What do you dislike about Spore?

[Ploppu]

First thing that annoyed me was that when you are doing something on a planet, then you get contacted by aliens, and you can only answer their hails when on galactic view.

And if you do not hurry out and answer their hail quickly they will declare war against you.

And when i got into war they started attacking me, and their ships runs away then heals to max again, and it sucks. you have to circle around them with the Minor Proton Missile, then hunt them down with the Mini Lasers. as the missiles aren't fast enough.

And when i was on my way to one of their colonies to counterattack lots of ships attacked me while i travelled (interstellar), and i've got no means to protect myself.

So you lose about 30% hp just to travel for a counterattack, and when i was entering their system i got a badge.. and guess what? it doesnt pause the game! so you lose another 40% just to close down the badge reward window without reading what kind of badge you earned.

Then when you finally enter their planet you have 30% hp, which sucks.

And its impossible to expand your empire, every alien i meet declares war just because i'm unable to leave the solar system when i'm protecting my homeworld every 6 minutes.

And i'm playing on Hard, but it seems the Normal difficulty is hard also. but the other stages were quite easy on hard difficulty..

I want too see more ships, that patrols the interstellar lanes between your stars, and some ships to recruit to take with you, and some ships that defend your empire since if you are going to own over 100+ star systems later, which empire would just have one ship? but it should take awhile to get them.

But the no-answer-we-declare war thing is the most annoying thing..aliens shouldnt be able to hail you when you are in a star system or on a planet unless they own it / are in the star system or planet. and you should be able to answer then.

[CapnCarnage]

The Game Doesnt Work lalala!!!!

[Leonick]

what i dislike, apart from 3 activations of course... is the afct that most stages are so linear, sure cell phase is understandable, but just for example, in creature phase its either kill of other nests, or ally with them, i would like more options on how to get further...

also it would be nice if you saw more than one nest of some of the more successful species on the planet and then the bigger of those evolved in to tribe, currently most of the time the tribe creatures wasnt in creature stage at all

it would also have been nice if the game evolved, at least some of the basic creatures instead of just switching when you evolve

EDIT: Oh and probably said before... multilayer would be nice, at least for LAN, i dont mind developing on different planets or so, would be real nice when you come to space

[Zacros]

Might be me..but ehh- I can never find the planet I need to do missions on! lawl- sometimes it wont show me a flypath to it =(

[psychojohno]

I dont like that i cant download content

[Lyra]

Originally Posted by miclemmers

I love the parts of the game I have played. the only problem is that my game starts bugging at the beginning of the tribalfase, as stated in a post on the technical forum.
not very likeable

/signed
As soon as I start tribalfase either my game locks up on the loading tribal stage. Read: I can't play 3 out of the 5 available stages since I'm not able to unlock the content

[Verkinix]

3 activations and SecuROM is what I dislike about spore.

[SharonQ27]

I loved playing through all the phases of Spore but I feel kind of overwhelmed now I'm in the space phase and it's all big and spacey, I'm scared of the space phase

[Scallus.be]

Hello, as a lot of you allready stated... the space stage was the thing I was looking forward to it the most. But once I got up there with my "Mornak" species all went wrong after 30 min of play. 1st of all I'm playing on easy as this was my first time . I found it hard to get money in (trade routes... they dont bring in revenue as far as i know... or at least not enough). I found some artifacts and started to sell them but this didn't give much revenue aswell. So then I started doing some heavy missioning... But after some time 3 out of 6 species became warlike to me (Probably also to my warfare past... all stages were conquered by me "removing" rival species, tribes, cities). So they attacked with alot of ships whilst i only had "3" myself (my space ship + 2 allies). My outer 2 colonies were constantly under attack, and I started to loose "time" to get my "allies" replenishing me with new ships. I also had the idea of them getting stronger and stronger... so I thought well lets get some more allies, artifacts etc but my nearby solar systems were allready all visited by me so no more artifacts to sell. My allies got attacked, my homeworld became attacked etc etc. In the end all I did was playing parent with my only spaceship jumping from my colonies to my homeworld back and forth... without beeing able to explore, colonize and terraform the way I wanted. And erm my god it takes long to take over a colony of them...
Ok here my short wishlist
- While you attack an enemies colony --> Pause the outer game so at least you can conquer a colony without fear of loosing 2 others
- Be able to command an AI-controlled invasion-force to attack an enemy colony
- Give more money or make space ship tools more cheap
- Less micomanaging of colonies as the universe is way to big... (maybe copy your "city layout" and when you start a new colony it automatically built that layout.

For the rest however the games kicks *** and I mean it!

[stwiegep]

3 activations and SECUROM is what I dislike about Spore

[RidJazz]

My gods, how many years did it take to make this ??? was it a two man team ? i was so looking forward to this and all i got as a very quick simple game up to space, then it completely falls apart.......micro managing the colony while defending you empire with 1 ship and pants add on ships from allies...why did i think it would turn into and online multi player when in space was it part of the origanl plan? seriously EA this took over 4 days to make ???

[dark32angel]

what i dont like about spore.

well its more i like spore but i dislike ea, becuise the dont have a word for customer service, since i bought the game 2 days ago i can still not play it becuise the dont now how to solve this ****ing problem.

[Azahiel]

Much has been said already. And I can only agree.

While I like creating stuff this is pretty much all that keeps the game going. The "game" part of the creature, tribal and civ itself are repetative, way too simple and often tedious. And that part was a disappointment. The game itself turned out to be boooring, as you do the same over and over. All that save it are the editors.

I like playing though the entire game however, because it is more satisfying for me to build a successful creature with what you can find along the way.

This is lost in the later stages as the look of the creature is only cosmetic and doesn't really influence the further gameplay. The later editors also are just eye candy (especially the building editor) which doesn't bother me that much, but a little more diversity than just pretty stuff would be nice. I often don't really feel like making my own buildings because they do nothing except look. I could put a white cube and it would work the same.

Personally I don't like where the game finally went. They put all the effort in the editors and the technical side which is a GREAT accomplishment. But they overlooked a lot of stuff. Will's urge to satisfy a wide audience made the game almost infantile and too simple. The Sims sometimes are a bigger challenge and more is going on there. In fact Will made challenging games that deserved the "SIM(ulation)" prefix. Spore is hardly a simulation.
But when I saw the "Sim City Sociaties" (which imo destroyed the Simcity line of games...it wasn't made by Maxis though) it made clear what "Sim" now stands for - "Sim(ple)".

What more?

Where's the flora editor?
There's the cell editor? (except the one "in-game")

Oh yeah, and all the things they said about the space stage. Here on the other hand there's way too much going on! Where's the freedom when you have to jump form one colony to the other. Why can't you have a fleet defending the colonies? Why can't the allies defend themselves? What do you need allies for when they don't help you at all?
The galaxy is huge, yeah but somehow there's no room to expand because you encounter alien races so soon. Somehow they develop a lot faster and you're stuck with your 3-4 systems with 4 other races already having 10 systems. It's a GIANT galaxy and the races are packed up tightly in one of it's corners.
Why not give it some time, spread the aliens a bit more, give room. Or better yet, give the interstellar drive LATER. After you terraform and put colonies on the planets in your system so that you can get a resonable ammount of cash for more exploration.

Now for some not entirely gameplay related feelings.

I don't like my personal feeling that they intentionally made the game lacking so many stuff so that the fans would buy addons just to fix stuff that should have been in the game form the very beginning! Call me paranoid, but that's EA I'm talking about...
Patches please!

What were you doing all that time? I remember the 2005 presentations of the game and aside the interface nothing seemed to have changed. It seems more effort went to careful marketing and not the game since it seems unfinished.

Just on the side, I love the game and all this doesn't bother me that much. But still...

[Markoose16]

I've enjoyed Spore so far but not as much as i hoped and have so far got about half-way between my home planet and the centre of the universe. Now I get the same annoying problem as everyone else some stupid problem on one of my planets back by my homeworld. But why should I have to turn back and completely counter my entire travel across the universe just to deal with the Grox attacking my planet. Every other species I encounter has atleast 5 spaceships on each of their planets but my species can only produce one spaceship which is manned by me. ***!!!! Was no-one at Maxis thinking! I prefer to ally with most species and then destroy anyone that declares war on me but my allies can't defend themselves or help me so I have to run back across the universe to save someone's ******* *** every second I make some progress.

Plus what is the point of the stupid ecosystem calapse missions? having it in the tutorial or doing it as a mission that is asked of you is fine, but when the planet has entire armies on land,sea and air why can't they go and shoot some creature with a farting disease instead of having to call me in my spaceship on the other side of the universe. Maxis could have atleast put a range limiter on the random missions because it is just ridiculous.

I and everyone else as a fan of spore who have followed the game since it was revealed should have all of these missing features and problems fixed in patches rather than 5 expansion packs.

[Airdraken]

the most annoying fact was i cant play online, i wanted to play this online with my 2 best friends, but its only single player and i wanted to be able to ally with em or maybe have a 3 way pvp,

for tribal as well there doesnt seem that much creativity, if i were to fight against them in tribal mode, it would be a draw all mass axemen. i also dislike the fact that everything in tribal is done my food, ( 1 resource available and use)

[Pyritie]

3 installations, SECUROM, and the lack of species culture. Every damned tribe/city/planet looks exactly the same.

Also, some more things to do would be nice. Right now it's too linear.

[timmsi]

the game dont [Removed - GJM] on release WELL [Removed - GJM] DONE!

[Xyquas]

There are two things so far, that I don't like about Spore:
1. There ist no possibility to save the game in the space stage, although this is a stage that consumes lots of time. Even worse: Spore crashed during that phase - after 11 hours of playing :-( This is the worst thing about that game!!! I really really do hope this will be fixed!!!

2. The tribe stage is a little bit boring, because one HAS to fight it's way through. I'd liked it better if you could chose the peaceful way all the time. The same in space stage: There's a huge universe but the player just has it's one stupid ship and has to defend a whole empire with it. That's not fun, that's just work :-(

[Fatbag]

I dislike the continuous attacks i receive in space stage from neighbouring empires- i would prefer it if war could be harder to provoke and tools mentioned whther they'd upset the empire or not. i tried making a chocolate swirl river and then the empire got angry- it would be nice to mention it in the description or something.

[aarddave]

Originally Posted by Anikki

The game overall is too simple and lacks a true challenge like "create a working/balanced or simply "better" creature". 90% of the game is style. Which is fun, but it feels unrewarding as the player has so little chance to play the designs.

Cell is satisfying in that regard. here it really pays to change your creature around, some things fail, others work depending on the environment and type of predators. At least on "Hard".

Creature is still nice but too easy and simple. The way that mutations are "found" in bone-piles kinda breaks the whole metaphor.

Tribe sucks as suddenly the creature and its features becomes meaningless, reduced to mere styling. Clothing options are too few and too meaningless again.

Civilization is meaningless lalalala. Requires one to design 4 buildings and 4 vehicles which you'll hardly come to appreciate up close and could be just some random blocks thrown together (exception is the UFO).

Overall the design choices become too cosmetic and loose nearly all meaning in civ-phase.... very disappointing.

I'd like to have MUCH more twisting and tweaking the creature / buildings / vehicles in every stage of the game. And an option to play at varying detail levels (think of sid meiers civilization), different timeframes, bigger/smaller worlds, more complex "tech tree" etc.

agree with this. i was greatly looking forward to the game, but its a bit too easy especially taking the aggressive route. beyond the cell phase there is very little to actually think about.

the graphics nice and the concept is great, there just isn't enough strategy in it to draw you in. i've got part way into the space phase, so far my game as been like this
- started in cell phase as carnivore. munched by way through the ocean to pick up dna, occasionally mating to increase speed to catch up other fish to eat quicker.

- land phase, stick on horns, hooves and claws, upgrading occasionally. rarely even need a pack. move from lair to lair extincting them one by one, targetting the alpha first for the unlock.

- tribe phase, kill off a nearby lair for food, fill out the population, outfit them all with a weapon and kill off each other tribe one by one.

- civ phase, build a military vehicle with good firepower grab a bunch of spice mines until you can build more vehicles, then destroy each city one by one.

- space phase, from what i've seen it's also very simple. you're given the equipment you need, directions where to go.. and you go do whatever mission you have.

there is so much more gameplay that can be added to improve the game, such as making evolution decisions have much greater impact further down the line. have creature design choices limited so you can't have it all, but can choose to specialise in certain areas. resource and city management can also be greatly expanded.

when you look at other games like the civ series, there was always the feeling of 'just one more turn' where everything you did, from where to settle, how you interacted with neighbours, what to build and when - all had an impact on how the game evolved. there is very little like that here which is a shame as the game could have been so much more. playing around making different shaped creatures and buildings is only fun for so long.

[Zhuriel]

THe fact that it doesn't work.

[Anisky]

Well i've only played the first 3 stages and just started on the civilization so thats what my opinion is based on.

I love the first stage, was laughing out loud and having fun.

The creature stage is a tad boring when your doing it for the n'th time (i enjoy starting over a lot to make different creatures from scratch) and i havent figured out how to get mouth-pieces for anything but carnivore yet, which i find a bit odd.
The path-finding for your group-members in this stage is not very good, it's happened to me sevaral times that i had started socializing with a new species only to find i would fail because my group was at the bottom of a hill not helping me out, annoying.
I also miss some more options or ways to find food or parts, it gets a bit tedious. The graphics seems "jumpy" too - meaning: plants at a distance have a certain amount of polygons, when i move closer the amount increases, which changes the shape of the plant visibly - it's quite ugly and distracting. - And why are there no smooth edges on the pixels?

In the tribal stage it annoys me that the controls have switched. I keep left-clicking things because i did that in the creature-stage. It also lacks a way of turning the camera via the keyboard (Q+E would be the obvious choice).

Starting the civilization stage my first-hand impression is, that i (at first) didn't understand what i was building when i was building the city-hall and a vehicle. I had no idea what they were to be used for which makes designing them a lot less fun - and afterwards i ofcourse regretted some choices when i figured out approximately they were for.
After that i got an overview of my city and was really disappointed that my creatures (which i had shaped and had fun playing) was now just tiny dots on my screen which i couldn't even click. Then i zoomed a bit out and saw the planet seemed to have shrunk too! Not much area to explore then :-(.
I drove the vehicle around a bit without having a clue what it was doing, then i decided to build a building and was facing the create-building-screen again - and again without knowing the purpose or location of the building i just gave up and logged out.

Next day i logged in and started a new creature - which i have now done several times now because those fases are quite fun - without even getting to the civilization-stage with any of them though. I guess you can say it makes the game last longer for me, but i'm getting the feeling it's because there are some rough edges in some parts of the game so i'm looking forward to a (hopefully under development) patch via this EA-downloader thingy.

[Silverskeejee]

The fact that the game revolves around the same old pattern.

Eat something.
Eat/Greet your Neighbours.

Really, that's the game in a nutshell. I'd really like something ELSE to do in Creature onwards phases, other goals that keep me in that phase and enjoying it.


Somewhere to turn OFF my own creations. I keep getting half the damn creatures in my world being various evolutions of my own one, which is frustrating.

[Frepp42]

First of all let me say that I think Spore is an awesome game. That said, there are some things I don't like:
* 3 activations and SecuROM. This kind of protection doesn't stop crackers and only makes life miserable for those that would need to reinstall the game more times than 3.
* Far too many pirates and eco disasters in the space stage. As it is now it takes too much of the fun away. Don't remove them altogether, but please don't let it be one of the corner pillars of the space stage, as it is now.
* No autosave function. There should be an autosave feature, it's just too damn frustrating to go back and replay parts of the game in case the game crashes (which it has done a few times for me) or if you just plain forget to save often enough.

[Pyritie]

First off, seeing as Spore is a game about creating and designing your own things, why doesn't the gameplay reflect this?

So many other things could've been done in the creature stage to be more social, but instead you're forced to dance with other creatures. I mean, how many animals are there in the world that dance with each other?

What you could've done instead is made different species have different requirements. Maybe one is hungry and you need to go get food for them. (Hands, anyone?) Or if a species is under attack; you go kill the attackers and then the defenders like you more. Or if two species hate each other. Go kill one of them, and then the other likes you. Or go collect shells or something for another species. And so on.

But instead, we're stuck with some stupid game that gets old really fast.

Oh, and the transition to tribal. One guy in your species discovers fire. Okay, fair enough. But then suddenly a bunch of huts spring up and you're holding sticks with skulls on them.

What you could've done here is made the user "discover" how to make those things. For example, find something like string that can be used to tie sticks together. Or discovering that a long stick makes a decent weapon. Or discovering that animal carcasses can be used to put stuff on. And for crying out loud, why do buildings have to be in a set position? Couldn't you have done something like other RTS's (say, C&C Generals) and let users put things where they want to? You could add something like a certain range they have to be within and a building limit, for example.


Tribal stage wasn't much better, although the fact that you could at least become friends with hated tribes was good. All that you do is blow some horns at another tribe and then they like you. And if you're under attack, allies don't even help you.

What you could've done is added more interaction with other tribes. You could get other tribes to help you destroy another tribe, or you could trade with them, and so on.

Transition to civilization was terrible. One minute you got a few buildings, the next minute you're designing a town hall, the function of which you have no idea what it does until after you've made it. And again, you have the same thing as in tribal stage. All the villages/cities are laid out exactly the same.

C'mon EA. Ever heard of an open beta?