Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Core Imposter]

The next thing Beach says in that video that makes no sense is that the age break is "as if time has passed and 50 or 100 years have gone past and your kingdom having faced those challenges is going to have to regroup". This is insane. That 50 or 100 year challenge is what we would want to play to see how it gets us to the next age and how we navigate that IS THE GAME. This is crazy and it seems like a crib to put in place rather than actually designing a full game system. No wonder this was received poorly.

 

[Gorbles]

No one who thinks 15 hours is a long drawn out game experience has any business working on a Civ game. They are in the wrong genre.

This is wildly exclusionary.

But you at least explain your perspective earlier in the post:

This one video by Ed Beach he says that "the big idea of Civ 7 is to take the very long drawn out Civ experience that could take players 10, 15, or 20 hours to get through a game and break it up into chapters."

This is just fundamentally opposite the expectations of many players. Civ4 could be configured from tiny maps to huge, quick games to long, some of us played the epic games. I would boot up for a game would only last 50 hours. Many of my games went 700 plus turns as I soft modded my game to handicap myself enough to make it interesting against the AI.

And it shows how much you fundamentally don't understand what is happening with VII (as well as overvaluing your own expectations and conflating them with that of the wider playerbase).

You have no way of knowing how long the average player wants their game to be. That's not even something that comes up in the review data we have access to so far.

I don't want infinite games. I never have. But I have nothing against players having the option to make games longer. I've never objected to game speed settings, or the like.

Neither should you, in the reverse. If you want a long game, you play a multi-Age game. That's your full game, right there. If you object to Ages, then it's not a matter of a long game. These are separate things. Ages are a mechanic that enable shorter games. They do not make the game itself shorter, assuming you're intending to play the full timeline and explore every single tech and civic tree.

You even say that you "soft modded" your games to (presumably) lengthen your games, or increase the enjoyment you got out of these longer games.

If anything, that says you shouldn't be in a position to dictate how a Civ. game should be designed. Because you're not playing the game as designed. It seems like you never were. The moment you mod your game to suit your own preferences, it stops being the game the developers made.

And I champion mods, for that exact reason. But it means you have absolutely zero leg to stand on when you try and talk about how a Civ. game should be. You have your opinion, and nothing more.

That 50 or 100 year challenge is what we would want to play to see how it gets us to the next age and how we navigate that IS THE GAME.

You do. That's what the result of the Crisis infers. An invisible timeskip doesn't actually change a great deal (one of the biggest complaints is the logistics of resetting the position of players' units).

 

[Siptah]

@Gorbles to be fair, it doesn‘t really feel like you play this challenge, because most crises are harmless. It‘s very rare that you get the feeling of „hopefully, it‘s over soon, or my empire will break.“

 

[Dreadnought]

You don't play this game, right? So you probably have no idea that Scouts have a powerful ability that requires decision making because it ends the Scout's turn. This is a new feature that auto-explore wouldn't have allowed players to try out.

I was aware of this feature. But I was also aware of the reaction to not having auto-explore as a feature in the game.

 

[Core Imposter]

https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=ed+beach+civilization+7+video+stream&mid=D90F04BFF94AA0FBA5F9D90F04BFF94AA0FBA5F9&mcid=F4818CB8FFC540FAB61CE8706D518865&FORM=VIRE

Beach: There were a shockingly small percentage of players that were finishing their games, and a lot of players never ever experienced the end of a civilization game even once so we looked at why that might be the case and realized that it was the nature of 4x games to explode" (blah, blah(the snowball problem)). This is a legit issue, but Ed thinks that the problem was micromanagement and that's why people quit when in fact the predominant reason people quit is that they recognized either a won game or a lost game and elect not to play it through. So, the remedy Ed chose was based on flawed thinking. The proper solution is hard, no doubt, but whether you like it or not a Civ game is to some degree a simulation of world history and the perfection of the genre must include civilizations enduring periods of strife, war, famine and other issues (diplomatic, plague, whatever) that model the great leveler THE EFFECTS OF TIME AND MEDIOCRITY and instead of putting those concepts in the game they again took the path easier trod and just cut out a lot of the most important history of each civ (and terminated each civ in the doing). Beach: "We needed to reset the game board a little bit so that you just had less to manage.". Historically Civs ended up having less to manage because someone took it away from them, Ed. In many cases internal strife and divisions solved the problem Ed. You have chosen gimmicky methods to solve a problem rather that model reality, and those gimmicks are worse than the snowball problem because THE GAME IS TOO EASY TO WIN and people are not playing because of the lack of a challenge, see (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/brandon-sanderson-discusses-civ-7-video.698044/) if you don't believe me.

Beach: "We've had great success; we've run lots of tests and it's absolutely working, and players are engaged all the way to the end of a civilization game now". Ok, so Ed actually said that. I'd like to investigate who supervised those tests, how they were structured, and basically surmise how things got twisted around. I don't want to think that Ed is just lying.

I am certain that the testers weren't the old guard from the real Civ days, or we would have saved Ed, and everybody else, from this ignoble fate.

Oh, let me not fail to include a comment about what Ed said was the biggest technological improvement for Civ 7. It was shipping to all the platforms. "Above all else". Obviously leveraging tech to make the best game took a back seat to designing a game that could fit on every platform. And that is, above all else, a game of reduction to the detriment of the PC crowd. Not well received by them either.

Maybe secondary platform revenue will justify the decision to make simultaneous cross platform launches the most important objective for the game. But clearly the ages system has "cured" the "just one more turn" problem and you can quote me on that and verify it by Steam stats.

 

[Sagax]

@Gorbles to be fair, it doesn‘t really feel like you play this challenge, because most crises are harmless. It‘s very rare that you get the feeling of „hopefully, it‘s over soon, or my empire will break.“

And when it is finally over and you complete at least one legacy path, you are greeted with a victorious “your civ has achieved prosperity” cutscene… followed by a hundreds-of-years long timeskip and mandatory civ switching.

At the very least, there is some tonal disconnect between the narrative and how the game actually plays out mechanically. If crisis is supposed to infer downfall and rebirth, then why are we getting Golden Age legacies? And if the emphasis is on triumph, then why the out-of-control timeskip and civ switch? It’s one of the few observations about this game where I feel like the devs were trying to have the cake and eat it too.

 

[Gorbles]

@Gorbles to be fair, it doesn‘t really feel like you play this challenge, because most crises are harmless. It‘s very rare that you get the feeling of „hopefully, it‘s over soon, or my empire will break.“

I've said multiple times I think the Crises need work. But that's separate of "we should be playing the time between the Ages", as Core Imposter was saying.

It's interesting because on one level it's purely psychological. The passage of time speeding events is baked into the game's timeline; always has been. Turns at the start of the game increment by what, 100 years a turn? 50? I don't have the game up right now to check. This slows as the game advances, to the point where you're ticking through individual years in the later game.

The mechanical imposition is the problem. Which isn't a problem with Crises exactly, it's a problem with Ages (for these players). You can turn Crises off.

But Crises themselves, and how a player responds to them, is what models your success at the start of the next Age (that and Legacy Points). Ironically, your point about Crises being weak, and my (earlier) point about Legacy Points feeling too strong, are the opposite of what players like Core Imposter want. They don't want stronger Crises. They wouldn't want less safeguarding of their empire during an Age transition. They want weaker or no Crises, and stronger or no safeguarding (i.e. full continuation).

If crisis is supposed to infer downfall and rebirth, then why are we getting Golden Age legacies? And if the emphasis is on triumph, then why the out-of-control timeskip and civ switch? It’s one of the few observations about this game where I feel like the devs were trying to have the cake and eat it too.

You get Golden Age legacies because of your success. Because of the gameplay you excelled at. It's a direct reward for previous efforts invested; it's continuity.

You get an "out of control" timeskip because the time is relatively immaterial. Just like bouncing through the years 50 years at a time in each early game turn is. It's flavour.

The fact you find that flavour lacking; or the tone disconnected, are things that can be improved. They're not mechanical. They're emotive (and I'm not saying this to suggest they're therefore not important).

The civ "switch" (as it is so often framed) is an evolution. You're back to rebirth.

 

[Sagax]

The fact you find that flavour lacking; or the tone disconnected, are things that can be improved. They're not mechanical. They're emotive (and I'm not saying this to suggest they're therefore not important).

Thanks, so my point still stands. Doesn’t matter if one categorizes the issue as mechanical or flavor-based - here we’re pointing out the pain points in the current implementation, not filing a patent.

(By the way, at no point did I claim that the issue is mechanical. Only that the mechanics and the narrative (aka flavor) are not meshing well. One can approach the fix from either side.)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Beach: There were a shockingly small percentage of players that were finishing their games, and a lot of players never ever experienced the end of a civilization game even once so we looked at why that might be the case and realized that it was the nature of 4x games to explode" (blah, blah(the snowball problem)). This is a legit issue, but Ed thinks that the problem was micromanagement and that's why people quit when in fact the predominant reason people quit is that they recognized either a won game or a lost game and elect not to play it through. So, the remedy Ed chose was based on flawed thinking.

Except the solution really works, as far as I can tell. Players no longer feel their win halfway through the game, they feel it in the second half of the last age. And as I understand based on Steam stats, much more players are actually finishing their games now.

The thing to discuss here is whether snowballing (and other problems solved by age transition, like balance between civs) justify those revolutionary changes.

 

[misesfan]

Except the solution really works, as far as I can tell. Players no longer feel their win halfway through the game, they feel it in the second half of the last age. And as I understand based on Steam stats, much more players are actually finishing their games now.

This may be true. 90% of a 5K player base is greater than 10% of a 30K player base. The only problem I see is that most people want to play an empire building game, but that ain't civ 7. They solved a problem that destroyed their player base. Good one guys.

 

[trev1972]

I am not personally convinced that a lower percentage of people finishing a game is actually a significant problem.

 

[Dreadnought]

They completely missed the mark on how to fix the alleged problem. If, and that's a big "if", not finishing games is a problem (which I do not believe it is), the solution is to make the games more immersive so that players have a reason to do things beyond getting a high score. Instead, their forced solution does the opposite.

 

[firadin]

They completely missed the mark on how to fix the alleged problem. If, and that's a big "if", not finishing games is a problem (which I do not believe it is), the solution is to make the games more immersive so that players have a reason to do things beyond getting a high score. Instead, their forced solution does the opposite.

Someone (I think on Reddit) said that they've played hundreds of hours of Rimworld and never once beaten a game (launched the ship). I think that's a really salient point. For some games the goal isn't beating the game, its just playing it. I think Civ is one of those games, and I never felt that my decision to end a game of Civ before the victory screen meant that I wasted my time or played a bad game.

 

[mbbcam]

Beach: There were a shockingly small percentage of players that were finishing their games

So it seems they have managed to go from a game that very few people finished to a game that very few people play ...

From the stats I have seen it seems like about 900k copies of the game were bought and there are now around 10k playing the game on Steam at any time. It would be interesting to have the views of the "shockingly large percentage" of people who don't seem to be playing the game they bought.

 

[Siptah]

So it seems they have managed to go from a game that very few people finished to a game that very few people play ...

From the stats I have seen it seems like about 900k copies of the game were bought and there are now around 10k playing the game on Steam at any time. It would be interesting to have the views of the "shockingly large percentage" of people who don't seem to be playing the game they bought.

Players vs. owners for civ 7 isn‘t a bad ratio currently for a game a few months after release. The problem is the „low“ amount of owners.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

They completely missed the mark on how to fix the alleged problem. If, and that's a big "if", not finishing games is a problem (which I do not believe it is), the solution is to make the games more immersive so that players have a reason to do things beyond getting a high score. Instead, their forced solution does the opposite.

They basically created their own problem and solved it. I’ve never seen a thread complaining about “I just hate this game so much, it takes so long, I never even finish a game”

People deciding the game is over because they’ve snowballed ahead is more of an AI issue than a fundamental gameplay issue. They had other ways to even do “rubber banding” and instead elected to just do hard resets

 

[tman2000]

They completely missed the mark on how to fix the alleged problem. If, and that's a big "if", not finishing games is a problem (which I do not believe it is), the solution is to make the games more immersive so that players have a reason to do things beyond getting a high score. Instead, their forced solution does the opposite.

What’s very weird is that BGS said the same thing about their games, specifically Emil Pagliorulo. They talk about player stats and how most players skip dialogue and quit early. They seem obsessed with catering to this less interested casual crowd as if they don’t realize that the core which does play the whole game is why the games are successful.

I assume there is a corporate mandate that looks at the game owners, looks and how long those owners play, sees the majority of casual purchasers have low hours and say “Why aren’t all the owners playing all the time like with GTA Online or Fortnite? We can’t monetize this until they’re playing longer”

Now, if that is the attitude, well we’ve seen lots of the key devs leave studios in recent years so…

And the ones who remain would be the true believing sycophants.

 

[Core Imposter]

It does seem as though Ed Beach was solving a checklist of problems. It could be that he received a list from somebody. That's no way to design a game. Would explain a lot.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

New milestone hit today with the first sub 9,000 concurrent player day on steam.

That's just 1 week after hitting it's first sub 10,000 player day.

 

[tman2000]

It does seem as though Ed Beach was solving a checklist of problems. It could be that he received a list from somebody. That's no way to design a game. Would explain a lot.

Good point. If they had such a draconian checklist, it could explain the other theory of radical shifts in design. The assignment was too hard, and the last minute shift was an epiphany on how you might accommodate an obnoxious mandate from corporate.