Summary
It’s safe to say thatCivilization 7has attracted the ire of long-time fans of the series, who accuse Firaxis of rushing the game out in anunfinished state. The latest entry in the legendary 4X series has been criticised foruser interface issues, a long list of bugs and general jankiness.
It’s a generally accepted phenomenon in the Civilization community that new entries don’t become full-fledged experiences until their first expansion releases. Although the community is permissive of lackluster initial releases, Civilization 7 is leaving players more frustrated than usual.
Communication Nightmare
Anupdate videoreleased by Firaxis outlined some of the changes coming to Civilization 7 in its first major patch. However, a user by the name ofDoctorMadcowspotted a text formatting issue in the update video and posted it on Reddit. A graphic outlining the changes to the Rail Tycoon victory condition contains a centre-aligned bullet-pointed list with missing spaces between words, bunching them into single words like “increasedfrom”.
It’s only a minor error, but the optics aren’t good for Firaxis. A studio trying to address user interface issues posting a video with communication errors only compounds the feeling of players that the studio is cutting corners.
“I have barely any faith in them at this point. It looks like they still have literally nobody at the company with any UX/UI experience - or any design experience at all,” commentsStopMarminMySparm. “In the grand scheme of things, this graphic should be a very minor thing - but it speaks to the greater point of Firaxis not knowing literally anything about design.”
The video has since been edited with an updated graphic placed on a plain grey background imposed over the footage of creative director Ed Beach explaining the update.
Update 1.1.1 adds several new features. You can now toggle quick move, a highly requested feature. There’s a new map generation setting called Standard, which generates more unpredictable continents. You can now rename cities and commanders and instantly restart games if you feel you’ve received a bad seed. Mount Everest, a new natural wonder, has also been added. Beach also promises various “UI and quality of life updates.”
