Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[user746383]

If we lost 20% of players in June even with the patch, and the sale was negligible, I wonder what it would have been without it.

 

[Leucarum]

I mean, the discount is not especially deep, and the patch - with the exception of steam workshop support - was good but not particularly groundbreaking. With better mod support, I wouldn't be surprised if the ripple effects on player retention from this patch emerge over time... But for now, just on the patch features, I wouldn't expext the dial to move that much.

 

[itix]

In fact, I don't understand why do you say that the patient is stable? Every month has shown significant decline, maybe you say this after the quick glance at the "last 30 days" and "June" being very similar, but it seems you have forgotten that we have the 2nd of July so "last 30 days" is simply almost synonymous to "June"

That was a bit of a joke from my side, as "the patient is stable" is sometimes used by medics to not comment on anything at all

@protocol7 thanks, I don't know why I missed the bottom line there...

 

[stealth_nsk]

It is also often mentioned that Civ V launch was bad. The data does not support that either.

I don't think anyone claimed Civ5 had worse launch in terms of simultaneous player count. It had worse launch in terms of player reception. Those metrics are totally unrelated.

Notez-bien, I just realized many Civ games were launched around September-October. This is yet another suspicion that the VII launch was rushed by management.

I don't think it's a sign of being rushed. Release dates are picked based on multiple parameters each time, like potential competition (whichever releases 2K sees as the most dangerous competitors). I think the best indicator that Civ7 was rushed is the fact that it didn't contain some features, which people see as finished product.

Also, this thing with dates is actually important in context of the metric you look at. Civ games which were released in Sep-Oct, got Christmas holiday season after 2-3 months, which Civ7 didn't get yet.

 

[bumpyglint]

In the meantime, I have checked on many Steam games due to the summer sale, and let me show you by comparision with the other games widely considered as "flops" (if not "disasters") to see how disastrous the state of civ7 is as measured by Steam user reviews. If you recognize at least a few of the massive failures listed below your feelings should be similar to mine "oh wow what a mess". 47% may create an illusion of the "mediocre score" but when you compare it with games widely considered unsuccesful then it turns out that actually Steam reviews have a very strong upward positive bias and 47% is a catastrophic result in the Steam context.

(I won't include the games considered to be the financial and critical failures at the ~70% review rate because there have been many of them - to my surprise for example Mass Effect Andromeda has been at this point, despite being widely disliked, ridiculed, losing its player count very rapidly and failing to the point of killing off all planned DLC and two sequels. It seems that already 70% in the Steam context is the beginning of a massive danger zone for the games long term survival)

67% positive reviews

Spoiler :

Humankind, FEAR 3, Total War: Thrones of Britannia, Duke Nukem Forever, Imperator: Rome, Dragon Age: Veilguard. All considered moderate to massive flops. IR was shut down after 1,5 years despite being major flagship project of Paradox who support each game for like 5-10 years. Veilguard is considered to be a colossal failure by its studio. Thrones are frequenty quoted as the worst Total War game ever.

~60%

Spoiler :

Aliens Colonial Marines, Forspoken, Callisto Protocol, Biomutant, Pharaoh, Beyond Earth. First two have reached memetic to legendary status of bad. Calisto was one of the greatest financial video game flops of all time, it killed its studio and its creator is ashamed of it. Pharaoh is tied with Thrones as the worst Total War game ever and which has similarly quickly sank to rock bottom and never recovered. Beyond Earth has rapidly bled to insignificance and has been widely considered a flop, even a massive expansion failed to help it.

57%

Spoiler :

Saints Row (2023) and Heroes VII - both considered by the fanbase as thr disgraceful abominations to the series and very quickly dying financially, with their support ending much earlier than anticipated.

~50%

Spoiler :

Disciples III, Cities Skylines II Mighty No. 9, Dawn of War III, Heroes VI, Torchlight III - all of them have been very widely considered to be the complete failures that have rapidly killed off mot just their own dev plans but their entire franchises and even studios (well Cities Skylines II seem to hobble still, barely)

And Civ7 is at 47%. And constantly falling (recent reviews are 2/3 negative!), currently being near the rock bottom neighborhood of the average score of Agony, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, LOTR: Gollum (lol) and Redfall.

Tl;dr the current review score of civ7 is far below many of the games considered to be spectacularly bad, franchise killers, financial bombs etc.

I said it before and I repeat it even more now, I'm really worried that Civ VII will be dead before having any "big expansion" able to fix it; almost for sure there won't be the usual "2 big expansions".

I mean, the discount is not especially deep, and the patch - with the exception of steam workshop support - was good but not particularly groundbreaking. With better mod support, I wouldn't be surprised if the ripple effects on player retention from this patch emerge over time... But for now, just on the patch features, I wouldn't expext the dial to move that much.

The funniest part is that this Civ would have benefited the most from the Steam Workshop—if only it had arrived before the game's player base had mostly moved on...

I don't think anyone claimed Civ5 had worse launch in terms of simultaneous player count. It had worse launch in terms of player reception. Those metrics are totally unrelated.

Saying it's 'totally unrelated' is just incorrect—come on You can argue that the correlation is weak (and I wouldn't agree so much even with this idea...), but it's pretty obvious there's a connection between active player count and a game's overall reception.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Saying it's 'totally unrelated' is just incorrect—come on You can argue that the correlation is weak (and I wouldn't agree so much even with this idea...), but it's pretty obvious there's a connection between active player count and a game's overall reception.

If you look at the games released in the last 5 years, the highest rated one on release is actually Vampire Survivors (97.31% positive), which has peak players lower than Civ7 (77K).
If you look at the games released in the last 5 years with highest peak number of players, the third is Monster Hunter Wilds (1,384K), which has current rating of 51.28%.

While both metrics has something to do with how well the game is received, they both are affected with so many other factors, that the correlation is generally non-existent. From statistics point of view it could be ignored.

 

[Bug Repellent]

The patient is stable.

The table shown doesn't support this assertion in my humble opinion. Especially when combined with the slowly dropping user review and the fact we're during the summer break and in the middle of a sale (admittedly a modest one).

 

[j51]

Millenia?

Nah. I mean like a real paradox game developed in house that doesn’t look like it’s from 2001. (Not that paradox in-house graphics are that great. So maybe a step above their graphic work too.) Honestly, I just want an actual Civ-EU crossover.

 

[j51]

This stuff is sad. I just hopes it holds on long enough for one full expansion and 7 more civs per era.

Edit: they could still try and bring fans back by fitting all of the techs and civs into a single era and release it to great fanfare as like Civ VII Reimagined or something. The legacies could just be refined as end of game victory conditions. Basically they should try something radical instead of throwing it away. The art assets are just really great and deserve a bigger audience. It would be a waste of money to not try something with those assets.

 

[bumpyglint]

If you look at the games released in the last 5 years, the highest rated one on release is actually Vampire Survivors (97.31% positive), which has peak players lower than Civ7 (77K).
If you look at the games released in the last 5 years with highest peak number of players, the third is Monster Hunter Wilds (1,384K), which has current rating of 51.28%.

While both metrics has something to do with how well the game is received, they both are affected with so many other factors, that the correlation is generally non-existent. From statistics point of view it could be ignored.

First of all, if we want to be that precise, it’s not necessarily true that a game with a lower percentage of positive reviews is perceived as worse overall by the public compared to one with a higher percentage.

Also, you consider "player peak" as a measure of "player counts", which is quite limited. For example, Civilization VII had a good player peak, mainly due to preorders, but it was received so poorly afterward that its player count dropped drastically.

That said, it’s clear that other factors influence player counts—most notably, media coverage. Indie games like Vampire Survivors usually get very little media attention, whereas AAA titles like Monster Hunter enjoy extensive coverage, which helps sustain high player counts even if the player reception is lukewarm.

However, it should be completely clear that simply being the "most played game of the month" (or having the highest player peak, as you considered) doesn’t mean a game is "the best game released that month" in terms of public reception. This was never my claim, and it certainly isn’t the definition of "correlation" or "unrelated data".

That said, despite these nuances, it seems evident to me that player reception does have some correlation with player counts—we can only debate whether that correlation is weak or strong. Naturally, you can bring up thousands of examples where this correlation doesn’t hold, and I can provide millions where it clearly does, so it's your choice how much time we can lose here

 

[Xandinho]

It'd be very disappointing if Civ7 gets an early shutdown.
I think the game introduces many good ideas and improvements compared to previous entries: influence, more realistic graphics (especially compared to Civ6), towns, traders buying resources, and resources with unique bonuses… They took some really interesting steps toward deeper immersion by adding unique architecture, unique civics, and traditions, but then took several steps back with the immersion-breaking mechanic of civilization swapping.

The decoupling of leaders from their civilizations is also a step backward in terms of immersion, though it’s at least something I’d be willing to accept—especially if it means we can have more civs like the Mississippians in the game.

I believe Civ7 will get at least one major expansion, and I suspect it will aim to smooth out many of these immersion issues.
But I’m not very optimistic that the game will receive the same level of long-term development support that Civ6 did, for example.

 

[Kwami]

But I’m not very optimistic that the game will receive the same level of long-term development support that Civ6 did, for example.

There's some pretty strong evidence that Gathering Storm was meant to be the last big thing for VI. There would have been some support patches afterwards and maybe one big final patch like we got for V, but I don't think that we would have seen NFP or LP without the pandemic.

And so, VII will get at least one expansion and, if that's well received, a second expansion. Beyond that, who knows?

 

[Xandinho]

There's some pretty strong evidence that Gathering Storm was meant to be the last big thing for VI. There would have been some support patches afterwards and maybe one big final patch like we got for V, but I don't think that we would have seen NFP or LP without the pandemic.

And so, VII will get at least one expansion and, if that's well received, a second expansion. Beyond that, who knows?

Civ6 was a major success. In addition, there were still highly requested civilizations from fans, such as the Maya, Portugal, and Babylon. There was still plenty of room for development, and clear commercial demand for it.

 

[aieeegrunt]

It people are staying away for polish reasons, or for the modding scene to take off then you mignt see a rally

If it’s civ-switching and era resets, this isn’t recoverable

 

[Kwami]

Civ6 was a major success. In addition, there were still highly requested civilizations from fans, such as the Maya, Portugal, and Babylon. There was still plenty of room for development, and clear commercial demand for it.

And yet, it was very obvious that NFP was a pandemic-driven experiment. I seriously doubt that there were plans for a third expansion before the pandemic messed up everything.

 

[user746383]

I feel like they could make a pretty good killing from another civ6 expansion, especially if the goal was to tighten everything up and just make it work great. Probably even the same for civ5.

 

[trev1972]

It people are staying away for polish reasons, or for the modding scene to take off then you mignt see a rally

If it’s civ-switching and era resets, this isn’t recoverable

I think its a mix, some are waiting for a polished and cheaper game, others hate the switching and resets

 

[user746383]

For me I’m not 100% sure what the fix is, I just know I have more fun if I pick up 4, 5, or 6 so that’s what I do. Though I keep trying 7 whenever there’s an update, so there’s something there. I hope they figure it out.

 

[Civinator]

The decoupling of leaders from their civilizations is also a step backward in terms of immersion, though it’s at least something I’d be willing to accept—especially if it means we can have more civs like the Mississippians in the game.

I agree, that the "decoupling" of leaders from their civilizations is an - in my eyes massive - step backward in terms of immersion, but I don´t agree that this setting for all civs in the game is needed to have civs like the Mississippians in the game.

In that post I explained, that it is enough for civs, whose leader names are not known, as it is with the Missisippians, to name those leaders "Leader of the Missisippians" in the game. It is not necessary, that now the leaders of all civs with the known names of those leaders must be "decoupled" from their civs. In my eyes this "decoupling" should only cover, that there are much too less civs in Civ 7 by release.

In the next version of the mod CCM 3 I will set the civ USA in era 1 to the Missisippians, just to demonstrate that this is possible without any problems for the game (the Civ 3 city graphics for America in era 1 show Missisippian buildings already since the release of Civ 3).

Spoiler :

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I agree, that the "decoupling" of leaders from their civilizations is an - in my eyes massive - step backward in terms of immersion, but I don´t agree that this setting for all civs in the game is needed to have civs like the Mississippians in the game.

In that post I explained, that it is enough for civs, whose leader names are not known, to name those leaders "Leader of the Missisippians" in the game. It is not necessary, that now the leaders of all civs with the known names of those leaders must be "decoupled" from their civs. In my eyes this "decoupling" should only cover, that there are much too less civs in Civ 7 by release.

This is a daily reminder that Tuskaloosa exists.
Decoupling leaders didn't lead to the Mississippians, in my opinion, but civ switching did. In previous games it would be better to have specific tribes that derived from the Mississippian culture: Choctaw, Creek, Caddo, Pawnee, Chickasaw etc.
In Civ 7 you can now have the Mississippians in Antiquity and then progress to any of these tribes in Exploration without them feeling redundant.