Player stats, sales, and reception speculation thread

[IntelligentDisk]

"Overrated" is a subjective position. You can say that the positive reviews were front-loaded, but to say that something is overrated is to say that it is scored too highly against an objective standard.

I would say that the positive reviews were front-loaded most likely because all of the majority of Civilization fans bought into it early and were happy with their purchase?

I don't think it needs to be compared to an objective standard, it just needs to be compared to itself. If it was rated 60% and fell to 40% I would still say the overall score by the audience at the time within the first 6 weeks must've been overrated. Likewise, say if its rated 50% initially but then rises to 70%, then it must've been underrated, only if the game doesn't get updates and have significant changes to it. If a game remains the same and starts off with reviews which aren't good but then it rises and rises, then I'd say it must've been underrated. If Civ VII didn't get updated or anything and the overall rating went from 47% to 70-80%, then I would say it must've been heavily underrated by Steam reviewers. But as its been updated for 9 months and recent Steam reviews have only just started to improve, the initial overall rating was not underrating Civ VII.

With Civ VI, it started off very positive and then as time went on, more people bought the game, more people reviewed and the overall fell 17%. It had updates & DLC too. An argument could be made that the updates & DLC made the game worse, therefore the initial reviews weren't overrated, and Civ VI just became a worse game over the next couple of years due to updates/DLC, but I don't think that's the case.

We can agree to disagree. By the way, I'm not saying the initial reviewers were wrong to rate Civ VI very positive. It's just that 2+ years went by with 40,000+ additional reviews (21,000 total at time of 83% rating) and the overall rating fell by 17%.

 

[IntelligentDisk]

I find Civ 6’s review pattern interesting because, in my view, Civ 6 is the only Civ game that got worse because of its DLC. The game just became too bloated. Civ 5, on the other hand, was enhanced (even saved) because of its DLC.

Perhaps what we’re seeing with that Civ 6 review pattern is a referendum on its DLC and not on the base game?

I don't think so. What DLC would that be? VIs reviews started falling right after 6 weeks had passed at the start of December 2016. October (only 11 days) was rated 78% with 9.1k reviews. November was rated 88% with 11.6k reviews, December was 59% with 2.1k reviews.

 

[AD1730]

I don't think it needs to be compared to an objective standard, it just needs to be compared to itself. If it was rated 60% and fell to 40% I would still say the overall score by the audience at the time within the first 6 weeks must've been overrated. Likewise, say if its rated 50% initially but then rises to 70%, then it must've been underrated, only if the game doesn't get updates and have significant changes to it. If a game remains the same and starts off with reviews which aren't good but then it rises and rises, then I'd say it must've been underrated. If Civ VII didn't get updated or anything and the overall rating went from 47% to 70-80%, then I would say it must've been heavily underrated by Steam reviewers. But as its been updated for 9 months and recent Steam reviews have only just started to improve, the initial overall rating was not underrating Civ VII.

With Civ VI, it started off very positive and then as time went on, more people bought the game, more people reviewed and the overall fell 17%. It had updates & DLC too. An argument could be made that the updates & DLC made the game worse, therefore the initial reviews weren't overrated, and Civ VI just became a worse game over the next couple of years due to updates/DLC, but I don't think that's the case.

We can agree to disagree. By the way, I'm not saying the initial reviewers were wrong to rate Civ VI very positive. It's just that 2+ years went by with 40,000+ additional reviews (21,000 total at time of 83% rating) and the overall rating fell by 17%.

Or, the people who bought the game early were most likely to like the game, and therefore more likely to give it a higher score. That doesn’t mean that it’s overrated, it just means that the target audience for the game liked it. That’s a good thing. I say this as someone who isn’t a big fan of Civ 6 (or, perhaps more accurately, I don’t like what Civ 6 became).

And this is where Civ 7 has problems. Early adopters scored it below 50%.

 

[aieeegrunt]

6 got very good pre release reviews from traditional outlets as I recall. It was clean and simple (even if kind of barebones), though I had the feeling that a lot of reviewers were kind of new to civ and this might have been their first experience. People went in expecting a good game and reviewed as such when steamreview time came. As peopled played they found some things that needed tweaking, were missing, etc.

7 opened with bad reviews. People started playing expecting to be disappointed. It'll take some doing to overcome initial perceptions (like it is with anything).

My two cents anyhow.

Or maybe, just maybe it got all those bad reviews because those people thought the game was bad?

People expecting to be disappointed wouldn’t have bought the game in the first place.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Or maybe, just maybe it got all those bad reviews because those people thought the game was bad?

People expecting to be disappointed wouldn’t have bought the game in the first place.

While this looks logical, reading reviews and reading this forum proves that it's actually much more complex.

For example, several people on this forum wrote that they like the game, but left negative review. Why? Because review answers the question "Would you recommend the game?" and they don't think they would recommend the game. Other cases include people complaining about price or Denuvo, even though the like the game.