Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Core Imposter]

Makes me wonder what happened on the 12th of August.

Some things:

1. 1336: English King Edward III bans wool export to Flanders, aiming to maximize taxes by granting a monopoly to a group of merchants.
2. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in the Canary Islands during his first voyage to the New World.
3. 1549: French troops conquer Ambleteuse, killing all English prisoners.
4. 1812: Duke of Wellington's troops enter Madrid during the Peninsular War.
5. 1877: Thomas Edison records himself reciting "Mary had a little lamb" on his newly invented phonograph, marking a significant moment in sound recording history.
6. 1888: Bertha Benz, wife of inventor Karl Benz, undertakes the first long-distance motor tour, demonstrating the practicality of the automobile.
7. 30 BC: Cleopatra VII, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, commits suicide, marking the end of her reign and the Ptolemaic Kingdom.
8. 1099: The Battle of Ascalon occurs, the final engagement of the First Crusade, as Crusaders secure their hold on Jerusalem.

The problem is that none of those things happen in Civ 7.

 

[GeneralZift]

1. 30 BC: Cleopatra VII, the last active ruler of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, commits suicide, marking the end of her reign and the Ptolemaic Kingdom.

I do this one quite a lot in Civ7

 

[Core Imposter]

One thing missed in the exploration age was the reason for it. Money. You have to create an identity of the leader/ruler and a relationship between money and power and then institute a game mechanic that directly connects trade to power and prestige. Colonialism was never about spreading culture it was about exploitation. But you can't model it in a game in purely abstract ways. You can't just give someone a virtual medal. You have to make it real with actual game mechanics. Perhaps a leader who has raised enormous sums in the New World can afford an armada to invade his rival. And then perhaps a storm sinks the fleet? Make it possible. That's a game.

 

[DefinitelyNotSidMeier]

There was a period from mid July to early August when player reviews had improved, with most days seeing more positive reviews than negative reviews. Then, since the second week of August, that has reversed and we're back to seeing more negative reviews than positive reviews most days, with some days heavily negative.

Spoiler Civ 7 Reviews Past Month per SteamDB :

View attachment 741143

How accurate is SteamDB's review numbers in comparison to Steam?

I checked it on the 12th because 2 positive reviews to 71 negative reviews is hard to believe, and it didn't sound correct.

On Steam it has 13 positive & 48 negative reviews which are Steam verified on the 12th August. I counted 17 positive & 61 negative reviews on the 12th August from both Steam & non-Steam verified.

 

[Wrenched]

How accurate is SteamDB's review numbers in comparison to Steam?

I checked it on the 12th because 2 positive reviews to 71 negative reviews is hard to believe, and it didn't sound correct.

On Steam it has 13 positive & 48 negative reviews which are Steam verified on the 12th August. I counted 17 positive & 61 negative reviews on the 12th August from both Steam & non-Steam verified.

On Steam proper, I believe the non-Steam/key purchasers can leave reviews but only verified Steam purchases count towards the aggregate review score.

 

[Skojardu]

I agree. (Soft) limiting districts in combination with the (soft) settlement cap that we already have could be an option. I'd actually take Humankind for a comparison here. Both that and civ 7 have unlimited districts, while their predecessors Endless Legend and civ VI had limited districts. Opening that limitation didn't fare too well in neither game.

One potential way to limit districts could be by making population a more contested resource: make units take up a population, and make urban districts also cost population instead of providing population. But this might just slow down the game too much.

In addition to districts, I think the snowball per tile is also a bit too strong in 7. In previous games, tiles with 5 resources were great in the beginning and still worth it in the mid game. In civ 7, you find tiles with 7 or 8 resources regularly, and many buildings provide 10+ resources as well. In the late game, a tile with less than 20 resources is actually bad. They tried to limit that with the age reset (building yields drop down, adjacencies lost, rural tiles reset), which seems a good way to me. But then they decided to just ramp it up in the next age for some reason. Yet, if yields reset, it would have been fine to make age 2 buildings just a bit stronger than age 1 buildings, and not twice as strong... so, I don't really follow the philosophy here.

Units purely out of production are modern autonomous killer drones seen in the war in Ukraine. All previous units for fighting required people to suit up and sally forth. It is fun gameplay, but once you see it in action in Civ Col, it is much more realistic.

 

[aelf]

I was very critical about the civ switching and the ages system from the beginning. From the first announcement I knew that I dont want to play this game. And I cannot imagine that I'm alone with that. Even within Firaxis there must have been people who said "Ed, these are bad ideas. We will alienate our fanbase". But Ed and the higher ups didnt listen. Ed, because he fell in love with his vision. And the highe ups, because they knew that this system means that they can produce an infinite number of DLCs with minimum effort (no doubt that is how they pitched their idea in the first place). But again, I doubt that these changes to the core franchise were made without resistance.

Yes, and you are one person speaking from one person's perspective. Again, the customer lens as someone who only knows their own wants and maybe those of people adjacent to them, with no way of finding out whether they're right in the aggregate without the benefit of hindsight. Someone working on the product needs to be able to find out more and consider more angles.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

How accurate is SteamDB's review numbers in comparison to Steam?

I checked it on the 12th because 2 positive reviews to 71 negative reviews is hard to believe, and it didn't sound correct.

On Steam it has 13 positive & 48 negative reviews which are Steam verified on the 12th August. I counted 17 positive & 61 negative reviews on the 12th August from both Steam & non-Steam verified.

I don't know, but in addition to SteamDB counting some reviews that Steam does not, I wonder if there is a timing difference between the two? For example, might one of them use your local time zone to count the start of each day while the other uses a fixed time zone? I don't know that this difference exists, but I've wondered if it might based on discrepancies like the one you pointed out.

 

[misesfan]

Again, the customer lens as someone who only knows their own wants and maybe those of people adjacent to them, with no way of finding out whether they're right in the aggregate without the benefit of hindsight.

The whole purpose of making a product is to satisfy the customer's wants and needs. If they produce a product that doesnt do that it should justifiably fail. That's fundamental market economics. Part of this process is predicting or knowing what your customer wants. The Devs for Civ predicted that more people would play a game to build something you believe in, instead of playing a game to build a powerful empire that stands the test of time. They are wrong and it demonstrates they dont know their audience. And they are getting slapped around in the marketplace for being incorrect.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The Devs for Civ predicted that more people would play a game to build something you believe in

I've been thinking about making a thread concerning this slogan. Does it actually express, I wonder, the satisfactions that people who like the game find in it?

At the end of a game of Civ 7, do players say, "Now, there's something I believe in!"

What does it mean to "believe in" a particular civ? Believe that those three civlets should have collectively been a civ in this world?

Or do the game mechanics in some other way allow one to believe and then build something that conforms to that belief?

Was it hard to believe in your civ in 1-6, and now it has become more possible to do so?

I ask because I didn't see any of the advance press or the advertising since then put any degree of specificity to what it is that this phrase means.

And I haven't heard players who like the game say, "Man, 7 finally lets me build a civ I believe in!"

I mean, we all know they made a big shift in 7, but is this phrase really the best one for capturing what's supposed to be fun and special about 7?

Do you do that--build something you believe in--more in this game than in earlier versions?

 

[ColtSeavers]

Yes, and you are one person speaking from one person's perspective. Again, the customer lens as someone who only knows their own wants and maybe those of people adjacent to them, with no way of finding out whether they're right in the aggregate without the benefit of hindsight. Someone working on the product needs to be able to find out more and consider more angles.

And do you seriously think, this "someone" did a good job and found all the right angels there?

 

[Civinator]

Maribozir take
Summary - bland boring and uninteresting, outrageous pricing , overly simplistic, samey , nothing to do , lack of choice, loss of depth , terrible UI , poor maps , lack of fun , streamling of the game , etc etc

Streamlining of the game in my eyes can be something positive. Sid Meier tried this during his whole process of developing Civ 1. That path in my eyes was lost more and more starting with Civ 4, when units that looked the same on the map began to have very different values in the game and "secondary techtrees" were added more and more to the game.

 

[Civinator]

At the end of a game of Civ 7, do players say, "Now, there's something I believe in!"

What does it mean to "believe in" a particular civ? Believe that those three civlets should have collectively been a civ in this world? Or do the game mechanics in some other way allow one to believe and then build something that conforms to that belief?

I ask because I didn't see any of the advance press or the advertising since then put any degree of specificity to what it is that this phrase means.

There was at least an addition to that phrase in the Firaxis/Take 2 advertisment. The English text was shown in this post: https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...culation-thread.697557/page-148#post-16851083

 

[GeneralZift]

I don't think the slogan really matters so much as people make it out to be. It's just that the old slogan doesn't fit the game anymore so they made a new slogan that they thought would sound good. But it doesn't necessarily reflect the game in any significant way

 

[Gori the Grey]

But it doesn't necessarily reflect the game in any significant way

Well, if so, that in itself is a kind of failure. If you're going to change your slogan, at least make it communicate the appeal of the new game.

Or, put another way, if you are going to design a very different game, invent a slogan that will tell players what satisfactions they will be able to take from this new game.

But I think you might be right. All it really communicates is "You won't be doing in this game what you've done in the others." Without putting any positive content in its place.

 

[misesfan]

I don't think the slogan really matters so much as people make it out to be. It's just that the old slogan doesn't fit the game anymore so they made a new slogan that they thought would sound good. But it doesn't necessarily reflect the game in any significant

I think the slogan 'building something you believe in' was probably coined in some marketing corner at Firaxis that sounded good on paper but means absolutely nothing to the people who really matter - the customer. They want to build a powerful empire. And the old tagline was perfect in conveying this....

 

[GeneralZift]

Well, if so, that in itself is a kind of failure. If you're going to change your slogan, at least make it communicate the appeal of the new game.

Or, put another way, if you are going to design a very different game, invent a slogan that will tell players what satisfactions they will be able to take from this new game.

But I think you might be right. All it really communicates is "You won't be doing in this game what you've done in the others." Without putting any positive content in its place.

Yes. And not meaning to undermine your original post, because I agree, here is my opinion.

The slogan 'Build something you believe in' is a bit awful from a marketing perspective. The word 'something' or 'thing' is **** in a slogan quite frankly.

Next on my moisturising line - "This thing is amazing on face"
Yea doesn't quite sell it.

Even instead of 'Can you build an empire to stand the test of time' which implies you play as one empire to 'Can you stand the test of time?'
which at least makes it sound like you are weathering the ages to survive to the end yourself.

 

[Gori the Grey]

The little snippet that @Civinator provided gives a little glimpse of their thinking. They knew that with the new mechanics, you could either play one civ through all three ages (China or India), and that would be like old Civs (a path rooted in history), or you could take full advantage of civ-switching (imagine new possibilities).

But that's kind of solving a problem no one had. I suspect no one who played and enjoyed any title in 1-6 said, "this is a great game, but I feel so hemmed in playing just China; I wish I had new possibilities."

What I mean is, the old games already "imagined new possibilities," not terribly "rooted in history." Songhai could build the Great Wall. Babylon could launch a space ship. Arabia could start in a jungle; Aztecs in a desert. Nobody was saying "yeah, but I need an even more counter-factual civ."

 

[tman2000]

I think the slogan 'building something you believe in' was probably coined in some marketing corner at Firaxis that sounded good on paper but means absolutely nothing to the people who really matter - the customer. They want to build a powerful empire. And the old tagline was perfect in conveying this....

Seems to mean "Build something unique and eclectic" instead of "Make a single historical power become a great empire".

But marketing jargon says "unique and eclectic" sounds better as "you believe in".

What they don't realize is that "you believe in" isn't just a more positive way to say "eclectic, but unique" it also inverts the meaning to gaslight the player. I don't think this is intended but it comes off that way

"We're forcing you to build an eclectic history you don't want to build, but you can't blame us because you're the one who chose which civs to switch to, it's on you, it's what you believe in."

 

[fantsu]

I do this one quite a lot in Civ7

Didn't even finish the antiquity age.