Losing all the civs

[Shadowstrike]

This has bugged me since Civ4 came out: every time there is a new version of Civilization, we lose all the civs from all of the expansion packs, and we go back to a very small collection of civs, only to gradually get them back again over the course of the next few expansions. I get that this requires a lot of new art assets, especially if everything is being redone, but I can't help but feel like each new version of Civ is very stripped down until it gets a lot of expansion packs.

 

[Wizard-Bob]

It's a planned part of their business model / revenue stream

 

[universecreep]

I'm actually ok with it as weird as that may sound.

If they gave us everything at the beginning, there would be nothing to look forward to.

They are new games as well so not all Civs may be a good fit for a vanilla release. For example, I don't think Canada would have been too useful without the expansion it came with.

 

[Futumch]

It's a common theme of games that have successive iterations.
Players of that Maxis game "The Sims" would probably be mighty sick of having to pay for seasonal weather or pets as add-ons for the fourth time. But the franchise owners just dangle something shiny in front of the consumers and they lap it up.
I'm still not sure if I prefer the model of lots of little transactions for smaller chunks of content, or larger, more expensive packs at longer intervals.

 

[Ivan Hunger]

The games industry has been moving in the direction of fewer games with longer tails. The old expansion set model might no longer be equipped to meet consumer demand.

I could see Civ potentially transitioning to a new model. Imagine a free-to-play Civ game that only has three playable civs to start. All other civs need to be purchased individually. But the upside is that all other content, including brand new systems, is delivered via sporadic free updates. The only thing you need to pay for are the civs. They could capitalize on players' endless hunger for more civs to fund the rest of game.

A game following that model could potentially last years longer than a game following the old expansion model would.

 

[Buktu]

If you have every civ at the start ot the game none of them is based on the mechanics of the expansions. That leaves alot of civs for litte mechanics. That means alot of civs will be somewhat similar to each other in playstyle.
Also civs sell. And as long as they sell content for the game they are going to work on it. Imo the april balance patch was a great step in the right direction for alot of civs. If they didnt sell new Civs with the NFP and made alot of money with it I doubt that they invested the resources for an update like this.
As much as I like the variety of civs we have in VI right now I still think its best to delay some of them in the next iteration as well. Ofc I am open to increase the number in general. Maybe start with 30-35 and add 10-12 per expansion/pass so we end up with 60 to 70 civs instead of 50.

 

[Linklite]

The games industry has been moving in the direction of fewer games with longer tails. The old expansion set model might no longer be equipped to meet consumer demand.

I could see Civ potentially transitioning to a new model. Imagine a free-to-play Civ game that only has three playable civs to start. All other civs need to be purchased individually. But the upside is that all other content, including brand new systems, is delivered via sporadic free updates. The only thing you need to pay for are the civs. They could capitalize on players' endless hunger for more civs to fund the rest of game.

A game following that model could potentially last years longer than a game following the old expansion model would.

Good grief, please no.

I doubt that we'd see the substantial overhaul of systems like what hat we saw in R&F and GS as a free update. The thing is, we saw in NFP how well that system works for cohesive and interactive systems when you can buy it piecemeal.

It also ends up pretty expensive. The biggest bang for your buck was the base game, with double the number of civs than any of the XPs or NFP. The individual DLC method also gets pretty expensive - they wanted £13 for 3 civs when I paid £30 for the base game with 19 civs (well more than that, but I didn't realise I was also getting a lot of the DLCs too, so technically I actually paid for 19 and got a bunch I didn't "pay for" since I wasn't aware that they were part of the deal).

I mean, I enjoy Civ 6, but it's hardly what I would describe as high quality and worthy of hundredss of pounds. Every time they released new content on the Switch, there was a game breaking bug introduced, was unplayable for days (weeks? I can't remember) when NFP came out. There are still serious problems that they haven't bothered to fix. Roads are as ugly as anything. Imagine that, but every freaking month as they release a new civ?

If I get a whisper that they're doing it that style, they can count me out. They've already proven to me that I can't trust them to do a decent job of doing even part of their content piecemeal, never mind the whole thing. And that's before we get to the inherent problems that comes with it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

And that's usually why I'll only buy games after the expansions are out. No need to pay to beta test.

Civ 6 was different because I bought Vanilla out of goodwill after having a good experience with support. But with the piecemeal pricing, I'm definitely going to wait on it for 7.

 

[Shadowstrike]

The thing is that they can introduce additional new civilizations that use newer mechanics added in subsequent expansions, without wiping out the existing civs. Depending on how through the redesign is, you can still retain a lot of the mechanics that make the existing civs interesting.

 

[HiRezAudio]

The games industry has been moving in the direction of fewer games with longer tails. The old expansion set model might no longer be equipped to meet consumer demand.

I could see Civ potentially transitioning to a new model. Imagine a free-to-play Civ game that only has three playable civs to start. All other civs need to be purchased individually. But the upside is that all other content, including brand new systems, is delivered via sporadic free updates. The only thing you need to pay for are the civs. They could capitalize on players' endless hunger for more civs to fund the rest of game.

A game following that model could potentially last years longer than a game following the old expansion model would.

Not for me.
I honestly don't mind the paid for expansion packs as these bring new features - even if they piss me off royally, such as the 'climate change' bullcrap we are being belt fed by 'Gathering Storm' - but that is another thread entirely as we really should keep extremist politics out of this except as government types. But I digress.
I for one will never play a large number of the civs we currently have because I am just not interested in playing the whole religious game - it needs too much luck in the early stages and in the later stages unless you have the option to purchase buildings/units with Faith it's largely irrelevant. I prefer the whole 'pot luck' thing we have right now.

 

[nzcamel]

Every new vanilla release comes with more Civs than the last. Wanting them all up front is not only ignorant that we do get more each time, but also naive in failing to understand that Firaxis being able to sell us more Civs later on is a win/win.

 

[Shadowstrike]

It's not "ignorant" and I resent that remark. There are a lot of additional civs that have yet to be represented, which could be added in future expansions. I'm just sick of suddenly losing a huge chunk of game features with each new iteration of the game, only to be resold them over the next few years.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I find the issue is so many civs are marked as essential on release it really limits how many new or rarely seen civs can appear. It can be mitigated by changing the civ focus between games like making France domination focused or having a scientific English. I'd certainly be interested to see England with a default leader that is new to the series. Things like that keep it feeling fresh even though you are just seeing the same civs again.

 

[Leucarum]

Given that NFP worked as well as it did I expect we'll see a return to season passes with new civs with civ7. To me it seems plausible that we'll get new civs much quicker than we did for civ6....

 

[nzcamel]

It's not "ignorant" and I resent that remark. There are a lot of additional civs that have yet to be represented, which could be added in future expansions. I'm just sick of suddenly losing a huge chunk of game features with each new iteration of the game, only to be resold them over the next few years.

You rebuy the entire game over. The work that goes into the new edition of the game is often different to the work that was done on the last edition for various reasons. Just because you paid for expansions in Civ 6 does not give you any right to similar added features in Civ 7 for that reason alone, let alone others. Why should you have to pay anything at all for Civ should be your question based on your logic.
And, as I noted, each vanilla release on average gives us more content at launch (Civ 5 being the exception imho), be it more Civs than past vanilla releases, and more features kept in the base game. Civ 6 was chock full of stuff for a vanilla game. It was already more complicated at that point that 5 was in its finished state! AI and some UI aside, it was a better game at that point.

Given that NFP worked as well as it did I expect we'll see a return to season passes with new civs with civ7. To me it seems plausible that we'll get new civs much quicker than we did for civ6....

With respect I really hope not. Most every monthly release broke more stuff than it fixed. I do really enjoy the steady flow of content that season passes provide; but if they cannot significantly lift the QA part of the process with each release, then I'd rather get one yearly expansion, and have most of the bugs worked out within a month or two, and have the game working as it should for 10 months. I know it doesn't play out quite as well as that...but that is still better than the never ending new bugs of NFP.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

but if they cannot significantly lift the QA part of the process with each release, then I'd rather get one yearly expansion, and have most of the bugs worked out within a month or two, and have the game working as it should for 10 months. I know it doesn't play out quite as well as that...but that is still better than the never ending new bugs of NFP.

I wholeheartedly agree, not only does it destroy the gaming experience, but the modding experience as well. After how they have completely broken these processes, sadly Civ 7 will be the first Civ game I won't buy on release since Civ 2 (where I found it in the bargain bin at Best Buy for $10 lol). Maybe when the last Civ 6 update is confirmed, we can have a Vox Populi style mod for it (assuming they ever release the code) since Civ 6 could have been so great but fell short imho.

 

[Leucarum]

Most every monthly release broke more stuff than it fixed.

There's some truth here. The monthly release schedule and QC cycles did not line up for NFP and firaxis were always chasing the last update. I guess that'll always be true, but it seems they tried to cram a lot of their updates and fixes into the final patch which probably exaccerbated the problem as they added in a bunch of new features which brought with it their own needed bugfixes.

I'd cut them some slack though as it was the first time the team had tried this schedule. Hopefully going forward one lesson they'd learn is that they need to have bug/balance fixes on as much of a cycle as new content.

With all respect, though I have to disagree with you, I really do hope they go down this route. NFP got me more engaged with civ than either of the expansions and it really kept the game feeling fresh. I see your point of view, but regular novel features for me outweigh the need for regular bug fixes - although if there were a completely game breaking bug, or a glitch to one of my favourite civs I might have thought differently.

 

[KayAU]

I'm fine with starting out with a limited roster, and even a limited feature set. The important thing to me with a new Civ game isn't to have a large number of civs or a vast amount of content right away, it is to get a good solid foundation, which can then be expanded on and refined in polished, well-tested expansion packs. While I appreciate that something like NFP keeps you coming back to check out the new stuff, I'm not convinced it makes the game better in the long run. With each new update, I found myself only returning for one or two games, sometimes not even that, before losing interest again. Meanwhile, VP hasn't had any significant content updates in a very long time, yet I keep returning to it again and again.

 

[nzcamel]

There's some truth here. The monthly release schedule and QC cycles did not line up for NFP and firaxis were always chasing the last update. I guess that'll always be true, but it seems they tried to cram a lot of their updates and fixes into the final patch which probably exaccerbated the problem as they added in a bunch of new features which brought with it their own needed bugfixes.

I'd cut them some slack though as it was the first time the team had tried this schedule. Hopefully going forward one lesson they'd learn is that they need to have bug/balance fixes on as much of a cycle as new content.

With all respect, though I have to disagree with you, I really do hope they go down this route. NFP got me more engaged with civ than either of the expansions and it really kept the game feeling fresh. I see your point of view, but regular novel features for me outweigh the need for regular bug fixes - although if there were a completely game breaking bug, or a glitch to one of my favourite civs I might have thought differently.

Hell, if they can implement significant changes to QA, then I'm on board. I suspect though that it's not especially financially viable for QA to be doing the level of scrutinising they need to, for smaller monthly releases. Also @DizzKneeLand33 has a point re the mods too. Unless Firaxis could find a way to help effected mods get an earlier start on addressing changes, it just isn't worth it.

 

[jasper]

The civ7 will be a brand new game. All the civs will be different.

If the next civ game has the same exact roster with the same bonuses and game mechanics etc then you might have a point.

They put in work to make a new rome then why shouldnt they charge us for it?