That makes sense, and it's great that people are enjoying it, but these are people who knew what the game was, paid hard-earned money for it, and still over half are saying they wouldn't recommend other people playing it, and the percentage of people who paid for the game and are saying they wouldn't recommend people play it is _trending up_ over time. That's the part I have a hard time wrapping my head around.
I do largely think this is it. How many people were actually complaining and not playing the game because the end-game took too long? Sure it was a design flaw, but not one that made people dislike or stop playing the game.
I suspect they also saw it as a way for players to have uniques that are always useful, for players to be able to create "killer combos" by chaining civs with complementary bonuses together, to bring in civs that don't have well-established historical leaders, etc etc
Naah. Not rhat firaxis aren't overchsrging but the Dev diaries gave pretty convincing reasons for what they did. I just think they solved a problem only a minority cared about.
a minority?
Not denigrating the minority. As someone enjoying Civ7 I am probably part of it.. But it is a problem for firaxis if they alienate a majority of their (as you noted relatively small) market.
That's fair to some extent. Though I think both statements come back to people not knowing what they want until faced with it. In the abstract, yeah making the late game more interesting or adding a religious victory sound great, until you see what that entails. Firaxis thinking they were giving people what they wanted, while not actually doing so would seem reasonable to me.
Minor clarification: this is sales in $. As civ is more expensive than many other games, it has an advantage in that stat compared to number of copies sold stat.
The problem is context. 8th sounds good until you look at what's behind it, and see it's 2 sports games and then games which haven't even released in the period in question.
Sports games are also hugely popular they just have their own niche market similar to how Civ does.
I think this is it, but also because unique abilities/units in the past were more valuable the earlier in the game they came along. I also think they are too worried about having everything be perfectly balanced rather than having so many OP civs like there was in the past. In the end though, the thing that would have had the final stage of the game better in past editions is better AI more than anything else.
This is from January 5 2025 to May 3 2025. I would surely hope that it would be up there considering it's a major franchise that released it's first edition since 2016 in this period.
I do like the age system for keeping everything nicely bite-sized. I can see why it alienates a lot of players though. That disjointedness is an awkward feeling. Couple it with civ switching and you had a recipe for marmite...
Agree 1000%. If tens of millions have bought your game, and many (or even most) don’t consistently finish it, there is something about the rest of your game that overrides the weakness that causes them to not finish it. Whatever you do, your solution to that weakness should not undermine the rest of the game.
I agree. Balance seems to have taken up too much of Firaxis' attention. One of my frustrations with Firaxis' civ design has been a hesitancy to give stronger abilities to the late game civs. For example, I would rather have an America that is borderline OP in the late game than what we've gotten for that civ's design in the past few games.
