[poll] How excited are you currently about Civ7? [vol 1 - September/October 24]

[Riconatic]

Yes, DLC model is evil, and it's a tragedy that the market equilibrium is set where it's set.

But I think most people simply don't factor it, when estimating their excitement for the game. I certainly don't. Even though, Larian rightfully deserve massive praise for the integrity of releasing a full experience for a single price, sales practices are a separate thing from the game itself.

The best way would be to buy the heavily discounted complete edition several years later.

I only estimate price per hours. Larian type game for me is good. But I only can be play it once. I do not have it in me to replay it after one completition.

I estimate this game to be one of my cheapest games per hour (civ 6 might beat this still) and initial price is quite irrelevant or model they sell it in.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Yes, DLC model is evil, and it's a tragedy that the market equilibrium is set where it's set.

But I think most people simply don't factor it, when estimating their excitement for the game. I certainly don't. Even though, Larian rightfully deserve massive praise for the integrity of releasing a full experience for a single price, sales practices are a separate thing from the game itself.

The best way would be to buy the heavily discounted complete edition several years later.

I don't think the DLC model is always evil but otherwise I largely agree with you. I can absolutely separate my feelings on the game from the monetisation model. The model for VII was cemented by the success of VI, it isn't going anywhere.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I played civilization on MS-DOS on a 486, and played all the sequels since then.
Solid 1 for me here close to zero. I am surprised browsing through here no one is talking about the insidious DLCs which should be a feature of the base game itself, when DLCs actually mean something instead of intentionally cutting out bit and pieces of game in order to EXTORT more money from its fans.
Just look at Baldur's Gate 3 and see what a true game for fans look like.
The best way for change is simply not to buy ANY DLC, buy just the base game itself or not buy at all. But I doubt the majority of seasoned strategy gamers will even care, so let them earn money and perpetuate this cash grab greedy model. Have fun guys.

DLC model is not evil, it's a way to split cost, segment customers, etc.

The thing many people don't realize is what there are no super profits on highly competitive market. Those money the company gets are really needed to pay off for games and there's still a chance for the company to lose money on games. So, those costs are necessary. The only thing DLC system does in terms of money is distributing those costs, so, for example, people who can't afford (or don't want) to pay full game, could buy only basic version.

P.S. Another thing the DLC model does is having release earlier, since those DLC civilizations and leaders are really not ready yet.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Solid 1 for me here close to zero. I am surprised browsing through here no one is talking about the insidious DLCs which should be a feature of the base game itself, when DLCs actually mean something instead of intentionally cutting out bit and pieces of game in order to EXTORT more money from its fans.

To play devil's advocate, 130 € is still cheap for many players who are either ultra fan of this very precise franchise (and don't play much of other games) or that predict that they will spend 1000s hours on it, or both. To be fair, if the game is not even more expensive, it's because it's not out yet and people don't know for sure by advance how much time they will play at it. I mean, Civ7 has still to gain one's spurs after all. After that, if the game is quite good AND a lot of people spent 100s hours playing it AND the game has still some hype in it, they could charge each separate expansions 100 € without a problem. Again, not for all potential buyers, but for some/a lot ? I guess it's just maths. If they were selling the game 1.000 $ I'm sure it would still have a lot of success, but it would probably bring in less money than if it's sold 70 $. NOT considering wrath of customers going all illegal.

segment customers

Isn't that a problem instead ?

 

[stealth_nsk]

Isn't that a problem instead ?

I don't see how segmenting customers is a problem, it's just a way to maximize sold amount by charging more (130) from people who are ready to pay (i.e. hardcore fans), while charging less (70) from more casual players. Having single price (i.e. 100) would mean receiving less money from hard core fans and having much less sales from casual players. And having less profit means higher chances of the game's financial fail.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

7th of November. and Age II is revealed in details. Now we have leaders (And Nick Macchiavelli is revealed, Normans.. not so much. i'm not sure about how could Normans Chevalier looks like)

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

DLC model is not evil, it's a way to split cost, segment customers, etc.

The thing many people don't realize is what there are no super profits on highly competitive market. Those money the company gets are really needed to pay off for games and there's still a chance for the company to lose money on games. So, those costs are necessary. The only thing DLC system does in terms of money is distributing those costs, so, for example, people who can't afford (or don't want) to pay full game, could buy only basic version.

P.S. Another thing the DLC model does is having release earlier, since those DLC civilizations and leaders are really not ready yet.

DLC is only evil when it is used wrong. Taking content out of a game with a specific purpose of selling it at a profit when it should clearly been in the base game.

If they made Religions a DLC, people would be rightfully pissed.

But content like new leaders, civilizations, wonders, etc is actually a fine way of utilizng a DLC model.

 

[j51]

DLC is only evil when it is used wrong. Taking content out of a game with a specific purpose of selling it at a profit when it should clearly been in the base game.

If they made Religions a DLC, people would be rightfully pissed.

But content like new leaders, civilizations, wonders, etc is actually a fine way of utilizng a DLC model.

I feel like crossroads of the world skirts the line though: it only comes out like 6 weeks after release.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Twas not so long ago that games had big expansions, released years after the initial release. If I followed dtarchon's reasoning, then I would have never bought Civ3 Conquests or Civ4 Beyond the Sword. Both of those made the vanilla game much better. Brave New World made Civ5 better, though it's still my least favorite among the Civ games released in this century.

DLC (for me) is just a way to subdivide the content that would have been in an expansion in previous iterations. More content, more frequently. I do agree with @TheMarshmallowBear that it can be used in an abusive way; I don't think that happened with Civ6. My preference is still for expansions at some point, to introduce new mechanics and move the game forward. Old World releases frequent, periodic, updates to fix issues and improve balance, while still selling an expansion/DLC to update game mechanics.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I feel like crossroads of the world skirts the line though: it only comes out like 6 weeks after release.

That doesn't mean it's bad.

LIke I said, if this released advanced trade route system, or something like religion, then yes, that would be skirting, but this is literally just a pack with additional leaders, wonders, and minor content, does not justify it being "money sucking"

If you can not buy it, and the quality of the game is not hampered by it, it's not evil.

 

[j51]

That doesn't mean it's bad.

LIke I said, if this released advanced trade route system, or something like religion, then yes, that would be skirting, but this is literally just a pack with additional leaders, wonders, and minor content, does not justify it being "money sucking"

If you can not buy it, and the quality of the game is not hampered by it, it's not evil.

With only 10 civs per era (11 exploration) though it could be argued that it’s necessary to have those 4 extra civs to enjoy the game to keep variety up. Or if one of the old standbys that look like they may be missing, like Germany or Russia, are in that DLC it can also feel shifty.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

It's all a spectrum, isn't it. On one side you have egregious & predatory tactics designed to extort fans, and on the other you have a genuine desire to deliver high quality new content to fans that want it, for a fair price. We all have a different threshold for what is acceptable, but for me, Civ is very far from crossing that line because the content is generally high quality and delivered in such a way that I do not consider predatory.

With that said, there are a couple of things about the release strategy for VII that do irritate me. I do not like DLC that comes a matter of weeks after release, and I am not a fan of things like personas that cannot be purchased without buying a Super Delicious Max edition. Yet these do not hamper my excitement for the game; it looks extremely interesting and it's clearly a labour of love, there is no lack of effort.

 

[Leucarum]

I feel like crossroads of the world skirts the line though: it only comes out like 6 weeks after release.

That's pretty much exactly my feelings. The game doesn't feel like it'll have a complete enough roster at launch, but for a bit more money we can fix thst almost immediately. I liked the model of the NFP, but this DLC is coming out way too soon for it not to feel like a cash grab.

 

[j51]

That's pretty much exactly my feelings. The game doesn't feel like it'll have a complete enough roster at launch, but for a bit more money we can fix thst almost immediately. I liked the model of the NFP, but this DLC is coming out way too soon for it not to feel like a cash grab.

Right?! Which I assume is because of 2K and not Firaxis. To me it looks almost like the devs has 12 civs per era planned on release but that they were forced to shove some to dlc.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

I came across this post about Dungeons & Dragons but it neatly encapsulates what I dislike about the current trend in abilities and mechanics in Civ:-

When a player has to pick between "+1% lockpicking to a skill of 47%" and "+1% climbing to a skill of 51%" and "+1 story points to a pool of 39" the decision is, essentially, meaningless. When the choice is between those or 50 other options, the game has gone out of its way to waste the player's time with irrelevant and unsatisfying choices.

On the other hand, choices like "+20% lockpicking" or "2x story points" are satisfying choices that are very easy to reason about as the results will have immediate large impact on the character's capabilities. Removing near-usless or niche options always avoids buyer's remorse on the player's part ("I wasted 6 points on that shoe making skill that I've not needed once in 30 sessions!").

Is there any known reason for the seeming paradigm change for the number of skills?

I'm collecting RPG systems and have almost a full library worth of books lying around. From what I saw, at least the big systems that were available in my country between 1990 and 2000, almost all ...

rpg.stackexchange.com

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

I came across this post about Dungeons & Dragons but it neatly encapsulates what I dislike about the current trend in abilities and mechanics in Civ:-

Hmm. Isn't it the opposite of what's going on?

Compare social institutes from civ 5 and civ 6/7, for instance. In 5 there used to be constant but weaker bonuses like +15% towards production of melee units, in 6 it's +50%, or even +100% for ships, but one has to juggle the policy cards. The whole justification for the policy cards system is exactly that: to have more meaningful decisions.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

The whole justification for the policy cards system is exactly that: to have more meaningful decisions.

If that was the design intent, the Civ 6 mechanic was a massive design failure. The policy cards trivialized the decision, because they could be swapped so frequently. It became "this is my highest priority for the next 2 turns, so I'll micro-manage my efficiency by swapping in this card for those 2 turns".

Civ 5's policy trees made for much more meaningful decisions, because you had to live with them the rest of the game. For many, that was too far in the other direction, especially given the struggle the dev team had in trying to balance the individual trees (something they never properly achieved).

The happy medium (for me) is policies that have a noticeable impact on the type of civilization you are building, which can only be changed gradually and infrequently, or with a significant cost (revolution). Ideally (again for me) those policies would have multi-faceted impacts, not just be +x% to this one specific thing, but I don't expect the current dev team to embrace that as they seem to prefer single effects. I'm hopeful, though, that they may at least cut down on the "you can change all policy cards every 1 to 3 turns" system of Civ 6.

 

[kaspergm]

If that was the design intent, the Civ 6 mechanic was a massive design failure. The policy cards trivialized the decision, because they could be swapped so frequently. It became "this is my highest priority for the next 2 turns, so I'll micro-manage my efficiency by swapping in this card for those 2 turns".

Civ 5's policy trees made for much more meaningful decisions, because you had to live with them the rest of the game. For many, that was too far in the other direction, especially given the struggle the dev team had in trying to balance the individual trees (something they never properly achieved).

I agree 100 % with your assessment here of the problem with the Civ6 policy card system. I just want to throw in that there was another workaround the problem with the Civ5 system, and that was being a bit less stingy with the number of policies you earned. In unmodded game, you basically got to develop 2 trees + 1 ideology at best. This combined with some blatant balance issues gave you basically no leeway to deviate from the optimal path that was Tradition > Rationalism.

Personally, I had modded the game so that you got more policies - corresponding to about 3-3.5 trees + 1 ideology - which along with some balancing made the system amazing for me. It gave me the freedom to experiment with different openers - Tradition or Liberty or Honor +/- Piety depending on what civ I played with - and it gave me more freedom to explore other policy trees than just Rationalism every time. I absolutely loved that system.

 

[Naokaukodem]

If that was the design intent, the Civ 6 mechanic was a massive design failure. The policy cards trivialized the decision, because they could be swapped so frequently. It became "this is my highest priority for the next 2 turns, so I'll micro-manage my efficiency by swapping in this card for those 2 turns".

I do not totally agree with this. At least, how I play the game, fluently with few "think/re-think" pauses if not none blablabla. I often "wake up" in the middle of a turn to address some kind of problem - like a wonder that seems to take too much time to build - to feel I need this card Immediately. If it's too costly to my taste (or simply do not have the gold), I'll wait until my next research is finished, if not I will pay the gold. And as I rarely build theater squares (nor got every inspiration, far from it usually), this can take quite much time and waste in productivity etc. So your example (the sentence between quotes) is wrong : you have to wait or pay.

The happy medium (for me) is policies that have a noticeable impact on the type of civilization you are building, which can only be changed gradually and infrequently, or with a significant cost (revolution).

Wait or pay. So it does have a cost every time. (at least for me, unless I manage to slot in some card preemptively, and there's still this wasted effect during some turns, unless you somehow manage to make everything coincide perfectly, which is... well... luck ? Or superabilities most players certainly do not have)

Ideally (again for me) those policies would have multi-faceted impacts, not just be +x% to this one specific thing, but I don't expect the current dev team to embrace that as they seem to prefer single effects. I'm hopeful, though, that they may at least cut down on the "you can change all policy cards every 1 to 3 turns" system of Civ 6.

But taken globally, those policies do have multiple facets. It's just that that one policy will have one effect principally. (otherwise it would be yet another chore to read and assimilate !)

 

[Seek]

I'm hopeful, though, that they may at least cut down on the "you can change all policy cards every 1 to 3 turns" system of Civ 6.

Policies can only be changed when a new policy or policy slot is unlocked (from a civic or other source) so no more gold unlocks at least. Per the Antiquity livestream