Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[sonicmyst]

I think the problem with Modern Age is that it very feels much like a WW2 scenario + monopolies game mode from older games but without any action happening. There is also nothing else to discover or explore at this point because most of the map has been revealed already, and settling new towns seem inconsequential.

I think that is the inherent problem with Ages system. While it provides opportunity to play a good civ of that age, the downside is that Ages forces the player to play that same scenario to win.

 

[Core Imposter]

They are going to soldier on and ignore any criticism in regards to ages, leaders and civs. The first time I heard Firaxis acknowledge problems with civ6 was when Ed Beach was explaining civ7 in marketing videos. They are very rigid in their design, so any course correction is probably first when they start with civ8. I wouldn't be surprised if they actually keep ages in civ8. They had 3-4 years after Humankind to change direction and didn't. It feels like they design games in a vacuum and don't listen to anyone outside the office, or play other games.

bleak take

 

[misesfan]

They may develop their game in a vacuum - but numbers dont lie. They cant even beat Fallout 76, which is dang pathetic. I'm sorry, but the game seems cooked.

 

[luca 83]

When I wrote that fixed leaders were anachronistic, no one agreed with me: the game does not improve with the addition of civilizations, VR viewers, languages approved by Native American tribes, the game improves with better AI, with narrative events that explain why a civilization is born and falls, it does not simply change with the change of eras.

 

[ThERat]

Not to get too personal, but Ed Beach reminds me of some of the managers I worked with, very much convinced his ideas are better than others. I have a feeling he represents the current culture at Firaxis. With such drastic changes, you would of thought, they would test this with selected people to get real feedback. Instead they invited paid youtubers to praise their work.
Firaxis is not alone in their bubble, as we had a lot of people defending the game here initially, trying to tell us that every civ game faced the same backlash (which to me is utter nonsense). We even have people here trying to tell us that it is our criticism and negative talk that drives the numbers down I can tell you, on other sites people are way more openely critical.

 

[canadamufc]

Who would have thought that taking away the single most series defining mechanic that has made Civilization the greatest 4x franchise in history would be a mistake? That is, taking any civilization from history and leading them through all of time.

It's honestly depressing.

There is a lot wrong with this game. The UI isn't right, the age switch is awful, and the DLC prices are criminal. But in a way, I feel as if the game can be salvaged from that. I don't think civ switching will ever be popular though, especially in the Civ community... where the game's entire premise is to NOT switch civs from Civ I. Even not speaking from a personal point of view, I am not sure civ switching was really the homerun they thought it was.

 

[ThERat]

Who would have thought that taking away the single most series defining mechanic that has made Civilization the greatest 4x franchise in history would be a mistake? That is, taking any civilization from history and leading them through all of time.

It's honestly depressing.

There is a lot wrong with this game. The UI isn't right, the age switch is awful, and the DLC prices are criminal. But in a way, I feel as if the game can be salvaged from that. I don't think civ switching will ever be popular though, especially in the Civ community... where the game's entire premise is to NOT switch civs from Civ I. Even not speaking from a personal point of view, I am not sure civ switching was really the homerun they thought it was.

I have said this many times, the name of the game is civilization, for goodness sake, it's to lead a civ and pass the test of time. I am currently playing a C3C CCM3 game, always war and last night, as Germans, I am facing the Vikings. How off putting would it be, when I face Vikings and the Mongols and whichever civ and then suddenly, mid game, I am forced to switch the civ. Game breaking for me. Never even bothered about the leader really.
However, plenty of people told me, I am just too old to think this way. Well, after all, I don't think I am alone

 

[tman2000]

bleak take

It sounds a lot like BGS and I wonder if this is cultural for that generation of managers, if it's a Maryland thing, or if there's some sort of weird set of arcane policies coming from the equity holders imposed via the corporate c-suites.

 

[tman2000]

There is a lot wrong with this game. The UI isn't right, the age switch is awful, and the DLC prices are criminal. But in a way, I feel as if the game can be salvaged from that. I don't think civ switching will ever be popular though, especially in the Civ community... where the game's entire premise is to NOT switch civs from Civ I. Even not speaking from a personal point of view, I am not sure civ switching was really the homerun they thought it was.

What's weird is apparently each new feature set can be correlated to sets from one or two specific games. The game is unfinished and who can possibly explain the UI debacle. It seems like the 3D modelers and leader animators are the only people who really did actual work for 6 years.

There's game script stuff that's hard coded into the engine meaning they're having their engineers code in game features without bothering to mess with the scaffolding. And weird stuff not just in the UI, but in marketing - typos, indicators of ESL. It's weird.

 

[Core Imposter]

When I wrote that fixed leaders were anachronistic, no one agreed with me: the game does not improve with the addition of civilizations, VR viewers, languages approved by Native American tribes, the game improves with better AI, with narrative events that explain why a civilization is born and falls, it does not simply change with the change of eras.

Thank you for saying this. For Civ 8 I would like to see the owner of the franchise turn to an open competition in which gamers flesh out their own design ideas and present barebones gameplay mechanics from which the most promising could be chosen. It's time for a reimagining.

 

[luca 83]

Senza voler entrare troppo nel personale, Ed Beach mi ricorda alcuni dei manager con cui ho lavorato, convinti che le sue idee fossero migliori di quelle di altri. Ho la sensazione che rappresenti l'attuale cultura aziendale di Firaxis. Con cambiamenti così drastici, si sarebbe pensato che avrebbero testato il sistema con persone selezionate per ottenere un feedback concreto. Invece, hanno invitato degli YouTuber pagati per elogiare il loro lavoro.
Firaxis non è l'unica a trovarsi in questa bolla, dato che inizialmente qui c'erano molte persone che difendevano il gioco, cercando di dirci che ogni gioco di civiltà ha subito lo stesso contraccolpo (il che per me è una totale assurdità). Abbiamo persino persone qui che cercano di dirci che sono le nostre critiche e i nostri discorsi negativi a far scendere i numeri. Posso dirti che su altri siti le persone sono molto più apertamente criti

 

[luca 83]

Not to get too personal, but Ed Beach reminds me of some of the managers I worked with, very much convinced his ideas are better than others. I have a feeling he represents the current culture at Firaxis. With such drastic changes, you would of thought, they would test this with selected people to get real feedback. Instead they invited paid youtubers to praise their work.
Firaxis is not alone in their bubble, as we had a lot of people defending the game here initially, trying to tell us that every civ game faced the same backlash (which to me is utter nonsense). We even have people here trying to tell us that it is our criticism and negative talk that drives the numbers down I can tell you, on other sites people are way more openely critical.

The change of civilization is also good but it is how it is managed that is wrong by not learning from the mistakes of humankind. Even the conformism and the conformism of the users does not help

 

[tman2000]

Thank you for saying this. For Civ 8 I would like to see the owner of the franchise turn to an open competition in which gamers flesh out their own design ideas and present barebones gameplay mechanics from which the most promising could be chosen. It's time for a reimagining.

They could release a "Civ Maker" that uses Civ 5's engine and make as much of it editable as possible including art tools. Plus a simple scripter.

Mainly to create custom wild scenarios to share Mario Maker style. But they then could use it as a platform to discuss what people want for Civ 8 and devs can actively craft in updates for Civ Maker to more precisely implement popular or novel features.

Then just implement the most popular set with top notch graphics for 8 and there you are.

 

[y10]

It is disheartening because I think they did add interesting mechanics and improve the AI (which has historically been a weakness, and is definitely the biggest problem of Civ 6). I think, unfortunately, trying to break the game up into three minigames is fundamentally a flawed idea. They were trying to solve the problem of snowballing, but you go for a more hard reset between the ages, you de-prioritize early decisions and make the game feel like it is undoing your work. I'm still hoping for a classic mode where they keep the mechanical improvements, but get rid of the ages system. I think if they did that, they really could make an excellent game.

 

[protocol7]

I think the discussions here are rather shallow and has in that regard tended to revolve around incorrect assumptions - e.g. "obviously" I, aelf, mean this or I am this. That's my issue with the nature of these sort of threads. It's just speculation or trying to obtain vindication for personal prejudices.

It's late, so I'm going to have to follow up with a much longer post tomorrow (I will try). I'm not just saying things. I will do my best to outline a macro perspective of what is happening. But, in short, rooting for a particular series is a dicey prospect. In the marketplace, products and franchises are subject to the forces of creative destruction. A popular franchise will eventually fail, despite how much we want it not to, and new, likely different, ones will take its place. And the seeds of its failure are planted by success. The more there is at stake (i.e. the bigger the customer base), the more pronounced the issues threatening its longevity will be.

Yeah I just don’t agree the people here fear change, the conversation is shallow or uninteresting, this topic shouldn’t be discussed, or that the fans are causing the game to fail by not believing in it hard enough. You can keep showing up in the thread which isolates the topic to complain about it, but I guess the rest of the people who come to the thread do so because they find in interesting or fun or even just a good place to vent. There are multiple pages of interesting conversation and ideas along with you intermittently complaining that we shouldn’t be having it.

There are plenty of threads here I find silly or uninteresting. It’s hard to imagine what it would take for me to start dropping in to explain to everyone every few days about how I don’t like their thread and they shouldn’t be allowed to have it.

Maybe start a new thread to talk about whether negative opinions should be allowed on a fan site, and explore that deeply there instead of using this thread? Anyone interested in that topic can join you there, instead of derailing this one which is for a different topic. I empathise that this topic is the one that triggers you, but talking about whether or not we should be allowed to have the topic isn’t really talking about the topic at hand. And you’ve been showing up to try to convince us for months now.

 

[Pfeffersack]

(...)

It's hard for me not to draw parallels to the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and to how after the hugely successful Heroes 2 and even more successful Heroes 3, the developers felt the series "needed something fresh", which ended up in the all but disastrous Heroes 4. And yes, that did mean the series went on ice for a number of years, but also resulted in the great reboot Heroes 5. So maybe there's hope for a reboot in Civilization 8 at some point, which will bring the game back closer to its roots. Of course, I would hope the Heroes analogy stops there, seeing how Ubisoft completely ruined the Heroes franchise with the subsequent Heroes 6 and 7.

(...)

Your using HoMM4 as an example proves my point. HoMM4 wasn't worse than previous iterations. It was just different. But consumer expectations were pretty set. They basically wanted iterations of HoMM3 forever.

Not wanting to go far OT here...but for HoMM series, to me the real disaster happened after HoMM5. Yes, HoMM4 tried some new things and not all of them were great (heroes as "units" were often critized), the developers went bankrupt and the game wasn't a huge sucess and left in an unpolished state. However, some elements even reemerged in the comeback'ish HoMM5 (initiative, different creature upgrades, skill tree changes). Questionable trands like streamling, railroading, meta scoring systems or a forced third party account came with HoMM6 and were continued with HoMM7. Why I'm writing this like it being a 'fact'? Isn't it just my personal option on these new spirit? Well, it seems to be at least the opinion of a too big share of the audience. No HoMM8 ever came, but instead modding kept both Homm3 (HotA, basically a HoMM 3.5 with e.g. two high-quality new town factions) and HoMM5 (a dedicated fan programmed a fearsome AI for it) alive, while OTOH competitors emerged, tring to capture the spirit if the 3rd installment (Songs of Conquest being the most sucessful, upcoming Stormbinders recently announced). The biggest sign however that there is some truth in this is however that Ubisoft themselves decided to go back to the roots - they hired a studio for a very conservative remake of HoMM3 called "Heros of might and Magic - Olden Era". More acknowlegdement of HoMM3's "pull factor" is probably just not possible

 

[Gorbles]

Since V they seem wary of releasing full mod tools because it increases the longevity of the game too much. Here's the last three months of all three games, and below that the all-time for VI and V. V just keeps on truckin' thanks to mods like Vox Populi that aren't possible in VI. I'm sure they'd love those V players to buy a new game and get on a new DLC train.

"they"

You know, for someone objecting to allegedly repetitive points made not in service of the thread, repeatedly engaging in speculation and claims of your own about the developers that won't actually service the topic of the thread you made is a tad ironic. No?

Tangents are cool. I like tangents. But you can't be selective then with what tangents you prefer, if you're causing some of them.

They've stated mod tools are coming. Plenty of Civ VI modders have argued that the DLL is not the be-all-and-end-all (frequently, in the Civ VI subforums I used to be pretty active in), and that modding support was actually pretty darn good despite the game being more technologically advanced than V raised the barrier to entry for modders (especially around art assets).

Also, critically, the DLL source (which is what enabled VP to be the success it is) is not "full mod tools". It's not a mod tool at all. It's game source code. Opening it up is increasingly a legal nightmare depending on the third parties used.

 

[protocol7]

Modding as you describe is already possible in VII and we now have a really nice tool in CivMods and the Steam Workshop isn't really necessary to get a good mod experience with what's possible in the current game. Vox Populi required another level, being able to modify game code which is what I suspect "they" won't give us again. I think I was clear that it only seems like that's the case, I'd love to be surprised. I'm certaintly not claiming I know anything about what they will actually do. If you're upset about my use of the term fully moddable for including source code, feel free to correct it to whatever makes sense in your head but what I meant is Civ5 level of modding. Apologies if I used an incorrect term.

And as far as speculation, speculation is great. I don't like meta discussions, and I'd feel the same if someone was showing up here to correct everyone's grammar, discuss if the topic itself is unethical, or philosophically debate whether humans can ever actually know anything. Maybe interesting for a certain kind of person but it's not really a discussion of stats, sales, and reception except in a very meta way in that if humans can never truly know anything we don't even know if the game or its reviews exist. If everyone else enjoys this it’s fine, I can always ignore them? But I suspect based on other replies I’m not the only one.

 

[Gorbles]

If you're upset about my use of the term fully moddable for including source code, feel free to correct it to whatever makes sense in your head but what I meant is Civ5 level of modding. Apologies if I used an incorrect term.

Upset is something I would never forumpost about a video game for. Interesting that that's where you go to, though.

But no, I'm simply being accurate. Too many conflate "writing additional source code to then compile it into a form the game can access" with simply modding the game with established tooling. I'm a software developer (one of many, no doubt), and while you can call it pedantry if you like, it's a very real delineation between what is possible for modders with modern titles and what games used to be open to, with this specific bridge of "the developers allowing access to source code".

It's complicated. It's a tangent by itself. But it certainly has nothing to do with whoever "they" are and DLC plans. It's a simple fact of IP rights that exposing source files is more difficult that it's ever been. And explaining that is also a tangent. Do you see the bind I'm in?

(no doubt, there are people that would never want games to be modded at all, but given that we can mod VI and even VII already, whoever "they" are aren't relevant to this suggestion)

Maybe interesting for a certain kind of person but it's not really a discussion of stats, sales, and reception except in a very meta way in that if humans can never truly know anything we don't even know if the game or its reviews exist.

I could say the same about the repeated sidebars about how the developers should be replaced, for example. I'm a simple man in that regard. Maybe too simple; too binary. Either you object to all such derails, or you object to none. That's how I think, and I appreciate I'm a distinct person who isn't you, and that forums haven't turned us all into a hive mind (yet). You can always agree to disagree; I find myself doing that a lot more, the older I get.

 

[protocol7]

Please then accept my sincere apology then for using the terms they, upset, and mod tools and through their use derailing the thread, I'm not sure in advance which terms to use best but those are ones I'm familiar with. I'm a developer in the video game industry as well, but I'm not really trying to make a point about accuracy of specific terms so happy to agree with whatever you prefer. I regret having mentioned mod tools and will delete the comment to avoid any further issues. I'm not here all day to object to any and all derailments so all I can ask is for grace on that front if I haven't met your expectations - it really wasn't intentional and me not being here at some point ideally shouldn't be taken as signing off on whatever happens when I'm away.