Player stats, sales, and reception discussion

[MutilationWave]

Square tiles v. hexes aren't as big an issue as 1UPT v. Stacks

Agreed, and even with the issues of 1UPT, I'm so glad doomstacks are gone. And I played with them from the beginning. One of the few things from 7 I think is a total win is the commanders. They make 1UPT much easier to manage, and you can get into some deep tactics with them or just use them as Buff Buses. Or anywhere in between.

 

[itix]

The downside to this approach from Take Two's perspective, of course, being that Civ7 2.0 would most likely take at least the work of a major expansion, and it would have to be released as a free update to entice sales.

Do we think Civ's reputation would be broken by a quick pivot to Civ8 instead?

You can't pay salaries with reputation. They are making money by selling games, and if games don't sell, they must adapt or shutdown.

 

[Wardog]

I would gladly buy a remastered (just modern graphics and nothing more) Civ III, and I'm sure many people would do the same for a remaster of IV or V. I believe a revised VI with much better AI, some smaller adjustments and VII graphics would be a sales success for many years to come. The way for the new Civ game to succeed was so obvious and simple, I really don't understand why they took this path, why they decided to make the game distance itself so much from its classic formula. I, too, see no salvation for VII, unless they make radical changes to it.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

The way for the new Civ game to succeed was so obvious and simple, I really don't understand why they took this path, why they decided to make the game distance itself so much from its classic formula.

They've explained it in extensive detail over various mediums, you can disagree with it if you want but there's no excuse for not understanding their vision.

 

[fantsu]

I would gladly buy a remastered (just modern graphics and nothing more) Civ III, and I'm sure many people would do the same for a remaster of IV or V. I believe a revised VI with much better AI, some smaller adjustments and VII graphics would be a sales success for many years to come. The way for the new Civ game to succeed was so obvious and simple, I really don't understand why they took this path, why they decided to make the game distance itself so much from its classic formula. I, too, see no salvation for VII, unless they make radical changes to it.

I'd be careful what you wish for.
I don't think modern Firaxis has much talent doing acceptable remasters right now. They cannot even handle creating actually unique UU's, how on earth would they make III or IV look better as they never got there later on?
And to actually look and sound better while still censoring aspects from original games so that old fans would be pleased?
These kind of remasters would easily fall as an downgrade to originals in so many ways.

 

[GeneralZIft]

They shoulda made Civ V II and not Civ VII

 

[Uberfrog]

I personally think the AAA game industry is way too conservative these days, and constant “remasters” of old games are a sign of this. Just this week we are seeing Bethesda announce a remake of Oblivion after 13+ years of no Elder Scrolls 6…

So much as Civ 7 has its faults I back a developer that isn’t afraid to try new things every time against the creative stagnation of re-releases.

 

[Kev1916]

I personally think the AAA game industry is way too conservative these days, and constant “remasters” of old games are a sign of this. Just this week we are seeing Bethesda announce a remake of Oblivion after 13+ years of no Elder Scrolls 6…

So much as Civ 7 has its faults I back a developer that isn’t afraid to try new things every time against the creative stagnation of re-releases.

In your opinion , there are many many others who are and will be delighted with a remastered Oblivion.
Kicks off’s in 5 hours

I’d rather have a re mastered “Civ” game any day over a developer that spawns a monetised Frankenstein console game

 

[stealth_nsk]

In your opinion , there are many many others who are and will be delighted with a remastered Oblivion.
Kicks off’s in 5 hours

I'll probably like Oblivion remaster, especially if they rebuilt player progression from scratch, but TES 6 would be much more welcome, if that would be the choice.

I’d rather have a re mastered “Civ” game any day over a developer that spawns a monetised Frankenstein console game

I doubt it would be possible to sell Civ remaster in any reasonable number. Unlike action games, strategies could totally work without fancy graphics and if you change gameplay, it's no longer a remaster for them.

Anyway, remasters are usually done by external teams and don't compete with main releases, so this discussion is quite abstract.

 

[Kev1916]

I'll probably like Oblivion remaster, especially if they rebuilt player progression from scratch, but TES 6 would be much more welcome, if that would be the choice.


I doubt it would be possible to sell Civ remaster in any reasonable number. Unlike action games, strategies could totally work without fancy graphics and if you change gameplay, it's no longer a remaster for them.

Anyway, remasters are usually done by external teams and don't compete with main releases, so this discussion is quite abstract.

Thou I would wager a fair sum , that a remastered SMAC fine tuned and with "fancy" graphics would from a fan point and a commercial standpoint be a success.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Thou I would wager a fair sum , that a remastered SMAC fine tuned and with "fancy" graphics would from a fan point and a commercial standpoint be a success.

I don't know if it could catch many new players, and among old fans it's hard to sell more than a million copies, but if chosing among Civ games, SMAC clearly has best chances for remaster success. It has very strong narrative component with all the fictional quotes it had.

"Resources exist to be consumed and consumed they will be", "I don't know, but I've been told, Deidra built a network node", "The substructure of the universe" - still music in my ears after all this time.

 

[Darsnan]

I don't know if it could catch many new players, and among old fans it's hard to sell more than a million copies, but if choosing among Civ games, SMAC clearly has best chances for remaster success. It has very strong narrative component with all the fictional quotes it had.

"Resources exist to be consumed and consumed they will be", "I don't know, but I've been told, Deidra built a network node", "The substructure of the universe" - still music in my ears after all this time.

And of course:

"There once was a young cyborg named Ace
Who wooed ladies at every base
But once they glanced at
His Special Enhancement
They vanished with nary a trace!"

Back in 2005 Firaxis released a poll asking their fans what they'd like to see next, and a SMAC remake blew away all the other options:

The dystopian themes of SMAC ran deep, and the graphics were poor, both of which I think turned a lot of people off. Maybe using the graphics of BE blended in with the SMAC Factions (which a lot of people can identify with) may garner a larger fanbase?

D

 

[UWHabs]

I don't know if it could catch many new players, and among old fans it's hard to sell more than a million copies, but if chosing among Cov games, SMAC clearly has best chances for remaster success. It has very strong narrative component with all the fictional quotes it had.

"Resources exist to be consumed and consumed they will be", "I don't know, but I've been told, Deidra built a network node", "The substructure of the universe" - still music in my ears after all this time.

I'm pretty sure the reason Beyond Earth didn't take the AC name was a legal/rights issue, so I don't think we'll ever get the actual Alpha Centauri IP back unless if someone really goes out of their way to make it happen. But yeah, like I can still physically hear them saying some of those quotes.
God does not play dice.
God does play dice, but the dice are loaded.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I hope the update is good and I hope people come back. I'm sorry you bounced off it so hard. It seems less drastic of a change than hexagons and 1UPT and the community largely got over those changes. Many people, including me, now think they were good changes. At the time there were people predicting the death of the series over that.

My main issue with those changes is that they are restrictions which, in my view, lead game development to a dead end. They're not the only ones though. More broadly, targeting a standard speed playthrough of about 5 hours from the Neolithic to the Space Age prevents a more in-depth experience. I personally consider longer playthrough in marathon speed offers a more complete experience of the game, but others consider that it brings nothing except more repetition of the same thing, so I guess it comes down to personal perspective.

Ultimately, if Firaxis didn’t impose such strong constraints on itself, limited map size being another one, i remain convinced it could bring the game much further.

Can you imagine playing with square tiles at this point? Seems so barbaric. Although I will say that I miss being able to use the numpad for unit movement, that felt great. I would probably be the only audience, but if someone made a nice mouse with a hex arrangement of keys I would love that. Or a hex where the numpad is on a keyboard. Although they'd have to give us all our hotkeys back to be able to play with minimum mousing.

In game mechanics terms, the main difference between a hex and a square grid is that hex grid reduces the number of tile interactions. A tile is only connected to 2 tiles of the top and bottom rows instead of 3 with a square grid. So 1 tile is in connection with 6 tiles instead of 8, and at a radius of 5 tiles it makes 7,776 rather than 32,768 interactions between tiles. Also as the cities are made more distant (to not reduce the number of tiles in their radius) without making the map bigger, that makes less cities on the map overall. As such hexagons are mostly a limitation compared to squares. less impactful than 1UPT obviously.

 

[Isca Dumnoniorum]

Ultimately, if Firaxis didn’t impose such strong constraints on itself, limited map size being another one, i remain convinced it could bring the game much further.

Out of curiosity, when the larger map sizes eventually appear, would you want Firaxis scale the settlement limit cap at the same time? Or would you be content with more Civs being in the game? Or both?

My problem with some of the map types in Civ VI (lile the inland sea or mountainous inland one) was that the maps never filled up with the standard number of civs. I like there to be some competitive tension for settling space (although without the egregious forward settling we saw before the early patches in Civ VII!). The settlement cap really holds this back sometimes, particularly since the AI seems loathe to breach it.

 

[Leucarum]

Out of curiosity, when the larger map sizes eventually appear, would you want Firaxis scale the settlement limit cap at the same time? Or would you be content with more Civs being in the game? Or both?

My problem with some of the map types in Civ VI (lile the inland sea or mountainous inland one) was that the maps never filled up with the standard number of civs. I like there to be some competitive tension for settling space (although without the egregious forward settling we saw before the early patches in Civ VII!). The settlement cap really holds this back sometimes, particularly since the AI seems loathe to breach it.

I kind of wish they'd lower the settlement cap, or make it start at 1 and have a few more +1s on the tree. Civs start on top of each other so often it would be nice in a way to disincentivise forward settling.

 

[Xur]

Firaxis can't even make a spiritual successor to SMAC. Beyond Earth was terrible and basicly just a civ5 skin made by 2 modders supported by the Firaxis art team AFAIK. The good things I remember from SMAC were the units you could design and the terrain having real elevation. It's one of those games that were great for its time, but I wouldnt wanna play it now.

If you take a look back at previous civ games, then Firaxis added or expanded features - rarely removed or replaced features.

Civ1: Basic game
Civ2: More techs and unit stacking, larger maps + the previous.
Civ3: Culture, resources, golden ages, larger maps and Unique civs/UU + the previous.
Civ4: 3D graphics, religion, civics replacing governments, smaller maps and great people + the previous

From now on, here be dragons:
Civ5: Hex tiles, 1UPT and city states, smaller maps + most of the previous
Civ6: Districts, workers replaced with builders, eureka railroaded gameplay, predictable agenda system reducing replayability, smaller maps + most of the previous from civ5

Train crash:
Civ7: Smallest maps so far, swap civs, eras and entirely new gameplay.

I think you can find good things in all the games, I just think the magic is somewhere in the civ4 area. I'd love a civ game that had the unit workshop from SMAC, but improved and expanded. I dont think civ7 is actually a civ game at all. They replaced everything and just made it smaller. What were they thinking?

 

[Kev1916]

I personally think the AAA game industry is way too conservative these days, and constant “remasters” of old games are a sign of this. Just this week we are seeing Bethesda announce a remake of Oblivion after 13+ years of no Elder Scrolls 6…

So much as Civ 7 has its faults I back a developer that isn’t afraid to try new things every time against the creative stagnation of re-releases.

On a side note in an "All will be revealed Oblivion re-mastered" which is live just now with over 600,000 K !! viewers

​

 

[AD1730]

On a side note in an "All will be revealed Oblivion re-mastered" which is live just now with over 600,000 K !! viewers

​

And it's released now on Steam and on console.

 

[Kyriakos]

Nowadays all games look very similar, with all having some version of full 3d with skins and a casual iphone-approach to gaming.
When I was 10 years old, I was imagining the existent strategy games I was playing (including Civ) if you could see their world in full 3d and zoom in and out etc, but hadn't realized that this was the space created by imagination so as to allow for immersion in the actual game that had none of that. When the game has that by default, what is there to imagine? With time, it is taken for granted and becomes trivial as it is impersonal.

Not arguing that you can't imagine, even with this set-up in a game. But I am of the view that it is an example of less is more. Besides, I do love pre-rendered gfx ^^