primadog wrote:Can we have a Questionnaire/Polls subforum for General?

If you look at General Discussion right now, you'll see that majority of the threads there are 'Do you...', [Poll], 'Show us your...' threads. Those kind of threads have very little discussion values, since people simply post their view or thing without regard to whether it have any merit, interest. Worse still, it clusters out truly worthwhile threads.

If people want to play forum games, vote in a poll, or just spam a useless thread, let them, but let them in somewhere that won't block off true discussions, what General Discussion is designed for.

Actually, I have noticed people are much more inclined to respond to a thread if it has a poll on it. Almost everyone still has an initial idea which starts the thread, poll or no poll, and most threads with polls seem to survive longer. So I disagree. You can't judge the merit of a thread by if it has a poll or not.

A Poll is simply an extension of the first post of a thread which appears above the first post where the average user can opt into giving an opinion, and personally, I think it's actually better to have an opinion poll than a long list of "I agree" and "I disagree."

You could create a poll right now asking if a poll should be in a different category, or not, and the choice to have a poll would only make the thread look simpler.

Alright, it's obvious that by now we have a lot of topics that really don't fit all the categories this forum provides.

Such as topics about banning, and other nonsense.

So, I propose the forum be re-modeled..So to speak.

Add an Off-Topic section, Forum Games, Graphics Corner (Not Spore graphics, as in like Photoshop signatures etc...)

Create some diversity in the forums, I see we have very cut-throat, Spore only discussion areas. But truly the people who truly love to interact with their community would most likely expect as much as I would. I doubt it's difficult at all, I should know this as I have made my fair share of forums in my lifetime, so i doubt you can fall back on the "we don't have time", or "other issues are more important", as all it takes is a few clicks a voila.

Also, a large suggestion, is to make Moderators to those specific forums, it would take the work load off of the SporeMaster, and the Maxis developers. Lets think about it, how much time do they really spend speaking to the community as opposed to everyday posters, and the occasional "smart guy". Either way, you can easily limit the powers brought upon them to that one section so there wouldn't be a security problem involved.

Seriously, being in love with graphics, I love to make wacky, crazy things in Photoshop, from signatures to desktops, and more, and I've been doing it for years and am attempting to enter it as a career, or part-time at least, I'd like to see more ability to express myself than just SPORE, all night and day, really limits my posts to certain topics.

Last bit off my trail of thought would be the whole ability to set avatars, why is it so hard to set a preset setting to "On".... Anyways i know this last one has been proposed, but get real for a minute and notice how user-friendly forums are...It isn't hard at all.

From a topic in Spore General Discussion, had not seen this at first.

There is a glitch when searching through Sporecasts online, concerning Sporecasts which have as many as 100 creations or more. The Sporecast creator's name disappears from the Sporecast box, and on the line where it is on sub-100 item sporecasts, is the # of creations. And where the name usually appears on smaller casts, is blank. This should be fixed.

Delete our own replies that we've decided to retract. So, for example, I could remove this message.

An option to put more topics on a single page, and more posts on a single page of the topic. This is especially bad in General Discussion and Hints and Strategy when half of page 1 is stickies, and there's only 7 real topics. As fats as the boards move...

I'd rather have like 50 topics a page and 50 posts per page, or at least an option to do so.

I have some website/forum feedback. This is specific to the forum.

I'd like to ask for some sort of signature rules and size limitations. Some people on this forum have some obnoxiously huge signatures. Other people have perfectly fine and acceptable signatures. There should be some sort of rule like no more than 8 lines high or 172 pixels tall. That may be helpful but not overly restrictive.

does anyone else have the problem that the number of items showing in a Sporecast on the web is not that same as that same Sporecast showing up 'in game' ?

or did I miss a thread about this?

also, how often does the game connect to the server to update assets?

This won't be top priority, but it'll really ease sharing in the forums. Can we have a [spore]...[/spore] BBCODE that will instantly link and image a spore creation, sporecast, or user gadget?

For Example

[spore]Primadog[/spore] automatically output the following ->

1) For about a week or more now, I can no longer remove creations from a Sporecast that I have created online. Removing the creation from the sporecast in-game works, but is a pointless change, because the web sporecast that everyone sees does not change.
2) Not only can I not delete a creation from an online Sporecast, after I had added a creation to a Sporecast, and tried to remove it from the Sporecast, by deleting it off the server entirely, by clicking the "remove creation" link both in the creation's pop up window within the Sporecast and from the "My Creations" tab, I was unable to delete that creation from being shared, at all. Its as if once a creature is added to a Sporecast, it can't be deleted at all, from a person's online creations, and this needs to be fixed as well, so if you delete something you have already added to a Sporecast, you are still able to remove it from the website entirely, and this is something I believe was possible before, so why this would change doesn't make sense, unless its due to some ongoing work being done on the site.
3) Recently I have also had trouble uploading any creation with many tags, like say, about a dozen or so. When tags are removed, the creature uploads fine, but then I have to re-add the tags once the creation is online. And the one that uploaded, that I might want to search for in the future in-game, will be tagless, unless I keep a copy of it that has the tags, that didn't and won't upload. I think there should be no tag limit that affects uploading.
4) After adding a creation to a Sporecast online that had uploaded with no tags, and trying to add tags to it, the creation refused to update with the tags. I tried adding tags to it in the main creation list, and also in the Sporecast edit box itself online, and it would not save the changes. At one point it seemed as if the creation in my personal "My Creations" list would accept the update, but that update isn't automatically applied to the same creation, that is within the Sporecast, as if once something is added to a Sporecast it becomes a separate asset than its identical non-Sporecast counterpart. After both seemed to not update, I relogged into the site, and possibly restarted my Firefox browser as well, I was then able to add tags to the creation, but I had to do it twice, once for the creation in the Sporecast and once for the creation under the "My Creations" tab. I would like to see the online Sporepedia link up a creation with its Sporecast counterpart, so I don't have to add the tags twice, which I wouldn't have to add at all if they could have successfully uploaded with the tags I gave them in the editor initially, and it seemed at least temporarily that a creation added to a Sporecast can't have its text edited, and if this was the case and not a glitch, that is not how it should be.

An error has occurred.

For detailed error information, please see the HTML source code, and contact the forum Administrator.

java.lang.NullPointerException

I've been receiving this error all day (2008.09.30) when I first login.
I have to shut down IE7, reload, relogin, rinse and repeat two or three times before I can see the forum posts.
The forum index shows up fine.
This occurs when I open a post, or I open a user profile.

(edit to remove sig)

Hallowed are the SPORi

I would like to propose the General Discussion Forum to have sections on every stage of the game (cell, space, etc) as it would make it more organized.
I would also like the forum to have avatars.

This may have already been reported and of course it may just be my connection to Spore.com. But for the past couple of days when I open the Forums from the Community tab on Spore.com I have to log in again, even though it has only been a few seconds from the time I have opened Spore.com, logged in, clicked on the Community tab, clicked on the link for forums and the forums web site open in a new tab in Firefox. (Oh yeah, I prefer Firefox to IE so that is my browser of choice) I am presented with another log in screen.

And when I go back to the Spore.com page and click on another heading, sporepedia for example I discover that even though I was signed in on the Community page I am suddenly signed out and have to sign back in.

This is not very user friendly in my opinion. I thought that it had been set up that if you logged into Spore.com you would automatically be logged in when you linked out to the Forums web site. And that when you went back to Spore.com you would still be logged in.

If this is a browser issue please let us know, and if it is a programming issue please at least give us the option to stay logged in (Not the remember me checkbox, I don't want my passwords to be saved to any more places than they already are.) I have seen web sites that offer this option with a spinner or pull down listing various lengths of time, i.e.

5 Min
15 Min
30 Min
1 Hour
Etc.

elliander wrote:
Why does Phone Contact information no longer exist for any of Electronic Arts products or anywhere on this website? I can't even find an existing record of it elsewhere on the internet. I found fax and mailing information, but even 5 years ago there used to be a way to call someone on the phone and get real help.

http://www.computerhope.com/comp/ea.htm

Don't get me wrong, usually e-mail support works, but when I am at wits end trying to get help to no avail, I just want to be able to talk to a real person. I know EA is seeing record profits, so EA can afford it. Unless EA just invested in some kind of BOT that acts like a real person, using a list of words to estimate a given response? If so, it would explain why a bug report would be answered by instructions on how to install, since a real person would know what I am saying.

Then again, I think it would be nice if you added a simple to use Knowledge base that you would reach before getting tech help, where your questions get matched up with suggestions for help based on previous answers given to other people. As long as if that fails, we can end up reaching a real person eventually.

In short:

There are MANY things that can be done to improve our ability to get help when we need it. A section of tech support devoted to reporting bugs directly to the people who handle it, comprehensive help for those of us who want more than to report a bug. Information. Etc.

I used to think Sony Online Entertainment had the worst technical help. (they actually cursed me out in a live chat help!) but they at least had some help on a phone number. I have to say now that EA has treated me by far the worst. And it's sad, because once upon a time, I considered Electronic Arts to have the absolute BEST support of any company!

The innovation from the programmers, the kindness from the people I would call when I had a problem, there were so many reasons why EA became one of the biggest - if not the biggest - game developer in the whole world. Please return to being like that, take these words seriously.

I tried posted a number to get a hold of tech support but it was removed...
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6501.page

rrchristian wrote:

elliander wrote:
Why does Phone Contact information no longer exist for any of Electronic Arts products or anywhere on this website? I can't even find an existing record of it elsewhere on the internet. I found fax and mailing information, but even 5 years ago there used to be a way to call someone on the phone and get real help.

http://www.computerhope.com/comp/ea.htm

Don't get me wrong, usually e-mail support works, but when I am at wits end trying to get help to no avail, I just want to be able to talk to a real person. I know EA is seeing record profits, so EA can afford it. Unless EA just invested in some kind of BOT that acts like a real person, using a list of words to estimate a given response? If so, it would explain why a bug report would be answered by instructions on how to install, since a real person would know what I am saying.

Then again, I think it would be nice if you added a simple to use Knowledge base that you would reach before getting tech help, where your questions get matched up with suggestions for help based on previous answers given to other people. As long as if that fails, we can end up reaching a real person eventually.

In short:

There are MANY things that can be done to improve our ability to get help when we need it. A section of tech support devoted to reporting bugs directly to the people who handle it, comprehensive help for those of us who want more than to report a bug. Information. Etc.

I used to think Sony Online Entertainment had the worst technical help. (they actually cursed me out in a live chat help!) but they at least had some help on a phone number. I have to say now that EA has treated me by far the worst. And it's sad, because once upon a time, I considered Electronic Arts to have the absolute BEST support of any company!

The innovation from the programmers, the kindness from the people I would call when I had a problem, there were so many reasons why EA became one of the biggest - if not the biggest - game developer in the whole world. Please return to being like that, take these words seriously.

I tried posted a number to get a hold of tech support but it was removed...
http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/6501.page

They got your money you are of no further use ;p.

TDOONAN wrote:This may have already been reported and of course it may just be my connection to Spore.com. But for the past couple of days when I open the Forums from the Community tab on Spore.com I have to log in again, even though it has only been a few seconds from the time I have opened Spore.com, logged in, clicked on the Community tab, clicked on the link for forums and the forums web site open in a new tab in Firefox. (Oh yeah, I prefer Firefox to IE so that is my browser of choice) I am presented with another log in screen.

I use IE7, and it appears I also must log in separately to the forums. This was not the case previously, and seems to have appeared after the period when all the posts came up with "java.lang.NullPointerException" errors. I don't know what the devs changed, but I would like once again to share login between the two sites. Easy access from Spore.com is one reason I prefer this forum: if I have to log in every visit this distinguishing feature is lost.