On Friday, Civilization VII developer Firaxis published a big blog post outlining the upcoming quality-of-life updates to smoothen user experience, starting with UI.
Sid Meier’s Civilization VII has not come out yet, and developer Firaxis Games has already committed to enhancing the user experience for the long haul. On Friday, Firaxis published a blog post that details the upcoming quality of life changes landing in Civilization VII. Reviews for the latest Civilization have been mostly positive over Metacritic (with the sample size only including critical reception so far), but on the Steam platform, reviews have painted a different picture over the 5000+ user reviews currently posted. Overall reception is “mixed,” with fans outlining numerous issues they’ve experienced since starting the title.
Many of the reviews posted to Steam have complained about the title releasing in a “rough” state, and one user xXx_Gwenyth_xXx said “The UI is terrible. I can’t find any of the information that’s relevant to my gameplay ever. Notifications are both annoying to click through and simultaneously disappear without any reason. Tactility and telegraphing normally communicated through sounds, camera adjustments, and musical cues are either missing or have regressed into some sort of minimalist alternative” in a scathing ‘would not recommend’ sentiment.
Other users have also complained about confusing UI design, as well as the notion basic quality gameplay elements have just vanished from the previous game. This includes key command functions like queueing next movements and the ability to hasten gameplay.
In a direct response to these complaints, Civilization VII developer Firaxis Games published a blog post promising fixes are coming. The blog post reads, “The team has been poring over your feedback, including our most recent Steam Reviews during the Early Access period. As stewards of the Civilization franchise, we hold ourselves to a high standard and always strive to create the best game possible.”
Firaxis Games then commits to improving elements users directly voiced concern about, and says “Our top priority is improving the UI. We need some time to digest all of your feedback, but some areas that we’re already looking into include making UI interactions more intuitive, improving map readability, fixing areas of polish like formatting, and more.”
Firaxis Games concludes by saying the scheduled March patch 1.1.0 will address many of these issues, and they will continue to smoothen the experience following the February 11 launch of Civilization VII.
