Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[KayAU]

Games like Rise of Kingdoms is just an game that makes things better and for free. Sure it has only fifteen free civilizations, but they are much better designed historically and much deeper in mechanics.

Wait what? I haven't played that, but think I have seen ads...isn't that one of those mobile games where it's free to play, but everything is designed around making you spend a fortune on inane stuff like cosmetics and reducing wait times? As I said, I haven't played it, but if this is what it is, it is pretty much the worst direction I could imagine the Civ series going in.

I agree that Civ 7 is too expensive, and the strong focus on monetization through expensive DLC was a major reason I didn't get it at launch. But going to free to play would probably make the game much worse, as mechanics would be shifted towards making players spend money in game instead.

I much prefer the model where developers make the game as good and enjoyable as possible, and then I pay for the whole experience.

 

[Xur]

Games like Rise of Kingdoms is just an game that makes things better and for free. Sure it has only fifteen free civilizations, but they are much better designed historically and much deeper in mechanics.
Civ VII is similar even it is inferior in design.

What kills VII is its absurd cost.
What makes them fix it if no-one plays it?
By going f2p it would draw in some players, and surely some of those would be willing to buy planned DLC with small amount of money. And it would keep the developers interested spending some time with an actual design and pour some love and flavor in it instead of rushing copy/paste "unique" units to meet the deadlines.

I didn't know what Rise of Kingdoms was, so the top search result gave me this. And it's exactly why f2p is cancer.

Rise of Kingdoms is a mobile game wildly popular with players around the world. It is also a manipulative, deceptive, predatory, and illegal scheme designed to promote online gambling and exploit players, including minors, into spending large sums for bogus in-game purchases.

 

[Kev1916]

I didn't know what Rise of Kingdoms was, so the top search result gave me this. And it's exactly why f2p is cancer.

It is also a manipulative, deceptive, predatory, and illegal scheme designed to promote online gambling and exploit players, including minors, into spending large sums for bogus in-game purchases.


I did read that, it was raised in Americia which to be fair says more about the intelligence or lack of user's to try getting a court action as "loot box"-based gaming model is illegal under California law." .......
Which BTW The court rejected the plaintiffs’ contentions about Lilith misleading players, The court also rejected the plaintiffs’ contentions about Lilith misleading players based on how the loot system operated.

It is a mobile game and the loot box system yes does not hand out very rare items , well not that often Doh Sherlock, if anyone spends thousand's of dollars buying "loot" boxes for a mobile game well maybe they should bin there phone

 

[Gorbles]

It is a mobile game and the loot box system yes does not hand out very rare items , well not that often Doh Sherlock, if anyone spends thousand's of dollars buying "loot" boxes for a mobile game well maybe they should bin there phone

If folks have the money and are doing it willingly, there's no problem. People spend their money on all sorts of unnecessary stuff.

The problem is that these games are often designed to psychologically pressure people into spending. Don't blame the users for that. There's a lot of actual (imo malicious) intelligence and intent that can go into these game systems.

 

[Kev1916]

If folks have the money and are doing it willingly, there's no problem. People spend their money on all sorts of unnecessary stuff.

The problem is that these games are often designed to psychologically pressure people into spending. Don't blame the users for that. There's a lot of actual (imo malicious) intelligence and intent that can go into these game systems.

I dont blame the user's thou the words very rare and legendary are not that malicious or hard to work out , and mobile games in the contect of loot boxes" do not equal "Illegal gambling" as per the class action.

To quote the Judge "there was no plausible basis for any of the plaintiffs' claims. "Overall, the [Complaint] is long on speculation and short on plausible facts,"

The case was dismissed at an early stage and the dismissal was not appealed.

​

 

[Krikkit1]

A Free to Play with only 4 Leaders,4 civs per era and Tiny maps only might work.

Perhaps if it was a Weekend/1 Week period it was available.

 

[KayAU]

Well, whatever the legal status of the F2P business model, I would argue that it is certainly manipulative and predatory. My understanding is that these companies do what they can to manipulate players to spend as much as possible. For some people, it will lead to a kind of addiction, which can have serious financial consequences. It may not technically be gambling, but it's not hard to see the similarities.

Besides this, I believe F2P is also a detriment to game design, as games will be designed primarily not to give players a great experience, but to trigger their desire to spend. Classic examples are pay-not-to-wait, or pay-to-skip. These are not features which benefit the game in any way, and encourage designers to make parts of the game intentionally tedious.

If Civ goes down the F2P route, I'm probably out. I'll make do with Vox Populi and the various Civ competitors. Endless Legend 2 is looking interesting. The 1.4 update for Ara: History Untold is pretty darn great. I'm sure more will come along with time.

I'd honestly be happier if Civ 8 was a pachinko machine than if it went the F2P mobile game route.

 

[ThERat]

I can't recommend going down the path of pay to win, supposedly free mobile gaming. I played Rise of Kingdoms as free to play and you can never ever compete with the whales that are willing to spend 100s of thousand just to be tops. It's crazy what sort of money people are willing to spend for such short term dopamine rushes. I wouldnt know how a game like civilization would fit into a mobile freemium model.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I dont blame the user's thou the words very rare and legendary are not that malicious or hard to work out , and mobile games in the contect of loot boxes" do not equal "Illegal gambling" as per the class action.

To quote the Judge "there was no plausible basis for any of the plaintiffs' claims. "Overall, the [Complaint] is long on speculation and short on plausible facts,"

The case was dismissed at an early stage and the dismissal was not appealed.

​

They are illegal gambling in parts of the EU

 

[UWHabs]

I can't recommend going down the path of pay to win, supposedly free mobile gaming. I played Rise of Kingdoms as free to play and you can never ever compete with the whales that are willing to spend 100s of thousand just to be tops. It's crazy what sort of money people are willing to spend for such short term dopamine rushes. I wouldnt know how a game like civilization would fit into a mobile freemium model.

Even other big games with lots of DLC don't go fully freemium (stuff like Cities Skylines, for example). You could arguably drop the base price for the game, and just make sure you have more civs and leaders as DLC that people pay for. But that won't seriously impact things. The big point is that civ is mostly a solo player game - there's only so much monetization you can do. Sure, you could have it so that when you unlock a ruin, instead of paying 3 turns production you pay 3 SidBucks for the larger bonus, that also doesn't work if you let people mod their games they could mod out those values.

I'm definitely curious to see where the June and beyond patches take things, and when we get the first patch that has a real shift in any feature or game mechanism. So far they've make some tweaks, but just in tech prices, costs, changing a +2 to a +1, scale an item by age, and stuff like that. We'll have to see when they really start tackling some of the core or core-ish game features and making some bigger adjustments.

 

[Kev1916]

They are illegal gambling in parts of the EU

Aye which parts? cant see any , thou Rise of Kingdoms was seemly banned for a while in India

 

[Nares]

I dont blame the user's thou the words very rare and legendary are not that malicious or hard to work out , and mobile games in the contect of loot boxes" do not equal "Illegal gambling" as per the class action.

To quote the Judge "there was no plausible basis for any of the plaintiffs' claims. "Overall, the [Complaint] is long on speculation and short on plausible facts,"

The case was dismissed at an early stage and the dismissal was not appealed.

​

That's a shame, and I wonder if the judge was operating under the gatcha-defense. Gatcha is a Japanese term used initially to describe toy vending machines, but which has come to encompass digital "loot boxes." Perhaps you recall seeing these as a child; you'd put in your money, out would pop a plastic ball, and inside the ball would be a toy.

Despite the corporate desire to make it so, it's a poor comparison to digital "loot boxes." Traditional gatcha provides the end-user with a physical product that the user owns. A key point to remember about modern video games is that we're no longer buying a product, but instead renting a license to access the publisher/studio's product, and that license can be revoked at any time and for any reason. That last bit is a necessary evil, to protect publishers/studios from being forever liable if/when they decide to shut down the company.

There is no pre-existing model for such RNG licensing. On the surface of it, the very concept is absurd. Given the potential complications (re: gambling addiction, fraud, etc), it's amazing that this practice is allowed to continue.

Of course, none of that has anything to do with the state of Civ7, and we may be derailing this thread.

 

[bitula]

Civ 7 started at about 85k players, which seems good, especially compared to the current numbers. However, Civ 6 started at a whopping 162k players, almost twice as many. I wonder which factors went into that.

Possibly it was the fact that they revealed the "new mechanics" (ages/civ mix) before selling. So like half of the people thought "I don't want to play this kind of game". I mean there is nothing to try out here, it was already clear what it was about. This reasoning is based on statistics from one person -> myself, but nontheless could be true... I did buy Humankind, but there civ mix was optional, you could always choose the same civ, and it was more logical because the leaders also changed, and those leaders were rather just avatars, so it didn't break immersion.

 

[Civinator]

So like half of the people thought "I don't want to play this kind of game". I mean there is nothing to try out here, it was already clear what it was about. This reasoning is based on statistics from one person -> myself, but nontheless could be true...

Here is another one, so the statistics are now based from two persons - at least. And I never bought Humankind because of that not-liked kind of civ-switching.

 

[trev1972]

This is something I've been thinking about. I think the initial interest for a new entry is to a significant extent dependent on how people feel about the previous one. There are many factors, but it seems like that would be a major one, and I was honestly surprised to see how low the initial player numbers for Civ 7 were.

Civ 7 started at about 85k players, which seems good, especially compared to the current numbers. However, Civ 6 started at a whopping 162k players, almost twice as many. I wonder which factors went into that. The price was surely a big part of it. The negative buzz surrounding things like Civ switching or Denuvo will probably have influenced it, although I don't know how widespread these concerns were outside places like CFC. But could it also be that people were not as happy with Civ 6 as we might think?

I didnt buy the game, i was gifted the game some time after release. For me at least it was the pre release videos that stopped me ordering the game. I simply did not like what i saw.
I don't know how many had the same instant dislike of the ages/civ switching as i did of course

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Possibly it was the fact that they revealed the "new mechanics" (ages/civ mix) before selling. So like half of the people thought "I don't want to play this kind of game". I mean there is nothing to try out here, it was already clear what it was about. This reasoning is based on statistics from one person -> myself, but nontheless could be true... I did buy Humankind, but there civ mix was optional, you could always choose the same civ, and it was more logical because the leaders also changed, and those leaders were rather just avatars, so it didn't break immersion.

As I've posted before, the reasons Firaxis gave people to not buy Civ 7 were broad-based. Personally, I was curious to see what Civ would do with civ-switching and the era system sounded interesting, although I was also cautious because the same leadership team was in place for Civ 7 as Civ 6, and I didn't enjoy Civ 6. I don't know whether I would have ultimately pre-ordered or not, because my hard-stop reason for not pre-ordering was Denuvo. My reason for continuing not to buy is now Denuvo plus game reviews.

As a consumer, I'm very pleased with my "no buy" decision. And as a 4x game fan, I'm very pleased that I've used the time since Civ 7 launched to go back and play a few games of Civ 3 and Civ 4 and spend a lot more time with Old World (which I highly recommend, by the way - that game's in an amazing state right now.)

I'm still open to buying Civ 7 down the road if they address current issues and release a Denuvo-free version (or I build a Linux machine capable of running it), but I'm in no rush.

 

[CliffCo]

As I've posted before, the reasons Firaxis gave people to not buy Civ 7 were broad-based. Personally, I was curious to see what Civ would do with civ-switching and the era system sounded interesting, although I was also cautious because the same leadership team was in place for Civ 7 as Civ 6, and I didn't enjoy Civ 6. I don't know whether I would have ultimately pre-ordered or not, because my hard-stop reason for not pre-ordering was Denuvo. My reason for continuing not to buy is now Denuvo plus game reviews.

As a consumer, I'm very pleased with my "no buy" decision. And as a 4x game fan, I'm very pleased that I've used the time since Civ 7 launched to go back and play a few games of Civ 3 and Civ 4 and spend a lot more time with Old World (which I highly recommend, by the way - that game's in an amazing state right now.)

I'm still open to buying Civ 7 down the road if they address current issues and release a Denuvo-free version (or I build a Linux machine capable of running it), but I'm in no rush.

I don't understand the hate for Denuvo, anything that helps fight piracy is good imo, if your negativity towards it is based on it slowing down game performance then that's not a valid argument either as Civ7 doesn't require high frame rates etc.

 

[Leucarum]

I wonder if how bad Humankind is may have hurt Civ7. I remember when the initial announcement featured civ switching my stomach clenched a little bit because of how bad Humankind implemented it. Civ 7's version is way better, but the whole mechanic just has bad connotations for anyone familiar with Humankind... And implementing it better still doesn't mean implementing it well. I enjoy Civ7 in spite of Civ switching not because of it.

 

[Hannibal XIII]

Possibly it was the fact that they revealed the "new mechanics" (ages/civ mix) before selling. So like half of the people thought "I don't want to play this kind of game". I mean there is nothing to try out here, it was already clear what it was about. This reasoning is based on statistics from one person -> myself, but nontheless could be true... I did buy Humankind, but there civ mix was optional, you could always choose the same civ, and it was more logical because the leaders also changed, and those leaders were rather just avatars, so it didn't break immersion.

I'm kinda in this boat. I never completed Civ6 (as in buying all the DLC) due to disquiet over some leader and civ choices and most importantly due to a map editor that was subpar compared to Civ V's for the entire life of the game.

I was in the "wait for a sale" boat on Civ7 but the civ-switching and "Great People" grab bag of leaders turned me into a hard no. I like the idea of historical transitions (although I'd prefer to play through the whole collapse) -- but they could not have picked three worse civs to promote in pre-game explanatory material as an example of switching representing that progression.

Egypt-Songhai-Buganda? Three polities with nothing in common and no ties to each other, not even close geographically within Africa, a bog-standard colonized cattle kingdom being the modern age end state of the one ancient civ to survive the Bronze Age Collapse, builders of mathematically perfect Pyramids, and the big dog of the early modern Sahel?!

That progression to me says it all about where Civ is now. Only a hotep would earnestly think those civs should be grouped together like that; its as bad as Civ 4 Sitting Bull.

And the leaders, who they place so much emphasis on, did not fill me with any more desire to take the plunge.

I hope they get it together for the next iteration, but if not then it was a hell of a run for my Civ days -- from a Civ II CD my mom got me at a Marshalls all the way to 6.

 

[VGT]

Not sure if this was discussed at some point, but I realized today that we can get something interesting from player charts when comparing civ 6 and 7.

When checking at what time peak is happening for each game during weekdays, civ 6 has its peak at 14:00 UTC and it's much bigger compared to any other secondary peak.

Then civ 7 has peak at different time - 19:00 UTC.

Now a bit of speculation:
I think it shows that at least on Steam both games have big difference in relative demographic size from different parts of the world. More precise conclusion I would try to draw from it is that civ7 lost a lot of demographic from 14:00 UTC peak but has bigger percentage overall in 19:00 UTC peak.

Now if I would try to guess, what part of the world that would be, I would draw a conclusion, that it's a working gamer in its 30-40+ age often having kids, so gaming window usually happen somewhere around 7:00PM - 10:00PM.

This translates first peak (civ6 favored) to UTC+5 - UTC+8. And second peak (civ7 favored) is in UTC+0 - UTC+3.

So final conclusion that can be drawn from all this is civ6 was quite popular in east Asia, so most likely a lot of Chinese players while biggest peak from civ7 comes from Europe. So game did not appeal to Chinese market as much as previous one? Or maybe this could explain lower numbers on Steam - are consoles much more popular in China these days instead of PC?

A lot of speculation here on my part so if you see different ways to interpret some steps, I'm all ears.