Topic: Would "Old" spore have sold more than "New" spore??

[gec05]

Why do I have to pay for every single copy of a part though it doesn't even add anything to the stats? Why am I getting punished for trying to create "realistic" creatures?

Though I can agree with what you said Flisch. These limitations are mostly due to space concerns. Maxis was of course concerned about balancing issues. With the stat system that they created, they had to limit what was allowed for creatures. And for performance issues, you're only allowed so much resources for a single building or vehicle. So that the game could run on low end configurations as well as conserving space required to download content and storing it. Can you imagine how the game might run if multiple creations that break the complexity meter were all in the same place at the same time? Not to mention how much more hard drive space you'll need to store all those subscribed downloads.

[Gorman Conall]

If Spore 2 will come out and it will be good I will probably download it. I think I deserve that after paying for the Spore we have now.

Just because you don't enjoy Spore does not mean you deserve anything.

[DaMuncha]

I expected a living ecology in the creatue phase, I expected to see herds of wild creatures migrating accross the plains, I expected to see creatures going out and hunting for prey, I expected to see creatures gathering food and making little homes.

What I got was a bunch of dumb animals standing around thier nest not doing anything. It was nothing like what saw in any of the vids.

[Detoxicated]

I expected a living ecology in the creatue phase, I expected to see herds of wild creatures migrating accross the plains, I expected to see creatures going out and hunting for prey, I expected to see creatures gathering food and making little homes.

What I got was a bunch of dumb animals standing around thier nest not doing anything. It was nothing like what saw in any of the vids.

hes right you know, this cant be will wrights work, hes more of a simulator, it was probably ea who forced him to make this stupid little thing with even smaller phases

[Notorious B.O.B]

I expected a living ecology in the creatue phase, I expected to see herds of wild creatures migrating accross the plains, I expected to see creatures going out and hunting for prey, I expected to see creatures gathering food and making little homes.

What I got was a bunch of dumb animals standing around thier nest not doing anything. It was nothing like what saw in any of the vids.

hes right you know, this cant be will wrights work, hes more of a simulator, it was probably ea who forced him to make this stupid little thing with even smaller phases

Actually, I think it was the guy who came around about halfway through the project (what was his name?  I don't remember)  who tried to add gameplay, because it "wasn't there".
I know this has been mentioned before, but I can't remember the exact details...was it Ocean Quigley?

That really did bug me, though.  I love zoology and nature shows and all that jazz, so I was excitedly anticipating a natural dynamic to the creatures, cause I knew I would spend hours just watching them, but then we got what we got in the creature phase.

[RR_Raptor65]

I've said it before, the problem with Spore is nothing you make matters.  You can make a T-Rex and it'll be defeated by a Chicken, you can make an M1A1 Abrams and it'll be defeated by a Panzer I.  For a game using the word "evolve" to describe creature creation there's no natural selection to be seen at all.  I would have loved a game where my creatures physiology and biology competed with other people's creatures.  Striving to create the perfect survivor rather than collecting bones and working the stats up with the parts.

I was one of those who was hoping for a game that looked and played like a TV special like Planet Earth or Walking with Dinosaurs in the Cell/Creature Stage, then like the movie "Quest for Fire" in the Tribal Stage, Band of Brothers in the Civ stage and a mixture of Star Wars and Star Trek in the Space Stage.

Course the closer and closer Spore got to release the more obvious it was that Spore was never going to be like this at all, but I bought it anyway hoping it'd still be fun, played it for about a week and got frustrated at all it's glaring gameplay flaws that would have been so easy to fix with a little imagination on the part of the developers.  Spore really could have been something great, but it wasn't designed that way for whatever reason.

[Hydromancerx]

I expected a living ecology in the creatue phase, I expected to see herds of wild creatures migrating accross the plains, I expected to see creatures going out and hunting for prey, I expected to see creatures gathering food and making little homes.

What I got was a bunch of dumb animals standing around thier nest not doing anything. It was nothing like what saw in any of the vids.

hes right you know, this cant be will wrights work, hes more of a simulator, it was probably ea who forced him to make this stupid little thing with even smaller phases

Actually, I think it was the guy who came around about halfway through the project (what was his name?  I don't remember)  who tried to add gameplay, because it "wasn't there".
I know this has been mentioned before, but I can't remember the exact details...was it Ocean Quigley?

That really did bug me, though.  I love zoology and nature shows and all that jazz, so I was excitedly anticipating a natural dynamic to the creatures, cause I knew I would spend hours just watching them, but then we got what we got in the creature phase.

I think it was a guy from the "Civilization" games, but not Sid Meir, some other person.

EDIT: It was Soren Johnson who left 2K games to join the Spore team.

[Raz]

Meh, Spore has already lost a number of people based on much it sucks now anyway, in terms of later expansions. They might get the first wave, but the resulting waves, not so much.

[Ichthyostega]

Now that I think about it, I think the real problem with Spore is that it tries to be too many things and ultimately fails at being any of them, except for a great editor. Another main problem is that it isn't that fun and is repetitive. Of course, then there is the lack of science...

I would have gotten at least a quasi-scientific game who focuses on good gameplay yet not completely disregard science. But if I had that and a real scientific simulator, I would get the latter.

[Spore-addict]

I wanted a fun playing experience combined with a science game.

The video where they drop a monolith and all the creatures run into the water is fun.

What happends when there is 60% carnivores and 40% herbivores on a planet?

Will the eco system balance out or will they eat all the herbivores and die. a barren planet in time.

It is a ton of these socalled experiments.

Another, moving the sun closer to the planet so it gets warmer...what happends?

It is so simple in spore that even a 3 year old kid would get bored after 2 min.

a low, mid and warm climate...please what about using celcius instead and numbers.

There was so much potential in spore but most of it has been lost. No offense to will wright but when
thinking on what spore could have been after some stupid long development time like 7-8 years time and what it has become...
epic fail sadly.

Any game that has been in development that long should be a masterpiece nothing less.

Yes there are some that like spore, but I think we can say without lieling that 99.9999% of all people has been disappointed.
Limitless adventures, limitless creatures....

Well the limitless creatures is not true at all, and what does shape and size matter at all if there is no impact on gameplay`?

This is spores main problem today.

If shape, size, legs, arms..you name it does not influence the stats more than a pointless numbersystem that is flawed completely then what is the point of actually designing your creature, vehicle etc at all?

The game should take into consideration stats like weight, size etc etc. and calculate a number for hits etc. I am sure that would be much MUCH better than the current flawed child system.

Another area:

The 5 stages is silly. We have 4 stages that is more or less irrelevant. That is the problem with any of these development games.
The glue that needs to stick the stages together is simply not there. We get a simple ability transfered to next round but besides that it does not matter at all the previous stage. This continues until space stage. Why not combine something like creature-city-space and make one good stage that has tons of dept instead of four stages until the last one that has not.

There are many areas where you think this game was just a marketing hype and nothing at all. Let us take a look at tribal...15 minuttes then it is over , maximum time. How much did they advertise that stage...it is BS simply.

[DaMuncha]

There is no trading between villages, no social gatherings, no learning each others languages, no comunication, no getting to know each other. You just play a song for them and thier your best freinds for life. Boring.

[Ichthyostega]

Well, what I think a good development plan Spore could've followed would be developing one stage at a time, and releasing them as they're completed. Like for instance, you could spend a few years on the Creature Stage and then release it and have all of your fun experimenting with different bodyplans and see which one is better, as well as eating up everything you see. Then after that is released, you work on the Tribal Stage, where you are intelligent, nomadic species that builds temporary structures and move to new places when resources run out, but when you find a comfortable spot like a river to settle along, where food is plentiful enough to feed a certain number of individuals, and when the population booms, half are willing to farm the food, while the other half is free to do whatever they want, thus effectively starting civilization. But for the sake of the development plan, you will just be a very advanced tribe. I'll need more time to think about what would be in the Civilization and Space Stage.

But even if "stages" are developed separately, I say screw stages, because then that'll tempt you to simply glue together separate games, and give them very rudimentary transitions (I mean, there is barely any transition between the Tribal and Civilization Stages, it's like they learn how to use electricity overnight).

[Flisch]

Well, what I think a good development plan Spore could've followed would be developing one stage at a time, and releasing them as they're completed. Like for instance, you could spend a few years on the Creature Stage and then release it and have all of your fun experimenting with different bodyplans and see which one is better, as well as eating up everything you see. Then after that is released, you work on the Tribal Stage, where you are intelligent, nomadic species that builds temporary structures and move to new places when resources run out, but when you find a comfortable spot like a river to settle along, where food is plentiful enough to feed a certain number of individuals, and when the population booms, half are willing to farm the food, while the other half is free to do whatever they want, thus effectively starting civilization. But for the sake of the development plan, you will just be a very advanced tribe. I'll need more time to think about what would be in the Civilization and Space Stage.

But even if "stages" are developed separately, I say screw stages, because then that'll tempt you to simply glue together separate games, and give them very rudimentary transitions (I mean, there is barely any transition between the Tribal and Civilization Stages, it's like they learn how to use electricity overnight).

I totally agree with the first part. That's actually what I am saying. Most people think that releasing 5 games rather than Spore would be even more money-making, but if every stage was developed as well as any other "real" game is it roughly based on (MMOs, RTSs, Civilisation and uhh... sandbox games?) then you would pay a fair price. After all the whole content is stored on an external database, in the Sporepedia. All these four games could use the same database. So that, even if you don't get to create animals in the tribal game, it will still download creatures made by players owning the creature stage game. The cell stage could be released as some sort of demo, as it does not really affect the other games in any way content-wise and it's too short to be a stand-alone game. Or it simply could be included in the creature stage, or in any game, really, maybe even with different content (bodyparts) in all four games to encourage the players to buy all four. >_>

However, I don't think the idea proposed in the second part would be a good one, except it just affects the looks of the stage and not the actual gameplay. What would a gameplay transition between creature and tribal look like? And what would the players do who prefer the tribal stage over the creature stage and skip it altogether? I admit that the civilisation stage should feature some kind of evolution, that means improving your technology level from wheels over electricity to high-technological stuff like... holograms. I also wished the different stages would affect each other more than just those simple cards. The closest thing we have right now is the available of mouthes based on the behaviour of the cell (which I don't like... a creature should be able to evolve from herbivore to carnivore) and the available type of food in tribal stage, which I find very interesting, but its execution is very dull and silly. I would have prefered lots of different types of food. Nuts, fish, filterfood, leaves, grass, roots, etc. That would not only have made creature stage much more interesting, but also it would have given the tribal stage a different twist each time you play it.

[Grangan]

Despite initial excitement and defense, I gave up "new" spore after about a week.   I say we need a new revolutionary world-improving game design, to avoid the bad taste in our mouth left by Spore.  I have an idea...

[Ichthyostega]

However, I don't think the idea proposed in the second part would be a good one, except it just affects the looks of the stage and not the actual gameplay. What would a gameplay transition between creature and tribal look like? And what would the players do who prefer the tribal stage over the creature stage and skip it altogether? I admit that the civilisation stage should feature some kind of evolution, that means improving your technology level from wheels over electricity to high-technological stuff like... holograms. I also wished the different stages would affect each other more than just those simple cards. The closest thing we have right now is the available of mouthes based on the behaviour of the cell (which I don't like... a creature should be able to evolve from herbivore to carnivore) and the available type of food in tribal stage, which I find very interesting, but its execution is very dull and silly. I would have prefered lots of different types of food. Nuts, fish, filterfood, leaves, grass, roots, etc. That would not only have made creature stage much more interesting, but also it would have given the tribal stage a different twist each time you play it.

Well, what I meant is that the stages shouldn't be like separate games glued together, more like subgames that effectively flow into each other.

But yeah, it would be nice to have some progress in the Civilization Stage, even if it may be simpler than the tech tree of the Civilization games. You first settle your nomadic people and have them build edifices, thus building your first city. You train warriors to defend your rising population center against predators and barbarians. Then the computer will have other nomadic populations of species become civilizations once they find a comfortable spot. You can interact with these other civilizations by trading with them or waging war on them. It will basically be a real-time strategy version of Civilization. When researching new technologies or building new units or buildings, your game will pause in order to allow you some time to decide. Although this may be a little too complicated, you could be given the option to allow the game to build your creature's buildings or vehicles for you if you are the kind who are too lazy to design buildings, like me.