Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Gori the Grey]

But how is sinking what’s probably a ton of money into the diorama inspired graphics a profit motivated choice?

On the thought that modern players like eye-candy. I don't think the fixed graphics are so costly as the leader animations.

 

[ariosto]

Now that I think of it, the game is only a small step away from "solving" snowballing: AI bonuses that scale with age! If you could play Antiquity at Sovereign, Exploration at Deity and Modern at some kind of Hyperdeity, you would get a much more constant difficulty curve.

That's actually a solution from good old Civ IV

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

On the thought that modern players like eye-candy. I don't think the fixed graphics are so costly as the leader animations.

All units on the map are constantly moving as well now right? So every model needs to be animated for presumably move, fight and stationary actions.

And pet the dog don't forget.

That's on top of the leader animations

 

[Gori the Grey]

I just mean buildings, VCB. That's what diorama means to me. The units have had animations since Civ III at least. That's priced in.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

Sure, but your post seemed to suggest that the developers didn't try very hard to create the game because they were focusing on DLC. That seems absurd to me. What is a "right choice" is obviously very subjective.

Why does it seem absurd? Did you see the UI at launch? The game literally launched without basic staple options like large maps

I really just don't understand why anyone thinks this game was motivated by multiplayer and min/max concerns. What's your evidence for this claim? Multiplayer support was barely even there when the game launched with no teams, no hot seat, and a limited number of players. The civilizations and leaders and city states are all kinds of imbalanced. Nothing about this game screams "multiplayer" to me. Certainly no more than every other Civilization game did.

Most Civ games are not played on teams, most playing multiplayer don't use hotseat, and most Civilization multiplayer matches are not played on large maps.

You don't see creating short contained single age games that can be played in one sitting and having customizable online profiles w/ unlockable cosmetics and progression systems leans towards Firaxis having a greater focus on multiplayer this time around? How streamlining micromanagement and allowing for crossplay at release create a more multiplayer friendly game? They had multiple press conferences and events centered around showing off multiplayer and there were articles before release like this

Civilization 7 Is More About Multiplayer Than Ever Before

Many of the changes to Civilization 7 seem geared towards multiplayer, and that's great for the health of the game.

www.thegamer.com

Firaxis obviously went into VII with a greater focus on multiplayer than past titles

 

[GeneralZift]

Most Civ games are not played on teams, most playing multiplayer don't use hotseat, and most Civilization multiplayer matches are not played on large maps.

You don't see creating short contained single age games that can be played in one sitting and having customizable online profiles w/ unlockable cosmetics and progression systems leans towards Firaxis having a greater focus on multiplayer this time around? How streamlining micromanagement and allowing for crossplay at release create a more multiplayer friendly game? They had multiple press conferences and events centered around showing off multiplayer and there were articles before release like this

Civilization 7 Is More About Multiplayer Than Ever Before

Many of the changes to Civilization 7 seem geared towards multiplayer, and that's great for the health of the game.

www.thegamer.com

Firaxis obviously went into VII with a greater focus on multiplayer than past titles

This logic doesn't make sense to me. So they went in with a greater focus on Multiplayer but didn't include most of the legacy Multiplayer features?
You know, Hotspot is one of the best ways to get someone into Civilisation in the first place. Large maps are variety which is what keeps people wanting to try new things online.

Customisable profiles, progression systems, is this strictly about multiplayer or is it more about getting as much attention from players as possible? We see all these techniques in Battle Royale, MOBAs, MMORPG, other stuff designed to sap your time.

Devs should spend less time talking about MP and more time actually playing it, so they can figure out what caters for the vast majority of online people.
Although maybe I only speak for myself.
I spent many hours playing MP Civ5 and I've never wanted to grind a level bar. I would have loved better netcode and stronger AI than could compete with humans though!

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

This logic doesn't make sense to me. So they went in with a greater focus on Multiplayer but didn't include most of the legacy Multiplayer features?
You know, Hotspot is one of the best ways to get someone into Civilisation in the first place. Large maps are variety which is what keeps people wanting to try new things online.

Customisable profiles, progression systems, is this strictly about multiplayer or is it more about getting as much attention from players as possible? We see all these techniques in Battle Royale, MOBAs, MMORPG, other stuff designed to sap your time.

Devs should spend less time talking about MP and more time actually playing it, so they can figure out what caters for the vast majority of online people.
Although maybe I only speak for myself.
I spent many hours playing MP Civ5 and I've never wanted to grind a level bar. I would have loved better netcode and stronger AI than could compete with humans though!

While I agree that they shouldn't have removed hotseat, the reality i the vast vast vast majority of players don't use it. Online multiplayer completely overshadows couch coop and multiplayer in this day and age.

For the record, I think Firaxis went in the worst direction possible with this game and won't begin to try and justify some of their bizarre choices like shipping w/o larger maps, I was pointing out there was obviously a much greater focus on multiplayer this time around.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

What does any of that have to do with my post, though? Should I stop using basic English pronouns or something? I'm pretty sure that "us" is still the right word, even if you're not happy with the game.

Try make a pool on any subject right now, navigable rivers, classic mode, you name it.
After you done that you'll understand what "Us" mean, maybe.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Devs should spend less time talking about MP and more time actually playing it, so they can figure out what caters for the vast majority of online people.
Although maybe I only speak for myself.
I spent many hours playing MP Civ5 and I've never wanted to grind a level bar. I would have loved better netcode and stronger AI than could compete with humans though!

I would have loved if the defeated, instead of get out and immediately restart a game, would be forced to stay in the game untill the end, so the good
player, don't always ends up alone by turn 50, when he starts to attack other civs... maybe give the defeated players special powers, like reincarnate in a barbarian nation,
or family of Brontosaurs, or a lonely Kraken, that swallows up the stronger guy in the field... or became an Alien ship that shoots fire meteorites to your cities once in a while, like
a lottery each turn the defeated players can win or not win the chance to vindicates their defeat....

So much untapped fun with LAN plays... Consoles were made for that.... PCs less... it wasn't so easy to find three or four Pc in the same room...
Gentrifications of genres gives birth to monsters... hybrid de-nucleaized puppets waiting for the next turn to magically save them from the iniquity of their gameplay...

Hey the game is balanced now... it's not about the Crusaders any more...
That hope is so far away now that I almost see the ghosts of jerusalem hiding in wolf's clothes...

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I think Firaxis explained their motivation pretty well. They made age reset and civ switching for:

1. Reduce snowballing with age reset
2. Avoid problem with differences between early and late game civs with civilization switch
3. Allow playing shorter multiplayer games with age reset
4. Make people actually finish their games with switching their goals
5. Age reset and civilization switch just work together well

I wouldn't say the motivation is bad. It's just that it's mostly targeting multiplayer. 3rd point is MP only, snowballing is bigger problem for MP and civ balance is more important for MP as well.


I don't understand the distinction between financial and non-financial decisions. When you make commercial product your final goal is to generate revenue and make profits. There are multiple strategies possible, but every strategy has to be financially solid.

They did it for appease the whiners. Who can't stand lose by ineptitude. Who can't come to grasp with a broken mechanic that
more and more is growing weight, whilst the old is agile and outpace.
Split the dev cycle into three, like the seasons for potatoes, each one a port, a different vision.
Not unified. With their own decision making and flaws.
This is the rule of third in my mind.
Cut the one that sold less, and replace it, whilst maintain the other two branches irates.
This isn't a World Cup, there is no winner here.
Make a good financial decision by not making one.
Keep all the benefits of having free choice over your lunch... team, etcetera.
What will happen to the losers?
The force will bring balance to the universe?
Or a Monkey born from a golden Egg...
Thae ain't a lightsaber that splat the sea in two.
The palace bring joice, the mockery satisfaction, the minimap ending with spoken narration a truly Majestic vojage...
How can I be so boring...

 

[Lazy sweeper]

In my experience the age progression mechanic gets weird in MP and masks a lot of other stuff. In a lot of board games this sort of mechanic creates an interesting push/pull between players wanting to end a game, vs those who want to drag it out, but in 7 it's very uninteractive as a mechanism, and players can push it forward hard if they want, so when I tried it, it kind of becomes a race to get your snowball first if that makes sense?

I haven't enjoyed Civ7 as a multiplayer game. My usual MP group doesn't want to move on as long as Eras/Civ switching are in there either... So I can't see it becoming an MP game for me.

Maybe if you could come back as a worker just to be sacrificed to hurry a revolutionary settler that could revolt and get back in the game, just to fight back in the latest turns of
the game and disrupt your biggest enemy, would bring you satisfaction? Adrenaline? Or are workers so inferior a DinoRobot instead would be better suited?
What keeps you tighted up?

 

[Kwami]

Try make a pool on any subject right now, navigable rivers, classic mode, you name it.
After you done that you'll understand what "Us" mean, maybe.

Regardless of your feelings, "us" is the proper pronoun to use here. They developers told us something. That's all I said.

 

[Kwami]

Why does it seem absurd? Did you see the UI at launch? The game literally launched without basic staple options like large maps

But they also created a game that works on just about every platform and that has very few bugs and stability issues compared to the launch versions of V and VI. And they put a lot of work into designing new systems, creating really nice graphics, and researching more interesting civilizations and leaders, too. Sure, the UI was lacking, but that doesn't mean that they didn't put a lot of effort into the game. They certainly put more effort into the game than into the DLC, contrary to your claim. We still don't even have a unique model for the Revenge!

 

[itix]

I need to finally finish my huge work in progress post where I theorize that a lot of civ7 problems, similarly to a lot of civ6 problems, stem from Ed Beach's approach of viewing civ games too much as board games and not enough as simulation games. Basically he tries to repair every issue with abrupt brute force mechanics trying to top-down enforce certain game states (e.g. the way ages, age transitions and crises work) instead of designing the simplest building blocks in such a way that they will naturally generate complex situations later on (e.g. few simple mechanics regarding citizens' happiness -> crises, revolutions, cultural change; many Paradox games can do that).

I am very interested. I like Civ 6, but it never felt like a good strategy game. I'm not sure why I think so, and would love to read your thoughts on Civ7.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

That's actually a solution from good old Civ IV

This was one of the things that turned me off Civ 6. Higher difficulty levels gave the AI more and more bonuses on game start, but once you survived the initial AI Warrior rush, the game played pretty much the same as it did on lower difficulty levels. You caught up to the AI, you passed the AI, you never looked back. I'd much rather see higher difficulty levels reflected by increasing AI bonuses as the game goes along. That also requires an AI capable of playing core aspects of the game semi-effectively, or else the bonuses don't do anything.

 

[aieeegrunt]

This was one of the things that turned me off Civ 6. Higher difficulty levels gave the AI more and more bonuses on game start, but once you survived the initial AI Warrior rush, the game played pretty much the same as it did on lower difficulty levels. You caught up to the AI, you passed the AI, you never looked back. I'd much rather see higher difficulty levels reflected by increasing AI bonuses as the game goes along. That also requires an AI capable of playing core aspects of the game semi-effectively, or else the bonuses don't do anything.

Civ6 has more than a few mods that do exactly that. It also has several mods that dramatically improve the AI itself.

 

[Gorbles]

Civ6 has more than a few mods that do exactly that. It also has several mods that dramatically improve the AI itself.

Civ VII also had an AI mod from very soon after launch. Various improvements have already been incorporated into the base game (fixes to forward settling were an early highlight, from memory).

 

[lymond]

Moderator Action: Several posts deleted. The attacks will stop now. Discuss the topic and not each other. Several of those impacted already know this. Thread bans will be the next action. - lymond

 

[queenpea]

We still don't even have a unique model for the Revenge!

Wow is that true? I thought they had fixed that.

 

[queenpea]

I just checked concurrent players, and this is the first time (that I can recall) that the number has been less than 5k.

4943 players currently.