Civilization VII

[Hellraiser]

I enjoy their demise

Paradox or Firaxis?

Spoiler

In before:

 

[ropetight]

I enjoy their demise

Paradox or Firaxis?

Spoiler

In before:

I have huge respect for the genius of the Sid Meier and all his games I played throughout my life, but this Firaxis skinsuit has to face demise, sooner than later.

 

[Modron]

Ooph

https://steamdb.info/app/289070/charts/

https://steamdb.info/app/1295660/charts/

Not much more than twice Civ 5 as well:

https://steamdb.info/app/8930/charts/

 

[mediocrepoet]

Ooph

https://steamdb.info/app/289070/charts/

https://steamdb.info/app/1295660/charts/

Not much more than twice Civ 5 as well:

https://steamdb.info/app/8930/charts/

Thank you, Civ fans.

 

[ropetight]

Major complaints from Steam reviews (not mentioning gameplay mechanics and hystorical revisionism): currently full of bugs, bad performance and bad UI.

Requires 2K account for online games.
And it has Denuvo, too.

 

[flyingjohn]

Thank you, Civ fans.

Even worse, the numbers are lower than beyond earth.

 

[whydoibother]

I still haven't finished a game.
When I am close to winning, competitive AIs all declare war on me together, and without the quick animations setting wars are just tooooooooo sloooooooow.
This is honestly the one single most important thing to add right now - quick combat animations.

 

[cvv]

I still haven't finished a game.
When I am close to winning, competitive AIs all declare war on me together, and without the quick animations setting wars are just tooooooooo sloooooooow.
This is honestly the one single most important thing to add right now - quick combat animations.

It's absolutely baffling to me that in 2025 most turn-based strats STILL don't contain a speed slide on launch. And yes, it's most, I've been banging about that for years now (seems like decades, honestly). There's ALWAYS an outcry and they always add it later in a patch but rarely on release. FFS.

It's almost like devs don't really play their games outside some weird dev/debug modes.

 

[Anomander]

Yeah, you don't even need to play your own game. This is just a common knowledge. If you played any turn based game you would know.
It's like they don't even know what they are creating.

 

[Damned Registrations]

It's a symptom of huge budgets and large teams. Invariably in that situation the people in charge end up being the ones skilled at managing people, rather than the ones skilled at making the thing. As a result, the people that recognize obvious problems are all at the bottom of the totem pole and get ignored while the managers schmooze with marketing and make retarded decisions. It's not just a gaming thing either, applies to corporations in general.

 

[civac2]

My guess is the game just wasn't done and publisher pushed for release either out of financial motives or because Firaxis team took forever. That's why there are some features missing and others appear like standins for the real thing.

 

[flyingjohn]

My guess is the game just wasn't done and publisher pushed for release either out of financial motives or because Firaxis team took forever. That's why there are some features missing and others appear like standins for the real thing.

2k needed something before gta 6 so they forced a release.

 

[Monolith]

With how much of a let down Civ6 was I didn't have high hopes for 7. Never thought they would turn this into such a massive clusterfuck.

 

[Gerrard]

This game would've never been good, even if the devs had unlimited money and time. You people are delusional.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This game would've never been good, even if the devs had unlimited money and time. You people are delusional.

100%. That age mechanic and the weird leader out of time result is a fundamental shit design decision.

Hurr hurr, George Washington of the Aztecs. (or whatever leaders/civs they actually put in the game, can't be arsed to look it up)

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

think about how many people are involved in a 3d rendering. models, textures, direction, animation... and this game has a green statue of liberty being assembled. tens of people and not one "dude, the fuck you doing?". there's no improving on retardation, not in a million years.

 

[cvv]

tens of people and not one "dude, the fuck you doing?"

Nobody wants to be labelled "toxic". And so the game tanks and everyone gets fired.

Karma.

 

[mediocrepoet]

tens of people and not one "dude, the fuck you doing?"

Nobody wants to be labelled "toxic". And so the game tanks and everyone gets fired.

Karma.

On top of that, if you do raise the issue, you get shitcanned 9 times out of 10. (Probably 10 out of 10, but left due to the possibility and margin of error.)

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah, you don't even need to play your own game. This is just a common knowledge. If you played any turn based game you would know.
It's like they don't even know what they are creating.

More than likely, the actual developers know and would love to, but management sees it as "non-mandatory" so pushes it back on the priority list.
I'd assume the same for the bugs and the trash UI.

There's no way all of this wasn't reported in QA. But *someone* overruled the feedback.

 

[Beastro]

Ahh, the Bulgarian Space Program.

 

[flyingjohn]

More than likely, the actual developers know and would love to, but management sees it as "non-mandatory" so pushes it back on the priority list.
I'd assume the same for the bugs and the trash UI.

There's no way all of this wasn't reported in QA. But *someone* overruled the feedback.

Let me just stop you there. Management did not say "MAKE ONE OF THE WORST UI IN EXISTENCE". Firaxis has a dedicated ui dev or devs and it is their job to do it properly.But, as any other modern game developer cycle:

-Ui dev want to change some buttons but it is not his area of development
-Contact the project director and tell him this so he can send the message to the button guys
-The button guys get the memo but are swarmed with other requests and put it on their list
-Ui devs continue using placeholders while sending messages to the director about the buttons
-Button guys keep piling up the messages on their to do list
-a guy from the button/ui team complains and gets fired
-Game is 2 months from release
-Director says to clean up the lists as quickly as possible and leave shit that can't be done quickly
-Button guys panic and send their placeholders
-Ui guys implement their placeholder and call it a win

Now imagine this for everything else and you get why modern games are shoddily made compared to stuff from the early 2000's.

 

[thesheeep]

Let me just stop you there. Management did not say "MAKE ONE OF THE WORST UI IN EXISTENCE". Firaxis has a dedicated ui dev or devs and it is their job to do it properly.

Nah. This UI has extremely strong "first version/prototyping, but brushed up a little" vibes.
No developer worth their salt goes straight for the perfect version as it would be way too slow development wise.
You can't have the entire team waiting for someone else to finish.

-Ui dev want to change some buttons but it is not his area of development
-Contact the project director and tell him this so he can send the message to the button guys
-The button guys get the memo but are swarmed with other requests and put it on their list
-Ui devs continue using placeholders while sending messages to the director about the buttons
-Button guys keep piling up the messages on their to do list
-a guy from the button/ui team complains and gets fired
-Game is 2 months from release
-Director says to clean up the lists as quickly as possible and leave shit that can't be done quickly
-Button guys panic and send their placeholders
-Ui guys implement their placeholder and call it a win

Isn't that an example for what I wrote, though?
That example is not a UI dev failure, but a management one. Devs can't be blamed for using placeholders to achieve otherwise unattainable deadlines.
Artists can't be blamed for being swamped with too much to do. People who complain can't be blamed for being right or fired for being right.
The ones putting otherwise unattainable deadlines and not managing priorities right are to blame - they are the ones who should have an overview, but I doubt they had it this time.

Sure, there are also shitty devs and artists who even if doing their best won't do much good or will be super slow - but even those can be made useful if managed correctly.
Then there is that atmosphere of "give no negative feedback" in lots of studios still, which can be detrimental for obvious reasons.

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong, of course, but multiple someones on the team decided that this version was "good enough" for release.
I doubt it was the people actually implementing the UI. Or testers. That would be seriously surprising.
Deadlines can be moved, it's not like Firaxes never did that.

Even though Firaxis has a history of somewhat botching releases - almost all their games had a flawed reception that improved over time.
But no Civ launched this badly with 50% ratings by actual gamers.

It is also possible they did mock reviews and those ended up in the 70% range, which gave them the impression this version was "good enough". Problem is, mock reviews are generally done by journos, and we all know how useful those have become...

Either way: Sad but fascinating.

 

[thesheeep]

I'll give you something that was definitely the devs' fault: The art style.

This was already declining somewhat in Civ 6, but this time around it is basically impossible to tell at a glance what is what - usually in a game like this you would use stylized buildings, textures, etc. to inform the player without having to look at a menu or symbols on the map.
And that's not a management decision, the art (outside of UI) doesn't look unfinished, it looks like whoever decided on the style just wanted to up the realism and detail without understanding what that would mean for visual clarity. And that was likely decided years ago, without release pressure.

 

[whydoibother]

It's absolutely baffling to me that in 2025 most turn-based strats STILL don't contain a speed slide on launch.

Something to do with multiplayer desynics? Or they just want to show off how pretty it is? Or it looks retarded when its 10 feet in front of you on the TV (game is on consoles too)? Or it looks retarded in VR (games is on VR too)?
But absolutely its a mandatory option for players like me who spend hundreds/thousands of hours in these games.

 

[Hellraiser]

It's hard to say exactly what went wrong, of course, but multiple someones on the team decided that this version was "good enough" for release.

I'm more willing to put this one on Take Two/2K (although I still think current year Firaxis are hacks, just not that too blame for the too early release), KSP2 was an even bigger shitshow when it was released, launched anyway in a clear "we need to recoup some cost at least" stunt. It's no coincidence this happened within the same corporate group again, especially when, as already mentioned, they are losing money for a long while now and GTA VI is not out until much later. Last year they caught flak from the stock market for higher than projected losses for the previous fiscal year (ending March 31st 2024).