Why is Firaxis so silent?

[Abraxis]

That's a bunch of really bad arguments.
1. 90% of complaints may be shallow, but it's rather obvious that there are some major issues with the game (AI, unfinished UI, unfinished Civilopedia). No one wants them to address ALL complaints.
2. It is not true that devs generally "avoid trying to steer the perception of their product". Maybe it's true for games that you play, but it is not true "in general". It is indeed quite common for devs to do that. Many examples have been given in this thread, I mentioned Battleborn and the Endless games for instance.
3. No one wants them to "come home everyday and read a bunch of thoughtless criticism". I don't understand where you get that from. I'm asking them to give us some feedback. I even said that I'd be ok with them telling us that they don't agree with my game-has-major-issues assessment.

You're almost completely missing the point of this thread and of what people have posted here. You're wildly exaggerating what has been said in order to then make fun of it. It's classic strawmen burning.

If they seem bad, it's because, like this one, I don't care to explain them at length, just as you don't care to think them through. Do you know why? Because neither achieves anything tangible.

-Surprise, probably the devs feel the same way regarding the reception of their product.

If you really want to have a part in making a good game, go make a good game. Otherwise you're just complaining on the internet. There's no reason it aught to be validated by those out there making good games, and it means nothing that they won't.

 

[steveg700]

The OP made a comparison to Endless Space 2. You could just as easily replace the question "why is Firaxis so silent?" with "why is Amplitutde so open?"

The answer is that Amplitude is still a company with a small profile. They need to get gamers;' attention any way they can. Their best bet case scenario is to acquire and maintain a small, devoted audience. At the far opposite end of the spectrum from Amplitude, you have a company like Rockstar, who can get millions of people clamoring to view a 10-second teaser that reveals almost nothing explicitly.

The Civilization franchise gives Firaxis (which is a relatively small house of designers operating under 2K's banner) a high-profile property with lots of fans that extend way beyond the hardcore sect of forum-dwellers. Civ has become a game that tries to strike some degree of balance between their hardcore and casual audiences. So, it makes less sense for Firaxis and 2K to devote resources to interacting with hardcore players who comprise a minority of their audience, and who won't like hearing what they have to say when they realize this is not a game custom-fit to their feedback. It's an investment of time and effort that they don't see paying off.

You know all those terrible, unacceptable problems that Civ still has after all these months? Aside from the ones that actually make the game too unstable to play, they're imperceptible to many if not most who play this game.

 

[Zuizgond]

You know all those terrible, unacceptable problems that Civ still has after all these months? Aside from the ones that actually make the game too unstable to play, they're imperceptible to many if not most who play this game.

Not so sure about that. Look at the steam rating over the last 30 days : only 57% positive.

 

[callan]

Given that even I can see how shallow 90% of the complaints are with my low to moderate experience with the title, and how compromising the proposed solutions often are to married systems, I can only imagine their faces are purple from all the palming if they actually tried to not only read all the feedback, but respond to it in any capacity worthy of their positions.

Short answer, very few deserve a response, unless putting even a fraction of the effort into their feedback as the devs put into the game. Those few probably would. Just pointing it out here like this really doesn't.

Also devs in general tend to avoid trying to steer the perception of their product, it generally always backfires.

Finally, this is their job. Would you want to come home everyday and read a bunch of thoughtless criticism of your work from over-entitled brats on the internet or do something to you know... relax.

If this was sarcasm, I apologize for taking it at face value, but this is exactly my point. You actually believe, in an hour, you -just some joe on the internet- have the solutions to the challenges faced by this highly experienced and proven team of professionals, who have dedicated years of overtime collaborating, and deliberately obsessing over every detail on this project. I mean I am arrogant as all heck, but at least I know it.

Things just aren't as simple as they can seem after even a whole hour of consideration, believe it or not.

I get the impression you believe problems exist because no one sees them, and not because, you know, reality.

If they seem bad, it's because, like this one, I don't care to explain them at length, just as you don't care to think them through. Do you know why? Because neither achieves anything tangible.

-Surprise, probably the devs feel the same way regarding the reception of their product.

If you really want to have a part in making a good game, go make a good game. Otherwise you're just complaining on the internet. There's no reason it aught to be validated by those out there making good games, and it means nothing that they won't.

A lot of this is off topic and a more of it is borderline trollish in tone. Relative to these forums, naturally.

Firstly, the question posed by this thread is why are Firaxis such poor communicators in general? You are making out that this question is unfair because most questions are undeserving of a response. This is true, which is why most developers make a point of addressing most of these simple queries through the use of such modern communications tools as roadmaps, vlogs, Q&A's etc. Ways of addressing the simple questions and queries held simultaneously by thousands of their customers at once. Firaxis doesn't do this and you have not addressed the why of that at all.

They do not even maintain a method of collating feedback. If you want to submit information to "Firaxis" you can't. All of it is filtered through 2k Games, as it is with all companies (and sub-companies) owned by TakeTwo Interactive. So the answer to that lad's question is not that he is stupid, or his question is stupid, but that the top-end publisher doesn't care to hear from him, either way. You may well not think that is a problem, which would be fair enough. I certainly don't see it as ideal behaviour from a business perspective but, at the end of the day, it's entirely expected in this case as it has been the universal truth, in terms of TakeTwo/2K, for many years now and *I* was expecting no different from this title. But I can, at least, understand why people without such perspective might have questions and be disappointed by the answers. I don't understand the need to belittle them for it though. Perhaps you can explain that to me?

 

[Hail]

None of the early live streams or reviews went past 50 turns or so, so the glaring inadequacy of the AI was not exposed.

you forgot about the AI Battle Royal. anyway, stability is the primary priority. since the AI does not crash - it's good enough.

Back to OP question then: Why is Firaxis so silent now?

they are busy counting your money.

2K knows that certain devs like Sid and Ed have truck with the fan base. Perhaps, part of their job is to go out and say nice things and not say bad things in front of the customers, then disappear as needed.

Sid is the Create Director at Firaxis. he prototypes new games [he likes] and has marginal influence on Sid Meier's titles unless explicitly stated. for example, Starships was his last game afaik.

The QA people seem to be busy testing the Linux version of the game at this time. Probably, a lot of human resources were shifted over to work on the recently announced XCOM2LW2.

I thought that Aspyr ports Firaxis titles to Mac/Linux. they certainly do (will) for civ6 [and did for civ5].

I really wanna modding tool ....
I cannot understand firaxis too....

releasing modding tools will lower DLC sales. modding tools will be made public toward the end of civ6's lifecycle.

Not so sure about that. Look at the steam rating over the last 30 days : only 57% positive.

not sure about what?

2K bosses chose the easy route of creating the new civ game (VI) very similar to the highly successful previous title [that has two expansions and a ton of user-created content]. obviously civ6 vanilla cannot surpass civ5 BNW. many of those that bought civ6 played for a while, said "meh", and went back to civ5.

 

[GauntZero]

I really dont get all this hard feelings (that sometimes get close to hatred).
I consider myself a player in the middle-ground bet5ween the casual player and the highly competitive "professional" player.
I usually play on King difficulty, and, if I focus on a victory type, I am able to get it (but not overly easily) - I played around 150h so far and still have a lot of fun with Civ6.
There definitely are some that I would consider as lackluster, things that should (and most certainly will) be fixed, like a combat AI that does not always act perfectly (like not focussing enough in killing units or getting cities).
But there is no real showstopper in my eyes.

And I think 90% of all Civ players probably can be considered my level or more casual than me, so to speak the main target group for firaxis.
And this target group does not have such big issues with the game - even if the rather few who do, often raise their voice son the internet more loudly.

Don't get me wrong - I respect those who seek for a really competitive game, that has a challenging AI, even when you are very experienced in the mechanics and play very focussed.
I just think they are not the big market, that a company like firaxis will put their main focus on.

For players like me, a little patching here and there will do perfectly.
And I would even prefer sooner DLC with additional leaders and civs over too much work into patching a game that does not feel much lackluster to me.

 

[Gedemon]

releasing modding tools will lower DLC sales. modding tools will be made public toward the end of civ6's lifecycle.

That's false, a lot of modders have all DLCs, first to made their mods compatible, then they made mods which require those DLCs, which means mods are an incentive to buy DLCs, not the contrary.

Problem is, it's very possible that some people in marketing think like you.

Don't get me wrong - I respect those who seek for a really competitive game, that has a challenging AI, even when you are very experienced in the mechanics and play very focussed.
I just think they are not the big market, that a company like firaxis will put their main focus on.

I don't want a really competitive AI now, that would be nice, but you can't have a competitive AI without giving it bonuses, and part of the difficulty is to choose bonuses that are not too obvious for the human player.

But before that I'd like an AI that understand that a bomber has a nice feature allowing it to drop bombs on its enemy.
An AI that doesn't think that the best use for a knight is to put it on a boat and send it with 10 others to surround an enemy battleship
An AI that doesn't think that when I'm helping it in a war, at its demand, the only war in 4000 years, then I must be a terrible warmonger
An AI that doesn't think that to take a city the only requirement is to make units dance around its walls under its garrison fire
An AI that doesn't praise my powerful navy because I'm the first to put a builder in the water, or praise my powerful Air Force because I've made a biplan...

I'd just like to have a normal AI first, one that is not a schizophrenic psychopath would be a plus, then we could talk about how to make it more competitive.

 

[steveg700]

Not so sure about that. Look at the steam rating over the last 30 days : only 57% positive.

Confirmation bias at work? You didn't mention that overall reviews remain "mostly positive", and the reviews from the last 30 days currently constitutes less than 10% of the total.

But more the point, that total number of reviews is less than 19,000. What percentage of people who bought the game on Steam does this represent? Most people (myself included) don't rate or review games, certainly not in the white-noise channel of Steam.

 

[Leyrann]

If this was sarcasm, I apologize for taking it at face value, but this is exactly my point. You actually believe, in an hour, you -just some joe on the internet- have the solutions to the challenges faced by this highly experienced and proven team of professionals, who have dedicated years of overtime collaborating, and deliberately obsessing over every detail on this project. I mean I am arrogant as all heck, but at least I know it.

Things just aren't as simple as they can seem after even a whole hour of consideration, believe it or not.

I get the impression you believe problems exist because no one sees them, and not because, you know, reality.

I'm not sarcastic, but you are getting extremely close to using ad hominem instead of actual arguments to prove your point.

Anyways, no, I do not think I have solutions. But do you know what the problem is? From everything we can see, Firaxis doesn't only lack the solutions, they lack the ability to see what is wrong. The AI is positively stupid - A while ago someone on this forum did a test, 1v1 on a duel map against Montezuma, information era start on Deity level. He did not do anything. Nothing at all. Two hunderd turns later, he gave up, as Montezuma still hadn't managed to capture his capital. If the hardest AI in the game cannot take a walled city that is, for the rest, not being defended in any way after 200 turns, then there's no excuse. Your game is broken. A post like that one is what I am thinking about with "spending an hour explaining the problem" (or whatever I said exactly). And you know, if Firaxis does know, great, but the same point still stands: Why do they not tell us they are aware of it, in that case?

Communication with the community is vital to make what is a good (or actually pretty bad, to be honest) game into a great game. And there is nothing at all coming from the developers from Civ VI. Now, I understand that's mostly due to 2K not allowing it, but then I want to say, WHAT IS 2K DOING? I just want to have one out of two options. Either the developers come around and ask me what my problems are with the game they made (which I reply to with explaining the problems with the AI, the UI, game pacing, etc), or they come around and tell me that they're solving the problems that the game has. Right now, they're just doing neither, and that is just unacceptable for a game that sells millions.

(oh and before you come with the inevitable "why do you play if you dislike it, go do something else with your time", well the modders have, in three months, fixed basically all problems with the game (to a degree, at least). Which also shows how bad the game is handled by official parties)

 

[Leyrann]

Confirmation bias at work? You didn't mention that overall reviews remain "mostly positive", and the reviews from the last 30 days currently constitutes less than 10% of the total.

But more the point, that total number of reviews is less than 19,000. What percentage of people who bought the game on Steam does this represent? Most people (myself included) don't rate or review games, certainly not in the white-noise channel of Steam.

You mention confirmation bias... But talking about biases, most games tend to have an overwhelmingly positive rating. Typically, you'd probably expect good games to have at least some 70 or 80% positive, right? 57% is actually really low, mostly when talking about a title as big as Civ 6.

 

[Zuizgond]

Confirmation bias at work? You didn't mention that overall reviews remain "mostly positive", and the reviews from the last 30 days currently constitutes less than 10% of the total.

But more the point, that total number of reviews is less than 19,000. What percentage of people who bought the game on Steam does this represent? Most people (myself included) don't rate or review games, certainly not in the white-noise channel of Steam.

Most positive reviews have been posted less than one week after release. People didn't even see the flaws and bugs at that time.

 

[youngsteve]

Confirmation bias at work? You didn't mention that overall reviews remain "mostly positive", and the reviews from the last 30 days currently constitutes less than 10% of the total.

But more the point, that total number of reviews is less than 19,000. What percentage of people who bought the game on Steam does this represent? Most people (myself included) don't rate or review games, certainly not in the white-noise channel of Steam.

The most recent comments are far more reliable. When a game is released many people who bought the game instantly go on to make their comments, but it is only later when the flaws become more evident. I expect many of those original posters wouldn't be so positive if they were reviewing the game now.

I can see the bad publicity damaging the publishers. You only need to see the damage done to EA when they released their Sim City 5 disaster to see what can happen. Admittedly that couldn't have happened to a greedier bunch than them, & although this is not on the same scale, it is not the sort of publicity they are looking for.

 

[steveg700]

QUOTE="Leyrann, post: 14636235, member: 266219"]You mention confirmation bias... But talking about biases, most games tend to have an overwhelmingly positive rating. Typically, you'd probably expect good games to have at least some 70 or 80% positive, right? 57% is actually really low, mostly when talking about a title as big as Civ 6.[/QUOTE]

Most positive reviews have been posted less than one week after release. People didn't even see the flaws and bugs at that time.

The most recent comments are far more reliable. When a game is released many people who bought the game instantly go on to make their comments, but it is only later when the flaws become more evident. I expect many of those original posters wouldn't be so positive if they were reviewing the game now.

I can see the bad publicity damaging the publishers. You only need to see the damage done to EA when they released their Sim City 5 disaster to see what can happen. Admittedly that couldn't have happened to a greedier bunch than them, & although this is not on the same scale, it is not the sort of publicity they are looking for.

In all three replies above, the reviews from the less-than-thirty-days filter which serves your contentions is deemed to be valuable, while my illumination that it's a meager representation of the total audience is discarded. All three replies likewise elect to skip the part where I point out the actual total number of reviews is small enough to render the entire dataset of little value in indicating consensus. That all smacks soundly of confirmation bias.

As for bad publicity damaging the publishers. Civ VI is already a success, critically and commerically, and that it carried most of the gripes over from Civ V didn't impact that success. The list of gripes with Civ VI's AI simply don't compare to the launch issues with Sim City, as you yourself say that most games have positive receptions when released. Civ VI did, Sim City didn't.

TLDR: Like it or not, for better or worse, the game's doing fine and there's a dearth of evidence of any consensus that the game is in an unacceptable state.

 

[darkace77450]

The list of gripes with Civ VI's AI simply don't compare to the launch issues with Sim City, as you yourself say that most games have positive receptions when released. Civ VI did, Sim City didn't.

I can't speak for user reviews, but initial reviews for Sim City from the critics were embarrassingly glowing. After users got their hands on the game and discovered its glaringly fundamental flaws sites like IGN posted updated, less favorable reviews for fear of looking incompetent and/or being in EA's pocket.

 

[RealAntithesis]

I really dont get all this hard feelings (that sometimes get close to hatred).

I think things tend to get magnified on the Internet - it's called jumping on the bandwagon, but there are actually some real issues with how Civ 6 has been handled by Firaxis (and maybe 2K as the publisher). Civ 6 was released with quite a number of bugs, balance and game play issues that anyone who spent a reasonable time playing the game would have come across and become annoyed by (such issues ranging from the head-scratchingly poor AI, to the look and feel of certain things (fog of war, hills etc), the UI which often works against the player (spreadsheet view and tabs in city screen, notifications etc), quality of life streamlining features that were removed (such as Alert, some hotkeys etc), clear balancing issues (embarked units etc) - the list goes on - hence all the comments from earlier asking whether Firaxis had actually play tested anything prior to release.

The big problem is, while I don't think anyone was expecting a perfect game on launch, there have been two patches in the time since Civ 6 was released quite a few months ago now, but those patches seemingly ignored all (most all) the major issues that people were collectively complaining about. And at the same time, there was no communication from Firaxis. No feedback. No roadmap for future patches. No indication that they were taking any of the issues on board or had any intention of fixing a game that was clearly still beta quality. Nothing I can see anyway. In short - no indication that they care at all. If there's an argument that Civ fans are being unreasonable in their continuous criticism, then it's also fairly obvious that this is being caused in large part by Firaxis/2K themselves and how they chose to provide 'support' for the product. A certain amount of transparency would go a long way here.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

While Firaxis is stone silent the SteamDB speaks.

Within the last hour a DLC was added to the list and a QA build was updated.

 

[DWilson]

While Firaxis is stone silent the SteamDB speaks.

Within the last hour a DLC was added to the list and a QA build was updated.

How long does it usually last between changes and releases?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

How long does it usually last between changes and releases?

A few weeks to a month, I think. Maybe Feb. 20th.

 

[DWilson]

A few weeks to a month, I think. Maybe Feb. 20th.

And, would the references to Madrid be likely content related, or something else? Or, actually, references to Madrid are 4 days old, I can't seem to find the new changes.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

And, would the references to Madrid be likely content related, or something else? Or, actually, references to Madrid are 4 days old, I can't seem to find the new changes.

Madrid is their code name for Civ 6.