sixty4half
I drink and I know things
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Yall make me laugh.
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Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread
- Thread starter protocol7
- Start date
Does anyone know how many people were playing Civ6 on PS prior to Civ7 being released? I may be wrong but i feel that Console players are usually younger than those on PC and may not be so interested in 4X games that typically have a more niche player base.
- Joined
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Many more - it was sat at 250th(ISH) most played prior to Civ VII launch. You can see the numbers comparison in one of the screen shots I posted too
PS versions weren't available for Civ6 until 3 years after its initial release, but people have been buying Civ6 for over 5 yrs on PS now so you can't really compare those charts for for the two games.
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So we're looking at a new low peak for a weekend on steam of about 12,300 concurrent players. That's down about 2,300 on the previous lowest peak last weekend. We could be heading for a period of time where Civ VII doesn't get 10,000 concurrent players at any time of the week soon.
Multiplayer lobbies may start running pretty empty soon which creates a bit of a doom loop for multiplayer fans as there's noone to play with unless you plan a session with people you know have the game.
Multiplayer lobbies may start running pretty empty soon which creates a bit of a doom loop for multiplayer fans as there's noone to play with unless you plan a session with people you know have the game.
GeneralZift
Professional
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How low can it go? I'm penciling it in:
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Another new milestone for Civ VII as it's concurrent playercount on steam dips below 5,000 for the first time
And its 24-hour peak was 6,000 below Civ 5, which in the view of some is the worst iteration of Civ (not in my view, I've played Civ 5 more than any other).
queenpea
Emperor
Interesting (to me at least) that reviews continue to slick slightly downwards at 49.24% positive.
Sorting by recent is showing more of a shift away from simply mentioning the Age system:
(there are more, but this is getting long enough as it is)
I'm seeing more complaints that the game feels unfinished, than of Ages specifically.
Honourable shout-out to this particular "no fun" review, at just under 700 hours clocked on the game:
(another negative review from the same timeframe talked about how the game was too complex, so YMMV)
Dreadnought
Deity
After a couple weeks of rebound, the weekend numbers continued their decline, reaching a maximum of 12000 concurrent players.
An optimistic poster from the previous thread said the panic number would be if we reached 5000 concurrent players. The trough this morning was right at that number.
An optimistic poster from the previous thread said the panic number would be if we reached 5000 concurrent players. The trough this morning was right at that number.
aelf
Ashen One
Someone on Reddit mentioned that they played a little bit and didn't like anything, including the commander system, which they thought was meh. I pointed out that even people who don't like the game think the commander system is great, and the lack of playtime undermines the Redditor's criticism of the game mechanics. I got a whole lot of downvotes, of course.
It's popular to hate on the game blindly, sometimes for contradictory reasons.
All I know is on reddit there were daily posts for weeks on how the PS5 version would constantly crash, or even early on wouldn't even run until a patch came in. When that entire audience is waiting 4 weeks after launch for a patch to make it even basically run, how can the game do well on that platform other than cashing in on goodwill from 6 and naivete?
stealth_nsk
Deity
I don't play PS5 myself, but I believe many people on this forum reported the game works well for them from the release date.
So, the fact that there are people who were unable to run Civ7 doesn't show how many of them had this problem. Or how many of them were there in the first place.
There are multi post re problems with Civ Vii all over the net re consoles some pre patch some after .
"
Fans Agree That The PS5 Version of Civ 7 Is In A Bad State Currently
Firaxis recently released a new update, but these gamers still think the PS5 version needs improvement. "also "the fact that there people who are able to run civ 7 doesn't show have many are still having the problem or how many were there in the first place "
GeneralZift
Professional
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Well your counter-argument was "other people think the system is good" and that plus undermining someone for lack of hours probably got you downvoted.
It's important to remember that there are people who will defend a game blindly, sometimes with contradictory reasons, probably because they think that all criticism for a game is blind hate.
In the other thread I was realizing that they probably stick to strategy one quarter at a time and the quarter just ended, and they've been in the hype it up launch strategy mode even until patch 1.2
They haven't had time to discuss their reaction to launch and plan their strategy. I for one think they should apologize, decide on a radical strategy (the only thing to decide is the scale of investment, but whatever they do it has to be extreme), then deliver. They might do that, but either way, I just realized they're not in a position in the business calendar to do things like that. We may have seen the writing on the wall, but numbers only got really bad in the last 2 weeks.
I think there's also an issue of drinking the Kool-Aid or believing your own hype. You don't want negativity to swirl around the game, but at the same time, guys, did you think the little growth rate adjustment would reinvigorate the game and hype up the audience? The growth rate thing was always just a kind of big fat problem that should have never happened and they sort of band-aid patched it to not be as bad. You can't hype on that. Maybe they know that and corporate orders have to be followed. Anyway, I think we will start to get clearer commentary and communication of vision. I think there's going to be a response, an acknowledgment of the game needing some evolutions to its vision (even if that vision becomes sort of giving up on the game).
GeneralZift
Professional
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I don't think game companies can afford to think a quarter at a time, that's quite risky. They would have planned the first 2 years of the game realistically. But it's falling apart since the game probably didn't do as well as the expected on launch. I agree with the rest of your sentiment. But I can't honestly think of what they could do
I've even started more than one thread on that.
I will say that it's just clearly obvious to me how unfinished the game is. They must know that it's unfinished. The company surely doesn't think it was just a misfired vision, they have to know internally there was some kind of botched development.
The reason I say that is, in terms of business planning, there's taking risks and having unanticipated audience reception. Then there's knowing you messed up on the the production side of the equation and how you as a business respond to that.
It's two distinct sides of the business, marketing and organization essentially. Marketing has ways to pivot if the product's design doesn't hit with the intended market. Marketing would struggle, however, to correct for a problem on the production side. This is why I've been emphasizing radical marketing. Something like an actual apology that totally flushes out the discourse and starts over but using the same game engine they sunk money into.
It's tough. I don't know what their budget for the game is. There are basic elements of the franchise feature suite (hotseat, larger maps, etc.) that are just not in the game. So you have to pay for development to actually finish, not just pitch-patch a few months at a time the features the community complains about the most. Okay, so let's say they are willing to do that, and pony up the cash. Will the community return to the game? (and let's consider a lot of people preordered and paid already, even if they're done playing)
One strategy could be a full Civ 6.75 conversion. Just toss out the age system. Rework all the buildings - same assets - to scale with a new continuous tech tree. Keep the civic tree concept. Add in dams and canals (hard). Add loyalty (hard, but less hard). Polish up the whole UI (not hard if you commit). I'd even keep civ switching in, where it's just optional. It would be the only way to access new social policies, and you would literally layer in new buildings instead of a total asset reset on the new age. Crises can remain as shorter, optional, more punctuated events that aren't tied to age progress.
Once you have this, you'd have something that's nearer to Civ 5 at launch quality. A complete but maybe bland and imbalanced Civ game. But then at least there'd be room for expansion.
There's no way they could charge for it, but they could tie the rehaul to new DLC to try and hype up sales. For example if they add dams in, then they could do a Yemeni Saba civilization that uses them. They could add a Venice if they add in canals. They could immediately monetize hype.
Rehauling the game to remove ages sounds tacky, but it would be such an admission of failure and such a major concession to a certain slice of the original recalcitrant audience, it might actually work. Like I said, you could keep civ switching in, just make it optional and get rid of the age progress/transition.
