Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[GuiSKJ]

I'd gain renewed interest in buying Civ7 (I have 1k hours in Civ6) if they gave me 2 things:

1. The ability to keep my Civ between age transitions. As in, I can play as Rome through the 3 ages (or go Rome->Norman->Norman), just like Humankind eventually gave us. Yes, it's suboptimal to do so, but I'd take that over making completely nonsensical Civ pairings.

1.1 Included in the above is the ability to start the Ancient era with a later civ. Let me start as England in the ancient era even if the civ has nothing in that era.

2. A Leader creator. If you are going to put civs in the games that don't have leaders (or have instead important figures), fine. But give me the option of making my own leader then. I don't care if the avatar/model is just a blob or shadow.

Mainly, give me a way to play Civ7 a little more like Civ6. There are a lot of ideas in Civ7 I'd like to enjoy, and the framework of Ages and Leaders actually ALLOW for more of a Civ6-like experience for those that want it.

 

[Bed0]

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).

I get where you're coming from and would not be surprised if a formal strategy still hasn´t been put in place taking the launch and following weeks in consideration. But Firaxis has business goals, quarterly and longer term metrics to beat. I'm sure execs and board (not sure how Firaxis strucure is set) are brainstorming what to do like crazy since week 2

 

[Stoic]

The only possible way is to maintain civilization with common ancestors, such as China or India for example... I see it as difficult given how the game is set up to maintain civilization without change

 

[aelf]

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.

I don't see an argument here. Not spending time with something and then judging it prematurely, leading one to a conclusion that's contrary to most people's seems like blind hate.

And I thought a central argument of Civ 7 detractors is the way the game is made isn't popular with fans. But you will twist yourself into pretzels to justify why something in the game is bad even when most people are saying it's good.

 

[0urBall]

I wonder if one of civ-switching or era transitions would have been more acceptable to fans? Both seem to me to be too much of a change for people to get on board with
And both seem to involve a huge amount of micromanagement at 2 very distinct points in the game, at the same time. So much so that it seems to be giving people an easy out to just stop playing the game they started

 

[GeneralZift]

https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Firaxis-Games-E260324-RVW95876271.htm#

If you can glean insights from it beyond what we know that would be great. Just don’t discuss any names of people involved as a privacy issue.

This was posted in another thread but I feel it's more relevant to this one.

I linked the UI Devs reviews here:


And plus a bonus one:

 

[Pistol90]

They need to stick with game, but go back on basic Civ design as much aa possible with DLCs, patches and expansions.

 

[VGT]

It might not be related enough to discussion, but I feel like it's an interesting information regarding sales expectations - cost of marketing. Maybe a lot of people is already aware about amount of money getting exchanged with youtubers for their promotion of the game. In Total War area on of bigger youtubers already mentioned some time ago that he dropped sponsored deal for civ7, when he was reacting to **** storm Potato was receiving, because he was also expecting backlash for it. I don't remember if he mentioned amount back then, but there is a fresh video where he says, that 2K was paying him $12k for promotion video for civ7.

source (at 9:29 if timestamp doesn't work):

For sure it varies between different youtubers and LegendOfTotalWar is big in Total War community which for sure have some overlap with strategy genre audience, so he would be on the more valued side of spectrum. But this kinda explains to me why hype and sometimes a bit forced promotion was happening in our area.

 

[KayAU]

I wonder if one of civ-switching or era transitions would have been more acceptable to fans? Both seem to me to be too much of a change for people to get on board with

Maybe, or perhaps an alternative approach to civ switching would have been less controversial.

Again, just to be clear, I haven't played Civ 7 yet, but I have played Humankind which has civ switching as a central part of its design. A lot of people hated it, I myself found it a mixed bag. Getting the new abilities and flavour was fun, but everybody changing identity several times during a game felt really schizophrenic. I assume that it would be worse in Humankind than Civ, as the leaders are less identifiable, and the switches happen more frequently. Still, not being able to keep your "civ identity" throughout the game seems to be a major complaint for Civ 7 players. I remember suggesting an approach for Humankind's civ switching where instead of "becoming" a different civ, you would instead adopt a set of traits thematically linked to that historical civ. This would give you the fun and adaptability of becoming, say more "Inca"-like, but you wouldn't actually turn into the Inca, nor would your neighbors appear to become someone else. Everyone would remain who they are, but would just evolve in a certain direction. You could also do things like putting the trait sets into a tree, where there could be preconditions for selecting a certain culture, depending on your history or surroundings.

 

[Xur]

This was posted in another thread but I feel it's more relevant to this one.

I linked the UI Devs reviews here:
View attachment 731785View attachment 731786View attachment 731787

And plus a bonus one:
View attachment 731789

That matches a lot of my thought about the company. I don't think it's super professional when you hire spouses and children for a subsidiary company of a publicly traded company. It must be super frustrating for an outsider to work at a place where merit comes second.

 

[criZp]

I don't think it's super professional when you hire spouses and children for a subsidiary company of a publicly traded company. It must be super frustrating for an outsider to work at a place where merit comes second.

Care to elaborate on this? I haven't heard of it before.

 

[Xur]

Care to elaborate on this? I haven't heard of it before.

Sid Meier had both his wife and son work there. Ed Beach has a son that worked there. I cant find the article, but I think it was a venturebeat article some years ago that mentioned familiar ties being normal in the company.

 

[Krikkit1]

I'd gain renewed interest in buying Civ7 (I have 1k hours in Civ6) if they gave me 2 things:

1. The ability to keep my Civ between age transitions. As in, I can play as Rome through the 3 ages (or go Rome->Norman->Norman), just like Humankind eventually gave us. Yes, it's suboptimal to do so, but I'd take that over making completely nonsensical Civ pairings.

1.1 Included in the above is the ability to start the Ancient era with a later civ. Let me start as England in the ancient era even if the civ has nothing in that era.

2. A Leader creator. If you are going to put civs in the games that don't have leaders (or have instead important figures), fine. But give me the option of making my own leader then. I don't care if the avatar/model is just a blob or shadow.

Mainly, give me a way to play Civ7 a little more like Civ6. There are a lot of ideas in Civ7 I'd like to enjoy, and the framework of Ages and Leaders actually ALLOW for more of a Civ6-like experience for those that want it.

For both of those how important is the name/graphics v the gameplay?

ie if I want to start as Antiquity Mughal should I get the +75% gold? or just the Mughal name/emblem/city list/graphics
If I want “Washington” to lead America should he just have no abilities or get to choose to have Franklin’s or Himiko’s

Basically would essentially the ability to “reskin” your civ/leader be enough or would you have to alter the game mechanics?

 

[itix]

Sid Meier had both his wife and son work there. Ed Beach has a son that worked there. I cant find the article, but I think it was a venturebeat article some years ago that mentioned familiar ties being normal in the company.

That doesn't mean anything.

 

[Siptah]

familiar ties being normal in the company.

Not that I would advocate that this is how it should be, but from my experience this is absolutely normal, whether in the public sector or in private. It doesn't necessarily mean that merit comes second. It seems very understandable that when qualifications are similar, a familiar person can have a credit of trust. I'm not sure whether you've ever been on a decision board, but in my experience, it is impossible to eradicate personal ties from the discussions that happen there. And imho, they also shouldn't be. If I can and do vouch for a candidate because I know them, and have a positive opinion of them as person and of their work, I want this to be a factor, naturally. Now, whether what makes qualifications similar is another discussion...

 

[queenpea]

Not that I would advocate that this is how it should be, but from my experience this is absolutely normal, whether in the public sector or in private. It doesn't necessarily mean that merit comes second. It seems very understandable that when qualifications are similar, a familiar person can have a credit of trust. I'm not sure whether you've ever been on a decision board, but in my experience, it is impossible to eradicate personal ties from the discussions that happen there. And imho, they also shouldn't be. If I can and do vouch for a candidate because I know them, and have a positive opinion of them as person and of their work, I want this to be a factor, naturally. Now, whether what makes qualifications similar is another discussion...

Yeah, certainly in the United States, this kind of thing happens in corporate life all of the time. While an individual can find it personally distasteful (and recently the “culture” has become publicly critical of “nepotism babies”), it’s not an uncommon phenomenon and it doesn’t automatically mean that employees are untalented or undeserving of employment.

 

[Xur]

That doesn't mean anything.

Didn't you read the UI devs' description of work life at Firaxis? The criticism was that leadership couldn't say no to the Lead Designer and others because they are friends. They obviously can't seperate work life (professionalism) from personal life.

Maybe it's a culture thing, because I only see this family/friend behaviour in small private business in a non-significant position. I have worked at places where at least one person would be fired if they started a relationship in the office and they would NEVER hire a family member.

 

[Dreadnought]

This was posted in another thread but I feel it's more relevant to this one.

I linked the UI Devs reviews here:
View attachment 731785View attachment 731786View attachment 731787

And plus a bonus one:
View attachment 731789

Is there any way to verify the authenticity of these messages?

Seems pretty damning if they are true.

 

[itix]

Didn't you read the UI devs' description of work life at Firaxis? The criticism was that leadership couldn't say no to the Lead Designer and others because they are friends. They obviously can't seperate work life (professionalism) from personal life.

Maybe it's a culture thing, because I only see this family/friend behaviour in small private business in a non-significant position. I have worked at places where at least one person would be fired if they started a relationship in the office and they would NEVER hire a family member.

I did. Relatives dont appear to be concerned. If there was something hot about it, this would have been mentioned.

 

[GeneralZift]

Is there any way to verify the authenticity of these messages?

Seems pretty damning if they are true.

I'm not sure, although it's written with such specificity that I would be surprised if it were fake. Although it could be exaggerated