Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[stealth_nsk]

Yeah, i dont buy that. Civ switching is a major change to make with the excuse of "early versus late game civs" You could fix that by just giving all civs special units in early, mid and late.

By itself it's not enough, but together with age transition it totally makes sense, because it allows aligning with age-specific mechanics. And age transition has many reasons listed there.

So, those are not features existing independently, it's the whole gameplay system came together. We actually speculated about how it would be possible to make similar game without civ transition, but none of the suggestions was universally appealing for people on this forum. It looks like within Civ7 game concept, civ switching was one of the best solution.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The game wouldnt be on sale twice in 6 months if it was doing well

Civ6 went on sale in 3 months after release and Civ7 required 4.

 

[WillK96]

So it would seem that the most profitable move would be to release more content for Civ 6.

Doubtful - while they could add more civs, the game has been pretty thoroughly fleshed out over the last 9 years, not much they could do to generate as much revenue as people buying civ VII. (1 copy of Civ VII with all content rn is $130). You'd have to have 3 people buy CIV VI or 4 people buy a DLC/expansion at $30-35 just to be close to getting the same revenue.

 

[Kwami]

Civ VII is on sale because Steam is having a big "4X Fest" event this month. Lots of 4X games are on sale now.

 

[Crashdummy]

Peak player numbers dont matter that much long term, but i would believe consistent current players do. The more players that play the ghame consistently, the more chances you have to seel a DLC to those people

But i guess we need to wait untill the first DLC detached from Founders edition to have a better look at it

 

[Crashdummy]

Civ6 went on sale in 3 months after release and Civ7 required 4.

Yes but Civ 7 already has 2 sales in 6 months

 

[Leucarum]

So, those are not features existing independently, it's the whole gameplay system came together. We actually speculated about how it would be possible to make similar game without civ transition, but none of the suggestions was universally appealing for people on this forum. It looks like within Civ7 game concept, civ switching was one of the best solution.

I disagree with that. Civ switching appears to be preventing a sizable portion of the potential playerbase from buying or playing Civ7. And even if any alternatives aren't universally appealing, you could hardly describe civ switching as appealing on the whole even if a minority likes it. In particular I can't see expansions turning out to be a good value proposition if Civ Switching remains... If they want long term value, selling DLC only usable for 1/3 of the game won't generate it at the price they're aiming for.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yes but Civ 7 already has 2 sales in 6 months

Civ6 had 4 sales in first 6 months, check SteamDB.

EDIT: I stand corrected, the first discount of Civ6 was in 1 month after release.
So, it was released on October, 21 and had discounts on November 23, December 20, February 9 and March, 16

 

[stealth_nsk]

I disagree with that. Civ switching appears to be preventing a sizable portion of the potential playerbase from buying or playing Civ7. And even if any alternatives aren't universally appealing, you could hardly describe civ switching as appealing on the whole even if a minority likes it. In particular I can't see expansions turning out to be a good value proposition if Civ Switching remains... If they want long term value, selling DLC only usable for 1/3 of the game won't generate it at the price they're aiming for.

I'm not speaking here about commercial success, I'm speaking about gameplay consistency. In the thread about civ switching I said that I think implementing it was likely a mistake

 

[Maiq]

I guess this is one of those situations where you hear what you want to hear.

3.6 Not great, not terrible.

 

[Gorbles]

Do I really need to explain why he might be trying to put a positive spin on things?

Why do you think you need to? Do you not understand my point?

Nobody forced him to field questions about Civilisation. He chose to do it, so he could give that answer. There are always rationalisations. You hear what you want to hear.

I guess this is one of those situations where you hear what you want to hear.

Like I said, it's the earnings call all over again.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

You clearly haven't been down the modding rabbit hole if you believe this, lol.

They haven’t allowed the core gameplay to be altered since Civ 5. No DLL = no real change.

 

[Askia Muhammad]

Stealth posted a graph a couple pages back. It showed VI bottoming out at around 25k players during its downtime around 2017. At the time of writing this VII has 5,911 players. I don't think these situations are really comparable.

7 has bottomed out near 4,000.

 

[Leucarum]

I'm not speaking here about commercial success, I'm speaking about gameplay consistency. In the thread about civ switching I said that I think implementing it was likely a mistake

I mean it can be both. Specifically in how it negatively affects the value of DLC.

 

[stealth_nsk]

7 has bottomed out near 4,000.

Civ6 also had lower absolute bottom. 25K was kind of floor of weekly peaks to Civ6, how 10K is for Civ7.

 

[GeneralZift]

'Why believe a CEO if he says a game is doing bad, but not believe him if he says a game is doing well?'

 

[Maiq]

Civ6 also had lower absolute bottom. 25K was kind of floor of weekly peaks to Civ6, how 10K is for Civ7.

Math is hard

 

[Bug Repellent]

A sale is always a good thing for would-be consumers and 30% off is nothing to sneeze at.

 

[danjuno]

They haven’t allowed the core gameplay to be altered since Civ 5. No DLL = no real change.

Could you elaborate on that?

 

[Gorbles]

They haven’t allowed the core gameplay to be altered since Civ 5. No DLL = no real change.

I believe modders have often said that what can be achieved in VI is far than what you could do in V - when you don't take the DLL into account.

So the game has been made more moddable. This is a fact. You claiming that "core gameplay can't be changed" undermines the very real work modders have done in VI and even VII to date.

Are there things you can't mod? Yes. Is forking over uncompiled source code the way to do it better? No, the better way is to expose those systems to modding.

'Why believe a CEO if he says a game is doing bad, but not believe him if he says a game is doing well?'

If someone believes that no news is bad news, and that good news is also bad news, maybe they're just looking for bad news?

Like, we're all posting plausible theories. Aren't we? I'd never claim a CEO doesn't have incentive to do damage control. But at the same time, if the only news someone responds appreciatively to is bad news, maybe that says something too.