Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[The Civs 6]

This. The Chess example is great, Chess doesnt need to be fundamentally changed because 99% of games dont reach the end, as long as the games played are interesting

You dont break Chess into pieces and add artificial stepbacks just to try to force more games to be finished

While I agree with your point, there should be a godwin's law type trope about comparing video games to chess

 

[Krikkit1]

While I agree with your point, there should be a godwin's law type trope about comparing video games to chess

Especially because Late game Chess has nothing invested in it that Early game chess does not.

If Civ was designed with only Pawns, knights and castles… then it would be fine if the late game was boring. But if the late game is going to have Battleships, Aircraft and Ideology and unique bonuses for the Green player….and it isn’t interesting… then the late game mechanics need to be changed so that the late game stays competitive and interesting.

 

[Crashdummy]

While I agree with your point, there should be a godwin's law type trope about comparing video games to chess

Well, Civilization is partially based on Board games and Ed Beach keeps trying to push it that way, so in this case its not that bad

Especially because Late game Chess has nothing invested in it that Early game chess does not.

This is just wrong. A Mistake made by your opponent in the early game in Chess can give you the victory if you take advantage of it

Chess is one of the more snowballiest games in existence, to the point that there is a whole study on openings

 

[Kwami]

This is just wrong. A Mistake made by your opponent in the early game in Chess can give you the victory if you take advantage of it

Chess is one of the more snowballiest games in existence, to the point that there is a whole study on openings

But that misses the point. In Chess, you start with everything that you're ever going to get and the rules never change. In Civilization, new pieces and rules are introduced at various times throughout the game. If the later parts of the game aren't competitive or at least interesting, then all of that stuff might as well not exist. Chess doesn't have this problem.

 

[Gorbles]

The list I quoted was so generic it could apply to nearly any recent release.

Firaxis can select whichever cohort they want to listen to or prioritize feedback from. Just hope their analysis goes beyond a surface level list that diffuses critiques.

And yet, contextually, the list applies to VII. Specifically, in referring to user reviews of the game.

Don't talk around the issue, yeah? Somebody gave a list of issues raised in reviews, and your response was "well I hope they don't act based on that". You want them, presumably, to focus on different issues. And therein lies the rub.

The thing is, there’s also no real proof that people not finishing their games is actually a problem.

This isn't the problem (it's also unfalsifiable).

In my opinion, they were trying to fix something that didn’t really need to be fixed!

This is the problem (for you). It's not a matter of evidence. There would never be any evidence that would validate the game's choices for you, because you don't think the problem needed fixing. It's an emotive argument, not a fact-based one.

(this doesn't make it wrong - as I say a lot, players should find games fun, or compelling in some way)

LATE EDIT - to be clear, I think they were trying to address something that needed to be addressed. My running argument throughout this tangent that while the release reception is one thing, knowing it ahead of time is a very different thing.

This. The Chess example is great, Chess doesnt need to be fundamentally changed because 99% of games dont reach the end, as long as the games played are interesting

You dont break Chess into pieces and add artificial stepbacks just to try to force more games to be finished

You should, uh, study the early history of chess.

Also I'm not sure you're right that games don't typically reach the end (in chess). People do resign, of course, but I don't think any of us have the statistics to make claims as to how common it is.

(which is funny considering the tangent is "Firaxis are drawing bad conclusions from data / misinterpreting data" / "don't have data")

Here's an old thread on the topic:

The etiquette of resigning - Chess Forums

To resign a game is to acknowledge that your opponent has reached a position so strong that only through gross mistakes would he/she lose. It is also a mark of respect because it assumes your opponent will not in fact make such mistakes. When is the right time to resign a game? To my mind...

www.chess.com

 

[aelf]

Ed Beach stated: "It's the leader that really counts for Civ players." I'm not exactly sure how he came to that conclusion. Maybe it was based on some misinterpreted player data, or maybe someone just mentioned it to him over lunch, I don't know. And honestly, that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that Firaxis clearly misjudged their community, and that's how we ended up with this mess. Therefore it makes sense for them, to get in touch with the community more, like reading these threads in this very forum. Not sure what's so hard to understand about that?

What's hard to understand is why you responded to a post about in-game data and telemetry to complain about a design decision that has no evident or demonstrable basis in those things.

Apparently, that sort of baseless complaining is just common sense in this thread!

 

[Siptah]

I mean, how would we react if the AI in civ 7 would behave as a chess player that resigns as soon as they realize that a loss is likely? Would it be interesting to win games mid exploration because all others resign?

I think the win conditions since at least civ 4 always tried to solve this problem a bit by not making you go all the way for a victory. It's fine to have a certain amount of land or all capitals or just beeline science victory etc. You don't need to play until you own all the map or got all techs. The exception is of course the tourism victory which actually wants you to go all the way and dominate all civs. In civ 7, this certainly isn't a problem though, as all victories are rather easy and fast to achieve.

I also think that comparisons between chess and civ are difficult though. They have very different game concepts. And one is legendary for how immersive it is and the other is a video game famous for piling abstract mechanics on top of each other.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Also I'm not sure you're right that games don't typically reach the end (in chess). People do resign, of course, but I don't think any of us have the statistics to make claims as to how common it is.

On high level chess resign is almost exclusive end of the game, because players see forced checkmates several moves before them and know winning end-games by heart. Most of the times I've seen checkmates on high level is when people instead of resigning make a move leading to quick checkmate out of respect to the opponent's game. And yes, there are cases when high-level players terribly blunder too, but it's even more rare.

But fully deterministic multiplayer-only game without hidden state is surely not a good analogy to compare Civilization with.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Devs made a huge mistake with this thing

Every game is played more at the beginning that at the end.

EVERY SINGLE GAME

Even Ocarina of Time had people that started the game and didnt finish it

And if we go to continous games, every simulator game had people abandoning their "careers" to start one again when they felt they achieved their objectives. Be it a Football simulator, a racing one, a basketball one, etc

Its normal to not finish every single game you start

BTW, this happens in board games too, i have abandoned plenty of times games of Risk or Monopoly, etc when the winner is clear

Its not a problem to solve

Over 60% of players never finishing a game of Civ VI is a problem absolutely worth tackling.

This. The Chess example is great, Chess doesnt need to be fundamentally changed because 99% of games dont reach the end, as long as the games played are interesting

You dont break Chess into pieces and add artificial stepbacks just to try to force more games to be finished

You must not be aware of "Freestyle Chess/Fischer Chess/Chess 960", which is a variation of traditional Chess which some of the best Chess players of all time including Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen have made pushes for.

What do you mean 99% of Chess games don't reach the end? What do you count as "the end" in Chess?

 

[itix]

I mean, how would we react if the AI in civ 7 would behave as a chess player that resigns as soon as they realize that a loss is likely? Would it be interesting to win games mid exploration because all others resign?

I think the win conditions since at least civ 4 always tried to solve this problem a bit by not making you go all the way for a victory. It's fine to have a certain amount of land or all capitals or just beeline science victory etc. You don't need to play until you own all the map or got all techs. The exception is of course the tourism victory which actually wants you to go all the way and dominate all civs. In civ 7, this certainly isn't a problem though, as all victories are rather easy and fast to achieve.

In Old World, you can achieve a so called double victory. It is triggered when you have gained twice as many victory points as the second player. It is quite neat, though the endgame in Old World is shorter anyway.

 

[UWHabs]

That's my solution as well.

Civ V has a dynamic that, if you're playing for domination, after you've captured two or three capitals, you can pretty much count on three or four civs to simultaneously declare war on you. I find this a challenge to my play, because my military is often stretched pretty thin / overcommitted to one front. But more importantly, I find it entirely plausible. If one country has shown such aggressive propensities, the others are going to be more inclined to band together to stop that one. So I find this a natural anti-snowballing effect.

It think it could be enhanced. If you've conquered two capitals, any civs that share a border with you should sign a mutual defense pact and should move maybe 50% of their troops to those borders, prioritize the building of fortresses there. Late game, with air and naval power, it shouldn't even be just civs that share a border with you; it should be the rest of the known world. And they should set their troops up for some focused, maximally-annoying counter-defense, so that even a civ that hasn't built a particularly large army can set you back a step.

And, there should be some equivalent in other dimensions of the game. They're more inclined to sign research agreements with one another, if you start to develop a tech lead. They boycott your blue jeans and rock-and-roll if you get too uppity in culture.

And the player should be able to join in such leagues to keep a snowballing AI in check.

And "hear, hear" to GeneralZift's x-post.

That was one of the worst parts of civ 5 though. It was annoying that the friend you've had the entire game, that you're busy trading with, would invariably backstab you. If it's too obvious that that is going to happen, then it makes the whole process of developing a relationship useless.

I don't mind if they lean into the ideologies more, sure. Like in my current game, I've had Pachacuti as an ally the entire game. He's been my bff for the whole game. I've fought wars for him, he's fought wars for me. In the modern era, he opted for democracy. So sure, if you want ideology pressure to be such that if I don't follow him to democracy, I need to basically put 100% pressure to fight to keep him as an ally. But if I chose democracy to join him, I should be able to stay allied, he shouldn't turn on me just because I have more science or culture.

 

[itix]

Over 60% of players never finishing a game of Civ VI is a problem absolutely worth tackling.

There is indeed a design problem in Civ VI - it is boring. In addition, it seems to be badly optimized. Enemy turns are taking too much time, even on performant machines.

On the other hand, I have shifted my playstyle. I dont care if I am winning or losing, I play Civ6 as an empire/city builder game and I quit when I am done. I have disabled all victory conditions except domination victory.

 

[Gori the Grey]

That was one of the worst parts of civ 5 though. It was annoying that the friend you've had the entire game, that you're busy trading with, would invariably backstab you. If it's too obvious that that is going to happen, then it makes the whole process of developing a relationship useless.

I don't mind if they lean into the ideologies more, sure. Like in my current game, I've had Pachacuti as an ally the entire game. He's been my bff for the whole game. I've fought wars for him, he's fought wars for me. In the modern era, he opted for democracy. So sure, if you want ideology pressure to be such that if I don't follow him to democracy, I need to basically put 100% pressure to fight to keep him as an ally. But if I chose democracy to join him, I should be able to stay allied, he shouldn't turn on me just because I have more science or culture.

Yeah, but if you're clearly going for a domination victory, then he has legitimate reasons for wondering how long your friendship to him is going to last.

 

[Krikkit1]

That was one of the worst parts of civ 5 though. It was annoying that the friend you've had the entire game, that you're busy trading with, would invariably backstab you. If it's too obvious that that is going to happen, then it makes the whole process of developing a relationship useless.

I don't mind if they lean into the ideologies more, sure. Like in my current game, I've had Pachacuti as an ally the entire game. He's been my bff for the whole game. I've fought wars for him, he's fought wars for me. In the modern era, he opted for democracy. So sure, if you want ideology pressure to be such that if I don't follow him to democracy, I need to basically put 100% pressure to fight to keep him as an ally. But if I chose democracy to join him, I should be able to stay allied, he shouldn't turn on me just because I have more science or culture.

Something like that should not be sudden. All throughout the game, there should be relationship penalties for being strong/in a winning position. They should intensify in the late game. So if you and Pacha are the two strongest civs…it should be very hard to get or keep an alliance at Any part of the game.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The thing is, there’s also no real proof that people not finishing their games is actually a problem. I think Emotional Husky made a great video about that on his YouTube channel. Personally, I only finish a small percentage of my games, but the ones I do finish are usually very exciting. In Civ 5, for example, you could get great endgames thanks to the ideology system.
The ones I don’t finish aren’t necessarily bad either, especially on the higher difficulty levels. Sometimes, you just have to acknowledge that your opponent did better, and then you accept the defeat. It's similar to chess: Most games aren’t played out to the very last move, but that doesn’t mean the game isn’t working as intended. In my opinion, they were trying to fix something that didn’t really need to be fixed!

Its not just chess, this is common for any sort of strategy game, turn based or real time.
At some point its clear to all the participants who is going to win, and the game is usually ended there.

Fully agree that this was a "problem" that didn't need fixing, and only made the game worse as a result.

 

[Crashdummy]

But that misses the point. In Chess, you start with everything that you're ever going to get and the rules never change. In Civilization, new pieces and rules are introduced at various times throughout the game. If the later parts of the game aren't competitive or at least interesting, then all of that stuff might as well not exist. Chess doesn't have this problem.

Later parts are competitive, sometimes, on SOME games. They are not in every game

Chess doesnt add piece, but changes strategies, there are "late game" strategies and players that are specialist on them. But not every game reaches that situation, or at least not in a competitive state

And its fine. In Civilization, during the history of the franchise, it was not a problem that some games were already decided by that point, just like Chess games might have already finish or also be decided

The problem here is that Firaxis wants to sell their Modern Civlets at the same price than their Antiquity ones, it wasnt a problem for the players, it is a problem for the executives trying to maximize profit

Going back to the numbers discussion, this weekend we saw about the same downward trend we saw after the first weekend of patches, so the trend doesnt seem like it was modified by the higher spike in players

 

[Crashdummy]

Over 60% of players never finishing a game of Civ VI is a problem absolutely worth tackling.


You must not be aware of "Freestyle Chess/Fischer Chess/Chess 960", which is a variation of traditional Chess which some of the best Chess players of all time including Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen have made pushes for.

What do you mean 99% of Chess games don't reach the end? What do you count as "the end" in Chess?

I disagree, its not worth tackling because its not a problem

And yes, i know Freestyle chess, the fact that Fischer random exists is proof that Classical Chess is amazingly snowballing. But here is the difference, Freestyle chess IS A DIFFERENT GAME MODE. It does not replace Chess and it would receive a really bit commotion and genative response if they would have push to be a replacement. Funny isnt?

The end in Chess is checkmate, stalemate and such, not resigning, which is how most of the games finish

 

[Gorbles]

Its not just chess, this is common for any sort of strategy game, turn based or real time.
At some point its clear to all the participants who is going to win, and the game is usually ended there.

Fully agree that this was a "problem" that didn't need fixing, and only made the game worse as a result.

We must play very different strategy games then. Resigning can happen, but playing to a win or loss happens a lot, too.

Do you have any statistics to suggest which might be the dominant practise?

Later parts are competitive, sometimes, on SOME games. They are not in every game

Chess doesnt add piece, but changes strategies, there are "late game" strategies and players that are specialist on them. But not every game reaches that situation, or at least not in a competitive state

And its fine. In Civilization, during the history of the franchise, it was not a problem that some games were already decided by that point, just like Chess games might have already finish or also be decided

The problem here is that Firaxis wants to sell their Modern Civlets at the same price than their Antiquity ones, it wasnt a problem for the players, it is a problem for the executives trying to maximize profit

Going back to the numbers discussion, this weekend we saw about the same downward trend we saw after the first weekend of patches, so the trend doesnt seem like it was modified by the higher spike in players

Chess literally added pieces. It changed existing pieces! This is why I asked you about chess history!

The problem here, in this tangent, is there's far too much post-hoc decisionmaking. People come up with their theories as to why an entry turned out to be something they don't enjoy, and retrofit everything to suit that theory, instead of finding evidence that actually supports that theory.

There is no evidence of "civlets". The non-existence of "civlets" in VI didn't stop them selling us content piecemeal there. Or in CiV! CiV even had map packs.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I think there are several different things there.

1. There's a difference between lose-quit, which happens almost always (few people play to the total defeat) and win-quit where winning is boring.

2. Let's talk about SP games only, because in MP it's enough for all losing players to do lose-quit for the game to end.

3. Win-quit itself is not a problem, it's an indicator of a potential problem. If players leave the game in the first third, because they win the game in the first third, that's the problem with snowballing being too huge. If players leave the game while working on victory project it's an indicator that victory screen is not satisfactory.

So, the problem with previous civ titles is the amount of snowballing, which makes late game so uninteresting (on top of other reasons for the late game to not be interesting) that players end the game very early. And yes, extreme snowballing is the problem which needs fixing in my book, because the game is supposed to be played from caves to space, not from caves to castles.

 

[Crashdummy]

Chess literally added pieces. It changed existing pieces! This is why I asked you about chess history!

The problem here, in this tangent, is there's far too much post-hoc decisionmaking. People come up with their theories as to why an entry turned out to be something they don't enjoy, and retrofit everything to suit that theory, instead of finding evidence that actually supports that theory.

And Civilization also added pieces before. The last change in Chess was en passant and was over 100 years ago, and even then it was just a small change (that had big impact, but a small change)

But when new ways to play the game came, like Freestyle/Fischer random it was adropted as a NEW GAME MODE, it didnt replace the original game. That's the difference