What do you dislike about Spore?

[Malgor]

Originally Posted by 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 > 2006 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

QFT

Wow. I played Spore today. I didn't *buy* Spore, due to SecuROM - and now I am glad I didn't, due to Spore!

The friend who let me try it caved and bought it (despite SecuROM), but now he is taking it back to the store.

I agree with everything Xanrith said (and also with many of the points made by others here). Where is our Spore? This game we have, it is in a Spore box, and it has some things in it which are like Spore - but if this game is Spore, then someone ought to tell Will Wright, 'cos he must have been playing something else before making all those presentations he has been making for years (especially the more recent ones).

What do I dislike about Spore?
-SecuROM
-Activations
-Lack of decent gameplay
-Lack of continuity (no follow through of races, everything feels a bit disjointed - hell, even the camera controls keep changing for no good reason)
-Lack of help (lets face it, big chunks of the game make no sense, and are never explained)
-Lack of options (woot, hundreds of parts - and only a handful are any use)
-Lack of cross-over ability (cannot find herbivore mouths if you are a carnivore, etc - only way to be an omnivore after cell seems to be by haveing both mouths during cell, not probocis)
-lack of balance in space stage (in *all* ways: too many enemies, or not enough; early spaceship is too fragile, but scales up too quickly; AI is playing a different game from the player)
-Lack of variety (it really doesn't matter how you play, the game is the same all the way through - nothing really changes)

I could go on.

All in all, this game fails on many, many levels. It seems more like a proof of concept than a finished game - and has tons of elements which leave you saying "if only," compared with almost no "that's quite cool" moments.

I've seen a hell of a lot of hyped games in my time, and usually avoid them because they are never as good as the hype makes them out to be. The difference here is that we have actually been seeing the game for the last 3 years - so I (like many others, I am sure) actually allowed my self to wonder if this game might actually break the mould.

Guess not - in fact, it is one of the worst games I have seen in some time.

Sorry, I have to make one final point here: who, at Maxis, thought that this game would have some replay value? and what were they smoking that made them believe that to be true? I have played it for several hours today, and I feel like I have done everything I need to. I did not go to the centre of the galaxy, I did not max out my ship - I did not even blow up a planet - but in a few hours I managed to play through most of the game a couple of times (almost 3 times), from cell to space, and I was bored senseless.

It is a sad fact that the best bit of this game is the cell stage, and that gets boring fast - the creature stage is not too bad, but is mind-numbingly repetative, and very 'flat' in terms of actual gameplay. Everything goes downhill from there.

Sorry for the long post folks, but I am sure many of you will recognise that even a post this length only really touches upon the issues with this game.

I am really, really glad I didn't part with any money for this - it is actually starting to make Fable 2's stupid bloody dog training system look interesting :/

[Wullailhuit]

I don't like it because either the save feature DOESN'T save (all planets still have NEW against them) or the save works but the file is corrupt ion start up (The planets still only have NEW against them).

So however much work I put into playing it , I have to re-start from the beginning of a phase every single time.

[theggman1970]

I dont like the way i paid 35 quid for a game that dont even work coz it says i have no internet connection when i do. 3 activations is *** aswell

[Celest-HK]

So...it's been said before and needs reiterating:

Homeworld Attacks - SLOW THEM DOWN!

It is way too easy to make other races hate you simply for not completing a quest for them. Then suddenly you get "Pay me 72,000 Spore Bucks NOW ORI'LLEATYOURHEAD!!!", then when you say "No, I've just spent the money I have actually playing the game and deliberately NOT trying to annoy people" you get "Fine then...We're going to bomb you every 5 minutes until you're so annoyed you'll just start over!"

They're all just TOO ready for war in my honest opinion, at least, on easy mode. I dread to think how they'd be on Hard Mode...

Moreover...why can I PAY a friendly species to slaughter someone and my own species wont do it for free? I find this totally bizarre.

[Xanrith]

Thanks Malgor, I honestly wish i hadn't bought it , the CCtrial was so promising and the 2005 demo was so pretty and exactly what we wanted.

If anyone at EA feels like telling me how to get my money back then please do i got my game via direct download from you. I think 95% of the community would be interested too. or again, at least let us have a toy around with the 2005 beta, that looks fun.

[vissia]

well this is what i dont like about spore
the game is unbalanced from the tribal stage til the space stage ,
in tribal stage i was expecting that i would gather resoures to build stuff
also u were the only one attacked in tribal stage the other computers would never attack each other even if it was one of my allies, also tribal was very short it could have been a bit longer ( cus in creature stage u would be in the game for hours while in tribal about 1h and ur done )
tribal = fail
civilization age was also good but the thing i didnt like was from primitive tribes ppl that had only spears into guys that have tanks O.o?? unreal seriosly unreal T_T.
also would like if u could build more type of vechles , like harvesters tankers , super tanker, and other modern type of stuff , something similar to command and conquer. would be nice if there were other resources not only spore bucks.tho still its kinda good , also increasing ally ai would be better :/
civilization= playable
space stage is one of the most imposible stuff in the game seriosly attacked every five second eco disasters , then pirate attacks , then attacked by 3 empires on one planet whit pirates raiding that same planet aswell, and too all of that 1 ship vs an army = idiotic T_T ,
also allys dont help you , but u have to help them or else they are gonna attack u and be at war whit u , also if ur having a trade rute and dont buy the system the empire is gonna be at war as well , also random guys keep poping up and wanting to me to give them money T_T so they dont attack me, but even if i give them money they still attack me O.o?? also other type of rescoures like some kind of minerals would be nice for selling or to help increase ur attack power :/ also would be nice if my own planets would save them self whit fighter instead of beaing sitting ducks -.-*
space stage = impossible -_-
also would wish there was a fish stage as well tho i heard there will be a expansion for fish stage , that ofc no one would buy T_T also would wish there was a auto save like after i take a planet or make a colonie its very annoying to save every 5 seconds cus ur game might crash, oh yea also game is very unstable alwys crashes , and there are many bugs like when u want to skip the part where ur ship is being remade u get stuck and cant see ur ship nor move T_T
also creature stage could be a bit more random like herbivores are eating fruits , and carnivors are attacking creatures and draging them to their nest where their members would eat, also would wish that my creatures in the nest would at least move instead of sitting and starving till the end of creature stage T_T, also u dont have the eat and drag option like in the 2005 vid.. would be nice if u had that also brain dosent grow if u make some species extilalala and other allies u get from eating stuff T_T like in cell stage
also all ur cretures end up all the same or similar :/
also would wish if u can make bigger cratures like elephent size or something like that :/
spore= fail ( but still playable )
also will wright made a couple of mistakes on some showcasing of the game its not 1st person shooter its 3rd person rpg T_T also cus of his mistakes by saying comps as players most ppl tought it would be a multi player type game (would be cool if it were u would fight whit other players , it would be something similar to travian its a browser game )
sorry if i made typo's i wright fast and im not english :/

[Kyle1000]

Cell stage is good

Creature stage i think is brilliant but you should be able to nest where you want

Tribal Stage is good for the first time you play it but it is repeatative the next time so it gets boring easily

Civilisation stage is good but again repeatative the next time you play it

Space Stage is brilliant except for the grox because they are to much like a boss at the end of a simple game plus it's the same the next time you do it, and it's eco disaster and pirates all the time.

And so much is missing, we were supposed to be able to design everything
and so much creativity has been lost from the game, it's the same everytime you play it all you are doing is repeating yourself.

I think this game needs changing to make it more creative like the ability to put buildings where you want them and to be differnet everytime you play.

Patches and expansions are needed

[Dajmin]

The middle stages are a little limiting. My girlfriend, for example, has no interest in the end-game Space stage, but she would love to play through the Creature, Tribal or even Civ parts. The problem is that it doesn't take long to take over the whole planet and once you do there's nothing much left other than to evolve.

Maybe if there was a random event to bounce your creatures to another planet or something it would give you the chance to keep playing and have a goal. An abduction would be a good one, an asteroid hit or something would work too. You could even work on taking over the galaxy without ever developing technology.

My only other real gripe is that my own planets are pretty much defenseless. I had an army of flying and driving machines, so why do I need to fly back home to save them when they get attacked? Building turrets is useless at that stage because their range is so short it doesn't even hit the bomber ships.

[itsmoirob]

What I dislike about Spore is the DRM (awful, only 3 installs?) and the fact that I've been lied to about multiple accounts per installation. The game manual states you can have multiple accounts but I am having technical issues getting online with the 2nd account. Also according to some on the boards EA Customer Service are saying you can only have one account.

[Fordaz]

Things like DRM don't bother me, I'm only planning on installing it once.

My main beef, as it seems to be with everyone else also, is the Space stage of the game. Pirates, eco disasters and lack of automation have turned me right off. I find myself restarting the game at the end of the Civ stage these days, because I can't be bothered with the hassle of space, which is a shame because it's supposed to be the pinnacle of the game, isn't it?

Praying for a patch to sort out the space stage, I'd love to play it without wanting to smash my keyboard through the monitor after 30 minutes.

[DarwinFan]

Am I the only one who is greatly disappointed at the omission of evolution via natural selection in this game? The whole creature creator thing is neat and all, but it's mostly just for aesthetics. It's the virtual equivalent of dressing up Barbies. You can spend hours trying to make your creature the most fit for survival, yet it will have little impact on the your species chances for success. You can make ridiculous, tripedal, awkward creatures that still are as effective as lean, mean killing machines. I guess I was just hoping they'd follow through on the concept they sold me on years ago. I hate how there like 10 different guns you can put on your vehicle, yet they all have the same effectiveness. What's the point? Purely cosmetic. What wasted potential. I think Wright was too ambitious with this one and ended up with a game that's more of a jack-of-all-trades and master of none.

Also, am I the only one who was duped into thinking this was an MMO? I'm not a fan of single player games at all.

[GrinningManiac]

Theres a patch petition or something in the Tech. forum, and one of the EA admins said that they were aware of the problems and are working on a solution.

this means they are listening, but feel that "the real fans who actually post in our forums dont like it: they must be the wrong type of players"

CASUAL GAMERS? the keyword is casual. these are people who dont play games much, hence casual. casual gamers is just a fancy way of mentioning the majority who never play games without making the deveopers cry because someone out there isnt buying their games.

work more on the hardcore (I dont like that name, makes me sound like I live at my computer) and you'd get the whole gaming community buying it. you know, the people who give a damn about games and therefore know about the existence of SPORE?

they had a bloody TV advert in Britain, dont know about USA. they know casual gamers wont know about Spore from the getgo!

but we can all say "Bloody EA, want expansions, three instilations, bah!"
But the real villian here is Will Wright. that egotistic ***** allowed the game to warp into a peversed penny-arcade of his vision, and he puts his bloody face in the civ creature's speechbubbles!

I want an Answer from Will Wright, or at least some form of acknowledgement that the game still exists once it leaves the drawingboard and will need critical response to be reviewed!

Answer us, Will! Awnser us!

[Watashiii]

Originally Posted by DarwinFan

Am I the only one who is greatly disappointed at the omission of evolution via natural selection in this game? The whole creature creator thing is neat and all, but it's mostly just for aesthetics.

Obviously, you are. The aestethics part is what most people like about the game. What I would really hate would be if some ultra-cool vitorian steam cannon gave less damage then some nondescript futuristi buzzer. In the end, people would want an easy route and all vehicles would look the same

Also, am I the only one who was duped into thinking this was an MMO? I'm not a fan of single player games at all.

Not sure how you succeeded in that. It was pretty much advertised as mass singleplayer

[Pyritie]

Originally Posted by Watashiii

Not sure how you succeeded in that. It was pretty much advertised as mass singleplayer

It's only mass-singleplayer if you can get the damn registration to work.

[SolidFury]

I think it is great...it does lose a bit of fun at tribal stage(the stage after dosent work for me but space does) I think if they could make it up to a MMO and fix up the spore tribal ect I would be a happy man!

[clawsywp]

There is not much depth to the early stages (i don't know about Space yet)! It is pretty boring and reminds me of Sim Societies. Its not a game I can see myself playing again once i have played it through.

I did like creature stage!

i am at space stage now and had to restart it as another character because I could not keep up with all the enemy attacks on orginal character, it was unplayable. That was a peaceful character.

[Ilmena]

I hate having to go to the Sandbox king. But EA take the damn GTAIV approach to space, you have missions, when you finish them you become lord of the galaxy, and can KEEP PLAYING. But you don't HAVE to do anything after the tutorial just do stuff when you feel like, but don't let people get cooler stuff until the finish missions (E.G: better guns, speed, HP etc.)

[SlicerPT]

Cell stage:

Perfect, its kind of sad that its become my favorite segment of the game. The choices you make (jet versus cilia, spike versus electrical gland) make a remarkable difference on the way you play.

The "forced adaptation" of growing every X DNA makes you think about the changes you make since you can't just stay and grow five thousand spikes in every direction before you go tackle harder opponents.

Good balance, good pace, good fun.


Creature stage:

Good. There are several things that are flawed about the creature stage, but they aren't too bad. For one, your creature's growth is mostly dictated by stats. Eventually you will want to upgrade your sing/dance/bite/charge ability, so you will have to replace a part which gives a lower rank for one that gives a higher rank, even if that part was one that you thought it looked good on your creature.

Even worse, since stats don't stack, there's no visible benefit to having more than one "derma bark" other than the fact it looks better - but it still costs you DNA to add these "useless" parts. Easy fix - adding parts should only cost DNA if they actually add stats to the creature. That way you're free to experiment and create crazy creatures just like all the other creatures we see in the world "made by maxis", while staying within the limitations of gameplay.

All in all, creature is fun, just a few nagging things lingering about.


Tribe: Very bad.

This is by far the most linear portion of the game, even MORE linear than cell stage. Its strictly time limited since there's only five enemy tribes, and once allied or exterminated the phase is over. Its strategy limited since you only have X buildings available to you, and can only get more buildings by allying/exterminating.

So you build your X buildings (2 at the start of the game) send your creatures out to get food. Then you either wait to get attacked and counterattack to devastate them, or you give them a gift (which will stop an ongoing attack instantly) and then play didgeridoo hero to ally with them. Repeat four more times and this stage is over in less than an hour.

Gone is the social adaptation aspect of ribal, the aspect of your creatures "learning" their social skills based on how you play. Unless, of course, you count the three archetypes used in Civ stage.


Civ: Ok.

Civ isn't bad, but it is very lacking in depth. Learning how to make an optimal city takes all of five seconds - connect a factory to the town hall, connect as many houses to that factory, then connect enough entertainments to the houses to counterbalance the factories, done.

Similarly, your starting city basically shapes your strategy for the rest of the game. If you start off as religious, there's little point in branching off to military, you're better off converting new cities to religious to increase your population cap.

There's only three vehicle slots, and they all serve the same function, only in different landmasses. Use tanks exclusively until you get your starting continent (bar one ship to steal spice derricks). Then sell off all your tanks and buy an invincible armada of ships to conquer one city in the other continent. Then sell off your armada and buy another fleet of tanks to take over that continent. Ignore airplanes and get an achievement.

There's really no point in using combined arms or any kind of strategy. The consequence abilities COULD have added tactical depth, but really they recharge fairly quickly and you can use them against every town. The problem with civ stage is that its too simple, its over too quickly, and it lacks more of it.


Space stage: Holy gadzooks! What happened here? Was any playtesting done on this portion of the game?

Throughout most of spore, gameplay as been one of discovery, and survival through mobility and cunning. On the space stage there is no mobility and there is no discovery, there's only wave after wave of pirates, enemy factions and grox to defend against, eco disasters tugging you to every corner of the galaxy. You will not have any time for discovery in the chaos of constant intergalactic warfare.

In typical 4X game fashion, enemy factions will expand terribly quickly, and after an hour of gameplay all choice planets will be taken. The galaxy is suddenly no longer a great unknown, but a superhighway of people out to get you.

Then it gets worse. As you start settling for the second rate planets around the galaxy, you find that you have to manually build every single colony, including buildings and turrets. Then you find that the turrets are largely useless, and that truely the only defense your interstellar civilization has is -you-. Then you get a pirate attack that consists of three planetary assault ships each with five orbiting fighters, and you will find yourself having to run back to another planet to recharge and repair three or four times before they are killed.

And then you find out that to get the next weapon upgrade you need to build fifty colony buildings. ONE BY ONE.

This stage is by far the most broken. I can deal with civ stage being meh and tribe stage being little more than a "pick what consequence ability you want" minigame. Space stage is where its at, and where you need to put the most work into if you want to keep people around for the inevitable expansions or downloadable content.



Overall I like spore. But I know I'm going to get bored soon since I'm unable to progress in the space stage, and having started over five games already (to hunt for achievements), my favorite stages will soon become dull and uninteresting as well.

[Tell]

It doesn't ****ing work. Is that reason enough?

[LukeExcell]

I Like almost everyhintg about the game. There are a few things which need sorting.

Planets - you only get 8 to begin with... I'm running out of them...Deleting, delete the entire planet and just not the creatures on it resetting the planet. So i now got 7 planets and 3 in use... erm what the hell am i to do when there all in use PLANET CREATOR PLEASE
Difficulty - i got into space then like it began really fun like doing the missions then i met the first alien race...ok...no problems, then another one which was rather hostile and in the end went to war with my orginal alien friends of whom i has decided to help them defend. Then another race came up which kept demanding sporebucks they delcared war... I was then having attacks on my colinzed planet which i sorted easily but then like all of them started attacking me and i got completely overwhelmed... The other thing that annoys me is the fact the enemy can send multipul space craft to your planet when u only got the one that u can control and u get swarmed by them... AND they can shot you in space of which YOU CANNOT RETURN FIRE or have blockades setup round your planets like they do....SORT IT OUT INA BIG BIG BIG BIG PATCH

[2142683272]

Mostly i dislike that spore won't run at all on my system...


no place to look for patches and the auto down loader doesn't see it because the registration is part of the game ...

no way to get help except via email.. not a good way to spend fifty bucks..

[CaptainTruelove]

Dislike: While the creators are completely awesome, why can't I apply paint/color to the creature the way I want it to show up instead of having to use 3 different stencils. Also, if my creature is in the space age, why can't he get a suit that goes along with it... you know, the kind with pants.

I just feel restricted in some of these aspects.

[retep01665]

Cell and Creature stage were very good.

Cell stage could have done with being longer, to benefit full use of the items you collect, some different shapes of Cell would have been better, just enlarging/shrinking the basic Cell wasnt very varied compared to some of the things you would come accross in there.

The Creature stage could use some work, it's over before you know it, excelent build up, with an abrupt and quick end, which takes you to the other stages where all your hard work in the Creature stage means nothing.

The other stages i found wholey poor, and seemed like some web flash minigames cobbled together, reminding me of poor cutdown versions of The Settlers, Civ/Colonisation and Supremacy/Utopia, i have played better public domain games in all fairness.

The space age seems a massive bore, a lot of work, a huge build up only to be greeted with mass grind/tedium and no real sense of acomplishment.

making creatures was indeed originally excelent and i found to be fun, making them useful and worthwhile in the longrun seems to have been overlooked in a big way, thus making my interest in the game last about 1 day.

there was massive potential with the ability to see/use other players creations, again tho this seems to have been cut-down and made into some small public domain style gimmick, i expected a lot more.

The lack of multiplayer really shocked me, being able to face your friends with your creations or a mix of other peoples seemed ideal, but again this is not the case.

Good Idea, Bad Execution...

[Blunthead]

I kind of dislike that all stages are about conquest rather than progressing yourself. All you do is taking over enemies with different means. I would much rather see the conquest / ally gameplay be a means to an end rather than the goal in itself.

[StarPaladin]

Cell stage was fun, and too short. The entire game is WAY too short. I thought it would take weeks (or months) and be epic. Gameplay and strategy was too simple and child-like, even for my 13 year old neice; Perhaps that's why the phases are so short, because it might have been really awful if you had to play them for long (and really, you should WANT to keep playing). Tribe stage was over so fast, I was absoulutely shocked. I was playing along, waiting for the "tutorial" part of the game to end, and all the stragies and tactics to start, and it just ended. I said out loud "It's over; that's all there is to that stage???". Took me about 45 minutes; unbeleivble

And as Slicer said, I could not make a creature look the way I wanted, because it was not usable (due to stats), and I had to make a totally different looking creature to progress than what I wanted. If we pay for the parts/stats, why can't we pay to make them look the way we want, instead of the way they "must" look. Is'nt creating a creature that looks the way you want suppose the be THE pinicle of this game? And I could not do that. . .