[Vanilla] Under 40% of players have won a game (from Steam global achievements)

[Noble Zarkon]

Doesn't mods prevent achievements ? P

No they don't - seems to be a widely believed fallacy as I understand that was the case in Civ 5.

 

[DJ_Tanner]

You’d be surprised at how many gamers grab every discounted game during Steam sales, only to leave them collect digital dust in their Steam libraries. Not defending Civ 6 or Firaxis, but it is a factor to consider.

No I totally do that, its a real problem in my life. However, VI is still a bit too new for that to be a large contributor due to that I think.

 

[psychoneirik]

Rome - 10.8%
.

I think the fact that Rome has a higher rate than other leaders has something to do with the exploit that allows you to win in one turn for easy achievements.
Also you should take into account the people who play offline exclusively, since Steam achievements seem to be bugged when playing offline.

 

[Tomice]

I'll be honest--i've seen very few games through to completion. I start a game trying to accomplish something, I either get that done or I don't, and I think of something else to try. I also almost never continue a game after being off of playing for a long time.

I feel the same. Civ is my favorite game series, but I rarely finish a game. When I achieve a feeling of clear superiority or boredom sets in (from lack of events), I often prefer staring a new game.
It might also be my 60h/week job - When you can't play for a week and the game wasn't very interesting, it's though to sink back in.

Modding might also be an issue. I really love total conversions like Vox Populi, but if you need longer to finish a game than the update cycle takes, new features or bugfixes might convince you to start a fresh game.

 

[Xeribulos]

I am not sure why these statistics should be seen as significant in any way.
I am among the bigger Civilization fans, have been playing the series since the first installment.
Yet Civ 4 was the only one I have ever completed any game in, and that was only because I played it in multiplayer.
I have 1750 hours logged into Civ 5 and never even got close to finishing any game. Why would I want to play until the end anyway?

 

[criZp]

To tell you the truth , till rennaisance era its nice to play but after it becomes kinda boring and mediocre , you know where everyone is , no more exploration , settling is no longer matter , and game kinda drags till you get whatever win you want , or worst case by rennaisence its clear who is the winner, its just the formality to finish.

yeah same with me. the exploration in the first game half is where the fun is. the last half should consist of diplomatic interaction or war with other civs, but neither choice is any fun due to terrible AI.

 

[bbbt]

Or perhaps gamers don't want to waste any more time than necessary on an incomplete, buggy game. One where the AI is incompetent and unit sounds still cut out (almost a year after the game's release date).

Thats actually a much higher completion rate than say Endless Legend (17%) or Endless Space 2 (11.5%). Paradox is a harder comparison as you don't really win, but for example, EU IV has Win a War or conquer a province at 23/23% and the the top achievements on Stellaris - colonize a planet (26%)

So by your standards those games are buggier and more incomplete than Civ 6?

Edit: I'm quoting these as a point that it's an impossible conclusion to draw from limited data, I'm well aware these are not apple to apple comparisons.

 

[Uberfrog]

I was interested to try and figure out how to compare the stats between Civ V and Civ VI.

With the Civ 6 data, you get the percentage whose highest achieved difficulty is, e.g. Chieftain, by subtracting the percentage who completed Warlord or higher. It's still not an exact comparison, because we have no way of knowing how many of those who completed Civ 5 on Settler also managed higher difficulties. But you can clearly see how Deity on Civ VI is much easier than in Civ V.

The general similarity of the higher levels, especially at the "default" Prince, imply that if you corrected for all those players on the lowest difficulties who also completed higher ones, the behaviour (i.e. quitting rate) would be very similar indeed.

Civ_difficulties

• Uberfrog
• Jan 17, 2018

A comparison between the percentage of players of Civ 5 and Civ 6 who have unlocked achievements...

 

[liv]

There is a cheat win on deity (or any difficulty win) for civ 6 (score on turn 1) I think that is also why more people have won with the Romans as the cheat win was first explain as a point win with the monument playing as the Romans.

(but it is true that civ 6 is easier to beat on deity than civ 5)

 

[Ondolindë]

Doesn't mods prevent achievements ? Putting a mode on after trying out a few hours and sticking to it feels like a rather widespread habit in steam games.

No they don't - seems to be a widely believed fallacy as I understand that was the case in Civ 5.

Indeed, it was the case in Civ V but it isn’t in Civ VI.

 

[agonistes]

Doubtful it's bugs, as there really are no bugs preventing you from finishing the game. Lack of interest is probably the big reason. The game isn't for everyone. Another reason could be turn time (in between turn).

I'm surprised at the level of drop off to King level. I actually found King level not much more challenging than Prince. Hardly any difference really.

Poor Spain, even casual gamers can see they suck.

I've had a few bugs prevent me from finishing. But with about 3000 hours in, that's not bad. I routinely don't finish because I'm still in the 'playtest' phase, where I'm deciding on the best conditions for play. Tweaking things. But ultimately, my goal is to have an unending game. I have no intention of ever finishing a game.

 

[DJ_Tanner]

I was interested to try and figure out how to compare the stats between Civ V and Civ VI.

With the Civ 6 data, you get the percentage whose highest achieved difficulty is, e.g. Chieftain, by subtracting the percentage who completed Warlord or higher. It's still not an exact comparison, because we have no way of knowing how many of those who completed Civ 5 on Settler also managed higher difficulties. But you can clearly see how Deity on Civ VI is much easier than in Civ V.

The general similarity of the higher levels, especially at the "default" Prince, imply that if you corrected for all those players on the lowest difficulties who also completed higher ones, the behaviour (i.e. quitting rate) would be very similar indeed.

The lower level data is quite a mess. On both sides, you can't see who played low on Civ VI or who was just achievement hunting in Civ V, that data is totally worthless for any inferences. However, I don't agree that the data is showing some clear look at deity being "much easier" there is a 2.5% increase. That could easily be a function of the data pool. There are some real selection bias issues in dealing with a sequel (and civ V and civ VI are much more sequels then civ V and civ IV from a playerbase perspective due to the popularity of Steam).

 

[Wielki Hegemon]

How many of that 60,7% of players have won not being online?

 

[Mr. Shadows]

Personally, I always buy a number of games during Steam's holiday sale. I just finished a game that I bought in 2016; it sat in my library for a full year before I played it. I even have some that I've never played. I'm sure it's normal for a percentage of players not to play the game serious. What percentage of customers usually finish a AAA title? The numbers don't mean anything until you put them in context.

 

[Uberfrog]

The lower level data is quite a mess. On both sides, you can't see who played low on Civ VI or who was just achievement hunting in Civ V, that data is totally worthless for any inferences.

Oh sure, it's a mess in general. I mainly just wanted a way to visualise the data, and was too lazy to upload two figures.

But I think that the data for Civ 5 is consistent with the same behaviour (if we had access to the same data) seen in Civ 6. To me it suggests that the number of people playing the game through to the end is pretty similar between the two games. I don't think the data in any way support that Civ 6 somehow encourages quitting more than Civ 5 does, as some in this thread have claimed.

However, I don't agree that the data is showing some clear look at deity being "much easier" there is a 2.5% increase. That could easily be a function of the data pool. There are some real selection bias issues in dealing with a sequel (and civ V and civ VI are much more sequels then civ V and civ IV from a playerbase perspective due to the popularity of Steam).

It's a 2.5 percentage point increase. Twice the proportion of players of Civ 6 have completed Deity as compared with Civ 5. Sure there's selection bias, but seeing as this is the only stat that can be compared directly between the two sets, I'd say it was significant. Not conclusive, certainly.

 

[Janskey]

Here's some data on hours played from SteamSpy:

Note that the scale is very different from 0 to middle vs. from middle to end. I kept the mouse cursor over the last bar to show it's value and the first bar is 0:05. Average is 90:26 and median 31:37 (average and median for Civ V are 180:07 and 41:44, respectively). It's hard to tell the exact values without access to raw data, but it seems that around 25% of players have played less than 10 hours.

 

[Olleus]

It's a log scale. If you made it linear, you'd have huge positive skew.

 

[leandrombraz]

You’d be surprised at how many gamers grab every discounted game during Steam sales, only to leave them collect digital dust in their Steam libraries. Not defending Civ 6 or Firaxis, but it is a factor to consider.

Not only that but you also would be surprised at how much people don't finish games. If you look at other games you will find a similar situation to VI, around 80% will have the very first achievement you're likely to get, then it goes down into you get to a low percentage for end game achievements, even lower for achievements that are hard to get and DLC achievements. Only 32% finished a XCom 2 campaign in any difficulty, 25% finished The Witcher 3, 46% Bioshock Infinite, just to give some example. Seems that game completion below 50% is quite common.

 

[Josephias]

Prince is the "default" level, correct? So the big jump from Prince to King is probably people who just click on "create a new game" vs people who actually customize game options.

Not only that, Prince is the “fair” difficulty level, isn’t it (no benefits for player nor AI). There is people, even here, who just stick to this difficulty for roleplaying games (or self-imposed challenge games). No difficulty added by statistical means.

 

[Disgustipated]

Have 6 improvements at once" was achieved by 81,1%. Which probably means that close to 20 % never actually played the game at all. Going through my Steam library, I have 15+ games I've played less than one hour or not at all. Some of them are probably awesome games that I will most likely enjoy when/if I play them. So I would not necessarily conclude that most players who never finished a game had issues with bugs or were bored towards the end-game.

I think some people load up a game like Civ 5 or Civ 6 and just build a bunch of units to conquer stuff. They aren't really interested in building things, they just want to destroy stuff. They are either too young to fully grasp the game, or too immature.

As for games I haven't finished on Steam I'll go through some games with low play, I at least try to play all of my games I buy, but some games I haven't really gotten into like:
Sid Meier's Pirates: It's a little more action orientated than I thought, I suck at ship battles especially. 110 minutes played. Not sure you can actually finish this game
Xenonauts: 8 hours played, did not finish
Xcom2 15 hours, did not finish (though I may play again some day)
Sid Meier's IV: Colonization 9 hours, did not finish. I really could not get into this game despite loving Civ4
Sim City 4 Deluxe 19 hours, only paid $20 for it, so I think I got my money's worth
Microsoft Flight Simulator X: 2 hours. I suck at flying apparently
Torment: Tides of Nuenerra and Divinity: Original Sin 2 I still have not finished, but I may someday.

Every single one of my games has at least some play. My least is Sid Meier's Pirates. Only paid $5 for it, not so bad.

25% finished The Witcher 3

some games such as Witcher 3 are GOG games as well, and I have the GOG version. But I did finish the game once. It's just too long of a game to play again. I really hate overly long games. Witcher3 is the definition of a game that is too long. It's overrated imho.