words into my mouth. I didn't reduce all criticism to this. Nor have I at any point said people are wrong for having a different threshold to me for what they consider valid change for the franchise.

My personal sadness that there's a theoretical mechanical wall is my own, valid, opinion. We're allowed to want different things.

This doesn't make sense to me

Neither does yours, to me. Our mutual lack of understanding only underscores my point that this is tricky for Firaxis.

Intentionally picking ahistorical combos doesnt negate the fact that less incongruent combos exist, and more will end up existing if the game gets the support it needs.

(sorry for all the edits, on mobile and it's a pain getting my thoughts in order while fighting the forum software)

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I prefer not having to suspend as much historical immersion.

For others, the anachronistic combinations are more of a dealbreaker. I do think that if the AI made more historical picks (when the game is loading), it might come across less jarring for some.

But ultimately, I think this iteration simply isn't for some players, and it should try and succeed on its own merits without going back on its own identity to chase them. Even if that means it isn't as much of a success as VI was.

It's frustrating for me, personally. It's shown that the franchise has limits to what can be changed. And that inherently caps how much the franchise can evolve. Which puts a time limit on its existence, ultimately. There's only so many incremental changes you can do before you run out of wiggle room. And then we won't get anything new at all. Hopefully that point is far enough in the future regardless, and I'm worrying about nothing

Sure. But as seen as the responses above "historical immersion" in Civ is seen as subjective. The immortal leaders still exist and now aren't tied to civilizations anymore. To you it may be fine, but not to other people. Sure, you can have Ada Lovelace leading Great Britain, but they would have to start out leading civs like Rome or Greece first.

 

[McSpank01]

I'm sure a lot of players were very much against the changes to the game, especially civ swapping and ages. I was pretty disappointed when I first heard about it. However after a couple of dev videos I was totally on board with the idea, and I get a sense I wasn't alone in that. I think a lot of people were initially anti the changes, but prepared to be convinced.

The reality is that the changes didn't land. They mostly don't work well and are incredibly jarring to veteran players. If the changes felt organic and fulfilled the promise of a civilisation built in layers then I have no doubt that very few players would be refusing to play the game. Word would get out that the game is good, that the changes do improve the game and also align to the values of a Civ game.

The real issue is that the changes in Civ 7 were just not well implemented, and so give ammunition to haters, and confirm the fears of people who didn't like the idea in the first place.

 

[Atchulhu]

The real issue is that the changes in Civ 7 were just not well implemented, and so give ammunition to haters, and confirm the fears of people who didn't like the idea in the first place.

No, the real issue is that these things make the game unenjoyable (to a self-evident majority of people) and caused almost everyone to quit playing.

The real issue is not how these changes affect the optics of the game or "give ammunition to haters." By and large, games get the kind of reception they deserve. What people think/say about a game is directly linked to how good that game is. Contrary to popular belief, there isn't some army of "haters" who make a devious concerted effort to bring down entertainment products that did nothing wrong, just for the sake of unfairly destroying something through dishonest slander. That's not a thing that takes place, no matter how much the creators of bad entertainment products - and their tribalistic followers - love to claim that it is. For all the same reasons that Twitter bigots are not the reason that Amazon's The Rings of Power failed and will inevitably meet the same fate as their Wheel of Time series, obstinate anti-change haters are not the reason Civilization VII was dead on arrival.

The thing to worry about is not what people on the internet will say about VII. The thing to worry about is the fact that it's a bad game. What people say about it just reflects that reality. There's no point focusing on the source of the feedback. That's like launching a restaurant that specializes in cardboard-based dishes, and then when the business fails, you start talking about how people were just rudely unwilling to accept that they should eat cardboard and the restaurant's concept gave fuel to the anti-cardboard-eating haters.

No, it's just that cardboard isn't good eating, and Civ7 isn't good gaming.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I’ve said this before, but apparently it needs repeating

If haters hating change for the sake of hating change was the real problem, then 1 UPT would have sunk Civ5 and Districts would have sunk 6.

They didn’t because the core identity of the game remained, and because the games themselves were enjoyable enough and Civ enough that it was more of an annoyance than a deal breaker

IIRC there was some rabble rabble about corruption for 3, and I can’t recall what people rabbled about with 4, but there was probably something.

Civ 7’s reception is something else. For one thing none of the older civs tanked the numbers like this one has

 

[GeneralZift]

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.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

I'm sure a lot of players were very much against the changes to the game, especially civ swapping and ages. I was pretty disappointed when I first heard about it. However after a couple of dev videos I was totally on board with the idea, and I get a sense I wasn't alone in that. I think a lot of people were initially anti the changes, but prepared to be convinced.

The reality is that the changes didn't land. They mostly don't work well and are incredibly jarring to veteran players. If the changes felt organic and fulfilled the promise of a civilisation built in layers then I have no doubt that very few players would be refusing to play the game. Word would get out that the game is good, that the changes do improve the game and also align to the values of a Civ game.

The real issue is that the changes in Civ 7 were just not well implemented, and so give ammunition to haters, and confirm the fears of people who didn't like the idea in the first place.

I believe this is exactly right. Very few people in the general video game buying population are dogmatic about particular features or feel like "if it doesn't have X, it isn't a civ game and I won't buy it". That's something we fanatics on this forum gravitate to, but most people play video games just to have a good time and enjoy themselves. Lots of people here are enjoying and having fun playing Civ 7, but it clearly hasn't caught the attention of the broader video game audience the way Civ 6 did. As a result, it hasn't (at least yet) found the same number of new converts to Civ to replace the people who dislike the direction Civ 7 went in, which both Civ 5 and Civ 6 managed to do despite peeving off a lot of civfanatics with the changes they brought to the series. History built in layers, civs evolving into other civs over time, game rules changing as you move into new eras, all of these could be part of a very popular game. Civ 7, at least so far, is not that game. To me, that's all down to execution and how the dev team implemented these ideas.

 

[Gorbles]

Sure. But as seen as the responses above "historical immersion" in Civ is seen as subjective. The immortal leaders still exist and now aren't tied to civilizations anymore. To you it may be fine, but not to other people.

I know. I said as much!

If haters hating change for the sake of hating change was the real problem, then 1 UPT would have sunk Civ5 and Districts would have sunk 6.

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.

They didn’t because the core identity of the game remained, and because the games themselves were enjoyable enough and Civ enough that it was more of an annoyance than a deal breaker

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

I really hate when people dismiss genuine criticism as hate, hate for the sake of hate.

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

 

[Kev1916]

How many serious 4x games are worth playing on the Switch?
How many 4x Games have three mini rounds with a meta
How many 4x games were released with content cut and flogged as a day one DLC
How many 4x games copied or continue with an idea that was ridiculous.
Much like history in layers , it’s a nonsense.
History is in the main written by the victorious, and in a game context if you move the goal post from the individual player to a force fed timer with a reset it’s game over .

 

[Civinator]

How many serious 4x games are worth playing on the Switch?
How many 4x Games have three mini rounds with a meta
How many 4x games were released with content cut and flogged as a day one DLC
How many 4x games copied or continue with an idea that was ridiculous.

For questions 2-4 my guess is, that the answer is one. But if I would answer question 1 with one, too, I think you would not like that answer.

 

[Gori the Grey]

It's frustrating for me, personally. It's shown that the franchise has limits to what can be changed. And that inherently caps how much the franchise can evolve. Which puts a time limit on its existence, ultimately. There's only so many incremental changes you can do before you run out of wiggle room. And then we won't get anything new at all. Hopefully that point is far enough in the future regardless, and I'm worrying about nothing

I think you're worrying about nothing. I think your math is off.

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

If one of them has been found unappealing, that still leaves infinity - 1.

 

[Wrenched]

It's frustrating for me, personally. It's shown that the franchise has limits to what can be changed. And that inherently caps how much the franchise can evolve. Which puts a time limit on its existence, ultimately.

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.