What's your opinion on civ switching?

[Kev1916]

Civ7 is definitely still a Civ game, and the tweaks to core Civ mechanics - things like removing builders, adding army commanders, towns and cities, adding influence to diplomacy, these are all amazing additions! Antiquity is pretty much Civ7 before the controversial features kick in, and I'd argue it's the best the franchise has ever been. At its core 7 doesn't shake things up quite as much as people say.

The issues with eras are probably fixable with customization options and more ways to score legacy paths.. It's civ switching which I doubt is salvageable for a large chunk of people, since a lot of the negativity is down to the emotional response it produces and questions of what Civs you identify with while playing. I don't see a good way to fix that.

Civ VII is at best a poor imitation of previous version, and will go the same way as beyond Earth.

On a personal note I have to laugh out loud at "down to emotional" response . Maybe take a step back from , and look at the real and many reason's that this "version" has flopped.

This "Civ" is at it's core a switch game and many off it's trade off's reflect this .

 

[Leucarum]

On a personal note I have to laugh out loud at "down to emotional" response . Maybe take a step back from , and look at the real and many reason's that this "version" has flopped.

Is laughing not an emotional response? That said, maybe don't go so hard after people who agree with you that civ switching won't work?

Take a look through some of my other messages on here. There's many reasons civ switching in particular doesn't work that I've gone over. But I singled out the emotional response since it is the thing I don't think they can solve with mechanical changes. It is a "feels bad" moment for a large number of people and I don't see how you resolve that without making it optional.

This "Civ" is at it's core a switch game and many off it's trade off's reflect this .

The 1/3 improved stuff in Civ7 is fantastic. If you follow Civ's rule of thirds the problems are all with the 1/3 new. 7 is at least very modular though, so even if they need to hit reverse on a lot of features to make it work, the core is strong, and I doubt it's going the way of Beyond Earth. Worst case scenario we get a "classic" civ spinoff built off the same core.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

Is laughing not an emotional response? That said, maybe don't go so hard after people who agree with you that civ switching won't work?

Take a look through some of my other messages on here. There's many reasons civ switching in particular doesn't work that I've gone over. But I singled out the emotional response since it is the thing I don't think they can solve with mechanical changes. It is a "feels bad" moment for a large number of people and I don't see how you resolve that without making it optional.


The 1/3 improved stuff in Civ7 is fantastic. If you follow Civ's rule of thirds the problems are all with the 1/3 new. 7 is at least very modular though, so even if they need to hit reverse on a lot of features to make it work, the core is strong, and I doubt it's going the way of Beyond Earth. Worst case scenario we get a "classic" civ spinoff built off the same core.

The laughing was a meta response to the criticism that disliking Civ switching is an emotional response, rather than evidence of emotional response to Civ switching itself.

I think it comes down to whether you view subjective preference as emotion driven or not. I personally don't think emotion does drive subjective preference. That I don't like Civ switching isn't because I'm angry or upset by it. It doesn't make logical sense to me in my conception of what a game of Civ should be. I'm upset as a consequence because I'd like to play a Civ VII that doesn't have Civ switching, but my dislike of Civ switching hasn't come from an emotional place.

It's come from my the rational part of my brain being unable to reconcile it with how I conceptualise and define civilization as a game and what a Civ should be, and unwilling to change my definitions. IE. It doesn't feel fun or what I come to Civ for - it's not my cup of tea. No emotion driving that for me.

 

[Gorbles]

The feeling of fun is literally an emotion. It's a feeling; a thing that you feel. We rationalise our feelings in a great number of ways (this isn't necessarily a bad thing). But let's not try to pretend as though emotions aren't relevant here.

The important thing is to realise that this doesn't undermine or invalidate the opinions made. There is nothing wrong with emotions being involved. Games should be fun.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

In your opinion, for whatever the core gameplay is to you. Again, I covered this. "just do what I want" is easy to say. It's harder to put into practise.

Gorbles please be realistic for even a second. They had to change a 3 decade old tagline to justify this game, a game which couldn't sell more than its immediate predessecor and which now has less players than a 15 year old game in the same series.

It's not just one user going "do what I want", its that the changes you defend are incredibly divisive and unpopular and the game failed because of them

 

[Gedemon]

[...] nor countless topics about how having more detailed individual civs with more unique units, buildings, and even civics has ruined the series. [...]

I actually think they made a critical mistake here, as the game play change they introduced required a lot more than 10 civs by era, they've shoot themselves in the foot by creating so many unique stuffs per civ. So that richness should have been done with a classic release, while they had to provide a lot more support to their choice of introducing civ switching.

 

[Kev1916]

Is laughing not an emotional response? That said, maybe don't go so hard after people who agree with you that civ switching won't work?

Take a look through some of my other messages on here. There's many reasons civ switching in particular doesn't work that I've gone over. But I singled out the emotional response since it is the thing I don't think they can solve with mechanical changes. It is a "feels bad" moment for a large number of people and I don't see how you resolve that without making it optional.


The 1/3 improved stuff in Civ7 is fantastic. If you follow Civ's rule of thirds the problems are all with the 1/3 new. 7 is at least very modular though, so even if they need to hit reverse on a lot of features to make it work, the core is strong, and I doubt it's going the way of Beyond Earth. Worst case scenario we get a "classic" civ spinoff built off the same core.

To re phrase LOL and avoid any doubt

In my part of the world it's not very nice if you try belittle someone by saying there point of view is just an emotional out burst ., that again in my part of the world often ends up with an "emotional" response

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

I actually think they made a critical mistake here, as the game play change they introduced required a lot more than 10 civs by era, they've shoot themselves in the foot by creating so many unique stuffs per civ. So that richness should have been done with a classic release, while they had to provide a lot more support to their choice of introducing civ switching.

That was kind of my point , nobody would be upset if Civs were this detailed in classic model where you play them the entire game. That would've been a wildly lauded and succesful change if it didn't come thethered to wildly divisive terrible 3 mini- games in a trench coat Age system and mandatory civ switching.

Again it's not just that the naysayers are luddites who hate all change for the sake of change like some here love to imply. We hate bad changes that undermine the very foundations of a series some of us have enjoyed for decades.

 

[Gorbles]

It's not just one user going "do what I want"

And nowhere did I say it was. I actually said there are hundreds of thousands of players (at least).

In future if you're going to quote me, please do it accurately and without misrepresenting my point, thanks. Here it is again for the record:

The answer is, of course, "the one I want". But that gets tricky when you have hundreds of thousands of fans, and these design decisions need to be locked in months before the release of a game.

 

[fantsu]

Dislike. Why take away vassalage? I'd rather took change in my empire by being vassal to an civilization that standed the test of time better, than, without reason, changed to a random new one.

 

[Civinator]

Your discussions since a long time are moving only in circles, no new arguments, only the old arguments repeated again and again. May be some civers here think, it is a great way to receive here hundreds of likes for always repeating their same old position.

It is now the turn for Firaxis to present a convincing solution, even in gameplay and in price.

 

[Siptah]

Your discussions since a long time are moving only in circles, no new arguments, only the old arguments repeated again and again. May be some civers here think, it is a great way to receive here hundreds of likes for always repeating their same old position.

Isn't that the whole point of these threads discussing civ switching? Reiterating everything that has been said in the week after launch already? Otherwise, why would people frequent these?

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

And nowhere did I say it was. I actually said there are hundreds of thousands of players (at least).

In future if you're going to quote me, please do it accurately and without misrepresenting my point, thanks. Here it is again for the record:

I honestly should stop quoting you because every interaction seems devolve into you not being able to admit the things you very clearly imply and say and then trying to twist arguments and words around.

No, introducing unpopular and incredibly divisive mechanics does not get tricky when there are not two equal sides to the equation. Very few asked for specifically for civ switching and ages and many more were adament against it to the point they refused to buy and the game is now a complete flop (even ignoring the mixed/negative user reviews among those willing to give it a chance) . Once you left the hugbox that was civfanatics you'd be lucky to find a civ discussion or forum that wasn't incredibly negative with people crapping all over Firaxis' choice to release "Humankind 2". Even here we watched as engagment before (and after) launch dwindled....

The writing has been on the wall since they announced the game and the fact that you, even after seeing this game couldn't outsell VI and has less players than V, are still try to dismiss the poeple telling you exactly why the game flopped with "well its not just as simple as Firaxis doing what YOU want" as if you're not in the absolute minority is wild.

 

[Leucarum]

To re phrase LOL and avoid any doubt

In my part of the world it's not very nice if you try belittle someone by saying there point of view is just an emotional out burst ., that again in my part of the world often ends up with an "emotional" response

Hmm. No intention of a belittlement here. I think the existence of an emotional reaction is a bigger problem for Firaxis than just the mechanic being problemstic. Mechanical problems can be fixed. A large number of people thinking "I don't like this" isn't going to be fixed. Not that mechanical problems don't exist too with civ switching, just that they are easier to fix.

 

[GeneralZift]

I always thought of the Civ selection process as the games version of 'history's greatest hits' - and you make a Civilisation in resemblance of that Civilisation from history and not necessarily an exact copy.

That's why your London can be in the desert and your French people can be in the rainforest.

So it never made sense to me why there needed to be an ascension mechanic, that you need to adjust your Civ, to sort of 'fit History' or that the game even needs to play out at all like real history.

I say this a lot I think but I don't know why we need to necessarily have a far lands and colonisation era, or why the religion aspect has to come at one exact point in time and so on.

They seem to have designed these features in a way to appeal to the History buff type of players who enjoy looking at intricacies of the fleshed out mini-Civs and plotting out courses of history in the game, sort of like a simulation.

But it doesn't appeal to them because there's not enough Civs for that to make sense.

And it doesn't appeal to those who are looking for a coherent single story, because it's always split up thrice at the same interval (and never any other way).

And so it mostly appeals for players who enjoy coming up with crazy strategies and wombo combing the different bonuses across eras.

But that doesn't lend itself to balance.
So it doesn't appeal to the multiplayer players, and the anti-snowball effect doesn't really work.

Who is this game designed for? I'm not quite sure, it's like I struggle to see the final image of what they always wanted to make.
When games struggle you can sometimes see where they were going and figure out that maybe they failed because they were rushed. Here I'm not quite sure.

I digress -- the thing about Civ switching is that it won't ever make sense.
Because you don't play the Civilisation that you pick. You play YOUR version of the Civilisation. And so it doesn't make sense* to evolve the way the original Civ evolved.
You should be able to evolve YOUR way.

 

[TylertheDestroyer]

I honestly think Civ 7's poor reception is not because of civ switching. It's because of pricing model and raw state of the game, i.e. lack of UI QoL features and mediocre UI in general, lack of gameplay settings (maps, victory customizations, etc.), bugs and very opinionated age transition implementation.

How could you come to this conclusion when you're posting in a thread where 35% of posters literally answered "hey we hate civ switching and it prevents us from playing"....

civ switching and how poorly implemented it was is absolute a major factor in the poor reception right alongside detached leaders, ages, UI, lack of customization etc.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

The feeling of fun is literally an emotion. It's a feeling; a thing that you feel. We rationalise our feelings in a great number of ways (this isn't necessarily a bad thing). But let's not try to pretend as though emotions aren't relevant here.

The important thing is to realise that this doesn't undermine or invalidate the opinions made. There is nothing wrong with emotions being involved. Games should be fun.

In that case though it's an emotional response also to enjoy the game, in the same way it is to not, so it's a redundant thing to be raising as a differentiating factor for how people have responded to disliking Civ switching.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I always thought of the Civ selection process as the games version of 'history's greatest hits' - and you make a Civilisation in resemblance of that Civilisation from history and not necessarily an exact copy.

That's why your London can be in the desert and your French people can be in the rainforest.

So it never made sense to me why there needed to be an ascension mechanic, that you need to adjust your Civ, to sort of 'fit History' or that the game even needs to play out at all like real history.

I say this a lot I think but I don't know why we need to necessarily have a far lands and colonisation era, or why the religion aspect has to come at one exact point in time and so on.

They seem to have designed these features in a way to appeal to the History buff type of players who enjoy looking at intricacies of the fleshed out mini-Civs and plotting out courses of history in the game, sort of like a simulation.

But it doesn't appeal to them because there's not enough Civs for that to make sense.

And it doesn't appeal to those who are looking for a coherent single story, because it's always split up thrice at the same interval (and never any other way).

And so it mostly appeals for players who enjoy coming up with crazy strategies and wombo combing the different bonuses across eras.

But that doesn't lend itself to balance.
So it doesn't appeal to the multiplayer players, and the anti-snowball effect doesn't really work.

Who is this game designed for? I'm not quite sure, it's like I struggle to see the final image of what they always wanted to make.
When games struggle you can sometimes see where they were going and figure out that maybe they failed because they were rushed. Here I'm not quite sure.

I digress -- the thing about Civ switching is that it won't ever make sense.
Because you don't play the Civilisation that you pick. You play YOUR version of the Civilisation. And so it doesn't make to evolve the way the original Civ evolved.
You should be able to evolve YOUR way.

Agreed. The recreating history directly angle was how the scenarios were built, but they were never the main way people played.

The main game mode I completely agree with your take on - it's like super smash bros but with historical empires and their leaders

 

[Gorbles]

In that case though it's an emotional response also to enjoy the game, in the same way it is to not, so it's a redundant thing to be raising as a differentiating factor for how people have responded to disliking Civ switching.

It is an emotional response to enjoy the game.

Neither of these things are dismissals, or rejections of points being made - except viewpoints that try to claim that emotions aren't a part of the general equation. They are. You specifically said "no emotion involved". There is. This doesn't mean that your opinion on what a Civ game should or shouldn't be is invalid.

(edited for grammar + tone)

 

[kotpeter]

How could you come to this conclusion when you're posting in a thread where 35% of posters literally answered "hey we hate civ switching and it prevents us from playing"....

I assume that when the game receives more polish and content, civ switching won't stop as many as 35% of people from playing or enjoying the game. Which means, civ switching wasn't an issue in the first place. Which brings us to the list of issues I provided in my comment.

It also depends on what we refer to in the context of civ switching. If we're talking strictly about the concept of changing civs between eras, that's one thing. If we're talking about everything related to its implementation in Civ 7 (the UI during the switching, the pool of civs to choose from), it's a different thing. I thought the survey posted in this thread referred to the concept, not implementation nuances, and comment accordingly.