What do you dislike about Spore?

[varnado]

I think space is REALLY BIG to be manageable by a single player!

[Curtis64]

As with many others, space is a little silly. It takes you say 10-15min to get near the centre of the universe using black holes and a ISD3, then a worm is gonna go extinct on your homeplanet, so you have to go all the way back and save the stupid thing.

The pirates are much the same as above.

You can kit out the entire colony with turrets, but it still needs a person to come and oversee the defence of it.

All your attacks on enemies are just a handful of allied ships and yourself. Epic space battles would be nicer, with dozens of defending ships against your own fleet of dozens, maybe 200 ships on each side in the biggest battles, down to 10-15 in smaller battles. I might be the admiral of the fleet, but that doesn't mean I have to be a the only person in it.

After creature phase your designs mean very little. If it mattered where you placed the guns on your tanks etc, and the price of your units shifted depending on how fast/damaging/tough they are, the game would be much better.

Where are the reactions we saw from tribe members in that old 30min video from the GDC? Where Will created spears, and the creatures crowded around, and picked them up. Then he created fire, and they went and poked the fire with the spears. Then he created drums, and the Willosaurs danced around the fire! The "procedural verbs" that were supposed to be in also seem to be gone, such as "Bite" and "Move" create "Drag", again shown in that video.

All in all, added complexity would really help the game. Hopefully we'll get these kinds of things in a future expansion.

One last thing, the SecuROM three activations. Customers aren't criminals.

[fifi666]

Hi the games immaculate in most ways, however ive a few problems with the space stage. finding your way around can be a bit tricky some times & keeping track of my colonys & how many i have & where they are, some kind of interface could be made to keep track with a highlight a route to them.

second problem, im all for war like races but every game i get there 2-3 species demanding sporebucks off me if i pay im skint, if i dont............EVERY 5 MINS 2 OF MY COLONYS ARE ATTACKED AT THE SAME TIME GIVING ME NO TIME TO DO ANYTHING BUT FIGHT OFF BLOODY SPACESHIPS!. il be happily terroforming my new colony when my home world & a colony will get attacked, i then have to stop what im doing fight them off then find the planet i was on before only to have 2 more attacked... could we posibly make it harder to be at awr or less frequent attacks plz?

[Powermuffin]

The fact that I can't get past the creature stage because it freezes when it loads.
I know it's a technical problem but it's a thing I dislike. The main things that I dislike about spore are the technical problems.

[ExtinctTerror]

The only major problem, and it is a MAJOR one, is the extremely high frequency of attacks/pirates/raids on your planet(s) in the Space stage. It is far too high and it is now stopping me from enjoying the game.

Every 1 -2 minutes my homeworld or one of my few precious colonies is attacked by an enemy empire. It happens ALL the time, if I'm on a mission (trying to get money to upgrade my excuse-for-a-weapon weapons) or trying to start a new colony. Liker someone else has said on this forum, it's becoming a mini-game of "See how far you can progress before you have to defend your homeworld!"

And when I'm trying to defend my cities there's the group of ships with the 10-damage-a-second rapid fire lasers that will destroy my spaceship in a matter of seconds!!!

Here's a summary of the space stage right now:

Homeworld: We're under attack!!
Player: I'm kind of busy, trying to single-handedly maintain the empire's economy (getting and selling spice) and all, isn't there someone, anyone else?
Homeworld: No, you're the only one of our entire species that can pilot a ship.
Player: Well, back when we were a Civilization I built many mini-Star Destroyers to help with defending our cities, can't they help?
Homeworld: Apparently not.
Player: Oh, well maybe a single ship from one of our allies could help out.
You ready?
Ally ship: Err, yea- (*Dies*)
Player: Blast!

The ally ship dies too quickly.

I hope my comments are taken as serious complaints, they are faults of the game and need to be fixed ASAP, maybe a patch or some kind of update.

Other than this, I like the game alot (before Space stage.)

[ExtinctTerror]

And another thing..

I don't like it how you can only have one kind of land vehicle, one kind of sea vehicle, and one kind of air vehicle. However, I still enjoyed the Civilization stage.

I don't like it how whatever your vehicle/building looks like, whatever parts you used, whatever you made it will still cost the same everytime. It's is sort of stupid when you think that a box a little bigger than your creature would cost the same as a 3-storey town hall with flags, towers, huge windows, elaborate structures coming out of it at every angle and so on.

Similarly, a square with one wheel and... just a wheel. Wold cost no less or more than a very complex vehicle that had one of each weapon, flashing lights, spoiler, a crazy paint job, etc.

It's a problem

[mantabloke]

I can't belive that a game this complex has no autosave or the ability to have multipul saves per game instead of just one. Only found this out after playing six hours and getting to space and it crashing to find that I didn't even have a game anymore. I shouldn't realy be surprised as it is published by EA.

[GrinningManiac]

The fact that the "like" thread is a page long and the "dislike" page is three clearly highlights the problem.

Its not his fault, But im still dissapointed with Will Wright. This was his baby, yet he let it hang out with those bad EA kids and smoke.

I dont blame EA persay, but its a funny metaphore all the same

[RobCoyote]

First, I have to say I do like the game overall. However, like many, there's quite a lot I dislike about it.

1) The Dumbing Down: Many people have said it, I'll say it too. Why was this game dumbed down as much as it has been? It looked so promising, it looked to be the greatest sim game ever. Instead, we've basically been given a load of editors with a few arcade games tying them together. This game, the brainchild of the father of Simulated Experiences, has very little simulation in it at all. The only part of it that seems to be what it should have been is the cell stage. While creature is quite fun, I really dislike the random way parts are gathered, I'd like a more structured method of evolution. Tribal and Civ barely have any gameplay at all. I rush through those stages as quickly as I can, because they're just awful beyond belief. I understand the need for some simplification to get a greater audience for the game, but this has been simplified down to pre-school level. What exactly do you learn about evolution in Spore? Nothing, nothing at all. I'm surprised Will Wright isn't weeping at what's been done to his baby.

2) Speed. Every stage prior to Space seems specifically designed to rush you forward into space as *quickly* as possible. I understand that cell stage would be quite short, but the other stages? Creature, Tribal and Civ are over all too quickly. While I do enjoy playing around in creature, in Tribal and Civ everything seems to happen in an instant. New building, erected in seconds.

3) Space: Aside from the frequency of Pirate/Eco Disaster events, which I'm fairly sure is broken, space is, like many people have stated, over-populated with spacefaring races. Jump two systems and you have a neighbour. It's like playing other space games in the smallest galaxies with the maximum number of players...yet in this galaxy there are hundreds of thousands of stars. There's no real sense of exploration, no sense that yours are the first sensory organs to experience some wonder of the universe. Showcase creatures in tribal and civ stages on surrounding worlds. All those other spacefarers really impacts the wonder of what you've achieved.
Both of these problems factor into basically removing what the whole point of the Space Stage was about: mucking about. You can't spend time enjoying yourself in your spaceship (Like Will Wright said you would be able to), just flying around, maybe terraforming a few worlds (Carving your name into them for eternity), playing with other primitive species, maybe uplifting them, maybe not (What happened to the 'Close Encounters' style minigames for communicating with primitive cultures through music and such?)

4) Terraforming: Now, I actually really love the terraforming in Spore, but it is too heavy handed in some places, especially when you want to put signature rivers, hills and walls in. Just click, point, stand back, then scream in frustration as it just undoes previous terraforming you've carefully been working on. it would be nice to be able to scale those things, much like you can scale everything else. I want to be able to make a reasonably small mesa for the island I've just made, not one that completely overwrites what I'd done because it only comes in one size...HUGE.


So, while I'm still having fun with Spore, I cannot help but miss what it could have achieved, what it *should* have achieved. Will Wright tells us he wants to create toys for us, but he feels that toys should have a purpose, they should help us learn as well as entertain. Well, from a man who known for eductation simulations, we have neither. All Spore is, is a pretty, shiny thing that we learn nothing from, and ultimately doesn't really do much beyond being pretty.

[Surprentus]

in the space section....there little opportunity to explore the galaxy. its a constant balancing act between defending ure territory, trading, completing missions and a little exploring. im very hesitant to explore in the event that i have to leg it back home. the turret defences seem useless when it comes to defending ure own turf. perhaps if u could build a proper defense for ure colonys that also replensishes itself automatically from time to time..would be nice. combat in space is also a bit haphazard and weapons need a rethink. missiles are supposed to be good against ships but i find the laser more effective.

[AnnoyedDragon]

Having your home planet attacked THREE TIMES IN A ROW, one right after the other, giving you no time to acquire funds or sort out other issues IS NOT FUN.

[brunowski]

Originally Posted by Kalrirr

.

Space: _Pirates. Eco disaster. Pirates. Eco disaster. Enemy attack + pirates + time limited mission at the same time. Too busy, no time for relaxed exploring.

absolutely agreed here... it gets very annoying very fast

Suggestion:

- Turrets should be auto repaired, or at least all turrets of one city replaced with one click.


- homeworld AI should build more combat vehicles and defend the planet.. there are tonns of hostile ai combat ships and not one friendly- yet there are hundreds of friendly trade ships....? let the ai handle the defense and call the player in only every now-and-then for a big one

Originally Posted by Pyritie

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

hehe... why have an open Beta when you get paying customers to do
that job?

[Will-ko]

I dislike the fact it was dumbed down.

What was shown in the 2005 demo was so awesome we all lalalala our pants with excitement and wide eyed amazement.

Sure the HUD is better now. But the creators have gone backwards. I find myself making the same looking creatures everytime purely because they have the best stats.

What happened to the procedurally generated stuff... sigh...

I want the 2005 build...

The "fish(?)" stage could of made such a difference to the game... and the underwater vehicles/cities.

[Blodhemn]

Compared to the videos from 2005, this is a complete let down. Dumbed down so so much why? so it can port onto a stupid Console?, so it can sell a few more copies to little kiddies? Damn you EA ( or whoever made the DUMBASS decision to change from what was demo'd in 2005 ) for ruining what was looking to be an AWESOME game.

Far too cartoon-like. The only similarity is the IDEA. I fail to see why it changed so much. If computers in 2005 could run it adequately, imagine how much better it could have been by 2008? but instead we get this hugely watered down lalalala.

Utterly disapointed, & gobsmacked. Considering taking it back for refund.

[Blunthead]

I think the game in general progresses too fast. I want each stage to last longer. Tribal was over before I had gotten used to it. Also as some others have said I would like a more gradual and seamless transition between stages.

Examples:


Creature to tribe

Instead of just filling up the meter and clicking a button and automatically becoming a tribe, I would have liked having to manually gather materials and build structures as a creature, perhaps at the same time learning to issue orders to other members of your species, other animals you have allied with would at this stage not have enough brains to follow complex orders. Also making a building more complex than a next requires a certain amount of individuals working on it at the same time, or progress stands entirely still. (Perhaps an introduction to the conductor gameplay would be suitable here with your avatar having to order enough people to work on the building, then having to direct the workers similar to conducting a song.) Once you have your first proper house built and the village grounds laid out you are now properly in tribal stage.



Tribe to city

The whole tribe stage was over just way too quickly. Similarly I would like to see a work of building your first city. If you made any allies you can create a bigger and better and more productive city, but if you instead chose to wipe all other tribes out your city may not be as productive but your nation will be getting a bonus to defensive turrets, making them twice as powerful. Also perhaps more powerful military vehicles.

Civilization to space

Civilization stage also ended way too suddenly for me. all enemies were down and my allies immediately just "gave up" and joined me and then it was over, I only conquered one continent and the others just joined me. I felt like I was cheated out of gameplay.
Instead of just ending I would here too see a transition period where when you have enough cities you may start work on the space vessel. This is a huge undertaking that will need lots of funding and take a while. You can only work on it while you are the dominant supernation of your world, and even if you have neither allies or enemies anywhere in the world you would still have to keep people happy or they might revolt and cause trouble and even splinter off as their own nation. The civilization stage is over when you launch your spaceship.

The different things it would look at as to judge your gameplay during civilization would be if there were other nations than your own at the end of the stage, if they were allies or enemies or neutral. If all cities on your planet belonged to your nation then you are obviously a ruthless conqueror, if most were allies you are a diplomat or trader (depending on how you became ally with them perhaps?), if most were hostile or neutral you are something else that I can't really think of right now at this moment.

Space stage progress

I think this starts up a little too fast too, you are off to a planet and you immediately discover other races in space. I think your first spaceship should be pretty weak and your first missions should be to map out your own solar system. scan everything on the other planet with some life on, perhaps even build a primitive base on another planet in your own solar system, one that does not even look like a colony because your space technology is not quite there yet, but more like a lunar base (this will either be automatically upgraded or abandoned once you get the proper colony tech) Only after this should you find the crashed alien ship, and with it technology for inter stellar travel. Colony tech will be discovered at the ruins and your homeworld will start building the colony packs. I think more systems should be barren before you run into life on other planets too. As it is now you get into space age and everything happens all at once, each new discovery does not feel significant because they come at such a furious pace.


To summarize. Progression through the stages is too fast. I want each stage to last longer.

[Blunthead]

Originally Posted by Frepp42

* 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.

The way I see it this only promotes crackers. People are required to download cracked versions of a game they already purchased. Limiting downloads to 3 and then even limiting the amount of time after your first download before you have to pay for it all over again. This is not to buy the game, it has more similarities with renting it.

[YuTakami]

I would like to add my voice to the growing number of people who have highlighted the issue in the space stage.

Will Wright promised me that I could do as I please in the space stage. This is not true. Every five seconds I am pretty much forced to fix an eco disaster or fend off pirates. This is actually detriment to my fun and spoils what is otherwise a pretty decent game.

This is the most fundamental flaw in the game. Most people are likely to spend the most of their time in the space stage as the universe is a fascinating thing, and people enjoy exploring. However, it is nigh on impossible to explore when you are repeatedly asked to fend off the same pirates time and time again.

As such only people with nerves of steel and infintie patience will truely ever get far in the space stage and most people will simply drop the game.

I sincerely hope that our feedback does get back to the development team, I am somewhat dissapointed by the space stage as it requires a great deal of gameplay balance.

Speaking of gameplay balance: Why bother trying to economically purchase a system owned by someone else?

Picture it:

You set up a trade route (of which you can't make many) wait a great deal of time for it to 'mature' then buy it at *exorbitant* cost. Why so expensive? At the end of the day it is simply faster and more productive to simply flatten the enemy ultimately rendering economic acquisition pointless.

Finally: BUGS.

Yes, you need better bug reporting facilities. Many a time the game has crashed out and up comes my copy of visual studio wanting to debug it. Now I'm not about to go about loading visual studio and sifting through loads of assembler code to try and suss out whats wrong in the game. If you include something that catches such exceptions, packages the stackdump and such info up and gives the user an option to submit it off for debug it'dd be a very good thing indeed.

I'm kinda surprised such bugs cannot be easily reported, especially considering the complexity of the game.


One last thing: Some serious funk going on with creating a colony. I don't know what happened but I clicked to create a colony, watched the space ship fire its thing to the planet surface, and.... nothing.

No colony, plus I can't exit the planet. Can't escape to home or anything. Only option is to quit. Is the physics system involved with this? Perhaps I was too close to the red/blue can/cannot place border and slipped at the last uSecond or something?

At any rate: Bug reported.

One more thing: I spent my entire evolution being peaceful. I would resolve to find the most peaceful route through the game. I was never agressive. The moment I stepped into space stage, I ended up becoming nothing but a warmonger mainly because I was forced into doing so. Not my playstyle.

Perhaps space stage should adapt to your playstyle? If you're peaceful, more time for exploring and keeping planets looking pretty. If you're out to kill things, more enemies to kill. If you change your mind and start backing off, space stage adapts to account for that. I think that would work a lot better than forcing everyone to destroy everything in their path no matter what.

Please fix space stage!

[Azahiel]

Originally Posted by Blodhemn

Compared to the videos from 2005, this is a complete let down. Dumbed down so so much why? so it can port onto a stupid Console?, so it can sell a few more copies to little kiddies? Damn you EA ( or whoever made the DUMBASS decision to change from what was demo'd in 2005 ) for ruining what was looking to be an AWESOME game.

Far too cartoon-like. The only similarity is the IDEA. I fail to see why it changed so much. If computers in 2005 could run it adequately, imagine how much better it could have been by 2008? but instead we get this hugely watered down lalalala.

Utterly disapointed, & gobsmacked. Considering taking it back for refund.

I recently watched the 2005 presentation and was wondering where all the fun stuff went to?
I enjoy Spore because I like playing with my creature and editing it and really make it do stuff, even if it's not so much.
Basically the only "life" of the game are the editors. If it wasn't for them the game would have been a distaser! So far it's only disappointing, giving that "that's it?" feeling.

I was disappointed with the other editors for vehicles and especially for buildings which I mentioned in my post before. What your stuff look like has no impact whatsoever on the game. I often don't even feel like making any thing I just take the maxis-made stuff. There are stats for vehicles yeah, but they have been totally irrelevant for me so far. All it takes is to take over spice, build a lot of vehicles and send them to the other city. A sure win.

The trade strategy is most dumb of all imo. Since there is only one resource. It's like "Hey, let's trade red spice. I'll give you my red spice for your red spice, deal?" "Sure what a great trade" O.o Makes more sense in the space stage where the spice has at least more colors. Besides, maybe I don't know economy...but what kind of market let's you buy out a country just by trading? O.o

The aggresive is self explanatory, but still...no matter where, what kind and how many turrents are placed on a vehicle it always fires the same...

The religious is just weird...instead of opening churches in "enemy cities", sending missionaries...you send again vehicles...though this time instead of bullets they shoot music (?) and show off a preaching guy. The latter being somewhat understandable. But I still don't get this part.

No matter which strategy you take, send out a horde of vehicles on the city for the sure win. No strategy at all. You find out that no matter which road you took as a creature leads you to the same thing, just the name of it changes.

The diplomacy thoughout the whole game does only one thing: prevents others from attaking you. Other than that it has no real purpose as the allies don't help you at all at any stage.

I'm surprised at Maxis really. The Sims were more complicated than this.
They did the SAME thing that Tilted Mill did to Sim City.They took a complicated simulation, the essence of what "Sim" should stand for and throw it into the bin making a playground with building blocks for kids. I thought Maxis was better than that. Sim City got butchered, it got so infantile...now Maxis itself did the same to what could have been the best game in history. As I said somwhere before "Sim" now means "Simple"

Spore should be graded seperately:

Editors - 7/10 (-3 points for the fact that only the creature editor is somewhat relevant to the gameplay, the rest is for the astonishing number of combinations, a place for creativity and technological briliance of the creature editor)
Gameplay - 5/10 (-5 for the simplicity, fast pace and not meeting up to the expectations, the rest is for the briliant cell stage, the kinda fun creature stage and the very nice, but buggy space stage)

The game feels very undeveloped...Maxis, what were you doing the past 3 years?

Originally Posted by Curtis64

All in all, added complexity would really help the game. Hopefully we'll get these kinds of things in a future expansion.

I can agree with that only if it'll be a free expansion ;p
These things should have been there from the beginning.

[Will-ko]

One other thing that I dislike about spore... *giggles*

That it doesn't have Stargates. (^_^)

[Xanru]

Space Age bugs causing the entire system to blue-screen/memory dump after an hour or so when I zoom in/out of systems/planets.

The game is great besides that. An Autosave Feature would do me fine tbh =P

[Eroneouse]

I did not like the way the Cell Stage was so fast to get through, it is a very fun stage to play but is overall very fast. MMO's make players take time to get certain goals achieved as that means more people spending real time in the game means more real time cash for the coffers. By adding more to the cell stage and makeing it a longer more immersive experiance will increase the word of mouth positive reviews of this game I should think and by that way put more cash into EA's/Maxis coffers as one of the bigger complaints is the cell stage is too fast.

How would I have made the cell stage more immersive and time consumeing at the same time.

For one I would have added 2 or 3 more meals to each growth cycle of the cell creature so extending time taken to complete a little longer but not too much.

At the half way mark of the cells growth cycles I would have had a selection screen appear where the player has to choose which basic body form they would opt to follow IE mammal, amphibian or fish and then have another set of growth cycles where the player has to find parts for that aquatic type of body form. Bringing the body progress to the same point we have now or to the point needed to begin the yet to appear underwater stage.

At each of the cells growth cycles start point I would have a mission appear for the cell to gather X amount of X cells body parts to get specific part upgrades.

I would have had many more upgrade parts for players to find even if they would never have space to equip them all, that would not matter as many players would likely collect the full sets before moveing on so they can have the most advanced critter they can for the start of the next stage.

I would have had more than just food and parts as objects to collect for example I would have put an area of the tidepool with traces of dye leaking into the water and a mission to find it and get a sample of the dyed water. On the next growth cycle a mission to find a sample of sulphur known to be near the tidepools edge. The next cycle a mission to collect shell shards from the waters edge. These things just adding cosmetic value to cells or upgrades in their own right would still give people more reason to stay around the cell stage.

I am sure there are many ways that the cell stage could be made more immersive and add to the time taken to complete it without it becomeing a boreing grind but retaining all its fun and charm.

What do others think about how the cell stage could be improved ?

[Ungalyant]

massively buggy, errors for 6/8 people I know who play it. Tribe and civilisation stage blatantly under developed, only 1 type of vehicle per city, only one missile per vehicle, lack of diversity, cookie cutter creature builds, not nearly enough creature parts, only 5 levels of everything on creature creator meaning no need for specialisation you can just make a perfect creature and no stacking stats which is lame. Weapons on vehicles have no impact on projectiles number of attacks, not nearly enough weapons or buildings, all phases except for space feel to short and crushed like mini games. feels like EA have just sucked the life out of another game and don't care because they're getting lots of money, it's what you get when your head is a buisness man and not a gamer. Feels like Maxis have made half a game and hope to release the rest of it in over priced addons very dissapointed.

[fenrif]

The game gets progressivly less interesting as you play, culminating in the space stage, which is blatantly not a sandbox. Sandbox implies you can do what you want. Being forced to fly back home every 2 mins means you cant. Limits on how many times you can use things (even the secret end thing) mean you cant.

Also, as the game progresses the best feature, the editors, becomes more and more divorced from the gameplay. In the cel stage the editor vastly impacts how your creature moves and interacts with the world. By the tribal stage its got nothing to do with it, and in the space stage your reduced to playing dress up untill you can buy the single-use creature editor thing.

Gameplay is overly shallow throughout. Tribal and Civ stages can be beat by zerging the enemy, and since theres not much else to do, are very uninteresting. Space stage is only difficult because the computer cheats. by that i mean it doesnt follow the same rules the player is forced to obey. (you get one ship, they get 100. You have to buy heals, they just fly away and can do it as much as they want. You get 5-6 ships max, they get fleets)

This game could've been awesome. It has very obviously been dumbed down from its original design. such a sad sad shame.

[Xanrith]

this is what i was told i would get

Spore - What we expected

this is what i got

YouTube - Spore - What we got

(note that this one of the best parts of the game, the game gets less interesting from the tribal stage upwards, you know because the point of the game, to evolve your lil' guys so they can be awesome, is removed in its entirety.)

They look like different games, they act like different games and i guess they ought to be

"spore: Fun edition"

"spore: casual gamer edition (also available on mac)"

2005 BETA edition > 2008 release edition

i could go on for several hundred more lines, but I wont. I will however plead with whom ever has the files to zip them up, and release them as a downloadable torrent for anyone who bought the game

Edit: What happened to my underwater worlds + animals?

Edit: and my classic trek fighting music? (that was totally awesome)

Edit: and dragging food.. and blood.. I said I would not do this, just watch the videos

[Augnaught]

Just hate the bugs, Really enjoy the customisation and it sucks I cant do that in the tribal phase due to crash