By playercount? Pretty positively in VII's favour. But I don't know what comparison you mean, to be fair.
The problem with the image of history in layers is actually a benefit of sorts, that some can be put off by the idea and not the practise. Which means, technically, they're still in a camp that can be convinced by the game as-is (nevermind any future changes).
Which is probably why Firaxis have been marketing the updates as well (imo) as they have. Maybe that's also what the stats are seeing the benefit of.
I was thinking of comparing the reception Civ7 gets from the subset of players that don’t hate civ switching with Humankind to see which game did that mechanic better, but it would be hard to split out that subset.
I don’t think the concept of history as layers is what turned so many people off; it’s the abrupt developer fiat reset. Let me play through the collapse. This is the concept the Rhys and Fall mod was based around and people loved it. It’s an old fashioned manual install mod on an older version of civ, so right there you know the players of that mod are automatically self selected to be cranky grognard CivFanatics.
This is from an entirely different game and playerbase, but the last level of Halo Reach was deliberatly engineered to be unwinneable. The Rookie dies no matter what he does. People still played and enjoyed it, because it became about what sort of shenanigans can you pull off to stay alive as long as possible
Sometimes it’s about the journey, not the destination. Civ7 switching/era reset takes the journey away. I mean personally I’m a big fan of Joseph Tainter’s theories of societal collapse, I’d love to see that encorporated into Civ, but not like this
Actually, there's no way for us to somehow verify what was the reason for improving reviews. It's a matter of what you believe in (pun intended). People who think only "classical mode" could save the game, put emphasis on the announcement, while people who thing Civ7 core is fine as is, tend to believe patch and DLC were the reason.
But there's nothing to discuss, really.
Ya we can spitball theories, like mine is “it’s only gonna be people who are aware of Civ switching buying it now since the word is out”. This would tend to support the idea that it’s patching and maybe DLC responsible for the uptick.
My knowledge of stats is fairly basic, so I have no idea what sort of math is possible with the data we have.
