The hate for Civ7 will end the series, if not soon then eventually
- Thread starter aelf
- Start date
- Status
queenpea
Emperor
If people are unsure about whether or not they should try it, then they should certainly wait for a discount and avoid paying full price.
Last edited:
No. People are under no obligation to give money to someone else to try something that they are fairly certain that they will not enjoy. This is particularly true with Civ 7's price tag.
criZp
Deity
Yeah, right. I never thought civ switching sounded like a good idea, but I could have given it a try. But you need to play a full game to test it out, which means no refunding afterwards, and the game price is rather high. So I simply won't try it out. (Although the main reason I didn't buy civ 7 is that I don't like the leaders.)
My price point is probably 66%-75% off at least, and after all the DLC is out.
If I was Firaxis I would be pushing the publisher to do a free weekend on Steam. You're absolutely right that a two-hour window isn't enough for this sort of game.
Yeah, it's the annoying part of things. I do think it's worth trying out, especially if you were fans of the previous civ games. Since they have fixed a lot of the most glaring launch errors, and maybe you'll like it more than you think.
But at the same time, I can't necessarily recommend a 70+$ purchase to everyone, never mind the 130 or whatever the full Founders pack comes in for. And yeah, 2 hours isn't nearly enough to really get a feel for it either.
But at the same time, I can't necessarily recommend a 70+$ purchase to everyone, never mind the 130 or whatever the full Founders pack comes in for. And yeah, 2 hours isn't nearly enough to really get a feel for it either.
VGT
Warlord
How we can try this product without throwing money at corporation that we don't want to throw money at in case we don't like the product? 2h test window on steam is useless in case of civ games scope. I won't even reach age transition which is biggest worry for me. Even free weekend which I'm hoping will happen at some point and I will be able to try it myself - still might not be enough if even from positive posts I'm getting vibes, that "shiny new thing" feeling wears off after some time and it gets boring and repetitive on subsequent playthroughs.
I genuinely get that impression. Like, we have the rumor which sounds reasonable of the entire UI team quitting. I've had a theory that in order to remove them from the post-launch bonuses contract, they had to scrap some percentage of their work. That's my most reasonable explanation for why progress might have been lost (and I don't like the theory it doesn't fully check out).
Still, the game is so unfinished and underbaked, with very easily fixed things (like the HMS Revenge) coming out wrong because apparently there just wasn't enough time. What's with the rush? What takes so long? If they had to rebuild everything from scratch it starts to make sense.
The UI rumor guy did say that the senior devs came back from a "research trip" and mandated a complete reworking of the game, so maybe there was a very late scrapping of what they had.
I have to be careful because the mods don't like us talking about the devs, so I'm referring to a development process overall not necessarily any individuals, but this point I want to make is honestly necessary context to even discuss this. The rumor mentions a redesign coming as the result of an Ayahuasca trip. Even the rumor was vague so let's just say that a hallucination somewhere somehow produced a game design vision and management supported the vision.
If you know about neural regrowth with psychedelics, often one is left with the impression of epiphany because formerly pruned neurons are reconnected - formerly discordant concepts gain apparent connection within mental perception. That doesn't mean the ideas actually connect. Compare to having an epiphany in a dream, waking up, and then as you try to sort out the details of the idea they don't really connect that well.
Ayahuasca is pretty powerful, so I could imagine - from the point of view of the creative process - a grand vision that ends up just not connecting well once it's implemented in real life. What this would lead to in terms of development is you're taking pieces that just aren't fitting together, and abandoning the "grand vision" at the last minute to just get out anything that sort of kind of works.
To me, this explains the development best. A powerful commitment to a grand vision at the last minute. No actual details to connect or realize the vision, and a lot of walls you run up against. A last second scramble to build a viable product with what you have.
It also explains why the "vision" needs things like very boring looking maps, extremely tight growth rates that have already been abandoned. There was an effort to realize, I think, the perfectly balanced multiplayer match. To simplify things so you won't need tooltips or a UI, and reduce the game to basic trade-offs and tactical decisions that roll over into consequences 40 turns later that decide the "match". The "Civ World Summit" being the epitome of what the game is meant to accommodate.
And.... it just didn't come together that way.
It makes sense to me because there's almost a clear vision in the final product. I can see how religion might have worked in theory, and then cool things like religion not being relevant in the Modern Age but leaving a thumbprint and legacy. Better implemented, that might have been really cool.
It seems like the implied game systems, like a better religion or better explorer/artifact system would have been cool had they had better implementation. However, more detailed implementation derails the "perfect multiplayer match, optimized minimalist UI for console players" thing. They're clashing, and that clash - the failure to anticipate it properly - I think is something that could be explained by psychedelic use. In my opinion.
If I had to guess, I think the game was originally going to have more narrative events, more fleshed out legacy paths. I think the Army Commanders skill tree was from the "more fleshed out" phase of development, as the tree's more unique upgrades barely get used right now. The UI rumor was discussing how the UI team had a ton of breakthroughs in how to portray certain information efficiently, but their ideas were shot down because of not accommodating console players well enough. So, I think Civ 7 was originally going to be more complex, within the general bookends we can already see. What I wonder is, was each age a little different in the original premise? Were the ages "standardized" (made repetitive, i.e.: tier 1, tier 2 of building types)? This, and the poor legacy paths (explorers, missionaries etc.) are what make the game fail IMO. If things were more fleshed out, and each age worked differently than the preceding one fundamentally, down to what buildings do, then I think the game would be better.
The final product plays like someone was given a blueprint for that grand vision and one month to just make something that runs. I can't explain this whole situation otherwise. Well, you could have had something like the UI team spitefully deleted game files or something as they left and development had to restart. I find that theory doubtful though.
I also can't explain the sentiment that the game is fine, that it's a matter of opinion, or all civ games launch like this, or some people just can't accept change. I don't understand those sentiments because the game is very clearly trying to be something, and is very clearly the minimum viable implementation of that thing.
Anyway, long post, but I'm wary of this narrative locking in that "all civ games are like this, people just don't like change, well the antiquity age is amazing and patches are fixing the rest". No, there's a huge story here. There's something that needs explaining, and getting that explanation has to be part of the narrative for this game or yeah, the series might end.
Brandon Sanderson summarized the experience a lot of us are having (gave the game a chance, optimistic about changes, got bored and don't like the game anymore). The mechanics do seem interesting when you first encounter them. It's like "wow, that seems like a good idea in theory how clever". But then after playing a couple times, with what has been actually implemented, it's just unpleasant to play.
There has been a lot of analysis on this, and it's always hard to put these feelings into words. But enough has been said we have a summary of the problem.
One: the game is very repetitive. Entire systems have been minimalized and streamlined. You're progressing through the same general tech/building/unit tree each age.
Two: the difference between ages end up being things which are actually frustrating and make you not actually want to play (missionaries). On top of often being frustrating, they're annoying due to bugs or the game not being finished (settlement connection problems). Finally on top of frustration and annoyance, many of the legacy paths are bare bones and so don't offer much replayability.
So it's a very repetitive, overly streamlined game, with minimal, broken, sometimes frustrating differences between ages.
This would be a massive betrayal of early adopters. It would be catastrophic.
Gori the Grey
The Poster
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2009
- Messages
- 13,351
You don't want to give a free weekend until you are certain gamers' experience will be a good one.
Not at all. It's pretty standard to have -20 or -30% reduction after half a year at one of the big sale actions (e.g., Summer, Christmas). There are some exceptions (e.g., Baldur's Gate 3 with its lauded release or Cities: Skylines 2 with its very rocky release), but many games (incl. civ competitors Humankind, Ara, and Millennia) went down 50% in their first year.
It's hardly a betrayal, because everybody expects the price to drop at certain occasions, and becoming lower and lower as times progresses.
That, on the other hand, is a good argument! Yet, I think that it might be good enough to convince a decent amount of people already (if you follow the reviews: around half the people that played it). Sure, another patch or two, especially if they are as good as the past two ones, wouldn't hurt. I'd like the UI to be in a state that makes all/most of my mods unnecessary, and currently, that's not the case.
Whether it would ever convince the clear majority of people that try it is another question.
Lazy sweeper
Mooooo Cra Chirp Fssss Miaouw is a game of words
C4: We had Armies, complex units upgrades perks, good Ai, workers and road, cities at scale with no inherent defence.
C5: Complete movement mess, complex units upgrades perks, good Ai, workers and roads, cities at scale with regenerating health mess.
C6: We had workers, streamlined units upgrades, no roads, no Ai, same movement and cities health mess as 5, lost city scale to map now smaller
C7: No workers, no units upgrades, no roads (free choice WHERE to build it), same movement and cities health mess as 5, even smaller maps and not at scale
I should ENTERTAIN the possibility to see the beginning of the end??? Just entertain???
We used to play with computers with 1Gb Vram, Dual core PC, 2Gb ram, 60gb HDD... civ games with bigger maps and thousands of units to manage and
Consoles are like 8Gb Vram, 4 Cores 4Ghz monsters, 4Gb Ram, 256gb SSD Minumum.
It was good for the gameplay to use complete 3D models for units with high poly count for the DS civ? No. it was useless.
But it was probably easier than having to optimize a PC game for also consoles.
There is a LOT of work that SOMEBODY does not want to PAY the devs for, so it SCRAPS features everywhere it can.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO SCRAP. There is ONLY THE SHELL LEFT.
devs have done a great work with the movement puzzle mess, plus navigating rivers, etc.
It's their GUIDELINES that has been streamlined too much. C6 still crash on the Switch...
Minor concessions will not resolve these MAJOR issues.
Radical changes might change a bit the perspective without going digging deep.
If it's the END of a cycle, that is possibly the only natural consequence of what has been done.
Last edited:
VGT
Warlord
Fully agree, although only from developer's perspective. From publisher's perspective free weekend will come as soon as they decide bars in Excel are not growing enough and need a new bump and publisher will not listen to developers in similar way they did not listen about premature release.
1-2 months (EDIT probably longer than that after giving it a second thought) ago there was free weekend for Cities: Skylines 2. I downloaded it and did only place few roads, then uninstalled. I had stuttering on empty map.I thought back then that at least loudest issue from release date was resolved if there was a free weekend but apparently not yet. Maybe it was something with my PC, but my GPU was one step below recommended settings.
Last edited:
Gori the Grey
The Poster
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2009
- Messages
- 13,351
Well, I've been mulling over this thread and two others, and I'm going to give an answer that draws on all three and speaks to all three. The two others are the one asking about value for your money and the recent review by Brandon Sanderson (whom I'm clearly supposed to recognize but do not). I'll start with that video. In it, he counts up the number of games he's played (four), says that the first time he played all the way through the modern era, he won, even though he was playing on deity, and therefore he is done with the game. He's not a "hater." He clearly loves the franchise; he even thinks changes in Civ VII are promising; he gives his opinion without any vehemence (in fact, he's multitasking by putting signatures on offprints of some sort). But he's a man who clearly has other ways he could spend his time, so if Civ VII on the highest level isn't going to give him a challenge, he's done.
Now over to the value-for-your-money thread. The answer I've been developing for that thread is that I have impossibly high standards: that my money should purchase me infinite replayability (like buying a chess set, say). But that those standards have been met (and probably established in the first place) by the two Civ games I've played (III and V). Civ V continues to interest me precisely because I can lose. I play at deity. I win maybe one game out of ten. And that keeps me going back: "If I'd only managed my economy better, I'd have won that last game; next game I'm putting a special focus on economy, dangnabbit."
The net result of these reflections is my response to the quote above. If they had a free weekend, and I beat the game on deity during that free weekend, I would never bother buying the game. There was one poster here who reported winning his first game, playing on deity, and then went on to list shortcomings of the game. My response was that he didn't need to say anything more after that first point.
That one thing they should for sure fix before they offer a free weekend.
Among players' dissatisfactions with the game--ages, civ-switching, bad UI--no challenge occasionally gets mentioned, but I don't see how it isn't the biggest gripe.
Last edited:
Core Imposter
Felon
- Joined
- May 13, 2011
- Messages
- 5,390
The issue of price never registers with me. It just matters if the game is worth my time. The Grey has hit the nail on the head. But I liked the idea of all the drama of drug fueled design imperatives and staff bloodletting and sabotage. Somebody could make a game about making a game; it could easily be better than the current iteration.
Apples and oranges. Humankind launched for $50 and especially the other two are more like indie games trying to nip at the heels of the giant.
Civ charged for a premium, well-produced experience. Lowering the price as an admission of a waning audience and failed launch would be a betrayal of people who paid $70+.
Again, listen, a lot of people are trying to find every little excuse they can for why the game actually is doing fine. That's fine. I don't think it's controversial that regardless of what some optimists think, the mood of the general audience would react poorly to an early price cut. It would basically be seen as Take-Two giving up on the game and admitting defeat as a cynical act that signals that seriously players should just abandon the game and not expect it to get better.
I'll reiterate that the only thing that will save the game is:
- A formal apology
- A substantial investment to fix the game without charging the existing audience
Alternatively, there are models where they could just abandon the game but still make money off of it. As I have said, this would involve releasing mod tools and then selling DLC in the form of asset packs. Basically, you're not buying Edo Japan for gameplay reasons, but in order to have the 3D models that people are using in mods and the like.
If I were Take Two, I'd admit defeat, release mod tools, and then do a business model releasing art/asset packs.
They could keep a skeleton crew that does weekend events like compile certain mods together in an official event download and host servers to play those mod sets and pair with community rewards and social media attention. Then, the most popular mods and scenarios could be packaged as an expansion, where the popularity is proven from a long-simmering community driven effort.
I'd happily play Civ 7 if certain changes were made, and I'd happily mod those changes in, but it's almost impossible to make meaningful changes to Civ 7 since some of the effects are hard coded into the C++ rather than being built into game script.
Yep, if I were Take Two I'd admit defeat formally. "Hand over" the game to the community with actually good mod tools (these might actually be difficult to produce), and then charge money on art assets rolled out over time. Even new leaders. Blank canvases basically.
$20 for 3 leaders.
$20 for 2 civ art styles.
Then it's just like "you're buying the 3d model at this price". And it is what it is.
Like I said, they can retain community managers who piece together mod packs for community events. So when they release a Henry V model the community will paint his gameplay effects and the most popular will get integrated into a standardized download for some weekend thing.
- Status
