RocketGirl wrote:
No...had they had integrity the wouldn't be in the situation they are now. Integrity to either stick to the original design, and the courage and decency to announce their planned changes. Either would do; it was their silence that has caused this situation.

Not for nothing but a ton of videos and information was released in the past 6 months regarding the finished product. So you cannot say the changes weer not demonstrated. In the old forums pre-release you had many comments on how the product with the announced changes was not the one you had hoped it would be.

As for integrity and standing up to the design changes, I agree. It makes me go Meh. A lot of what has been done or not done seems shifty, out of character, and downright despicable. I do hope that Maxis can pull out though and help the product become something more than it is now.


Regarding the original request;
It will take time to reply. It's not a instant thing, or even a medium wait thing. With a lawsuit regarding this product it will be a bit of pushing through EA legal to say much. That is the case with any lawsuit. Everything here is public record. Many questions will go unanswered simply because of that.

Poetry wrote:

RocketGirl wrote:
No...had they had integrity the wouldn't be in the situation they are now. Integrity to either stick to the original design, and the courage and decency to announce their planned changes. Either would do; it was their silence that has caused this situation.

Not for nothing but a ton of videos and information was released in the past 6 months regarding the finished product. So you cannot say the changes weer not demonstrated. In the old forums pre-release you had many comments on how the product with the announced changes was not the one you had hoped it would be.

As for integrity and standing up to the design changes, I agree. It makes me go Meh. A lot of what has been done or not done seems shifty, out of character, and downright despicable. I do hope that Maxis can pull out though and help the product become something more than it is now.


Regarding the original request;
It will take time to reply. It's not a instant thing, or even a medium wait thing. With a lawsuit regarding this product it will be a bit of pushing through EA legal to say much. That is the case with any lawsuit. Everything here is public record. Many questions will go unanswered simply because of that.

Not that I don't believe you. But can you link me to the videos that said SPORE was turning into a kiddie game with science stripped from it?

Because even the last video I saw with Will and his employees talking about SPORE they made it sound like the next breakthrough in educational gaming.

Ah Gummy bears. "Im so happy cause Im a gummy bear....GUMMY BEAR.....AHHHHH" good times good times.

Anyways....EA does have somewhat a large amount of what Maxis says and does. Maxis can't go OMG IM GONNA CREATE A GAME without EA jumping in and changing something. Guess what Maxis can't stop them cause EA owns maxis. Sucks don't it. Poor poor Maxis.

Also I agree complaining does more than not complaining

[Complain\sarcasm] OMG MAXIS YOU GUYS SCREWED IT UP EA YOU SERCUROM FREAKS[/complain\sarcasm]

Poetry wrote:
Not for nothing but a ton of videos and information was released in the past 6 months regarding the finished product. So you cannot say the changes weer not demonstrated. In the old forums pre-release you had many comments on how the product with the announced changes was not the one you had hoped it would be.

They didn't say what they had taken out after showing the original concepts. Why would anyone expect that anything they didn't demonstrate had been removed?

The sin of omission.

They didn't demo the new Spore and say, no procedural verbs, linear gameplay etc.

RocketGirl wrote:

Soldats wrote:
Exactly so had they kept their mouths shut then they might not be in the situation they are now or at at least not as bad as one.

No...had they had integrity the wouldn't be in the situation they are now. Integrity to either stick to the original design, and the courage and decency to announce their planned changes. Either would do; it was their silence that has caused this situation.

I agree but from the business perspective it does not make much sense to give your self negative PR so I can also see how they would neglect to mention such things in favor of just pushing the game out the door.

It seems to me that we have come full circle in our discussion and we are back to the original point what will Maxis/Ea do? Unless of course some one else has some objections they would like to discuss *hint* *hint*

P.S. My posts do not reflect accurately my own personal opinion I have just been playing the devil's advocate here(and probably should have said so earlier) to promote meaningful discussion of a heated and in my mind important topic.

P.P.S. To the people continually one staring RocketGirls post please I ask you to judge a post on weather or not it is a reasoned out argument (and then how well at that)and not just a wanton hate speech. Really nothing annoys me more on this forum than people one staring post they just don't agree with because that does not reflect the quality of the post.

P.P.P.S. For anyone wanting a meaningful discussion I suggest you adhere to some rules laid out by my personal hero Carl Sagan
CLICK HERE
You know what I'm gonna put that in my sig...

You go girl! Show em bastards you mean business!

It'd be nice if this thread could stay on topic for once. I'd really like to hear what Maxis has to say on various issues that have cropped up, the future of this game, and our questions from weeks ago. I don't know why you all are bringing up an unrelated issue of past videos. Let's try to keep the focus of this thread tight on getting some sort of feedback from Maxis here on their game's own forums. It's really irritating when companies run off and hide in the media instead of being personal and showing some participation here. Yeah, being active on a forum and working for a company like EA is like walking through a minefield, but perhaps a weekly update of what made it through to Maxis' attention would be nice. "We're looking into ______, problem ______ is related to ATi, ______ is something we're fixing, _____ feature should add a little depth" or things like that would be sufficient.

Weekly updates are better than arbitrary random ones and silence. Is it so much to ask for an update post every Wednesday or Friday or at least some sort of development blog/log?

What will Maxis and EA do? They will probably spend a few years releasing parts packs and occasional expansions that slowly fill in a few of the gaps in gameplay that we expected. I would expect nothing more. And set aside a few hundred bucks for the privilege.

My main problem with the game is that it is too repetitive and the things we create have only cosmetic differences. Playing as a bard or warrior in the space stage is almost the same thing.

I wished SPORE to have almost infinite replayability like Master of Orion or Civilization. Even their so cherished, cute loving casuals are getting bored with the game. This franchise isn't posed to last long this way and that's terrible.

I agree.

Come on Maxis.

Poetry wrote:
Not for nothing but a ton of videos and information was released in the past 6 months regarding the finished product. So you cannot say the changes weer not demonstrated.

Yes, I can. None of what had attracted many of us to the game in the first place, the things quite publicly shown in the 2005 demo were EXPLICITLY repudiated. Nobody came right out and SAID, "There won't be any evolution, stats will matter but morphology won't, the diplomacy system will be about as complicated as Dance Dance Revolution, etc..." Video showed almost none of the diplomacy system in Space, in fact the Space stage was hardly shown at all, beyond going from your home star to another and tractor-beaming something up...

The most charitable I can be is that Spore's press releases amounted to a sloppy mislead; that's the MOST forgiving I can be.

As for integrity and standing up to the design changes, I agree. It makes me go Meh. A lot of what has been done or not done seems shifty, out of character, and downright despicable. I do hope that Maxis can pull out though and help the product become something more than it is now.

Well, there we go.

Regarding the original request;
It will take time to reply. It's not a instant thing, or even a medium wait thing.

Oh, bullSpoor; they could issue even a vague statement of intention--fix Spore or leave it as-is forever--and we'd be satisfied, or at least I would. I've worked at game companies; it doesn't take more than a week or two to make that kind of decision.

Unless they're tied by bloodsucking lawyers. That's why I carry a bottle of Ajax.

Soldats wrote:
I agree but from the business perspective it does not make much sense to give your self negative PR so I can also see how they would neglect to mention such things in favor of just pushing the game out the door.

So spin-doctor it to sound positive; there are people who make whole careers out of nothing else!

And the fact that it can only be characterized as negative PR, rather than positive PR for very specific people, is a sign that maybe the decisions shouldn't have been made in the first place, neh?

It seems to me that we have come full circle in our discussion and we are back to the original point what will Maxis/Ea do?

Well, this is why I'm agitating for some positive word on the subject instead of silence, so we can stop guessing, stop accusing, and--if the news is bad--stop hoping.

What's the line from that John Cleese movie? "It's not the despair; I can take the despair. It's the hope that's killing me!"
...something like that.

You go girl! Show em bastards you mean business!

Wait...you can say 'SPORE' on this board, but the four-letter d-word that means 'condemn', kinna resembles 'dang', and which you can probably say on a kiddie cartoon is verboten? *boggle*

What will Maxis and EA do? They will probably spend a few years releasing parts packs and occasional expansions that slowly fill in a few of the gaps in gameplay that we expected.

You really can't fill in the gaps in gameplay that way; the lapses and omissions would have such a fundamental effect on the game that they'd never quite get it right. They'd have to do a reboot/remake, essentially.

RocketGirl, what boggles me is you claim that yourself and others on these forums are the "majority". That people are generally dissatisfied with Spore. Well, I beg to differ. It may readily appear that way on these forums, but how many people, over the million sold post on these forums? Have you thought about that? Even the xFire statistics illustrating a drop in players offers nothing in the ways of solid information. There are too many variables involved. What fraction of players stopped using xFire? What fraction of players simply haven't logged in on it in some time? And the list goes on. That "evidence" is anecdotal. It may outline a vague trend, but the numbers are hardly bulletproof.

So what do you hope to accomplish? Spore isn't an MMO. The developers aren't going to post updates and replies to player queries every week. It isn't an ongoing development in the sense that other games are. They make announcements when they choose, not chit chat with players because that person is so vastly important. The little group here on the forums is a puck mark compared to the sales the game reached, and what do they care about more? The game just launched. Obviously they care about sales. They're not going to be in a hurry to make little tweaks or fulfill promises right away just to ease the woes of a few butt hurt people.

I'm not disagreeing with you just to disagree, I'm just looking at things from a realistic point of view. Your charade here is tired and monotonous, and your crusade is hollow. Ranting on the forums or toying with EA Tech support will get you no where. You're going to have to do what everyone else is doing, and wait. They're not going to drop little morsels here and there because a few people are disgruntled. Their game is selling, and right now that's all that matters. Wouldn't you hope the same for a long term investment you spent years working on? Hope it succeeds, and tweak later. Sounds reasonable to me. You would do well to learn some patience.

Actually complaining does do stuff. Lack of complaining also does things.

Example: When Sims 2: Bon Voyage came out, I was one of the first people to post about it containing securom and how it messed up my pc- to the point of having to reformat it.
Long story short..... any time a person complained about securom, drm, limit installs.... a majority of the people told them to shut up. That they didn't want to hear about it. That they were fine with securom and didn't have problems.

Fast forward about 4 months... people started updating pcs, installed new software and hardware into the pcs, updated programs or drivers.... and then started getting securom issues. Now a lot of those very people who were screaming to shut up starting posting complaints and rants against EA.

MaxoidSam and other maxoids then finally posted that they were not getting rid of securom and that it was going to be on all EA games from then on. He said not enough people complained about it when BV launched. That too many people were ok with it or said they didn't want to hear about it.

People then said that they did have problems with it but that complaining doesn't solve anything. The maxoids said it could have if enough people spoke up.

Now fast forward to spore's release. We still have securom. We still have DRM and Install limits. And the maxoids are saying it will be the same way for the sims 3. Why? Not enough people spoke up when it would have made a difference.

This isn't coming from me. It came right off of maxoid sam's and other maxoid's posts. Complaining can make a difference if enough people do it.