What do you dislike about Spore?

[Kritorian]

Let me say first i think in general the game is great. There is room for improvement pretty much every where, but which game isnt like that. In a way i think it's a strength of the game cos it promises more.

Cell stage: Nothing i dislike. I like that it's simple.

Creature stage: Same thing really. It's simple and it should be imho.

Tribe stage: At this point i start missing something a bit more depth. What is there is good. Not sure what would enhance the experience exactly but i think it's jsut a bit too simple here.

Civ stage: Again i think it's a bit too simple. At first i was a bit disappointed with the RTS style of it cos i don't like RTS. But it's a simplified RTS and that is cool enough. Still a bit more depth here would be nice. Maybe some tech development or something for vehicle upgrades similar to the upgrades you purchase for your people.

Space age: Here is the real problem. First off as mentioned elsewhere the rate of attacks is too high. Ofc it might get boring if the challenge is taken out of it as well but i find it annoying as it has been in my games so far.

Also the actual combat is too arcade and just too difficult to handle. It's difficult to see whether i'm at the same level as my enemy and often find myself clicking without firing. After using a combat tool (aoe repair etc) i often forget pressing my weapon into action again which there is no visual indication of. Result is that my autoblaster and my allies do the work and i goof around like a d*i*c*k. Frustrating. Getting money from some kills is cool enough but WHY do i have to pick them up?! I constantly get my cargo cluttered with all sorts of **** that i will then have to abandon cos there is a very limited cargo space. And the time used to pick up stuff is often the only spare time untill Grox or pirates attack another planet of mine.

Honestly i think the whole design of space combat is fundamentally wrong, silly and flawed. It's not buggy. It's simply designed wrong.


Oh and why can the AI fight in space but player only on a planet?

Also even if i have 10 systems and an enemy has only 1 left he will keep attacking every now and then with the same strength. Doesnt seem right to me.

I love the exploration and the terraforming but the whole combat thing needs a big redo.

[Lazureus]

I dislike (read despise) how you advertise this game to the big minds(NASA & TED) in humanity, showing what can be done and how it would look(IE GDC 2005)

Then you rip out all of the games guts and throw in cuteness and simplicity. I even spotted you tossing in the mention of Drakes Equation, yet don't take the time to explain what Drakes Equation pertains to.

Simulation != Simple

Again going back to the GDC05 video, you had been showing us a game, a toy, that would be a must buy for anyone with a brain. Then you take it away, take everything out that actually requires any basic though and give it to children while actually failing to teach them anything.

Here's a small personal review of the game(spoilers may be included). I'm adding in my likes here and will be cross posting this as it looses to much if I only say the dislikes.

Some notes: I have online turned on but have no one buddied and have downloaded no sporecasts. I have not cheated using the dna or money cheates. I have played from cell to space 6 times through.

CELL: Dislikes.

You start out the game flying in on an asteroid fragment colliding onto a planet that is of any assortment of colors, but no matter what the color the water is, could be yellow or purple, what have you, and when you start the level, it's always BLUE!

The cells never change, I've played cell phase 6 times so far, and yet no matter what planet I'm on, all of the other cells are the same, I see all my cells in sporepedia, though what use are they if they are not to me uploaded/downloaded to and from other players.

Once you get enough DNA points, you are forced to evolve you cannot hang around a little while to further evolve your cell. Once that annoying little button pops up, food no longer gives you DNA. Why even bother to give a choice to use a button if they arn't able to do anything else.

There are some missing cell parts like cilia(little hairs surounding the cell to promote movement)

Ugly googly eyes. Cells should NOT have eyes! I know it was to make them look cute but, come on.

CELL:Likes.

I liked how when you remove the ugly googly eyes that cells should not have, the field of view shrinks. This makes you feel more isolated and dark which is what it would be for a cell.

CREATURE: Dislikes.
Ok now some new creatures freshly downloaded from sporepedia! YAY.. err wait, nope. Just a lot of annoying maxis creatures, my creatures, and maybe, just maybe, one or two simple creatures made from other users. The Hell?!

Ok, so we skip an entire generation of your creature actually having to survive the trip to landfall and watch as you evolved cell call its herd to a... premade nest.
Hmm, somethings seems a miss here, no actually having to find a suitable location to ensure your herd tribes? It just gives it to you.

No roaming herds. sure you get some of though rogue creatures and some small hunting parties. but no roaming herds like we all witnessed in the GDC05 video.

Body parts don't really matter as much as it used too. sure there's limited precedual animation still, but where are those verbs I heard talk about. You remember the eat+walk=drag thing. Seems I wanted to bring that big kill I just made to my herd to have a feast.. nope. The heard no longer has to eat, only you do.

It all seems very random, even though it was supposed to take into accout how you played and then downloaded some stronger creatures into your world. Other then EPIC creatures, there are no "Stronger" creatures to speak of. You remember that big spider creature that hunted you after you hunted and killed the little hoppy guy in the GDC-05 video? Yea, that's not this game.

Through the 6 times playing though the creature phase. I maybe got about 15 creatures total downloaded from sporepedia.

CREATURE:Likes.

I like that if you swim/fly out into the ocean to far that a giant creature eats you. But then got dissapointed that when I did that in the next game/planet that it was the SAME bloody creature.

Even with it's many flaws, to me it was the most enjoyable phase of the game.

TRIBE: Dislikes.

Remember in the GDC-05 video when Will goes into the tribal phase and thoes stupid hoppy guys were in the background and we went, "Yay! It actually evolves you planet as youe evolve!". Again, not this game.

Now you download some user generated creatures, even though most are still Maxis creatures and your creatures. Wait... these creatures were never on the planet before. Where the hell did they come from.

All thoes herds you befriended before? Gone, not like they ever existed. Only the creatures you had in your small herd actually stick around in your farm, and they are so small. When the hell did you grow to twice the size of them and why are all the new wildlife twice the size of them. Just because they were in your herd means they don't evolve?

I don't like how when you do befriend a tribe(by only playing music? ***) that all they are good for is giving you 10 food every once and a while. no help in defense or offense.

Why aren't the other tribes befriending/killing each other. Why are you the only one that is hated even before they meet you?

So we went from a simple Creature with a small herd in a large nest, finding fire, to a tribe that all of a sudden have stone axes, spears, and musical instruments. Oh yea and healing wands that don't actually do anything.

TRIBE:Likes.

Can't think of anything that stood out for me. it was very bland.

CITY: Dislikes.

Remember in the GDC-05 video when you built your city that YOU were the author, and it allowed YOU to build the buildings and roads how you please(like SimCity). Again.. Not this game.

You suddenly go from a small tribe to a large bustling city with.... TANKS, BOATS, and PLANES. Wait.. when did we find the ability to make alloys and engines.

As many people said, you can only have one kind of each vehicle. that makes 9 if you have at least one of the 3 kinds of cities.

However you build your building/vehicles it doesn't really mean anything (aside from the speed and power), Legs don't give it any different animation then tracks do.. it's very amateur. Something I would not expect to come from a dev team under Will wright. Especially after the GDC-05 video.

Trading red spice for... more red spice.. hmm.. no red spice for vehicles, at the very least let me trade for people. Seems they abolished slavery even before it started in all these worlds.

CITY: Likes.

Can't think of anything that stood out for me. it was very bland.

SPACE: Dislikes.

Again, it downloads some ships from other people, but the races?.. all Maxis... F&*@!

You planet has no more use for money even thoug you NEED money to buy upgrades. So what the hell are we doing with tradeing? trading should generate at lease some income for you when you fly to your planet.
No automatic transfer I can see.. But no automatic money generation like in the City phase? Come on!

Even though I don't get attacked as much as other players seems too.. my allies don't fare so well. Always getting into wars that they can't fight and need ME of all people to save them. You're intelligent races.. fight your own damn wars. Hell, when you do go and save them from the enemy scourge of fix their planet from natural disaster, do you get any compensation for your troubles or at least fixing your ship?.. nope, just.. "Thank you for saving us. Without you we would have been doomed. NOW GET THE HELL OFF OF MY PLANET!"

So with all of that craziness, my ship is now drained of cash and fuel and now I don't have time to, you know, actually have fun and explore like you were supposed to be able to do.

SPACE: Likes.

Again, can't really think of much in the way of good. There are some neat stuff, but again everything is overly simplified. Coming from playing EVE Online. I was very bored with this.

General Dislikes:

I am very annoying how you cannot disable Maxis creatures no matter how annoying they are or how much the look like a ***** (example: Blinks)

I find it very annoying that even though I don't cheat, maybe half of my creatures make it onto sporepedia even though the game said that it was uploaded successfully. Now that it thinks it uploaded, It locks down the button making sure you cannot re-upload just in case of a failure on the servers part.

Conclusion:

This game could have been so much more, and it was.
Whoever though it was a fantastic idea to dumb down a very scientific and very huge simulation game that was shown off at GDC-05 and advertised to people who are interested in the complex. Then hand us this broken pile of lalalala, should be shot and maimed... or at the very least fired. If it was Will Wrights idea to do this.. I'm very ashamed of you.

Hopefully some *FREE* add-ons will be coming our way fo fix the great many holes and problems that this game carries, as they should have been in it in the first place.

Lazureus

[Oddfellow]

The immidiate things on my mind..

General:
*Dislike the whole save system and start screen. It would be nice to have a normal save system where you can load up a save from creature stage if you didnt like the path you took in civ for example.
*The old start-up screen interface would be welcomed back too. Where you can jump in at any stage without having to find the right planet for the stage you want.
*Release the debug codes (i understand you spent so long on the game you would like us all to play it as it was intended to be played. but now a lot of us have done that and would like the full sandbox options)

Creature:
*Can't drag my kills home to my nest like in one prototype seen.

Space:
*Would like to see blowing up of moons/satellites add a new ring to nearby planet. (may still be there but im unsucessful thus far)
*Bigbadaboom movie sequence is too short. You dont get enough time to do an evil laugh.
*Too much maxis content. Compared to own creations and downloads. Not pollinating enough?

Create:
*Would like to share my Cells and my Music via the Sporepedia.

Sporepedia:
*Pressing enter on search should run the search. currently have to click on the button.
* Sort sporecasts by member count/item count/date/recent updates/etc. i suspect this is alredy coming.


But having said all of this I still enjoy the game as it stands.

[timfee]

in the space stage:You should be able to control individual vehicles and creatures,
vehicles should be able to fight enemy UFOs and you should be able to create vehicles and carry them to other planets to fight.
in the creature stage: all other creatures just sit at their nests. Fights between creatures are unrealistic- it should be one bite kill and your prey should run from you so it's more about actually hunting than having two creatures just standing there and clawing at each other. Also being able to kill three creatures to make them extinct is just silly.

[Oddfellow]

Something I left out in my haste. In civ the game lets me pull in a building somebody else made. But the UFOs creature creator wont let me pull in somebodies cool creature.

[Neethis]

I sat there in my space ship looking around at the stars, and evaluating the planets for where my next colony would go.

I found a perfect system, loaded with pink and purple spice, and topped up with a few nice yellow spice worlds to boot. i zoomed down to the most habitable world - a T2. but to my shock, i found another race there - a civilised race, just a few years behind my own.
I hovered above their world, watching their wars, their religious struggles, and the few trying to make an honest success of trading, as they struggled for dominance over their tiny insignificant planet.
And then I tired of them.

I accessed the terraforming tools, and began to pump out more atmosphere and water; their world began to drown, the sea level rising and swamping their cities, wiping out whole species, until all that was left was a world-ocean, wracked with storms, hurricanes and tornados. But i didnt stop there.
I began to heat the world, boiling away the oceans and revealing the dead ruins of their cities on the seabed. i carried on, vapourising the entire ocean, until the skies turned to fire and the world melted into lava.

I looked over the destruction I had wrought to this world; with guidance, its people may have become a great spacefaring nation, a worthy partner to look to the stars with and dream, a mighty ally to cross to the core of the galaxy with and find the secrets of the universe.
But instead I had wiped them out, deciding on a whim that their race, that was no worse than I had been, no longer deserved blessed existance. I had drowned then burned every trace of them from that world. And it felt good, that I had the power of life or death over entire civilisations in my hands like that...


And then, I was called back home to deal with pirates while the rest of my world sat on their arses >_<

And that is what I hate about Spore.

Thank you.

[Watashiii]

This thread started two weeks ago. There still isn't even a hint of development actually planing to do ANYTHING about the grind called "space stage warnings".

I mean, how hard would it be to make a small patch just to change a few consequences from eg. helping your ally defend himself or at least your ally not going into war and trying to drag you along with him.

Maybe not a patch. At least a semi-official explanation of what we're to do when a hueg race comes and asks for money that you don't have. The instruction book didn't say much, I don't know if the galactic edition or that game guide said much about it either

The sad thing is that the civilization phase suffers from the same problem, but people don't notice that because all you need to do is just spam enough vehicles to make the problem go away. I'd love to just drive my cars around and talk to other civs for a while like I did back in tribal stage. Unfortunately, if I do that, the enemy might take all my spice holes and leave me helpless

"you can win without firing a single bullet". Sure you can, you just send vehicles to fire mind control beams or trading beams. And in space, you can also win without firing a single bullet. All you need to do is to fire lasers and missiles

[Reddwar]

I just reached the space stage and i can see why everyone is complianing. I cant do anything without getting attacked every 5 minuits. And that is without the grox, who i have only seen once, and i am playing on easy. No matter how many ships i destroy the other empires always seem to have the same ammount. I won't go on as it seems the problem is very clear, Attacks are too frequent in space stage, get it patched!

[Resinator]

Yeah i have to agree all up to the space stage was easy and now i got into space i am getting attacked every 5 mins, and am now finding playing this game very tedious very time i find something i like doing attackes eco problems all i want to do is explore for 20 mins at least before i have to run back home to save me and allys. plus its space so why do i have hunderds of others around me demanding silly amounts of money.

[Neethis]

Originally Posted by Lazureus

This game could have been so much more, and it was.
Whoever though it was a fantastic idea to dumb down a very scientific and very huge simulation game that was shown off at GDC-05 and advertised to people who are interested in the complex. Then hand us this broken pile of lalalala, should be shot and maimed... or at the very least fired. If it was Will Wrights idea to do this.. I'm very ashamed of you.

Hopefully some *FREE* add-ons will be coming our way fo fix the great many holes and problems that this game carries, as they should have been in it in the first place.

Lazureus

Fired... as in out of a cannon? Into the sun...?

I agree though, once all the major basic playability issues and other bugs are fixed, downloadable addons should be issued for FREE to anyone with a copy of the game, instead of a million £5-10 expansion packs... lets face it, its the LEAST EA can do to win back a few paying customers.
Lets all keep our fingers crossed that EA stops their take over of other companies at the demise of Maxis - and hope Bethesda and other companies can continue the legacy of making extraordinary, innovative, and INTERESTING games like we all want...

PS: Come'on, Fallout 3!

[Dohman]

I dislike purchasing things in the space phase. You have to
first: select the item you want
second: press buy

instead of
Right click the item you want
or double click.

[StarWarrior]

I Dislike,

SecuROM, it's still on my system even though I have done a full uninstall. Now I have to remove the damn thing manually.

Crashes due to bugs which should have been eradicated through 'play testing' and quality control.

The lack of gameplay. Even though it was sold as a game (not a toy), and advertised as a game, the game side of Spore was obviously 'cobbled together' as an afterthought.

The complete and utter lack of customer support for legitimate customers from either the developers or EA.

[Menigal]

Simply put, there is not enough freedom in the early stages. I've not been able to spend much time in the Space stage since it constantly crashes, but everything up to then is far too restrictive.

We should be able to spend as much time in each stage as we want. Instead, there seems to be a constant push to move on to the next stage, and that's the one and only goal of each one. I quite like zipping around in the Cell stage, but it's over as soon as I start to get a nicely developed critter. It'd be nice if the little progress meter on the bottom of the screen either didn't exist or wouldn't force you to move on when you click to see how your creature rates.

Another victim of making this digital toy into something more "gamey" is the way duplicate parts don't add anything new to your creature, forcing you to always upgrade to the highest rated body part if you want to play effectively.

I'm really enjoying Spore and look forward to trying more of the Space stage, although it sounds like it's got its own freedom issues. I just wilalalala would let us play it! It's like we're being offered something great with all these wonderful creations we can make, and then having it snatched away by all these pointless restrictions on what we can do with them.


On a different note, I don't really like how extinctions are handled in the creature phase. As a carnivore, you never get to develop any preferred prey, since by hunting them, even if you scatter it over hours of gameplay, you will wipe them out entirely. It'd be better if you had to target the nest or something in order to specifically exterminate a species. Cows don't go extinct no matter how many cheeseburgers I eat!

[JellyTiger]

I do like the game up to a point. It annoyed me that I have to have an internet connection to start the game, even though I'd already typed in my serial number when I installed it. I was surprised how well my game plays as I'm using an unsupported vid card (mine's a little basic) The graphical options are all set on low so while it doesn't look as good as it could it plays fine.

I tend to play a more pacifist game if possible. I don't like fighting but will do if I have to, and you have to in the space stage. However, I've found I have to knock a few heads in earlier stages to get to where I want to be in later ones. Why does socialising and befriending other creatures/tribes mean that I'm some kind of religious nutcase when I become "civilised"?

Game Play:
Cell stage - not bad, nothing stands out as awful or frustrating

Creature Stage - I enjoyed this except for that if you want to succeed in an interaction with more advanced creatures, either aggressivly or socially, you need to upgrade to the "best" body part for that action. This places limits on how your creature looks. It may not matter having the lower scoring body part in later stages but it can make life a lot harder in this one. (I know you can swap parts about one final time before you enter the next stage but that's not really "evolving" more creating something brand new and it jars aestheically in the creature's time line.)This also holds true for vehicle creation as to make the optimum machine for your particular tribal specialty you have limited choices as to what you can use, taking some of the creativity away.

Tribal stage - Kind of meh, just something to get through before civ stage. Not sure how to get the middle ground on this one as I never seem to be able to balance friendship with war so that I'm an economic civilisation.

Civ Stage - I didn't like that if I was friendly as a creature/tribe I had to be religious and badger other cities into my beliefs. I tend to try and take over an economic city and than use that city to expand my empire as much as possible. The one thing that seriously irritated me with this stage was when I asked lalalalalala to help me capture a city (and paid heavily for that help) as I was a religious cult and they were military was that once the city was won and become mine, my ally continued to attack and took the city from me! I didn't have the fire power to defend it and I didn't want to attack lalalalalala. Couldn't win and was out of pocket!

Space Stage - Space pirates and attacking enemies suck all the joy out of this stage. In previous stages you have a choice how you play the game, here you have no choice, you have to defend everybody and their dog. Every 2 minutes you have to fight someone and frankly I don't want to. If it wasn't for the very real threat that the whole universe would become part of one aggressive empire and my home world would be destroyed I'd let them get on with it and carry on exploring space.I would like the option to play a less aggressive game. I appreciate that aggressive alien races add something to the game but I would like to have a chance at developing some kind of empire of my own before I had to deal with them. I like doing missions as I can build up my bank account, explore and build up relationships but I only seem to be doing this to pay off aggressive aliens to stop them becoming enemies and attacking me or making whole areas of space unexplorable as they're controlled by this race. Constantly paying off the bullies means I never seem to have the funds to buy another solar system rendering the whole economic approach redundant and unworkable. Making allies is more a hinderance than a help as you're constantly being called in to save them from invaders or eco disasters and they offer nothing in return, not even discount repairs and fuel.
Because of the sheer relentlessness of the attacks I am unable to explore space as much as I'd like to collect various bits and bobs, terraform planets for settlement or just for fun. They really do suck the fun out of what could be a great stage. (If I wanted to play a shoot 'em up I'd have bought one. I bought this one because I thought there'd be the option to play nonaggressively)
On the subject of settlements/colonies, why is everything so expensive when bought from them? I can get most stuff cheaper from allies or ambivilant races. Surely things should be cheaper from my own colonies, especially as they seem to be completely incapable of looking after themselves. Shopping about for the best deal takes time and costs energy so then once I've bought my new settlement kit or whatever I then have to return to my homeworld to recharge. This also limits the distance I can travel when exploring (between fighting) as I have to return to home to refuel/repair unless I have a lot of spare cash. What with paying off intergallitic bullies, defending allies, staving off eco disasters then dashing home to fight pirate hordes I beginning to think that evolution might not be all it's cracked up to be and cells have the right idea just pootling about in the primordial soup.

*Edit - Having played Space some more and expanded my empire through blood, sweat and tears (and a smidge of cheating) collecting Spice from all my colonies is getting to be a royal pain. I'd like some sort of automatic spice collection system or the ability to collect spice from all my outlying colonies if I visit my home planet. Oh while I'm on the subject of royal pains - can we please have a way of turning off or turning down the frequency of attacks/eco disasters?! I know I've already mentioned this but I really do hate them.

[Banquet]

I agree with pretty much everything you said there, JellyTiger.

Everything in Spore interested me, but the space phase in particular seemed so full of promise. The really daft part is, it pretty much lives up to that promise, but it's been coated in a layer of arcady gloop that makes it feel more like a sophisticated space invaders .

Yet there's never been a galaxy rendered in such detail before.. and that makes it all the more frustrating..

[culixstar]

there's only one thing i really dont like bout spore. as ya lv up in the space stage, your able to have ally ships with ya. my only beef with that is they are weak . i've lost count on how many times i had to go over to my ally to get 1...just one new ship cause my little buddy got blown to bits when i was attacking an enemy colony. that and (far as i no) you are the only space ship for your empire......the ONLY ship?! it would of been soooo much better if ya could go to your home world or colonies (if the population is high enough) get a few buddies (even of ya have to pay for them) and go out to kick some butt. or at least have some ships guard the colonies while your away. until ya get the space travel tool rank 3(cant remember the name rite now) its a HUGE pain to travel to planet to planet to get to the nearest ally colony to get ONE ship and then back to the next one and so forth. so ya those are my only 2 issues i have with the game.

[Klickinater]

I overall enjoy spore a lot, though it does have the potential to be so much more than it already is.

Cell: The only complaint here is that it's the same cells over and over and over again. At least make some variation.

Creature: Less like a FPS and more like a MMORPG. Overall it was one of the better stages and I enjoyed it. Some downsides are the fact you can't choose where your nest is. Secondly the animals don't meander or mingle. They just sit by their nests in clumps. They can have some by their nests, but the rest should be out hunting in packs (if they are social) or solitary. Thirdly, the extent of all the animals. There are tons of animals on the planet but each only has about 10 of their kind. Make it so there are more of the same kind of animal, maybe different colors or scaled different sizes but something so that you can form relationships to the other creature (so in the future you can say 'Dammit this is for all those times you ate me!' etc.). Fifthly, make it so that if you have two charm 1 items then it equals charm 2. So that way you aren't forced to have several items just because of their rating. Also it'll make it so several things which would be natural would happen (the more heads the higher the bite than with one head, the more feet the faster).

Tribe: It's on the right track but they stopped short. Add more kinds of resources (wood would probably be a good one). Then make it so that there aren't premade spots for your huts, just put a range so that you can't build so far away from your central hut. Next, make more tribes, make it so that there are as many tribes as there are on a tribal planet you encounter in space. You won't be able to get to them all because they'd be on different islands but then they can turn into cities in the civ stage. You should also be able to take over other tribes' villages. You should also be able to upgrade your weapons and such.

Civ: Samething as tribe but they stopped much shorter. Make more resources (maybe one or two, I'm not talking about a lot). Make it so you can make two of each vehicle at least (so you can make a fast one for quick response, a slow one but with a lot of weapons or a mediocre one with high health or whatever else). Factories could be set to be making wood or spice (or whatever other resource) or a mixture of both (as precentages: 80/20, 50/50, 30/10/60). Make it so the religious method isn't basically the same as military. AKA more diplomatic approach, the vehicles would be more passive than aggressive.

Space: So much potential. I have a love of terraforming thus i was overjoyed when i got the unlimited use tools to do it instead of the pay-per-use things. But it doesn't matter what I have unless I have time to do it! So many people have been complaining about this but I'm just going reiterate to make a point. I....DON'T......WANT....TO.....KEEP....GOING....BA CK....TO...MY...COLONIES...EVERY 2 SECONDS
It's so fusterating to go through several black holes to get to a place where you want to set up a base of operations and you get down to the planet and you start terraforming to get a call saying there are SPACE PIRATES attacking your planet! Easy way to fix this and to improve the game vastly: Garrisons. Thats all you need. Make it so that you can add more ships to the planet the more colonies it has (5 per colony or something). Something that when fully filled out, will ward off pirates but can be killed off by constant attacks (in times of war) so that you will need to defend planets if you are at war for a long time. But then you can also ask the colony on the planet to lend you their garrison for an attack too (time limit on their help time so you can't just use them as a personal fleet).

Also the addition of more colonies to a planet would be nice so you can increase their capacity to hold spice more than just 30 at most (with the holder). Just one or two more (maybe with a time limit after you place the third colony?).

Just my two cents (maybe a little more)

[Snootch76]

I have to agree with almost everything stated here, especially about the constant space attacks and eco disasters.

My two pence worth;

Cell.
This could have been in three stages, Cell, Fish and amphibian. By the end of the cell stage you quite clearly are a fish (the 'cillia' add on is a fin, the whip thingy you start with is a cillia,) and the fish mouth could have been available. Then when you 'evolve' legs maybe you could have gone onto land to explore the coast returning to the shallows to breed. A 'dryness' meter could be used, like the hunger meter to stop you getting too far inland. I feel that things are happening between stages that I'd like control over, such as the citing of your first nest.

Creature.
As has been stated, creatures should spawn at their nests but be able to roam about like you do. And it would be cool if you had to drink water. That way, as a carnivore, you could stake out water holes to hunt your prey as they come to drink. In the animal kingdom water is the most precious resource.

Tribal.
Meh. It's all been stated above. You should get a hand in inventing tools and need resources to gather, not just food. This seems such a rush through I have to slow myself down otherwise it takes fifteen minutes to complete.

Civ.
Just make the other AI's better.

Space.
Ok. Slow down the 'disasters'. Also, planetary 'zones' could have been fun. Deserts, tundra etc. I was disapointed that the poles and equator of my planets have the same climate. Maybe if certain plants could exist in cold zones and cold planets. When the planet gets warmer they move to the poles. Again with dry planets, desert plants can prosper but get moved to the dry zones when the planet gets more atmosphere.

Still, I do love the game, but I find it's a bit of a rush to get into space and when you're there it's too much of chore.

[Klickinater]

Snootch makes a good point about the cell stage, but I'd like to transfer the idea of transitions to the whole game. Everything could made to be so much more seamless. Instead of being forced to go on land, make it so that you have to get more DNA points to be able to get legs (a lot so you can't get them early) etc.

Creature - Tribe: Instead of suddenly having huts and tools. Make it so that you first get fire, you can get more into your paclalalalail you basically have your whole nest/tribe and you can start delegating tasks (send one to the camp fire to keep watch on the nest and eggs etc.) then eventually start gathering wood to make a hut. Also having some say in what the tools looked like would be a lot of fun.

Tribe - City: Make it so that you first discover metal and then all your huts turn into a little more modern houses and such. Then make it so that you build a wall around your village. Eventually, you can research houses and factories and entertainment centers, and the ability to collect spice and get vehicles.

City - Space: Not really a problem.

Now it feels more like you are evolving continuously instead of jerking from creature to tribe to city.

Also some things to add to my above point about space age.

To cut down on micromanagement, make it so that cities repair and rebuild themselves constantly. So if after an attack a house got destroyed? The city would slowly build it back even if you left the planet so that way you don't need to travel to each city to check on it after an attack which gets tedious if its your home planet or another home planet which you conquered.

And while we're on the topic of micromanagement, make it so you can save designs for cities. I have several designs which I use over and over again (mostly because they have the most efficient use of space that I can find). If you can just save a design then apply it to a colony you won't end up finding yourself tearing out your hair because of the monotony of putting in turret by turret by turret by turret.

[Trabb]

I dident like the space phase. why? because it was less about your creature and more about black screen with yellow dots and constant whining of help. i liked the other stages. think easy mode will make the whine's dissapier?

[Watashiii]

Originally Posted by Trabb

think easy mode will make the whine's dissapier?

no

[TheorixElite]

Hi there. Just started Space Age with my second creature.
First mission I'm given by my guys is to go to a the planet in your system and scan that crash site.
However, the cut scene that was supposed to show the crash site was all bugged and just showed
jaggy shapes on the screen. And now my ship's radar doesn't pick anything up.

So it's a gamebreaker. I can't progress without scanning that ship. I've tired simply looking for it, but with luck.

____________________________________

OK. So I fell back onto my last save. Which was just at the end of the Tribal stage. Spent the last 2 hours getting through Civ. So I'm back at the start of Space Age, where I was earlier.

First mission. The bug occurs again. Essentially, this means that my ENTIRE creature/save/planet/game is redundant as I'll NEVER be able to advance past the first space mission. All I can do now is restart at Cell with a new creature and play through all over again.

[Riffler]

I really dislike the space stage.

It's too big, you are constantly having to run back to help out against pirates or ecodisasters, and you can't tell reliably whether you can get to where you want to go until you get close enough to see if you can make the jump between 2 stars - I find myself constantly running into dead-ends and having to backtrack 5 or 6 jumps and then try to find another route. If you could hover over a distant star and the game would plot a route for you, with jumps you can't make in red that would help somewhat.

The other stages vary between OK and good. The creature stage is my favourite, but it's getting rather repetitive now - once you have a winning strategy there's not much more to do unless you want to make it deliberately difficult for yourself by making outlandish design decisions.

The tribe and civilisation stages both suffer from the same problem - once you know how to win them, there is really nothing to stop you steamrollering the opposition, there's no challenge there, no surprises, no reason to depart from the obvious route to victory.

It feels like there are really only 2 worthwhile stages - creature and space, and space wants to be a polished, full-product 4X game, but is really only a (big) mini-game. It's too big and long to be worthwhile as part of Spore, but nowhere near good enough to exist as a 4X space game in it's own right, so it fails on both counts.

[Secataal]

overall i luv the game, out of every game eva this is as close as to my dream game as possible, that is in theory....and pretty much in real life. i luv the idea of playing as what uve made, tbh i just luv creating stuff cos then u feel more related to it and actually care about it.

however i do wish they had expanded almost all of the phases as they can get boring after a while . i just wanted a bit more depth and complexity, otherwise tho a* game

[ravenstar]

Originally Posted by Anikki

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

Dunno About that cos I had a creature with level 4 spitting and when it attacked in the tribal stage it used the spit ability also.

Did kinda become pointless after the civ stage started though.