Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

Verified_Confection_Being said:
Aren't we in Easter / Spring holidays right now? Why isn't Civ VII experiencing a similar bump?
Click to expand...
There are 2 things here:
1. Usually Christmas holidays are way more impactful than others. Not only because it's bigger and more widespread, but mostly because of gift tradition, so a lot of games are sold in this period.
2. If SteamDB to be believed, there was 10% flash discount on Civ6 on Dec, 20, which probably helped a lot.

Actually, Civ6 used discounts much freely than Civ7, giving first one in just a month after release. It would be interesting to know why Firaxis changes their strategy for sales.
 
Iirc. hardcore fans who had preordered were not exactly pleased with discounts being offered very soon after release of Civ6. But I might be confusing this with another game.
 
tman2000 said:
I’ve noticed that many of us even who put in a lot of hours don’t actually completely understand specialist adjacency planning.
Click to expand...

In addition to their base yields (+2 science, +2 culture) and any bonuses to specialist yields that are independent from the tile (e.g. Confucius bonus, attribute tree bonuses, etc.), specialists add 0.5x the adjacency bonuses of the buildings on the tile. So a library with +3 adjacency from resources will add +1.5 science to each scientist on that tile. It's the same for every era.

Sometimes it shows a bigger yield than that, but from any instance I could test, it is a display bug.
P

Thread 'Error in yield prediction from new building on tile with existing specialist(s)'

I tried to search on this forum and couldn't find this issue reported.

Each specialist adds +2 science / + 2 culture, then 0.5x any adjacency bonus from the buildings on the tile (plus any bonuses from social policies, attribute points, Confucius, etc.)

When adding a new specialist to a tile with buildings, the 0.5x adjacency bonus is reported accurately on the population assignment (blue tile) interface. However, when adding a building (either for an empty slot or overbuilding) on a tile already containing specialist(s), the adjacency bonus is reported as 1x adjacency (double what it...
  • Like
 
pmarc said:
In addition to their base yields (+2 science, +2 culture) and any bonuses to specialist yields that are independent from the tile (e.g. Confucius bonus, attribute tree bonuses, etc.), specialists add 0.5x the adjacency bonuses of the buildings on the tile.
Click to expand...

So how do you plan around that other than placing buildings to max adjacencies then place specialists wherever the best yields are?
 
tman2000 said:
So how do you plan around that other than placing buildings to max adjacencies then place specialists wherever the best yields are?
Click to expand...

I mean do you want a market and a blacksmith in your 3 resource adjacency hex or a library and an academy? That's a trap that's easy to fall into if you aren't planning ahead. That six adjacency coastal peninsula, do you want 3 food (plus specialists) now or do you want 3 gold (plus specialists) later?

You can go through slotting buildings for best adjacencies in exploration and overbuild all your monuments. Now your influence has tanked.

With specialists themselves, is it better to get 3 extra gold or two extra culture? There are still plans to make. Sometimes max adjacencies for buildings and max yields for specialists aren't always the best decision.
 
Calcifer said:
I was curious and checked the stats myself. If you align to release the player retention doesn’t look so much different than what has been for civ 6.

View attachment 729353

I can agree that the launch could have gone better, I also think some people here are making the situation appear way worse than what it is in reality.
Click to expand...

Well the graph is slightly misleading, no?
It makes it look like there's a small difference, but in actuality -

If you take a close look you can tell that Civ7 now has about half of the total amount than Civ5 had at the same time, and about a third to Civ6.

It has the lowest total player count in sheer quantity.
If you consider Civ7 to have been the largest release so far then it would also be the lowest in relative percentage.
Now I don't strictly know if it's the biggest release so far, I don't have the stats but I think it's a reasonable guess.

Now, we aren't counting Console stats which may make up a reasonable margin of concurrent players and total release amount.

Is it a failure from just player count numbers alone? No. Is it bad? Clearly yes, and there's no glossing over it. Let's reality check - you can tell the Civ6 dwarfed the Civ5 numbers, it must've had a bigger release and more hype behind it. So you should expect Civ7 to match or beat Civ6.

What you shouldn't be seeing is Civ7 failing to even hit the lowest numbers on that particular Civ6 graph, even at its peak, and then going far below the Civ5 metrics, which came out almost 15 years prior with a famously awful launch, and a relatively smaller player base than Sid Meier's Civilisation series has now.

So, while I reasonably think that the reality is maybe slightly better than the numbers suggest, the numbers aren't promising and I'm certain they're worried over at FXS HQ... But they will probably save it like they always do.
 
MutilationWave said:
I mean do you want a market and a blacksmith in your 3 resource adjacency hex or a library and an academy? That's a trap that's easy to fall into if you aren't planning ahead. That six adjacency coastal peninsula, do you want 3 food (plus specialists) now or do you want 3 gold (plus specialists) later?

You can go through slotting buildings for best adjacencies in exploration and overbuild all your monuments. Now your influence has tanked.

With specialists themselves, is it better to get 3 extra gold or two extra culture? There are still plans to make. Sometimes max adjacencies for buildings and max yields for specialists aren't always the best decision.
Click to expand...

But it just seems having the right resources is more important and then nothing is ever tight enough to worry about these trade offs. Not to mention how hard it is to worry about them due to UI and lack of civilopedia
 
"All reviews" on steam is 49%, however recent reviews are gradually going down, currently at 42%. That is not what one would expect given that patching is ongoing. With patches it should get better not worse, right? To me this shows, that the game has flaws in its core design. I mean I didn't even purchase it, since why on earth would I want to play 3 mini games instead of one, but as I read from latest reviews (eg.: today) more and more people recognize that this is not fun at all and is the main reason for negative reviews.
 
bitula said:
"All reviews" on steam is 49%, however recent reviews are gradually going down, currently at 42%. That is not what one would expect given that patching is ongoing. With patches it should get better not worse, right? To me this shows, that the game has flaws in its core design. I mean I didn't even purchase it, since why on earth would I want to play 3 mini games instead of one, but as I read from latest reviews (eg.: today) more and more people recognize that this is not fun at all and is the main reason for negative reviews.
Click to expand...
There are many ways to interpret this, but the most simple is that the difference is not statistically significant. 8% difference out of 2000 recent reviews means 160 people.
 
stealth_nsk said:
There are many ways to interpret this, but the most simple is that the difference is not statistically significant. 8% difference out of 2000 recent reviews means 160 people.
Click to expand...
I think the only way to interpret it , is that despite recent patches reviews are well , going down !
Getting worse,
 
Something I’ve learned here is that there’s always some way to doubt or dismiss bad news, or interpret it in some opposite way, if that’s your main motivation.
 
stealth_nsk said:
There are many ways to interpret this, but the most simple is that the difference is not statistically significant. 8% difference out of 2000 recent reviews means 160 people.
Click to expand...
It's very steady and in small decrements if you look at it. It went down from 50% to 42% in a much longer period of time than the initial reviews averaging at 50%. This steady decline is in contrast with other similar games like ARA, which went upwards during the patching process.
 
bitula said:
It's very steady and in small increments if you look at it. It went down from 50% to 42% in a much longer period of time than the initial reviews averaging at 50%. This steady decline is in contrast with other similar games like ARA, which went upwards during the patching process.
Click to expand...
ARA is totally specific case. It was marketed as Civ competition, while actually being in totally different genre. That's why it got so many negative reviews on launch and that's why it recovered quickly afterwards.

Much more relevant example of game recovering through patching is Cyberpunk 2077.
 
stealth_nsk said:
The article claiming Civ7 was second best seller for PS, for example. Or Firaxis report on presale record. Or stat sites estimating sales to be 1M in the first month.

But, honestly, we didn't have much quantitative data in the news for Civ7, so are mostly chewing the same info under different sauces.
Click to expand...
Steam reviews trending more negative, even if it’s slightly, is still news. It’s just not what one would expect for a game ongoing regular patch updates.

A part of me wondered if, when the Founder’s Edition stopped being available, and as a consequence the game no longer had a $120 “price tag,” could this improve players’ impression of value for money?

As a longtime fan of the series, even I found the $120 version to be disappointing and I had a hard time recommending the Founder’s Edition to other players.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

FXS_Sar
  • Sticky
Civilization VII Update 1.2.3 - July 22, 2025
4 5 6
Replies
111
Views
8K
Maiq
Maiq
FXS_Sar
Civilization VII Update 1.2.2 - June 23, 2025
8 9 10
Replies
187
Views
16K
Nikolai II
Nikolai II
FXS_Sar
Checking in from the dev team: June update is almost here!
11 12 13
Replies
253
Views
17K
Krikkit1
K
FXS_Sar
Civilization VII Update 1.2.0 - April 22, 2025
6 7 8
Replies
146
Views
15K
Niallism
N
FXS_Gilgamesh
  • Sticky
A Message From Firaxis Games
2 3
Replies
54
Views
11K
Douglas Oak
Douglas Oak
Back
Top Bottom