Thanks to the production team for making changes in a day or so and fooling us fools

I'll just note here that the amount of changes and fixes we are getting monthly is roughly the same amount we used to get before the NFP. The only thing that changed is that we're getting smaller patches every month instead of one big patch every 3 months, plus the content that they are releasing with each patch.
 
Pretty sure Firaxis has always been on the smaller end of AAA studios, on top of the fact that a DLC pass of this type is usually so that the majority of the team can work on the next project while the underutilized aspects still have something to do. In this case that would be the artists who are waiting for the engine to be finished for Civ7, and in the meantime make things like Vampires, Soothsayers, Meteor Strikes, and new leaders; the AI coder(s), who have no game to work on and so might as well tweak and test a bunch; the community outreach members who are paying attention to our balance complaints and have time to try out some small changes here and there.

The heavy-duty coders are busy elsewhere, so the features we are getting aren't going to be huge new mechanics, especially not in the free patch. I think this patch is not that exciting, no, but I wasn't expecting it to be. There is more regular support at all, and that is what the free patches were promised to be. Expecting the whole AAA studio to be working on Civ6 at the moment is asking for disappointment.
 
20 years in business and you have no clue how project's life looks like??? Obviously they work parallerly on next civ, new content etc. It's not like they waited for patch release only to finally work on something else. Jeez man, stop this unjustified rant..

You are free to be as impolite as you want or mock me as much as you like, but your comment does not apply. I dont care about the ammount of resources they use in other projects when I critisize the lack of resources they use for this one. Since I am discussing about this project, with the perspective of a player of this game and regarding the effort I think the players of this game are reasonable to expect from them.
 
Last edited:
I read the other day that Forza 3 is being discontinued at the end of September. No more sales and presumably
no more attention. The game released in 2016.
Civ 6 was released about the same time and Firaxis continues to improve the game, provide new content, fix problems
and give free updates. And people moan.
I enjoy these forums. I'm impressed with the knowledge, the expertise, the intelligence and the wit. There are clearly
a lot of very bright people who take this game very seriously and devote much time and attention.
Then there are the whingers, trying hard to spoil things for everyone else.
I f you don't like the game, don't like Firaxis, why are you here? Why don't you just go away.
 
I f you don't like the game, don't like Firaxis, why are you here? Why don't you just go away.

Is fascinating to hear comments demanding players that think have legit criticisms about the game or the development to shut up and abandon the community. As if any concern does not matter how is framed or what your reasons are, means you don’t belong.

I am not demanding agreement and I am not being rude, aggressive or oversensitive. I am expressing what I think, and I am willing to expose my reasons and discuss them.

I personally don’t have intention to go away, and I will keep commenting on the flaws of the game or and its development in a reasoned and polite way, when I think criticism is granted.

Expecting the whole AAA studio to be working on Civ6 at the moment is asking for disappointment.

I think nobody expected that. There is a middle ground between careless content and expecting something unreasonable. And there is room and reasons to say this patch is somewhat lacking.
 
Last edited:
I am in agreement with oSiyeza and the OP. I have to say that the 'balance/polish' is very underwhelming compaired to the changes that got made last summer (also for "free"). I also dont believe content is ever 'free'. It is designed to hype us up, show they care about supporting the game and get more people to buy GS or NFP. This patch fails heavily for me at doing that, and even worse shows me again that they don't understand and/or care for the game. I actually think this might be on purpose at this point, putting in just enough effort to convince people to keep paying for overpriced content, but not too much, after all they dont want to make a finished/polished product, because then we will have less of a reason to buy civ7, very clever I guess...

Overall I think the NFP is overpriced for what we are receiving. I know some people will jump in here and say 'well this is only 1/12 of the content. But we are now 1/3 the way in, and I personally don't think that it is worth 1/3 of the asking price.

I am not whining at all, I really care about the game, that is why I am here. I want the best for the game, I don't think we are getting that, so I am disappointed. That is all
 
4 years into release and they're still working on improving the game, however imperfect it may be so I am grateful for that. Of course ideally the game would be flawless from the get go with competitive AI and all but that is just an unrealistic expectation in this day and age. Ideally I also wouldn't be lifting weights at the gym having to wear a mask which is super uncomfortable but I'm grateful because the gyms are at least still open in my state. :) All about adjusting our expectations to the new reality.
 
the get go with competitive AI and all but that is just an unrealistic expectation in this day and age

I strongly disagree. The only reason why games come somewhat undercooked is because dev companies know they can get away with it. It is possible and reasonable to expect fully working games when you buy them. And some companies release polished products today.

We as players and fans have the power to demmand better comment and make these anticonsumer policies change. When we are the ones shuting up any critizism directed to lacking, overprized or unpolished products, we are refusing to solve the problem and we are telling the developers that they can expect to have more profits while delivering less quality. We become the problem instead of the solution.
 
Last edited:
Overall I think the NFP is overpriced for what we are receiving. I know some people will jump in here and say 'well this is only 1/12 of the content. But we are now 1/3 the way in, and I personally don't think that it is worth 1/3 of the asking price.

You don't think 5 new leaders - 3 of which are leading brand new civs - and two new game modes (assuming you don't want to count today's) is worth $13?

Even if you don't like everything that was included (I don't particularly care for Apocalypse mode, personally) that still strikes me as a pretty good value TBH, plus we got new natural wonders, disasters, and a new district on top of that.

Heck, the content that available "free for everyone" only exists because people paid for NFP - they wouldn't still be patching the game if they didn't release NFP - so I have no problem including those when determining how much bang I got for my buck. I think it's been $13 well spent so far.
 
Last edited:
You don't think 5 new leaders - 3 of which are leading brand new civs - and two new game modes (assuming you don't want to count today's) is worth $13?

Even if you don't like everything that was included (I don't particularly care for Apocalypse mode, personally) that still strikes me as a pretty good value TBH, plus we got new natural wonders, disasters, and a new district on top of that.

I don't think overall the ammount of content is not worth it. But I am worried about the lack of polish and undercooked, unbalanced mechanics that are coming in the new modes. For example I wanted to love the apocalypse mode. But they have in my opinion loaded the mode with unfinished mechanics that do not work. The soothsayer, the appease the gods and the self-disaster atacks are things that should have not passed a concept idea. The comets tied to the climate change instead of integrating them properly is absurd, the repair mechanics are atrocious, the climate disasters disappearing in the final climate stage is ridiculous, the lack of progression in disasters is unsatisfying, the unability to scale the number of disaster to map sizes was obiously just the company not caring to implement the mechanic properly...

Regarding the secret societies mode, I have not played it yet. But I will say one thing, when they asked in the video about vampire castles and yields and they responded: yeah, you are supposed to remove the castle and build a new one as if it was intended behaviour, was somewhat insulting, as to me it was obvious that they just did not implement it properly and were directed to hide they did not have time to finish it.

Another example is the also recent DF penalty. Which is the most lazy unbalanced way I can imagine for fixing the domination advantages for the dimplomatic victory. Yes they could have balanced the grievances and diplomatic relations in a deep way to take into account wiping out civilizations In the existing system. But instead added a flat penalty that does not take into account if you did conquer a capital before diplomatic penalties apply or if it was a loyality flipping, and does not scale properly with how many civs you have conquered... That is just not wanting to take the effort to do it properly and not testing or balancing the effect of the penalty in the WC system.

The new civs are also unbalanced as if they have been less tested than previous ones, and I dislike that they pretend they listen to the comunity while at the same time still have not fixed the world builder, have not added a replay view like in all previous games, have not fixed the AI or even made it capable of achieving domination at all, have not added a vassal system, and it does not seem that they plan to improve diplomacy, religious combat, the WC or even significantly the UI. They have not ack any of the big concerns of the community.

Overall what concerns me is that I perceive a lack of care, a lack of effort from the company, like they have cut time and resources in many fronts to make the game more profitable, while saying they care and support the game.

I think with every new content release of the NFP it is more evident that they dedicate less and less time to the game but keep releasing the new content pretending is as polished as should be, and with the same price as previous more polished, interconected, balanced and better designed expansions.
 
Last edited:
Threads like this make me wonder what Firaxis is thinking when they say "Civ fans, you're the best fans in gaming."

I might not agree with everything that’s been said by OP and others in this thread, and I have really been quiet on the forum having, for the first time, been focusing a lot more on other games because customer service and communication have been way better, but I would seriously like to know what Firaxis is really thinking, to be honest, when they repeatedly say "Civ fans, you're the best fans in gaming." And I would hope it isn’t that we need not speak our minds and just take it in order to be the best fans. My experience with this forum speaks to the contrary. But that’s what Aspyr is expecting for MacOS customers, for example; it’s beyond unbelievable their behavior and disregard, and their “partner" Firaxis/2K enables them, unfortunately. At the very least, just one example of this happened with the delayed release of NFP for MacOS and Linux users after Firaxis promised and advertised it would release concurrently. If it hadn’t been for the mounting criticism, both wouldn’t have said a peep. I believe that Firaxis’ recent and encouraging change in communication and game-update strategy (I’m being cautiously optimistic here still) is, in part, due to people speaking up. The other part is that they couldn’t continue ‘to stumble at noon as if it were midnight’ with other publishers and developers’ better practices being just that, better.

Having said that, I will try a new game this weekend with shuffled trees, hoping none of your mods, @pokiehl, have been affected. Love them!
 
Threads like this make me wonder what Firaxis is thinking when they say "Civ fans, you're the best fans in gaming."

I had the same thought. I really don’t care for the OP’s tone.

If people want to complain, of course they can. As much as they want. And they can be as passionate a they want. But, personally, I don't like an uncivil tone or ad hominem attacks on e.g. Firaxis or its people. That adds nothing.

Sure. The balance changes in this patch seem modest from one angle. The patch stops short in a few places that feels odd, eg rebalancing Happiness thresholds, but not buffing Ecstatic or adding a higher Happiness level; balancing F Min and GM Chapel, but not Audience Chamber. There’s lots of other stuff that needs balancing, and this patch doesn’t address those aspects, eg unit gaps, Unit balance, Anti-Cav specifically, buildings (particularly Science buildings). It’s frustrating.

But, really, removing free amenities is a huge change to how the game is played. And judging from the other tweaks, it seems likely this change has been Qa/QC within an inch of it’s life. There’s clearly a lot of work that’s gone into this change.

FXS also seem to be generally conservative with balance changes, presumably so they can see how each change plays out, rather than rushing through a tonne of changes and stuffing things up in terms of balance. They obviously also prioritise changes based on upcoming content (particularly as sometimes upcoming content will rework the very thing people want re-balanced).

There’s obviously a lot of other stuff going on under the hood in terms of bugs etc. Plus a new game mode, that itself clearly took some thought, time to implement correctly, and more QA/QC.

I wish this patch did more too, but I’m also really happy FXS have finally tried making Amenities more important and have been willing to make the game a bit harder.

So, no, I don’t think OP’s criticism is justified. And frankly, I don’t find OP’s style of criticism constructive. But whatever.

While I’m at it, I think people should lay off Aspyr a bit too. I think they’re doing their best as I don’t think the porting is easy. I’d like NFP on iOS too. It’ll happen when it happens.

[edit: added 2nd para.]
 
Last edited:
Then there are the whingers, trying hard to spoil things for everyone else.
I f you don't like the game, don't like Firaxis, why are you here? Why don't you just go away.

Because they like the game and you don't get to define what's acceptable discourse.

There's quite a few very dedicated members and modders who have been vocal about the changes (or lack of them) in Civ VI.
 
I'll just note here that the amount of changes and fixes we are getting monthly is roughly the same amount we used to get before the NFP. The only thing that changed is that we're getting smaller patches every month instead of one big patch every 3 months, plus the content that they are releasing with each patch.
If that was the case, we would have had a full expansion released in February 2020. They produce less (that would be fine if modders could fill the gap) but still sell it at the same prize.

And the content is different too, they're now selling us a "pass" of civ+leaders+scenario (aka "DLC") and "modes" (ie "small mods") developed in 2 years while we were getting DLC then civ+leaders+scenario and gameplay overhauls (ie "large mods") in expansions released each year previously.

I read the other day that Forza 3 is being discontinued at the end of September. No more sales and presumably
no more attention. The game released in 2016.
Civ 6 was released about the same time and Firaxis continues to improve the game, provide new content, fix problems
and give free updates. And people moan.
I enjoy these forums. I'm impressed with the knowledge, the expertise, the intelligence and the wit. There are clearly
a lot of very bright people who take this game very seriously and devote much time and attention.
Then there are the whingers, trying hard to spoil things for everyone else.
I f you don't like the game, don't like Firaxis, why are you here? Why don't you just go away.
civfanatics.

People here want the game to be better and expect more.

Threads like this make me wonder what Firaxis is thinking when they say "Civ fans, you're the best fans in gaming."
Because we're passionate and whatever we're saying, we're still buying... while providing useful feedback in all the other threads.

That, and marketing of course.
 
Just an extra simple reflexion.

People is assuming that Fxs, has brainstormed and carefully discussed, studied, analysed and tested every single numerical change. And that it takes an insane ammount of work to propagate these changes to the game.

To that I want to say, while sure someone put thought into it. When most in this comunity think some of the changes in the amenities are kind of arbitrary, chances are they have not been as well thought.

Assuming that every change undergoes a separate QA is incorrect, the one making it tests it locally, commits the change and before release the game goes to QA, with directives on what should be tested. Is weird that people seem to think every change is carefully tested when the history of the game shows clearly that in the case of Fxs this is specially not the case, even with important mechanics. Fxs is a company that clearly struggles with QA.

Also propagating changes to the final product, does not require as much work as it has been suggested. Branching, testing and QA assurance are done in every patch. And the work they require does not scale up with every change added. It is a work that should be done fast. And delays are usually administrative or due to an engine or release cycle with flaws, bottlenecks or that does not account properly for some platforms.

Assuming that because Fxs has more resources, official developing requires more work for them than for an average modder is untrue. While release and QA procedures take time. The more actual developement involved the less impact those stages have.

All in all they don't need us to make excuses for the company as: sure the work needed to add the changes was next to zero, but what about all the thinking and testing work we actually dont know if they did or how much they did?

We have examples of good and bad work they have done in the past. Is funny that people is excusing the content in the patch compared with others, because the possible ammount of invisible work all patches may have. As if less actual content implies more QA or more think work, which is the opposite of the truth.

The fact is, loyality changes require less or comparable work than the beliefs changes in the previous free patch, and the random trees and wonder selector require less or comparable work than the observer mode or the kick voting feature. And still this patch has no new content while the previous one had an insane ammount of content on top of that.

The question is not if this is a patch with less quality than before, the question is if the trend will continue.
 
Last edited:
The fact is, loyality changes require less or comparable work than the beliefs changes in the previous free patch, and the random trees and wonder selector require less or comparable work than the observer mode or the kick voting feature. And still this patch has no new content while the previous one had an insane ammount of content on top of that.
NGL, reminds me slightly of that Dudley scene from Harry Potter
Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell. "Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."
Like do they need to continuously match or one-up their previous work for you to be satisfied? Maybe they're working on something bigger down the line? I'd give them the benefit of the doubt instead of just saying they're going sloppy.

And like, it's a free content patch every two months, are you really expecting a new brand scenario or whatever with a bunch of bells and whistles every two months? Especially since they're literally GIVING THIS OUT FOR FREE TO EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER BOUGHT THE BASE GAME SINCE 2016?!?!

There are a lot of things to potentially complain about, but not getting a shiny new thing for free should not be on the list.

Assuming that because Fxs has more resources, official developing requires more work for them than for an average modder is untrue. While release and QA procedures take time. The more actual developement involved the less impact those stages have.
laughs in modder

Maybe it's true enough for a tiny indie studio, but at mid-size studios it just isn't that simple. I can make art, text and value changes on a whim without having to worry about "Does this break when used in tandem with Y?", "Does this mean I have to get all this text re-translated into a bunch of languages" (and remember that a single change in number can mean that everything has to shift from singular to plural or whatever, so this does matter), "does this mean I need to get the producer and art director to meet with me so we can discuss if we have the manpower to add 3-5 more assets?", "I want to add a reference to Cthulu, so I'll need to contact legal to get that approved."

Modders can get small things done much faster than a whole studio. A studio has more manpower to throw at big tasks, but there's a fair amount of red tape to get through for every change you make, and it adds up.

I don't have to get approval, I don't have to worry about cost in time or money, I don't have to worry about people going "This is OP, plz fix". If I'm collaborating and something is taking too long or isn't to my standards, I can just say "whatever, I'm not dealing with this", and just DIY without worrying about anything more than bruised egos.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom