What do you dislike about Spore?

[GeneralMatrix]

Hey all!

Spore is here at last and I'd like to hear what you dislike about the game!

Whether it the whole concept of the game, or a certain stage in the evolutionary process, what do you dislike about it and how would you improve it?

For example, in the tribal stage, you cant tell your creatures to move to a hut without clicking on the hut. To improve this ld like to see a right click menu on the Creatures and/or their icons on the right with options to “Feed” or to “Collect Spear”.

Please keep any criticism constructive.

p.s. the “What do you like about Spore” thread is located here.

[1000errors]

Maybe im just an idiot but im really stuck as to what im suppossed to be doing when i meet another species and try to sing to them. so i can start the singing thing where the bar appears and we both sing at each other but have no idea what Im then meant to do other than repeatedly click the sing button.There must be more to it right as that doesnt seem to work 99 percent of the time.Im sure it probably says something in the manual only I am english and live in holland and cant read the dutch manual.wooohooo!

[EAUK_Adroit]

Originally Posted by 1000errors

Maybe im just an idiot but im really stuck as to what im suppossed to be doing when i meet another species and try to sing to them. so i can start the singing thing where the bar appears and we both sing at each other but have no idea what Im then meant to do other than repeatedly click the sing button.There must be more to it right as that doesnt seem to work 99 percent of the time.Im sure it probably says something in the manual only I am english and live in holland and cant read the dutch manual.wooohooo!

Different creatures will be impressed in different ways, try adding parts to your creature that allow you to dance or charm as well; with the higher the level for each, the more effective it will be.

[Berteh66]

I really enjoyed the mmo/fps style gameplay in creature stage, but I felt the transition to the RTS style Tribal stage was a bit abrupt....more of a 'gradual' shift of play style would have worked better I think

[MarkHenderson]

Originally Posted by 1000errors

Maybe im just an idiot but im really stuck as to what im suppossed to be doing when i meet another species and try to sing to them. so i can start the singing thing where the bar appears and we both sing at each other but have no idea what Im then meant to do other than repeatedly click the sing button.There must be more to it right as that doesnt seem to work 99 percent of the time.Im sure it probably says something in the manual only I am english and live in holland and cant read the dutch manual.wooohooo!

You have to repeat what the creature you are trying to impress does. If it sings then you sing, If it dances then you do your dance, if it wiggles to impress then you do the same. Try your creatures different social actions (the icons in green near the bottom of the screen) watch what he deos for each action. (all the apposing craetures do similar actions compared to yours so you will get to know which action goes with which social icon) You get actions available depending on the creature parts you have on your creature. Experiment with different creature parts to see whcih are best for what type of action.

Iam only at tribal stage at the minute but got to admit I like the cerature stage. The space stage has got me worried with all the complaints about constant pirate attacks and eco disasters leaving you little time to explore. Apparently you have to 'run on the spot' just to keep a few colonies up and running and protected. What must it be like to have more? I thought the whole point of the space game was to explore and colonise new planets and eventualy rule the galaxy? How can you do this if people are having major problems keeping just a few colonies going?

[Peteuplink2]

3 activations and SecuROM is what I dislike about spore.

[tangfastic91]

3 activations and SecuROM is what I dislike about spore

[B1nny]

I havent got my copy yet and im gutted cuz im so excited about Spore, cant get it until the end of the month

[Kalrirr]

Cell: Perfect.

Creature: _ Very short line of sight on mini map bothers me.
_ Alot of problems with finding the last 2-3 species to befriend on the planet , again due to small mini map.
_ Creature nests spawning on unreachable hilltops.

Tribe: _ Was hoping for a more varried resource gathering system. -> wood for example.
_ Too easy for an aggressive player.

Civ: _Allied AI is poor.

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

[McNum]

I dislike how the installation didn't give me a choice of game language. Sure, my Windows is Danish, but that doesn't mean I want my games to be.

Is there a way to change this? I'm not afraid to go registry diving to find it.

[Berteh66]

Originally Posted by McNum

I dislike how the installation didn't give me a choice of game language. Sure, my Windows is Danish, but that doesn't mean I want my games to be.

Is there a way to change this? I'm not afraid to go registry diving to find it.

The first window that popped up on installation was a language choice window.....you may have just missed it in your excited rush to install?

[McNum]

Originally Posted by Berteh66

The first window that popped up on installation was a language choice window.....you may have just missed it in your excited rush to install?

I picked English. The installer was then in English. So far so good.

"Velkommen til Spore"

Not so good. Also, is the installer supposed to make shortcuts anywhere? I haven't found any.

[Daveoz]

Cell: Perfect, maybe a little 'busy' on screen towards the end

Creature: All the creatures just stay near there nests, you dont see any active hunting or anything just creatures staying near there nests.

Tribe: The combat is so simple, you can only have one village with 6 bulidings, making all your units into axemen and attacking at once always wins.

Civ: Theres no diplomacy, just everyone sending religious, army units at each other constantly. Its not fun at all, and just tedious

Space: Pirates and Eco disaster quests your forced to do every 5 minutes or else You shouldnt have anything happen to you like this, since it restricts your freedom, sure keep pirates and eco disasters, but make them quests you go ASK people to do. So people that dont like them, can actually play the space game how they want to.

This is the biggest flaw in the game, im my opinion, it makes everyone do the same thing constantly.

[pjodron]

Well, maybe the civ state was kinda fast, like many parts of the game, and then the space age... wich is boring..... boring boring.... its to mutch collecting money. witch goes slow. i would not mind if it was a automatic thing like in the civ state. then it would be more intresting to envolve your colonies a bit more.
i am at war with serveral other speices and well i have to rush of now and then to save my allies from a virus? cant they deal with them self? and WHY does not my planets have some defencive fleat? i mean come on, my enemies have tons of them.

I would restart the game but then i have to collect every single piece of "building material" but i think that i will anyway becaus atleast for me, that is more fun.

oh and of course the dreadfull securerom, if its true what i heard that i only can install the game 3 times in its lifetime then its ##### stuiped. however i remeber a game that used online activation, you could have it for 2 computers. 2 activations that is, and they where good for 6 months. you could not activate again in that period. unless you talked to the developers.

Oh and yes i also wanted to mention that i am little dissapointed in the creature creation. i wanted a figure with two arms and diffrent hands on those. but its just me beeing a little peckish

[adehh]

One thing - recharge times on Planet Sculpting Tools, please remove.

In-fact, two - the cut scene when going through black holes gets rather tedious when you're going through them a few times.

Three - were proton missiles actually tested when Spore was in development? It's just that they are no way "Effective against enemy spaceships." one's that are flying away from you anyway.

Four - not enough control with cargo hold, would like to see a sorting feature or manually being able to move things around (without having to drop them on planets and pick them up again).

[Cyberfrog]

Originally Posted by McNum

I dislike how the installation didn't give me a choice of game language. Sure, my Windows is Danish, but that doesn't mean I want my games to be.

Is there a way to change this? I'm not afraid to go registry diving to find it.

I agree. I knew about this trick though:

Edit the desktop shortcut or make a new one. Then the "target" is:
"[something]\SPORE\Sporebin\SporeApp.exe" -L:English

Works great, except the game will create new folders to put creations, images and videos in, which might lead to a slightly messy My Documents folder.


I'll post more criticisms after I've played more.

[anomaly]

What do I dislike about it? Well let me begin with EA screwing me and others over on the discount offer because we used EA Downloader, then removing all reference to the discount offer and ignoring ALL correspondence on the subject.

Secondly, the broken product activation/registration for the online servers. I'm sure this one will get fixed soon enough but after the first issue above I'm seriously considering going in to the AU/NZ office in person and demanding a refund, then filing a consumer affairs complaint and pushing for a class action lawsuit (yeah ok I'm dreaming, but I know I'm not the only one ****ed off about all this. It wouldn't be that hard..)

[McNum]

Originally Posted by Cyberfrog

I agree. I knew about this trick though:

Edit the desktop shortcut or make a new one. Then the "target" is:
"[something]\SPORE\Sporebin\SporeApp.exe" -L:English

Works great, except the game will create new folders to put creations, images and videos in, which might lead to a slightly messy My Documents folder.


I'll post more criticisms after I've played more.

Sweet, thanks! That did the trick.

It looks like what the language selection of the installer does is to insert a shortcut with the corresponding language tacked on into the Windows Vista Games folder. To play in Englilalalala wrote ...SPORE\Sporebin\SporeApp.exe -locale:en-us

So cancel that complaint. User error. Replace user and press F1 to continue.

Now if only the Spore servers would let me in.

[flixern]

That you can't use 2 accounts on the game. Like I got my Spore account, and my sis got a Spore account. So when I log of my user on the computer. And my sis logging in and tries to play with her Spore account, it says something like "linking the installation of Spore to your Spore account" and then it says "In logging failed: The code to this installation is invalid and can not be used to link your product to your account."

[Garyneuk]

The apparant lack of technical support and responses with regards to all the problems and queries people have, That is what i dislike most about spore right now.Those things aside im loving it so far.

[miclemmers]

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

[Roda]

Pirates -.- Pirates Pirates Pirates...Nuff said.

[Jindujun]

I dislike..

Pirates in the space stage.
CONSTANT attacks from the Grox in the space stage.
The lack of any help from my allies in the space stage.

I understand that you wanted to add a little twist to the space game by having an "unknown" enemy attack you every other minute as well as pirates raiding you every third but come on. I'm currently the commander of an Omnipotent empire and I cant even control a fleet that keeps my section of space safe when I'm out exploring?

Give us a better way to avoid these attacks than a few turrets. Oh and turrets are mighty annoying to place when you have 50+ colonies.

Conclusion:
- Lower/remove pirate attacks when your empire is a certain size.
- Make the Grox attack less and less when they cant even dent your defenses.
- Either make your allies protect your territory rather than to demand you protect theirs or make it possible to assemble a fleet on the planets you control, ie. a new building that creates a space defense force for that planet based on the amount of houses in a colony.

Edit:
And a minor thing. Why isn't there a flora creator in the game? Not really a dislike just a "I want that!"

[Anikki]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Veyl]

Originally Posted by Kalrirr

Cell: Perfect.


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

I liked it all up until space.

What Kalrirr stated there sums it up.
I got into space, explored a bit. Naturally I irritated some species as I had no idea what I was doing (haha). Then I was quickly overwhelmed.
I'm debating weather or not to start from scratch, this time on easy.
With regards to the timed missions. I really don't like them. I find I get lost in space really easily. If I do somehow find the destination, obtain an item, it takes me a minute or two just to find the way back! Not to mention that I'm often getting attacked by anything and everything along the way.
Feels like i'm playing it on Super Hard-Hardcore only mode, and not 'Normal'.

Space needs a wee bit more balance
Other than that, great so far! lol