I kind of agree with those that said that the ages don't exactly solve the snowballing. It's a half-built house. The chapters, or what you can call level design, are now watered down to make it feel more like one run, with mini-setbacks. I think this works for Civ7, but has to be redone somewhat for the next iteration. The ages mechanic, in my eyes, will likely stay, as it provides the backdrop for selling additional content. It also breaks up the game into sessions that people can tailor for single/multiplayer. However, in order to really prevent snowballing, the design should actually lean even more into separate level/chapter design than it does now. The reason ages are not well received by some is the setback of the player. If they, however, let you "divide and conquer" within a geographical subsection of the global map during antiquity and then place you into a much enlarged universe with boosted AI players, it would prevent snowballing. Imagine an Old World like antiquity that does not stop after 200 turns but lets you enter the next level, aka age, with additional civilisations on a larger map that pose a new challenge. It's game design of leveling up and finding a bigger enemy, instead of artificially reducing the player's ability.
Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread
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I think what we're seeing is a combination of short-to-medium term stopgaps while bigger improvements that retain the feel of VII are in the works (see comments about religion to date for a less divisive example), twinned with trying to hit explicit player pain points (obviously not all of them, for every player).
My worry is that too much work invested in stopgaps makes longer term solutions even more work, but let's see. I think my main gripe is Continuity being default haha. I've been fine with pretty much everything else. I don't even oppose Continuity as an option.
With this system, the Human would not get benefits/penalties based on how poorly/well they did.
instead, only the AI would get greater or lesser boosts based on how poorly/ well it did.
If the player “loses out” on a boost because they did well..they might feel bad
If the AI “loses out” on a boost because they did well…that just means the AI is providing the proper challenge.
Leucarum
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For sure a lot of what's coming right now is stopgaps. Anything bigger is going to need an hollistic solution since pretty much every big change you could make is going to make 3 knock on effects.
Making everythjng optional is I think the best way for Firaxis to satisfy everyone, but there is probably a limit to how much you can do that before the permutations you have to balance become untenable.
Askia Muhammad
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A ball park guess would be 75% dislike maybe 25% actually like the changes. Even positive reviews mention ages and Civ swapping aren’t great.
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The firaxis of today is not the same as the firaxis of yesterday though, and I'm not convinced by the current pace of change they are making that they are capable of the kind of large scale change required right now
The amount of times people have been blaming Ed Beach for things here, I dunno about that.
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Those 2 things aren't incompatible. They've built a poor quality untested product over a span of 4 years, which I think has been universally panned as incomplete and buggy. That's all under Ed Beach's leadership. It's his design too which has polarised the fanbase.
And now when it comes to actually trying to stitch this all together and hang improvements into the current codebase, they are struggling immensely with pace without breaking everything else around it.
Ed Beach has been with Firaxis since at least CiV. Which is the game Solver referenced, in the post you replied to. Indeed, Beach is often credited with turning V around (positively).
So I'd say that they are incompatible, yes. The Firaxis of then and the Firaxis of now may have changed (what team doesn't over time?), but we can't use that to simultaneously to justify the success of a game Beach had an arguably-large hand in, and the failure of another game that Beach had an arguably-large hand in.
(to be clear: I'm not saying you said anything about Beach)
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Personally from what I've seen I think the caliber of the development team at Firaxis now compared to what it was in order to deliver Civ VI is considerably lower. I don't even like VI, but I can appreciate the quality that went into the creation of that game, and I find myself clscratchimg my head at the lack of it now.
VI famously didn't have working AI for aircraft for however long (among other notable missteps).
V had its own share of illustrious and at times amusing bugs.
Memory is fickle. It's harder to preserve what you felt 10, 15, 20 years ago. I'm the same - I'm 36 now. Not old by any stretch, but I started playing strategy games in my teens (and I'm sure some started younger). I think I might have been 10-ish for Civ 1. I wasn't much older than that when I played SMAC for the first time. I understood games far less then than I do now. Far less is surprising to me, or even wondrous; there's less emotion because "wow, ooo" is just something I don't have in the same way I did when I was a kid. I have two of my own, and I'm permanently tired
It's also hard to debate general sentiments about development teams without gettings into the state of the industry, profit motives for shareholders, and all sorts of other off-topic stuff. The economic climate's a mess, and people have to be more cautious with their disposable income than I think they've had to be in decades. I personally believe the game was released too early (separate to design decisions that some dislike, I think regardless the game was also released too early). It's hard to infer anything from that*, in my opinion (beyond the off-topic). YMMV.
*about the development team specifically
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You might not like the game, but it is a high quality game and, compared to previous releases in this series, it has remarkably fewer bugs and problems. Besides that, it has not been universally panned. User ratings on Steam are about 50/50 and "professional" ratings average to about 4/5.
I don't want to speculate about what the team is going to do with Civ7 now, but I intentionally referenced a prior history from Civ5 and not any of the earlier games. Civ5, 6 and 7 share a lot of the same team. From Ed Beach who designed the Civ5 expansions, but also people on the production side, the technical side and elsewhere. Plus the same type of corporation. While SMAC, Civ3 and Civ4 were developed by Firaxis as an independent game studio, Civ5-7 are all in the current scheme of Firaxis as a 2K-owned development studio.
None of that actually tells us what they'll do with Civ7 in future updates, but I think Firaxis today retains a lot of the studio that made 5 and 6.
GeneralZift
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If I'm being honest, Civ series has hugely wasted potential.
I don't think of it as 'high quality' the same way I might picture a title with tons of effort put into it, like Smash Ultimate, Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, Baldos Gate, Divinity, to perhaps name a few off the top of my head.
A lot of those titles simply nail everything, art, music, gameplay, pricing, top of the industry, and so on.
Of course if I have to name a strategy game in there I'd add Age of Empires 2 for the same reasons.
Civ is an average series. They don't nail the gameplay every time. The art is sometimes good but not always. The music is usually good.
What carries Civ is just a lack of competition. It's the monopoly effect.
This is how the game continues to grow despite having terrible reception at launch for the last 3 games.
It continues to grow even if it misses features from previous games. It will continue to grow even if the DLC is predatory or the UI is buggy or the AI is stupid.
Because up its sleeve is the Civ special sauce, a certain something that other 4X games can't recreate, and it's probably to do with ease of accessibility for newcomers, and the tactile feel of the notifications, and the 'one more turn' phenomenon.
I and I imagine many others don't exactly feel attracted to any other 4X game. You can't scratch that Civ itch anywhere else.
But once competitors are born that understand this same special sauce, it's going to make or break Civ.
Either they will have to adapt for the market or the market will dump them for a game which has less flaws.
I don't think of it as 'high quality' the same way I might picture a title with tons of effort put into it, like Smash Ultimate, Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, Baldos Gate, Divinity, to perhaps name a few off the top of my head.
A lot of those titles simply nail everything, art, music, gameplay, pricing, top of the industry, and so on.
Of course if I have to name a strategy game in there I'd add Age of Empires 2 for the same reasons.
Civ is an average series. They don't nail the gameplay every time. The art is sometimes good but not always. The music is usually good.
What carries Civ is just a lack of competition. It's the monopoly effect.
This is how the game continues to grow despite having terrible reception at launch for the last 3 games.
It continues to grow even if it misses features from previous games. It will continue to grow even if the DLC is predatory or the UI is buggy or the AI is stupid.
Because up its sleeve is the Civ special sauce, a certain something that other 4X games can't recreate, and it's probably to do with ease of accessibility for newcomers, and the tactile feel of the notifications, and the 'one more turn' phenomenon.
I and I imagine many others don't exactly feel attracted to any other 4X game. You can't scratch that Civ itch anywhere else.
But once competitors are born that understand this same special sauce, it's going to make or break Civ.
Either they will have to adapt for the market or the market will dump them for a game which has less flaws.
Crashdummy
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If only the current problems were as negligible as that problem....
I dont think we should be blaming anyone, since we dont even know exactly which is the Development process and who is exactly making the decisions (Civ switching to me is a financial decision to sell cheaper Civs for more money, so it wouldnt be an Ed Beach decision)
The team has failed, and they will now internally who has a bigger share of the blame
Lets not forget Dragon Age Veilguard had a "professional" rating of 9/10. Professional ratings are not worth the toilet paper i use
The game is a fluke
I'd say he's like one of my favorite sports personalities, Guenther Steiner. Very good at managing a messy situation and digging out of a hole. Poor at managing once you're out of the danger zone.
I was simply correcting bad information. Your opinion is worth just as much to me as professional ratings are to you.
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You've misunderstood me. I didn't mean the game as a whole has been universally panned as bad. I said it's been universally panned as incomplete and buggy. Plenty of people still like it in spite of that, but even those players can see that it released incomplete and buggy.
I don't have any response to "remarkbly fewer bugs and problems" except just wow.
To me it is clear Civ 7 has not been very well received at this point, and i don't believe it is parallel to how 5 was received at all.
I don't personally like it at all, its the first time i have uninstalled a civ game to make space on my drive.
However, i have to be honest. And i appreciate this will be an unpopular take, not looking to argue with anyone, its just how i feel.
I think 7 was to be expected. For me, from 4 onwards the game has been moving in this direction. I think less and less effort has been made from 4 onwards to hide the fact that you are playing a board game, not leading an empire. I think the AI has gotten worse since 4, not better. I think less effort has been made to add personality to the game and to add personality to your opponents. Effort seems to have been focussed on initial prettiness and accessibility.
I enjoyed both 5 and 6, i clocked up a few thousand hours in both but could feel the way the game was heading -especially with 6.
Yet sales of the game kept improving each time, 5 sold more than 4 eventually and 6 was the biggest success of all. So i can see why the developers made the decisions they did with 7.
I don't personally like it at all, its the first time i have uninstalled a civ game to make space on my drive.
However, i have to be honest. And i appreciate this will be an unpopular take, not looking to argue with anyone, its just how i feel.
I think 7 was to be expected. For me, from 4 onwards the game has been moving in this direction. I think less and less effort has been made from 4 onwards to hide the fact that you are playing a board game, not leading an empire. I think the AI has gotten worse since 4, not better. I think less effort has been made to add personality to the game and to add personality to your opponents. Effort seems to have been focussed on initial prettiness and accessibility.
I enjoyed both 5 and 6, i clocked up a few thousand hours in both but could feel the way the game was heading -especially with 6.
Yet sales of the game kept improving each time, 5 sold more than 4 eventually and 6 was the biggest success of all. So i can see why the developers made the decisions they did with 7.
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