Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[IntelligentDisk]

One of the things to note is that both significant falls on this graph were during sales (one of the theories is that sales attract some category of skeptical old fans who decide to try the game when it's cheap).

I have a strong guess that patch and the first part of the DLC pack content will be timed with Autumn sale (and second part of the DLC pack content - with Christmas sale). I think the real trend breaker will be if those sales will not bring that big drops.

Only the August sale saw a big drop in the positive %.

June 26th - July 9th sale (2 weeks)

• 2 weeks before sale: 32%
• 2 week sale period: 35%
• 2 weeks after sale: 41.5%

August 11th - August 24th sale (2 weeks)

• 2 weeks before sale: 48.5%
• 2 week sale period: 32.3%
• 2 weeks after sale: 38%

September 25th - October 6th sale (12 days)

• 12 days before sale: 39.1%
• 12 day sale period: 41.3%
• 12 days after sale: 47.7%

The Autumn sale has already been, that was late September/early October, and they said the first part of the free DLC is dropping with the update on November 4th. It's possible the game will see a weekend sale next week though.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Only the August sale saw a big drop in the positive %.

June 26th - July 9th sale (2 weeks)

• 2 weeks before sale: 32%
• 2 week sale period: 35%
• 2 weeks after sale: 41.5%

August 11th - August 24th sale (2 weeks)

• 2 weeks before sale: 48.5%
• 2 week sale period: 32.3%
• 2 weeks after sale: 38%

September 25th - October 6th sale (12 days)

• 12 days before sale: 39.1%
• 12 day sale period: 41.3%
• 12 days after sale: 47.7%

The Autumn sale has already been, that was late September/early October, and they said the first part of the free DLC is dropping with the update on November 4th. It's possible the game will see a weekend sale next week though.

Yes, I misremembered June drop being in sync with sales, but SteamDB says I'm wrong.

 

[Kev1916]

Steam shows 7 positive and 5 negative. Does that mean 9 were bought externally and 4 negative reviews were refunded?

" If you had a game that you have bought in steam store, reviewed but then refunded it for some reason. Your review gets downgraded with a key icon and won’t count at the review score at the top of the page.

 

[Kwami]

Steam itself tells me that 47% of all reviews in all languages are positive and that 49% of recent reviews are positive. So, it's getting better.

 

[Leucarum]

It would be really great if stability would actually be good for most players. When they announced it will be PC only (despite their games running really well on macs, and often better than on windows), I hoped this would at least mean good performance and no technical difficulties. Apparently, performance is rather good – but I've heard from crashes ruining saves permanently from several sources now. Some combinations of decision seem to lead to inevitable and reproducible crashes down the line, apparently mostly due to the so-called situation. At least that makes it looks like it can be fixed rather quickly. Still, I'm not too optimistic that the launch will be as successful as I wish it would be. But that's good for the civ 7 patch – at least for me, I'll play the new civ 7 patch first, an then try EU5 in some months, despite having bought it the day it was announced due to the many, many hours I have in EU4 (the only game in my Steam library that shows well above 1000 hours).

I'm personally looking forward to it. It will probably swipe me from Civ7 for a while, though I will try a Tonga game. Nothing else in ToP appeals thus far so...

What I find insane is the amount of stuff coming out in one go from Paradox. Eu5 is the big name, but All under Heaven and Surviving Mars Relaunched at basically the same time... Honestly, it's going to take the rest of the year just for me to catch up with what they're putting out in the space of a week. Civ7 will likely take a back seat for me until we see what they are doing with civ continuity.

 

[Kwami]

Surviving Mars Relaunched

I'm still rather salty about not having a GOG version or giving any kind of upgrade discount to players who bought the original game on GOG. Paradox really doesn't treat their customers well.

 

[Chiyo]

It will be very interesting to see how EU5 is going to be received. They seem to go the exact opposite way of Civ7 by concentrating on their core audience while Civ tried to open up to as many new players as possible even if it meant abandoning core elements of the franchise. From what I have seen I think I will like EU5 and will buy it at release, but I even bought Civ7 although I correctly feared I would not like it at all.

 

[Leucarum]

I'm still rather salty about not having a GOG version or giving any kind of upgrade discount to players who bought the original game on GOG. Paradox really doesn't treat their customers well.

Hmm... I didn't know that. That's a shame. I really like the game. You do get a discount on steam at least...

 

[Kwami]

Hmm... I didn't know that. That's a shame. I really like the game. You do get a discount on steam at least...

No, you only get a discount on Steam if you have the original game on Steam. If you have the original game on GOG, then you have to pay full price on Steam.

 

[Leucarum]

No, you only get a discount on Steam if you have the original game on Steam. If you have the original game on GOG, then you have to pay full price on Steam.

That's a shame It's my favourite games in its genre.

 

[Kwami]

That's a shame It's my favourite games in its genre.

It's even worse because Paradox just doesn't seem to care at all. There was one "no plans for a GOG version" comment on a Steam board and that's it. No other acknowledgement of GOG players at all. Their customer service is just horrible.

Oh, well. We shouldn't keep posting off topic.

 

[Leucarum]

It's even worse because Paradox just doesn't seem to care at all. There was one "no plans for a GOG version" comment on a Steam board and that's it. No other acknowledgement of GOG players at all. Their customer service is just horrible.

Oh, well. We shouldn't keep posting off topic.

Yes. Distracting people from whether 47 is bigger than 53 and whether either is glorious redemption or doom laden apocalypse.

 

[Gorbles]

Yes. Distracting people from whether 47 is bigger than 53 and whether either is glorious redemption or doom laden apocalypse.

You should know better than to focus CivFanatics on anything (they're not already hyperfocused on)

 

[Leucarum]

You should know better than to focus CivFanatics on anything (they're not already hyperfocused on)

There can be no middle ground!

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Any bored days analysts among us? I think it would be interesting to see a 2 month rolling trend (ie how does Jul + aug compare to aug + SEP compare to separate + Oct)

September is anonymously low in it's player counts because it never got that end of month patch like months across the summer did. Then October got an early month patch and November will have the same. So the numbers in September shouldn't be as low as they are, the the peak for November should be the peak for October in old money. Basically - I think the change in patch release month means months are no longer directly comparable. 2 month rolling may help paint a better picture of how player numbers are changing (or not as the case may be).

The reviews are more interesting as a shift at the moment. @stealth_nsk may be onto something with the lack of sales, so there are less reluctant trier's giving it poor reviewers after expected disappointment. But I think the map gen changes in the last patch were a genuine improvement that seems to have fixed one of the most obvious weaknesses of the game. It's interesting that in spite of those reviews ticking upwards, player retention doesn't seem to be ticking upwards, unless you compare against September (which as mentioned, I think is giving a false impression based on our current measures)

Suspect this next patch could have an even larger peak than October, but the drop off is going to be interesting to watch - as peaks get higher, can the troughs also get higher?

The good news for the future of the game seems to be that a lot of people are still hanging about waiting on, to quote what I frequently see on Reddit and Facebook, the full game finally being released. The bad news for the short term seems to be that it still isn't scratching the itch for the majority of past Civ players enough to pick up sales and retain players beyond the established baseline.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Any bored days analysts among us? I think it would be interesting to see a 2 month rolling trend (ie how does Jul + aug compare to aug + SEP compare to separate + Oct)

September is anonymously low in it's player counts because it never got that end of month patch like months across the summer did. Then October got an early month patch and November will have the same. So the numbers in September shouldn't be as low as they are, the the peak for November should be the peak for October in old money. Basically - I think the change in patch release month means months are no longer directly comparable. 2 month rolling may help paint a better picture of how player numbers are changing (or not as the case may be).

The reviews are more interesting as a shift at the moment. @stealth_nsk may be onto something with the lack of sales, so there are less reluctant trier's giving it poor reviewers after expected disappointment. But I think the map gen changes in the last patch were a genuine improvement that seems to have fixed one of the most obvious weaknesses of the game. It's interesting that in spite of those reviews ticking upwards, player retention doesn't seem to be ticking upwards, unless you compare against September (which as mentioned, I think is giving a false impression based on our current measures)

Suspect this next patch could have an even larger peak than October, but the drop off is going to be interesting to watch - as peaks get higher, can the troughs also get higher?

The good news for the future of the game seems to be that a lot of people are still hanging about waiting on, to quote what I frequently see on Reddit and Facebook, the full game finally being released. The bad news for the short term seems to be that it still isn't scratching the itch for the majority of past Civ players enough to pick up sales and retain players beyond the established baseline.

September not getting an update isn't the only reason why the player count was much lower. The player count dropped almost immediately at levels not seen before, my theory was students going back to school, college and university. September tends to see a drop of players on Steam overall.

I don't think lack of sales is the reason for reviews improving so much in the past month. October only had 2 days less on sale than September but had almost 300 more reviews, and October was so much better reviewed than September. October: 1,043 reviews, 48% positive. September: 870 reviews, 38.4% positive. I agree this next update could bring a bigger peak, maybe over 13,000 for the first time since May 4th. The week-by-week drop offs for 1.2.5 is pretty consistent with the drop offs of 1.2.1, 1.2.2 & 1.2.3.

 

[Dedrytus]

I'm talking only about my feelings but devs are not going to change my mind about buying Civ7. I see it like they have no clear vision how this game should look like. Allowing to switch off core mechanics that were advertised as main features of new iteration is not working for me. I am afraid that ai will be terrible to properly use different modes. To this day civ6 ai can't use aircrafts and ships for example.

 

[Smegger213]

The October player numbers are now on SteamDB.
Peak for October was 12617, with the average being 6624.
That means that despite the highest peak since May, the average is still lower than May to August's averages.
However the average was nearly 15% higher than Septembers average.
I guess despite some of the best weeks for positive reviews.
That has not been translated into more player numbers.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

Yeah there isn't really a correlation between Steam positive review % and player numbers. If there was you'd expect Civ VII to have much worse player retention than it does now, but it actually has better player retention than some other well rated (~80%) strategy games like Age of Wonders 4, Stellaris, Manor Lords & recently Endless Legend II.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Yeah there isn't really a correlation between Steam positive review % and player numbers. If there was you'd expect Civ VII to have much worse player retention than it does now, but it actually has better player retention than some other well rated (~80%) strategy games like Age of Wonders 4, Stellaris, Manor Lords & recently Endless Legend II.

Yes, the only effect from Steam reviews is that affect future sales if they hit the threshold, but not by much. So even if recent reviews will tickle to "mostly positive", we'll not see it on simultaneous players number, because correlation between simultaneous player number and number of owners is also very weak.