So I decided to give the space stage one more chance to change my mind. Here's what happened:



I think that speaks for itself. I tried to get screenshots of the 5 or 6 messages I had about colony attacks, pirate raids, and eco disasters all going on at the same time but the screenshot mechanism 1) doesn't include the GUI (which is ok) and 2) doesn't always work. This particular shot was taken via print screen since the screenshot button seems to be just puzzling as the save feature. It must take a coffee break every other minute.

In the past week since I bought the game, all I've heard out of EA and Maxis has been 'misprint'.

So I have the following 2 questions in which only 1 needs an answer to:
1) How do I get my money back?
2) What will the patch cover AND what free extra content will be included in a free add-on or upgrade? The majority of other companies give free content and add-on's. It's time Maxis and EA followed suit, especially after the Spore experience, or lack thereof.

Well said, my friend, well said!

I do agree there are many problems with spore, even though it is currently my favorite game.
Free content would be amazing, I'm not sure if it will happen though. There may be a patch or two giving "updates" but any major change or atleast with maxis comes months after the inital game luanch. Least that is what i get from Sims and Sims 2.

I give spore. a 7.5/10.
Good night all

blackcrown wrote:I do agree there are many problems with spore, even though it is currently my favorite game.
Free content would be amazing, I'm not sure if it will happen though. There may be a patch or two giving "updates" but any major change or atleast with maxis comes months after the inital game luanch. Least that is what i get from Sims and Sims 2.

I give spore. a 7.5/10.
Good night all

I really tried to like this game. However, space stage always seems to play out this way regardless of if I take the tutorial or not (actually, the tutorial is what started a war in the first place). There's such a laundry list of dissatisfaction that I'm officially taking away the option Maxis and EA to not give away some free add-on content. In my eyes, they don't get an option -- it has to be done. They still have the option to listen and fix things, for now.

I did play Sims, but stopped after all the expansion pack spam. That completely killed any interest in Sims 2 for me.

When I fight in space I destroy ships instantsly most of the time. Your space ship must suck or something.
The trick is to play the spave stage a long period of time.
All these problems everyone whines about?
I have hardly and issue with it, once you play enough, and get more sutff unlocked its pretty easy, the AI isnt so bad too, since they dont often declare war unless I bug them.

Just play more Spore.

Nice picture. I think I've seen those attacking space ships somewhere before in copyrighted TV, movie, and comic series. Nah...

I've learned a few things about how Spore space works. This might not apply to the way another player wishes to play in which case I have no qualms with criticism being volleyed at Maxis. Anyhow, please take the following as just some discussion of ideas on what might improve enjoyment of Spore space. I am most definitely not telling anyone how to play and most definitely not saying this is THE way to play.

- It's Spore space, not the space you imagined since childhood or what you see in Star Wars or Star Trek. This only means it's necessary to drop expectations and observe how Spore space works.
- No matter which philosophy your species follows, start by making friends with your neighbors and then maintain good relations (note: I'm currently testing whether full alliances are a good thing or not at the beginning). A war right at the beginning is a nightmare. Multiple wars is unbearable.
- Be wary of mission objectives. Don't upset one neighbor for the sake of pleasing another. Or do so VERY carefully. Yes, many of the early mission are designed to bring you into conflict. That's a real life lesson actually. Don't fall for that trap.
- Expand in your immediate area and don't go too far out. The further out you go, the more races you meet, the more good relations you must maintain, the less time you have for other stuff.
- Find a good money making planet or two. Build up the ecosystem on those planets and work your way to three cities with maximum buildings and turrents. Turrents may seem to add little defense, but I notice they at least act as good pointers to where the bad guys are (like WWII searchlights during air raids).
- Trade with your friendly neighbors. They have good prices and like it when you trade with them (sustains positive relations slightly).
- When you have a good spice trade economy going, you can ignore pirates who are "pirating". I still defend against "attacking" pirates, but I've heard that's not needed either.
- Build up achievements which lead to stronger UFO armor, longer range travel, more powerful weapons, larger cargo hold, etc. This is the Spore space equivalent of grinding. For example, just zip back and forth between your homeworld and a nearby system dozens of times if you're in a hurry to get longer range travel.
- Once you've maxed out your UFO's armor, have many ally ships, have very powerful weapons, etc., you're ready to expand beyond your immediate neighbors and wipe out anyone who would dare declare war on your small yet mighty space empire!

Or so my theory goes.

Oh and by the way, Maxis, space phase is too hectic.

TheAngelofDeath wrote:When I fight in space I destroy ships instantsly most of the time. Your space ship must suck or something.
The trick is to play the spave stage a long period of time.
All these problems everyone whines about?
I have hardly and issue with it, once you play enough, and get more sutff unlocked its pretty easy, the AI isnt so bad too, since they dont often declare war unless I bug them.

Just play more Spore.

I like the way that some guys complaint to my idea for spore was that I instantly penalize people when they start the space stage (in my siggy post).

I thought to myself about 30 instances like this one screenied and thought "At least mine was relative, no matter WHAT you are if someone is insta pissed you are done for until you fly over and bribe them with the money you don't have."

I'm still playing because I'm far enough to dominate but there was a HUGE slow cure up to that point.

Yes, the game is really slow if you want to have an easy time. I think people jsut rush the space stage and that is where the complaining comes from.

TheAngelofDeath wrote:When I fight in space I destroy ships instantsly most of the time. Your space ship must suck or something.
The trick is to play the spave stage a long period of time.
All these problems everyone whines about?
I have hardly and issue with it, once you play enough, and get more sutff unlocked its pretty easy, the AI isnt so bad too, since they dont often declare war unless I bug them.

Just play more Spore.

Kind of hard to get my ship not to suck when the SPORE tutorial is what caused a neighbor to go to war with me simply for entering their space.

Can't really play the space stage for a long period of time because I was crippled right from the start. The game decided it was a good idea to put one of those hostile aggressive spode empires as my closest neighbor. The screenshot above depicts the last chance for the Space game to get itself right, but even after cheating it was still impossible to keep up with multiple attacks. I eventually went around and bombed everyone that declared war off the galactic map. That finally worked, but required cheating, which I don't like to do. Out of curiosity, I took my ship deeper into the galaxy and randomly picked a fight with one of the races there. Guess what happened? They somehow INSTANTANEOUSLY flew past dozens of star systems to wind up in my cheat set of colonies. Can't enjoy a game when the AI doesn't even play by remotely the same rules as the player does.

Can't unlock new things when I'm busy fighting an enemy that has unlimited resources, unlimited ships, and the ability to simultaneously launch offenses against any of my colonies anywhere. What's worse, the player's version of unlimited resources via cheating is still crippled compared to the AI's unlimited resources of a never-ending barrage of ships.

You might not have a problem or "whine" about it, but you're not the one who got royally screwed by the way the game populated the galactic map without any ability to restart. You have absolutely no idea what it's like to have to fend off multiple crises with one little ship while your foe can have an unlimited number. You have no idea what it's like when your enemy who is attacking's ships are stronger than yours because the game somehow thought this was a good idea, and then the game has an even more brilliant idea to respawn you right in the middle of the fight you were just in without any sort of temporary invulnerability or respawn protection. Then, while you're so busy just trying to get one opponent off your back, a rival you had to ignore turns around and declares war. The only way to seemingly fix things is just to not contact anyone else and not answer any more communications. Unfortunately, that only works for so long.

It's not my fault the random galactic map populator made the decisions it did. It's really bad when the SPORE tutorial causes a war just by telling you to go somewhere! So you're not having the problem and maybe it's just bad luck, but this is what the game decided was a good way to set things up. You're not having the problem, but lots of people are. It's so bad the first mod for this game has come out to try to fix some of these problems. After taking a creature all the way from cell to space stage, breezing through each stage at a steady pace intending to collect as much stuff as possible, and then getting my ass repeatedly handed to me by a foe that has none of the restrictions I do, it's an understatement that anyone playing a game that's supposed to be fun would be severely pissed off. This is no better than enemies that shoot through walls or solid objects in first person shooters. It's no different from foes in RPG games that take hours to defeat (18+ in the case of a notorious Final Fantasy boss). It's no different from rival AI racers who can take a turn at full speed without hesitation.

Can't enjoy a game when the AI doesn't even play by remotely the same rules as the player does.

QFMFT.

This is the one class of AI cheats I can never stand. Far as I'm concerned, if the AI breaks the rules, so will I, and the game fails.

I do find it funny that much of what the computer can do in almost any stage is what I imagine the player was supposed to have been able to do.

I've seen creatures of the AI safely in the water (why I dunno), I've seen creatures with fleets, seen creatures seemingly auto defending all their planets and their (owned space) zones.

...then again I've seen one of my tribal guys holding a maraca-spear-flute in one hand...

I can replicate this error anytime so I think tomorrow I'll take a screeny with fraps for SAGs (Shites and giggles for those of you not familiar with acronyms I just made up).

With that I am off to bed.

PS. The reason I enjoy the space stage is I have a trainer that does things like lift the 99 cap on items in space...in fact that trainer is the only reason I'm still playing. Weird feeling (albeit I still love the game with trainer in effect, its incredibly enjoyable with a few tweaks...a-few-painfully-obvious-to-anyone-within-an-hour-so-how-did-they-not find-it-in-a-year-or-even-just-a-month-of-testing-tweaks).

ZJBDragon wrote:Can't enjoy a game when the AI doesn't even play by remotely the same rules as the player does.

That and your many other points add anxiety to my outlook on my own Spore space playing. I've seen some indications of many of the things you've mentioned and do not doubt what you've describe. It will be a dagger in my heart should I experience the same thing late one night.

I recall back when I was hating MoO3, someone was kind enough to recommend GalCiv. That was an excellent recommendation. I tossed MoO3 and enjoyed GalCiv for a couple years of gameplay. I wish I had a specific game to recommend to you. All I can recommend at this point is to put Spore on the shelf, find another game, and come back when Maxis releases a significant patch.

I just kinda wish space was a bit... less populated in my neck of the woods, y'know?

But it seems that there's ALWAYS at least 6 space faring species within 4 'interstellar drive 1' hops. Of these, two are usually spode loving warmongers who want to wipe me off the universe. And if they don't (I.E. I'm a religious spode SPORE too), there's two aggressive spode HATING species more than willing to pick up the slack.

I've only thus far managed one race who HASN'T succumbed to this initial gauntlet... but that race is willing (and able) to pay the tribute in excess of 2.5million that my 'allies' demand of me every 2 hours.
(And the allies that feel they should pay me? yeah, never more than 10,000. Jerks.)

Then I wonder how I am doing so well in the space phase, I so wonder.

ZJBDragond wrote:Can't enjoy a game when the AI doesn't even play by remotely the same rules as the player does.

Preach it brother!

The space stage is such a harsh and unflagging annoyance. (-edit- And the style and requirements of play is such a harsh and unwelcome contrast to the previous stages) The first race I contact is always during the tutorial, it's always angry with me from the start, it requires constant babying and hand holding in order to not descend upon me in a rain of fire and brimstone, and I can't progress because I can't take time away from them to do my own missions and they pay jack for spice. Even running missions for them doesn't help because they invariably send me off into some other race's territory who are also instantly angry with me and now I have to change their diapers for them, too. Now that I'm trying to avert war with them, the other race who I am now neglecting starts getting collicy and I'm NOT doing ANYTHING that I would consider fun AT ALL.

Ironically, when I finally ran into someone preaching the ways of Spode, they were the only ones who were nice from the outset and wanted to be pals.

In the end, I got really really annoyed with playing babysitter to a series of races who seem unable to defend themselves against anyone but myself or do anything on their own and cheated to buy them out.

I really f'ing hate the space game, it's all about doing EXACTLY what I DON'T want to do in a game.

I WANT to explore, I WANT to have fun, and I WANT to be able to have at least a 50/50 chance against an attack or during a raid of my own. I WANT to have a cadre of my own race's ships to follow me around. I WANT my colonies to be able to defend themselves at least as well as others are defended against when I am attacking.

If I'm going to have to micro-manage everything, then give me an interface where I can send other ships to wipe up these little insignificant messes that crop up when I'm halfway across the galaxy trying to progress or explore.

-edit-

Also, maybe it's just me, but it seems that trade routes don't seem to do much for trading and getting me money. In order to get a positive cash flow I have to, on top of all the babysitting, be the only cargo ship in the known universe.

I think instead of a spaceship, I need a people carrier/mini-van to take them all with me since they can't seem to take care of themselves without me.