Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[Crashdummy]

I am trying to learn the procedures of this forum to better engage in conversation. On a review of this “steam charts” for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I was shocked to find that the average number of daily players has declined over 90% since launch, and now has fewer players than Skyrim, a nearly 14 year old game.

Clearly no game this year can avoid becoming, as the kids say, “a flop”.

KCD is a single player game with no replayability, it cant be compared. You plat for the story

 

[AddAdamSmith]

KCD is a single player game with no replayability, it cant be compared. You plat for the story

The same could be said of Skyrim and Elden Ring as well, and both have much larger player counts despite being years older.

If they have no active players now, how will they sell DLC?

 

[tman2000]

The same could be said of Skyrim and Elden Ring as well, and both have much larger player counts despite being years older.

If they have no active players now, how will they sell DLC?

Skyrim is a sandbox with a story, KCD2 is a story with a sandbox, Elden Ring is a fighting game that pretends to be a sandbox with no story. Civ is a simulation/4X game meant to be replayed.

If simulation, fighting and sandbox games don't get replayed, they aren't liked, and people won't buy DLC.

If story games are good, they might not get replayed, but people will buy the DLC.

 

[AddAdamSmith]

Skyrim is a sandbox with a story, KCD2 is a story with a sandbox, Elden Ring is a fighting game that pretends to be a sandbox with no story. Civ is a simulation/4X game meant to be replayed.

If simulation, fighting and sandbox games don't get replayed, they aren't liked, and people won't buy DLC.

If story games are good, they might not get replayed, but people will buy the DLC.

Apologies. I am very confused. Is there some measure of “sandboxiness” that we can correlate with, say, “average hours played per player” that we can then use to determine the “flop-ness” of a game?

 

[DefinitelyNotSidMeier]

There's a brigade of "top 1%" posters on the subreddit that seem to browse new 24/7 and immediately downvote all negative posts. Even a comment in a post that says something like "yeah not feeling this game" get -22 downvotes within minutes.

There are tons and tons of negative posts, proving that this is a popular sentiment, but then a brigade of downvotes by a minority of super-active users that specifically downvote anything that's negative.

You’re sounding slightly ridiculous here. Are the people who leave negative posts and comments not allowed to upvote other negative posts or comments? If so, then how are some of the most upvoted posts and comments about VII negative?

There are also tons and tons of positive posts, as well as reviews, I guess that proves that is a popular sentiment too.

 

[DefinitelyNotSidMeier]

You may be surprised to hear this, but many, many people are capable of actual independant thought and making choices.

It’s amazing the lengths people will go to to avoid the simple truth that Civ7 is simply not the game many people want to play

This time the excuse is *checks notes* brainwashing.

Using ChatGPT to try and prove the existence of millions of phantom console users is going to be tough to beat, but this was a good effort.



Reddit is a disgusting cesspool of pathetic weak people who cannot abide any disagreement, and resort to cowardly behavior like this

Many, many people also follow the crowd and popular opinion. I believe they call it herd mentality. Of course this applies to pretty much everything and not just Civ VII, but I think the point should still be made.

I'd be interested to know how every single Steam reviewer of Civ VII would review the game if they had no prior knowledge of other people's opinions, or the popular opinon.

 

[tman2000]

Apologies. I am very confused. Is there some measure of “sandboxiness” that we can correlate with, say, “average hours played per player” that we can then use to determine the “flop-ness” of a game?

The simple answer is people liked KCD2 and will buy the DLC, but people don't like Civ 7 that much and not that many will buy the DLC.

 

[tman2000]

You’re sounding slightly ridiculous here. Are the people who leave negative posts and comments not allowed to upvote other negative posts or comments? If so, then how are some of the most upvoted posts and comments about VII negative?

There are also tons and tons of positive posts, as well as reviews, I guess that proves that is a popular sentiment too.

Sorry, it's possible that you're biased and not thinking quantitatively.

You have a large population of people who are not very active on reddit, but don't like the game. Some percentage of the population occasionally comes in and leaves a negative post.

Then you have a small population of hyperactive users who vigilantly watch for new posts and downvote them if they're negative so they have less visibility.

 

[tman2000]

Many, many people also follow the crowd and popular opinion. I believe they call it herd mentality. Of course this applies to pretty much everything and not just Civ VII, but I think the point should still be made.

I'd be interested to know how every single Steam reviewer of Civ VII would review the game if they had no prior knowledge of other people's opinions, or the popular opinon.

I doubt the near universal dislike of almost objectively profound flaws is some scam created by Russian bots or something.

 

[AddAdamSmith]

The simple answer is people liked KCD2 and will buy the DLC, but people don't like Civ 7 that much and not that many will buy the DLC.

But if they like the game, why aren’t they playing it everyday? I am very confused. If it is possible to like the game, but then not play it, how are we to gauge flop?

I have been studying this thread intensely, and it seems that a change in +/-1000 players is immensely important to determine a game’s financial health.

Have I been deceived?

 

[AD1730]

Many, many people also follow the crowd and popular opinion. I believe they call it herd mentality. Of course this applies to pretty much everything and not just Civ VII, but I think the point should still be made.

I'd be interested to know how every single Steam reviewer of Civ VII would review the game if they had no prior knowledge of other people's opinions, or the popular opinon.

I'm going to assume, based on your priors, that you're insinuating that those who don't like the game only hold their view due to a herd mentality. If that's your intention, the same argument can just as easily be made about those who hold favorable opinions of the game.

So no, I don't think it's a point that adds any value to the conversation whatsoever.

As for me, I audibly groaned when they announced the civ switching mechanic a year ago before I'd seen anyone else's reaction to it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't alone in having that reaction.

 

[tman2000]

I'm going to assume, based on your priors, that you're insinuating that those who don't like the game only hold their view due to a herd mentality. If that's your intention, the same argument can just as easily be made about those who hold favorable opinions of the game.

So no, I don't think it's a point that adds any value to the conversation whatsoever.

As for me, I audibly groaned when they announced the civ switching mechanic a year ago before I'd seen anyone else's reaction to it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't alone in having that reaction.

Let's imagine for a moment a hypothetical.

Imagine a company with a product comes up with a revenue maximizing plan for its product and mandates the designers to include features that permit that level of monetization. Now let's imagine that they have a marketing plan that is calculated to appeal to the ignorance of a customer base to entice them to maximally purchase the new updates of the product, because they're ignorant of past versions.

You could almost have a bad product, as long as the design and structure of the marketing is accommodated by the product. So you can just put out ad campaigns one after another, and there will be customers somewhere who will pay, even if product satisfaction is low.

Now, what would ruin that? If the consumer class communicates with each other about the product quality and creates a general poor impression of the product. It would nullify the effect of marketing. So, what would the company do to respond? Engage in social media and contest the poor perception of the product. They can't convince customers that the product is actually good. They can convince them that those who don't like the product are idiosyncratic, and the general audience actually does like the product, and so therefore the general impression of the product ought to be good.

Keep in mind, if the product was actually good, this wouldn't be necessary at all. The company is picking fruit from a blighted orchard, that blight being the poor product quality. They have the tools and data science to find where the good fruit remains, but they have to prevent the blight from spreading.

If the product was actually good, no blight, big harvest.

Just a hypothetical. I'm not sure exactly how it applies but maybe you can think of a way.

 

[Core Imposter]

Absolutely part of the decision to have ages and civ switching was one hundred percent related to the ability to sell DLC. Civs are good for one third of a game. People are going to want to buy all of the Civ options. The ages are so short that it will not be fulfilling to just play one age. Or at least, that was the thinking.

Now, I am making an assertion here. Could I be wrong?

If the game were good and sales were hot they could make a mint. Pretty sharp play actually. And you know, that thinking really drives a nail in the coffin of hope for a classic mode.

So, how would you feel if some suit or pantsuit came up with that scheme and forced it on Ed Beach?

What if the slogan "build something you can believe" was actually message from a design team held hostage trying to let us know that they couldn't?

I am also wondering how a "saving" expansion is supposed to be rolled out or even when. If it can't be ready by Xmas then what, with GTA6 coming out in the spring? I am beginning to believe this thing could have already been abandoned. Have they announced plans?

 

[tman2000]

I am also wondering how a "saving" expansion is supposed to be rolled out or even when. If it can't be ready by Xmas then what, with GTA6 coming out in the spring? I am beginning to believe this thing could have already been abandoned. Have they announced plans?

I bet you anything they have this ace up their sleeve, so they think, which is called "Gandhi" and they think they can announce it and launch a ton of marketing that makes it seem to people who haven't bought the game since Civ 2 that this is a "big deal" and rope them in for more sales. But first they have to smoke out the "negativity" online.

I imagine they're waiting for it to die down, for player counts to go so low all of us stop talking about it an move on. Then, they can roll out "Gandhi" and save the game.

See, because, last-time-I-played-was-Civ-2 people will play for maybe 70 hours, not quite get the game, get busy, put it down. Then they can release, "Obama" and they'll all buy it and half of them will play it, but sales are sales.

I would imagine some such might be what's going on here.

 

[Kwami]

I doubt the near universal dislike of almost objectively profound flaws is some scam created by Russian bots or something.

Sure, "near universal". Except that Steam reviews are pretty much 50/50 (49/51 when I checked just now) and critical reviews average 8/10. So, no, your opinion is not "near universal". It's not even remotely close. And there's nothing "objective" about it, either.

 

[Kwami]

I am also wondering how a "saving" expansion is supposed to be rolled out or even when. If it can't be ready by Xmas then what, with GTA6 coming out in the spring? I am beginning to believe this thing could have already been abandoned. Have they announced plans?

Do you really think there's a big overlap between the GTA6 community and the Civ community? Really? I'm sure that Firaxis doesn't care one bit about GTA6 releasing in the spring.

They'll develop and deliver an expansion 12-18 months after the game was released, just like they always do. There's no conspiracy here.

 

[sonicmyst]

Sending some charts here:

 

[kaspergm]

Absolutely part of the decision to have ages and civ switching was one hundred percent related to the ability to sell DLC.

As much as I dislike the design of Civ7 - and that is a lot - I simply don’t believe that is true, at least not if we speak about the developers motivation. I 100 % believe the developers thought these new features would make the game more engaging by making civs always relevant when in use, and by reducing snowballing and late game fatigue.

Now I think their lack of realisation of all the negative consequences these features have introduced into the game is misjudgement of epic proportions, and I also acknowledge that the … publishers, or whatever the term for those who fund the game is … might have bought into the concept with monetisation in mind. But I don’t believe that was what drove the developers in the first place.

And just for context, I like AD1730 was completely stunned when I saw the release info. Before, my hype level was over the top and I was literally counting down the days until I could preorder. But after seeing the announcement, my hype completely deflated. I had the game in my shopping basket several times for preorder, because I felt surely, the game could not be the disaster it seemed. But I could not get myself to pay for it, and each time I thought “I’ll just wait a bit, surely there’ll come some info that will convince me I will love this game”. And yet, I still don’t own the game (and I have not regretted a single time).

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

As much as I dislike the design of Civ7 - and that is a lot - I simply don’t believe that is true, at least not if we speak about the developers motivation. I 100 % believe the developers thought these new features would make the game more engaging by making civs always relevant when in use, and by reducing snowballing and late game fatigue.

Now I think their lack of realisation of all the negative consequences these features have introduced into the game is misjudgement of epic proportions, and I also acknowledge that the … publishers, or whatever the term for those who fund the game is … might have bought into the concept with monetisation in mind. But I don’t believe that was what drove the developers in the first place.

And just for context, I like AD1730 was completely stunned when I saw the release info. Before, my hype level was over the top and I was literally counting down the days until I could preorder. But after seeing the announcement, my hype completely deflated. I had the game in my shopping basket several times for preorder, because I felt surely, the game could not be the disaster it seemed. But I could not get myself to pay for it, and each time I thought “I’ll just wait a bit, surely there’ll come some info that will convince me I will love this game”. And yet, I still don’t own the game (and I have not regretted a single time).

I think there's a middle ground here. I took am confident that the developers thought this might be a fun way to play, but I could also believe that they settled on the approach because 2K pushed them to find more ways to monetise the game.

It feels like the DLC model is too baked in to be anything other than planned. They could sell us leaders, personas, Civs (per age) they could sell us additional ages, some of which could be alternate ages to replace existing ones, not simply to extend the game. They could sell us new Civs for those ages. There's even custom fog of war you can buy.

It feels like a shakedown, and all the new core features just happen to be excellent ways to extract more money. Like I say, I think the developers made a solution they thought would be a fun game, but I think they were set parameters / instructions ahead of design to bake in more monetisation. I do not believe this design has come purely from a place of honest traditional game design first.

 

[Kwami]

I think there's a middle ground here. I took am confident that the developers thought this might be a fun way to play, but I could also believe that they settled on the approach because 2K pushed them to find more ways to monetise the game.

It feels like the DLC model is too baked in to be anything other than planned. They could sell us leaders, personas, Civs (per age) they could sell us additional ages, some of which could be alternate ages to replace existing ones, not simply to extend the game. They could sell us new Civs for those ages. There's even custom fog of war you can buy.

It feels like a shakedown, and all the new core features just happen to be excellent ways to extract more money. Like I say, I think the developers made a solution they thought would be a fun game, but I think they were set parameters / instructions ahead of design to bake in more monetisation. I do not believe this design has come purely from a place of honest traditional game design first.

Except so far, they're only selling civilizations and leaders, exactly as they did for V and VI. Were those shakedowns, too?

Yes, you can buy silly aesthetic things like custom fog of war, but those things don't change the game at all, so who cares?