[NFP] Is Civ 6 doomed?

[Bechhold]

The door has seemingly shut when they start adding Vampires etc. to the game. Rather than giving us Merchant companies or something like that to the game they decide to go the route which doesn't even belong in such a game as Civ. Not even a "what if" scenario.

There's a reason Civ IV is considered the pinnacle of the Civilization franchise. They kept adding rather than diverting like the past two games. As others have speculated what Firaxis does in response to other 4X Games etc. They will need to keep an eye out on what Amplitude studios does with Humankind because if they knock it out of the park then... who knows what Firaxis can do.

 

[8housesofelixir]

Rather than giving us Merchant companies or something like that to the game they decide to go the route which doesn't even belong in such a game as Civ.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/speculation-possible-game-mode.663125/page-2#post-15917182

 

[salty mud]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/speculation-possible-game-mode.663125/page-2#post-15917182

Eh. Based on what the NFP has churned out so far, I'm very doubtful any "industry" game mode will be anything more than a toggleable gimmick rather than a substantial mechanic being added to the game. Dramatic ages sounds cool on paper, but it cheapens the game by having every empire either in a glorious golden age or catastrophic decay age.

 

[LMT]

I did not read all previous posts, so apologies if this was already mentioned.

But I'd guess most people who play the game do not want a better AI. They are probably fine with it as-is and are happy with more features and civs in DLC/expansions/season passes.

Remember, this site is named civfanatics. Most people who purchase and play the game probably do not win easily on deity every game.

So for what I'm guessing is the majority who make Firaxis money by buying the game and DLC... no, Civ VI is not doomed. Not in the least.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Eh. Based on what the NFP has churned out so far, I'm very doubtful any "industry" game mode will be anything more than a toggleable gimmick rather than a substantial mechanic being added to the game. Dramatic ages sounds cool on paper, but it cheapens the game by having every empire either in a glorious golden age or catastrophic decay age.

Whatever it becomes it will be toggleable. Whether it's a good mechanic or not remains to be seen.
I've personally enjoyed the Secret Societies at least the most out of all the modes.

 

[Abaxial]

The game is what, 4 years old and still being developed? That is more than most games get.

Yes, but the development is throwing on a heap more features rather than fixing the broken bits that should have been fixed years ago.

 

[Time Tested]

But I'd guess most people who play the game do not want a better AI. [...] Most people who purchase and play the game probably do not win easily on deity every game.

I've been playing since Civ 2 and I don't think I've ever played on a level higher than the middle/neutral level + 1. I'm certainly not winning on Deity. I do want better AI. I want an AI that provokes me to make challenging decisions or at the very least is convincingly working towards a goal. My first few games, I was okay with the AI kind of just giving up in the late game as it gave me space to learn the mechanics of the game, but now that I know the mechanics of the game, I wish I could turn up the challenge in the mid/late game rather than have the AI sit back and let me achieve my goal.

 

[salty mud]

Yes, but the development is throwing on a heap more features rather than fixing the broken bits that should have been fixed years ago.

This is it. Too many people think that more = better, but Civ VI is a perfect example of this not being the case. Mechanics like agendas, world congress, amenities and loyalty are pointless if they don't work well. As it stands, all of these could be removed and the game would probably be improved.

 

[Abaxial]

Here’s what I think is needed to rescue Civ 6, keeping to what is realistic. It’s not realistic to ask for better AI, which is a huge task, nor for an end to endgame slog, since that is a feature of pretty much all 4X type games. Nor do I think one can ask, at this stage, for major features like corporations, which would require a lot of playtesting, which would seem to be impractical at the moment. So here are things that could easily be done, which would tidy up the worst annoyances.

1) Finish Worldbuilder and polish it to a professional standard. It’s scandalous this still has not been done.

2) Stop the AI wasting the player’s time with stupid demands and unrealistic trade offers. If I want to try to improve relations by making generous deals, I’ll do that myself.

3) Get rid of the “move your troops from my border” request. As it stands, this is ill-defined, frequently impractical, and one-sided. It’s too broken to be easily fixable, so better to just scrap it.

4) For a weak civ to denounce a powerful neighbour is pretty much suicide. Civs should only denounce from a position of strength.

5) If possible, merge in the Warfare Expanded: Reloaded mod, which fixes the problems with the standard unit progression. But this is optional, as one can always run the mod.

6) The joke about nuclear Ghandi is not funny anymore. Give it up. Repeating a joke over and over is what bores do.

I think that with that, I would be satisfied to continue playing. There are various minor bugs, like the way you can’t click on a unit if it is too near the left edge of the screen, and really these should have been fixed by now, but the above are to me the major annoyances.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

What do you mean by "out on top"? If we take Steam reviews, Civ VI's all time review score is at 82%. Compare:

Civ V: 96%
Civ IV: 92%
Civ III: 90%

According to Steam at least, the largest digital distributor by far, Civ VI comes in at a distant and convincing last place.

I'm pretty sure once people realize that this is a business, they will understand no one cares about steam ratings out of all statistics. Even if only a tenth of players giving the game positive reviews, and somehow it sells the most copies in the franchise by far, then it is a success. No one gets paid from high volume of positive reviews.

The funny thing is most of the issues being listed in this thread are issues that have been persisting since the release of Civ6, and guess what, despite all of those, you people still buy every single expansion and even NFP, a large number even buy them immediately at launch, four years after its initial release with all of these unfixed issues. This proves a huge support for the game, regardless of where it is going. And then people start to pull out the number of active players as if it really showed anything. As long as you buy the products, no one really cares if you use them or throw them in the dumpster the moment you pay for it, because it means the same thing to the merchant: they got your money. And since this is, again, an industry and a business, everything else is irrelevant.

 

[KayAU]

I'm pretty sure once people realize that this is a business, they will understand no one cares about steam ratings out of all statistics. Even if only a tenth of players giving the game positive reviews, and somehow it sells the most copies in the franchise by far, then it is a success. No one gets paid from high volume of positive reviews.

Positive reviews are an indicator of how well your game is liked and how favorably it is being talked about, though, so it is not like it is entirely disconnected from sales. Anyway, I find this to be a very limited view of things. Sales numbers are influenced by a number of factors, including marketing, price, the state of the market, the popularity of the genre, the popularity of the predecessor, and so on. I mean, even if I, an avid Civ fan, were to accept that the shareholders' perspective was the right way for me to evaluate the game, isn't it net revenue I should be more concerned about, rather than sales numbers? And I guess I should also be concerned about by how much the game is contributing to the growth of the player base and overall value of the franchise.

Anyway, if you look at the first post of this thread, you will see that when the OP was talking about the game being "doomed", he was talking about the quality of the game, not how much money it was making Firaxis.

EDIT:
I wrote my reply before you added the last paragraph.

The funny thing is most of the issues being listed in this thread are issues that have been persisting since the release of Civ6, and guess what, despite all of those, you people still buy every single expansion and even NFP, a large number even buy them immediately at launch, four years after its initial release with all of these unfixed issues. This proves a huge support for the game, regardless of where it is going. And then people start to pull out the number of active players as if it really showed anything. As long as you buy the products, no one really cares if you use them or throw them in the dumpster the moment you pay for it, because it means the same thing to the merchant: they got your money. And since this is, again, an industry and a business, everything else is irrelevant.

Since the thread, and every comment in it except yours, is about the quality of the game rather than its profitability, everything else is not irrelevant. I was the one who brought the historic data on active players along with my reading of it. I'm okay with you thinking it is meaningless, but I think it is interesting and relevant to a discussion on the quality of the game. As are the review scores @salty mud brought. Sales numbers and profits are, in my opinion, less relevant to what this thread is about, but it could be interesting to have them. Perhaps you could dig them out? You seem to be trying to make a case that only sales numbers count, but you didn't bring any sales numbers.

Also, I would like to note that even if sales numbers is all you care about, future sales for Firaxis do in part, among numerous other factors, depend on how well liked the current game is. So even from that perspective, it isn't irrelevant.

 

[DogeEnricoDandolo]

Positive reviews are an indicator of how well your game is liked and how favorably it is being talked about, though, so it is not like it is entirely disconnected from sales. Anyway, I find this to be a very limited view of things. Sales numbers are influenced by a number of factors, including marketing, price, the state of the market, the popularity of the genre, the popularity of the predecessor, and so on. I mean, even if I, an avid Civ fan, were to accept that the shareholders' perspective was the right way for me to evaluate the game, isn't it net revenue I should be more concerned about, rather than sales numbers? And I guess I should also be concerned about by how much the game is contributing to the growth of the player base and overall value of the franchise.

Anyway, if you look at the first post of this thread, you will see that when the OP was talking about the game being "doomed", he was talking about the quality of the game, not how much money it was making Firaxis.

I wrote my reply before you added the last paragraph.



Since the thread, and every comment in it except yours, is about the quality of the game rather than its profitability, everything else is not irrelevant. I was the one who brought the historic data on active players along with my reading of it. I'm okay with you thinking it is meaningless, but I think it is interesting and relevant to a discussion on the quality of the game. As are the review scores @salty mud brought. Sales numbers and profits are, in my opinion, less relevant to what this thread is about, but it could be interesting to have them. Perhaps you could dig them out? You seem to be trying to make a case that only sales numbers count, but you didn't bring any sales numbers.

Also, I would like to note that even if sales numbers is all you care about, future sales for Firaxis do in part, among numerous other factors, depend on how well liked the current game is. So even from that perspective, it isn't irrelevant.

It is common knowledge to know that this is the most profitable entry of the entire franchise, is it that difficult to find articles about this? Civ6 is the fastest selling game in the franchise, both at launch and when the 2nd expansion was released.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/civ-6-player-numbers
https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-6/sales
In the end, what motivates devs to change the direction of a game, what are the incentives for them to say "Something has to be changed"? This thread? The charts on number of players? Or poor sales? The point of any complaining thread like this is to beg for a change in the game direction, no? But no change is gonna come if the game continues to be commercially successful. No chef is gonna change his recipe when you are gonna eat up whatever he puts on the table despite your constant complaint about how it is terrible.
If Civ6 isn't so well-liked since launch, how can it sustain its growth unprecedentedly after its 2nd expansion, so much so that this is the first entry that receives an unofficial third "expansion" and support 4 years after its release? The majority of complaints in this thread are nothing new, some same old stuffs since the dawn of Civ6, but the game sees almost no repercussions in terms of sales. After GS, people begged to get another expansion, just to have something to pay for. Just to show that it almost has nothing to do with high percentage of positive reviews or a large active player base. To be honest, if Civ6 continues to get more dev support after NFP, people are still gonna buy it, so that they have more to complain further down the road.

 

[glider1]

The winning formula of civ is enticement and promise. When civ 6 can no longer do that it is doomed.

 

[KayAU]

It is common knowledge to know that this is the most profitable entry of the entire franchise, is it that difficult to find articles about this? Civ6 is the fastest selling game in the franchise, both at launch and when the 2nd expansion was released.
https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-vi/civ-6-player-numbers
https://www.pcgamesn.com/civilization-6/sales
In the end, what motivates devs to change the direction of a game, what are the incentives for them to say "Something has to be changed"? This thread? The charts on number of players? Or poor sales? The point of any complaining thread like this is to beg for a change in the game direction, no? But no change is gonna come if the game continues to be commercially successful. No chef is gonna change his recipe when you are gonna eat up whatever he puts on the table despite your constant complaint about how it is terrible.
If Civ6 isn't so well-liked since launch, how can it sustain its growth unprecedentedly after its 2nd expansion, so much so that this is the first entry that receives an unofficial third "expansion" and support 4 years after its release? The majority of complaints in this thread are nothing new, some same old stuffs since the dawn of Civ6, but the game sees almost no repercussions in terms of sales. After GS, people begged to get another expansion, just to have something to pay for. Just to show that it almost has nothing to do with high percentage of positive reviews or a large active player base. To be honest, if Civ6 continues to get more dev support after NFP, people are still gonna buy it, so that they have more to complain further down the road.

I agree that what matters most to Firaxis as a company ultimately has to be sales. I do think they both should, and do, care about the quality of their game, though. For one thing, developers are people, and of course they are interested in how well their work is received. We know that they read these forums, and it would be strange if they didn't check out user reviews and player statistics.

For another thing, the perceived quality of their game is likely to have an effect further down the line. In your restaurant analogy, you talk about a chef who is not changing his recipe because everyone is eating what is put on their table. I don't think that's quite accurate. The chef in this case is regularly updating his menu, and has had a string of successful recipes. The Civ IV recipe was a critical success, the Civ V recipe even more so, and it allowed him to expand his restaurant. When he announced his new Civ VI recipe, people were lining up outside to try it out. However, while most seemed to agree that it was still good, people were a bit more critical and less enthusiastic. Reviews weren't quite as good, and people weren't always finishing their plates. Meanwhile, there were other restaurants scheduled to open up in the area. The market was far from saturated, and the good chef was still positioned to dominate it in the coming years, but he was rightfully starting to worry a little bit.

I'll leave the analogy there. The point is merely that the quality of the game matters. It certainly matters to me as a player. I would also like to point out that I'm not saying that it is "terrible", as you put it. Very few people are saying that. I like Civ 6. But like many others, I am a bit disappointed that all this new content that has been released didn't really improve it much. I've been buying everything so far, largely in the hope that it would improve the game, but my enthusiasm has been diminished.

Finally, while there is no doubt Civ 6 has sold well, that doesn't mean it has lived up to its full potential, or that the complaints people have about it haven't had any impact. Generally, coming off an extremely successful entry in the series and with the genre itself seemingly doing well, you might expect that sales should be higher for the newest entry, especially when you have a very effective hype train running. It certainly isn't inconceivable that Civ VI would have sold better if there was more positive buzz.

 

[civac]

The deficiencies of Civ6 are what will make you buy Civ7 (or Humankind tbf). I am still playing Civ4 BTS and don't have any plans to try out any newer Civ games. My Civ needs are satisfied by what I have. From Firaxis' perspective, I am a lost sale since their previous game was too good.

 

[salty mud]

The deficiencies of Civ6 are what will make you buy Civ7 (or Humankind tbf). I am still playing Civ4 BTS and don't have any plans to try out any newer Civ games. My Civ needs are satisfied but what I have. From Firaxis' perspective, I am a lost sale since their previous game was too good.

I find that Firaxis' policy for their later games has been trying to fix what isn't broken. Humongous stacks aren't perfect, but they're vastly preferable to the 1upt log-jam nightmare that Firaxis came up with. City specialisation worked a treat in Civ IV. Now we have ham-fisted districts that dictate all the play, and the amount of buildings has been seriously cut to compensate. Diplomacy was fine in Civ IV; the addition of agendas simply complicates for no good reason and often just leads to confusion and annoyance. A militaristic land grabber like Trajan should NOT be happy that I am gobbling up all his land. Harald Hardraada wants to rule the waves: why does he like me when I challenge his naval supremacy? Baffling.

 

[DJ_Tanner]

What do you mean by "out on top"? If we take Steam reviews, Civ VI's all time review score is at 82%. Compare:

Civ V: 96%
Civ IV: 92%
Civ III: 90%

According to Steam at least, the largest digital distributor by far, Civ VI comes in at a distant and convincing last place.

Reviews, while I do hate the idea that some find them irrelevant, do need to be taken with a grain a salt. But particularly with those that cover such disparate time frames. You have a real selection bias issue for a review for a game that was not originally part of the Steam framework in the older games. So reviews there are tough to have much, if any weight, as who is buying and giving an honest review for a game that old? Besides the fact that you have a very large magnitude issue as well in those games are sitting below 5k reviews, while the older games are well over 100k. As for Civ V and VI there is more to gleam from that comparison as they have somewhat comparable numbers, but look at how the reviews trickle out, Civ V has basically no reviews until 2014 (4 years after release) while Civ VI had a big review presence day 1. There are two things that should also be noted about this. 1, is that positive or negative reviews encourage more of the same, for instance it is less likely (an objective customer) will leave a positive or negative review if the clear consensus is in the other direction. 2, and more importantly is how reviews (who and why) have changed since 2010. Reviews were not as ingrained as something a "normal" customer should participate in as they are now. So for Civ V this leads to a couple of "review advantages" being that it was reviewed more after being feature complete as well as it was reviewed more at a lower price, since the game didn't start to really pick up reviews heavily until 2014.

So while I have no idea exactly how things would change if either, or both, Civ V had been reviewed heavily on day 1 or Civ VI had only been reviewed heavily 4 years after launch, I am certain things would look different for both games.

 

[Victoria]

Civ V had been reviewed heavily on day 1 or Civ VI had only been reviewed heavily 4 years after launch,

Statistics, damn statistics and lies.
Such a great phrase that Mr Twain would have appreciated.
Such a simple comparison just fits into the 3rd area as far as I am concerned.
For example you could claim that 1UPT was a welcomed change from dommstacks because V has a 96% as opposed to a 92%, it is still lies, or is it? Without the detail you cannot see the devils.
From my point of view I rated V and VI but got IV from a shop, loaded it, played it for a month then burned the disk without a review. If you asked me then, I would have said civ was doomed.

 

[Chekko]

Implement something that makes you able to play tall and I'd be very happy with Civ 6. They added some nice features I like and they continue to make it better. Not sure how I feel about New Frontier but small additions are still additions I suppose.

 

[Victoria]

able to play tall and I'd be very happy with Civ 6

OCC is winnable on deity. Have you tried to win with just 3-5 cities? Sure tall is eminently workable with VI just like wide was workable in V, probably easier.
I play 3-5 city games on Emperor fairly often, and it is a pleasure, not a task.