Reasons for not pre-ordering

[ezzlar]

As a huge civ-fan it pains me a bit for trying to adopt a sceptic approach to Civ 7. What became evident in Civ 6 was a, what I would call, a feature bloat. A lot of new mechanics were introduced together with new civs/leaders in a way that did not mix so well together. Instead of focusing on fixing core components of the game in the addons new features were introduced to lull the player into accepting middle/late game micromanagement of redudant features.

If we continue to show our support for a lacking game core and enabling the developers to focus on shiny thingies for the game to lure in even more customers we are indeed digging the civ-saga´s grave. And therefor, a sceptic and non-committing attitude towards pre-orders or other indications of accepting anything they are trying to make us buy unseen makes sense to me. I don´t think the game developers are blind to the fan core of the game.

 

[UWHabs]

Everyone is free to vote with their wallet. If the game does not look good to you, you are more than welcome to wait until it is.

Especially since everything is a download, it's not like failing to pre-order will cause you to have to wait for someone to send you a disk, or running out of copies of the game in-store. You're not even able to pre-order yet, so it's not like they're asking for money before you even see any gameplay or features or screenshots. For all we know, they might not even have a pre-order period and just will let people buy it once the game has launched and enjoy then.

 

[Connor_CivFan]

I've liked every game since civ 4, I see no reason for me personally to not preorder when In my personal opinion, the civ games have been quality games and I dont see that changing

 

[MrRadar]

The whole trajectory of Civ VI and its current state is one big reason not to preorder. Nor buy on release for the full price, for that matter.

 

[TreVor_ish]

What became evident in Civ 6 was a, what I would call, a feature bloat. A lot of new mechanics were introduced together with new civs/leaders in a way that did not mix so well together.

I would not necessary call it feature bloat or mechanics not mixing out together.
I do feel like mechanics added particularly in New Frontier Pass were under cooked an left plenty of space to improvement. Although, this might be because CIV VI was already a complete game that was used as a test ground for modularity of game modes.
This might indicate in CIV VII we will get more, hopefully better, bigger changes in gameplay modularity, so everyone would be able to play the game however they want.

The whole trajectory of Civ VI and its current state is one big reason not to preorder.

This is true, for me at least.
It took some years before we even got build queue and we still can't queue prerequisites or queue repairs.
It took some years till AI even started to use planes.
Things like micro in building railroads(or automation in general), pathfinding (forced embarking/disembarking? or long distance travel suddenly interupted by something way over few turns before reach) and plenty more that were already discussed in threads before, that are still a pain. (How is the state of a World Builder for instance, question marks in World Congress - really?, how about trying to defend a suzerain City State)

We still don't even have an option to throw money at 2k, I feel this might change around August when more information will be revealed, heck they might even change my mind....You never know (let me build canals all over the place and I'm sold - lol)

 

[pokiehl]

I'm unabashedly on team "Shut Up And Take My Money" and I'm happy to support the devs.

Ultimately, $60-70 is a small price to me for the hundreds of hours I know I'm going to play this game, and more importantly, build fun memories with my friends. I'd loved basically every prior Civ game despite their flaws, and I don't see that changing because I know Firaxis takes this franchise seriously.

It's easy to be swayed and dismayed by a lot of the negative talk and doom-and-gloom about the series you read from die-hard fans, but I think we have a tendency to get into echo chambers of negativity, so I try to not let that influence me.

 

[MrRadar]

I'm unabashedly on team "Shut Up And Take My Money" and I'm happy to support the devs.

Ultimately, $60-70 is a small price to me for the hundreds of hours I know I'm going to play this game, and more importantly, build fun memories with my friends. I'd loved basically every prior Civ game despite their flaws, and I don't see that changing because I know Firaxis takes this franchise seriously.

It's easy to be swayed and dismayed by a lot of the negative talk and doom-and-gloom about the series you read from die-hard fans, but I think we have a tendency to get into echo chambers of negativity, so I try to not let that influence me.

Is that all your reason for not-preordering?

 

[Krajzen]

I have never preordered any game ever on principle - I don't pay without seeing the product being delivered, and the discourse encouraging or discouraging me from it.

 

[pokiehl]

Is that all your reason for not-preordering?

I enjoy gifting things to friends so I'll probably be preodering the game 3 or 4 times over unfortunately.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Ultimately, $60-70 is a small price to me for the hundreds of hours I know I'm going to play this game,

Hundreds, you slacker lol

I didn't pre-order Civ VI as I was so disappointed with Civ V then saw how amazing the Aztecs were and regretted my decision, I'm fortunate that it's not a big financial decision for me so I'll be pre-ordering the moment I can.

 

[pokiehl]

Hundreds, you slacker lol

I didn't pre-order Civ VI as I was so disappointed with Civ V then saw how amazing the Aztecs were and regretted my decision, I'm fortunate that it's not a big financial decision for me so I'll be pre-ordering the moment I can.

True, forgot to add that I will be preordering whatever digital deluxe edition there is, so that'll raise the price for sure. In Civ 6 I also preordered all the expansions for my friends

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

I'm waiting on a lot more info before ordering.

The need a 2k acct thing on the steam page is worriesome.

 

[Gorbles]

Nobody should need a reason not to pre-order.

But at the same time:

The whole trajectory of Civ VI and its current state is one big reason not to preorder. Nor buy on release for the full price, for that matter.

In your opinion, you mean

 

[TreVor_ish]

It's easy to forget about annoyances, unfinished mechanics or even straight up bad implementations of those, when there is a new shiny thing upfront.
Deadlines are a thing, but so is cutting corners so it won't hurt finances. As well as practices to harvest more and more data from users.

 

[ezzlar]

I think it is our choice to make if Civ 7 is hundred hours of joy or thousands. If we send signals that shiny dlcs with low value content in terms of mechanics/ai is ok, that is what we get.

My opinion. (which always should be added at each post so "that guy" doesnt show up).

 

[kotpeter]

Pre-ordering in general is bad for customers, because we're buying promises and marketing efforts, while the actual gameplay is yet to be seen and reviewed.

Then again, I'm a big fan of Civ, so I will be pre-ordering the game, possibly even Deluxe edition if there's any

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Honestly, right now i only see one valid reason not to pre-order : the fact that modern games are almost always full of bugs and sometimes almost unplayable on release, so waiting for a sale after the worst bugs have been fixed is probably the smart way to go for any game.
As for Civ7 in particular, more reasons to not pre-order might show up in the coming months as we learn more about the game ... or (hopefully) we might get reasons to pre-order. But right now we know literally nothing about the game.

• New/modified features? We can only guess based on Civ6. Here i'm semi hopeful because Civ6 made a number of moves in the right direction to make gameplay more varied and improve replayability. I'm also still semi-concerned thought because Civ6 didn't really solved any of the long-lasting issues in the series.
• Art style? We haven"t seen any actual screenshot/video of the game. The trailer looked kind of realistic so i hope art style will move back towards an improved Civ5 realistic style rather than the cartoonish look of Civ6 (which i managed to get used to but never liked). Obviously it's a personal preference and others liked Civ6 style but the point is the same : we have no idea how the game will look.
• UI? Too often overlooked, UI is one of my biggest concerns after some of the baffling choices in Civ6 (i always wondered if the devs tried to balance the benefits of ICSing by making the players bored managing cities using a clunky UI). But again we have no idea how UI will look, and even if we could see the UI it's hard to know how functional it will be without using it.

Ultimately, i know i will probably end-up pre-ordering, especially if we have some nice ancient civ as a pre-order "gift" (i always prefer ancient civs to modern ones) but it's far too early to discuss whether we should or shouldn't, let's at least wait until more features are revealed this summer.

 

[Ordnael]

I have never preordered any game ever on principle - I don't pay without seeing the product being delivered, and the discourse encouraging or discouraging me from it.

On principle no, I don't pre-order as well...but physical copies with some hefty discount, count me in!

My signature says why I might not be interested in the base CIV VII game at all, also I haven't played the F out of CIV VI yet. Still finding new ways to play and enjoy, lately playing for domination on prince or king difficulty with smaller maps and thus finishing the game before infantry has been fun!

 

[Xur]

civ6 launched without a build queue and no map editor. But it was still a better game at launch, than it was after all the DLC bloat. Civ6 got worse with time. The AI was never any good, but none of the DLC made it better. The general focus on leaders and quick multiplayer games was very demotivating.

It’s the same dude making civ7, so my hopes and expectations are waaaaaay down at bedrock.

 

[Quintillus]

I don't buy things without knowing what I'm buying.

Some pizza shops offer a "mystery pizza" where you don't know what toppings will be on the pizza until you buy it. It might not be expensive, and I might like their pizzas in general, but I'm going to order a pizza where I know what I'm getting instead. I like pepperoni and mushrooms, I might not like what's on the mystery pizza.

It's the same basic concept here. We have no idea which toppings - mechanics - will be in Civ VII. Even once we know which toppings it will have, pre-ordering would be like trying a new pizza shop on the first day, when it's most likely to not have things sorted yet.

And for me, V and VI weren't my favorite games in the series - it's like if my favorite restaurant magnate had been starting places that I loved to eat at, and the last couple had been just average. I'd still want to try the next place at some point, but wouldn't be clamoring for a reservation on day one. Now maybe as we learn more, it will sound like it will be the best thing since sliced bread, and I'll want to make a reservation for the first fortnight, so long as I don't hear horror stories about half-baked pizzas on the first day. But there's a bit of a "is Firaxis going to find its groove again?" element for me as well.