I want to know why there couldn't have been two different modes. The free creator mode, in which the system works like it does now, and another mode in which all these ideas of evolution and every part of your creature affecting the way it acts and such. That way, if you just want to create for the sake of creating, you can. And if you want to experience the full evolutionary feel, you can, too.

Meh. I've never liked it when people dumb down new, exciting revolutionary ideas for the idea of mass-marketing.

This "official forum" is proof enough that he was wrong, and Will was right to begin with.

Kids don't like being talked down to....
I don't either.
I love science, do I study it or have it a profession? No.
Do I like reading and learning more than what I do now? Yes.

Chris Heckler is the antithesis of the science nerd, who thinks he is better than everyone, and none of us will "understand" him or science.

yeah, graphics have no real concern to me. I love cute things, I think they can be hilarious. And people have clearly shown us that making something creepy is NOT impossible! That open-endedness should exist throughout this entire game! Do we want to play in a childs sandbox, or an adults sandbox? THe choice SHOULD have been ours upon starting the game up, unfortunately they figured the adults didn't matter. (But not saying all adults who like the game are children, I mean we all got a little bit of child in us and might just want to goof off in one way or another, its the fact we should have had a choice between the two.)

I haven't read the whole thing, but I probably will. If I'm getting the gist of it right, someone told them they had to make it cute and that person is responsible for the game drastically missing expectations, not Will?

Because I'm certainly willing to believe that. Actually, that's what I would have guessed. It was Will's idea, Will's toy, so they should have trusted his judgment on it. And now hopefully they can fix it back to what it's meant to be with expansions, or for Spore 2, or something.

This kind of thing is both corporate red tape and human mistakes in a nutshell. Now how long until Will gets to call the shots, instead of Cute Guy here? (News to Cute Guy, people aren't your massive market to exploit. You give them what they want, they give you what you want; money.)

SpongB6F1 wrote:
The fact is that Spore could have appealed to the casual and the "hardcore" crowd, without any essential compromises on its original design concepts. A game like Spore could have been both accessibly engaging on a casual level and have contained enough further optional depth, in terms of sophisticated gameplay and a multitude of non-rigid, non-repetitive, non-mindless "sandbox" activities, to to keep the more invested players (not to say the more mentally active...) coming back for more.

Exactly! The SPORE game could have been complex and still have cute creatures. I don't mind cute. What I mind is that when I put spikes on my creature's tail, it still charges things head-on. The frigging spike didn't make my creature's skull grow thicker, it's a weapon in and of itself!

Does anyone here play Armored Core? I was expecting that, done with animals. Speed is affected not only by your thrusters, but by the total weight of your Core. Want a big hulking war machine? Cool, but it's gonna go slow. Something faster more your style? Drop the heavy weapons and heavy armor. Not so in Spore. If I wanted to, I could go into the Creature Creator and make a two-vertebrae (vertebra? i dunno) ball with an eye and a mouth. Then all I have to do is slap on a couple spikes in random places. Hell, if the mouth gives +Charge, then your legless creature can run its prey down. Slap on a fin or two and it will out-and-out sprint. I guess it's rolling really fast...

The Cell stage works in the manner I prefer. In fact, I've had more fun hunting prey in Cell mode than I do in Creature mode! One time, with a spiney plant-eater cell, I was able to take down a much, much larger cell with a few of my fellow cells. I happened to run into a pack of my own creatures, and we managed to circle the monster cell and poke it with spikes that stood far out from the cell body. The bigger cell presented us with a weakness, based on its design, that my cell was able to exploit, again based on its own unique design.

Fast foward several billion years to the end of Creature stage. My highly evolved and complex creature is about to attack a rival nest. When the battle is joined, does my pack encircle the prey, attacking weak points, using their smaller size to their advantage? No. They don't even spit...the two groups just close the distance and take turns whacking each other. If my creature's single, tiny arm has a grasper with a high enough "strike" stat, it will beat that four-armed monstrosity.

The result: Instead of a really awesome game that might have had a steep learning curve for a few people, I'm sitting here, writing my creature's story in a notebook as I play, because every time I raise a new species, I feel like I'm playing the same exact game with a new 3D character model. That goes triple in space.

I played Horde....and now in Warhammer Online I play the side of Destruction.

I wish for Spore the way Spore was supposed to be. But Alas, I have a game that doesn't even keep my Grandchildren interested sitting on my desk.

Hmmm, the quote I copied seems to have not shown up.

Absolutely agreed.

"Cute" and meaningful gameplay is not mutually exclusive. (DO YOU HEAR THAT CHRIS HECKER AND THE CUTE TEAM?!?!?!?!!?!?!!?)

In addition to making the game "cute", the "cute team" also DESTROYED any meaningful gameplay elements. They wanted Spore to be the ultimate sandbox where in anything you design nothing really matters. Instead, it's all cosmetic with no backbone, no meaning, no purpose, no direction, and no real way to keep the user engaged at all.

This is also what I am sure was lost with Will getting overturned by corporate management.

He lost his company Maxis. It's no longer his at all. He's just a pawn and a poster-boy now. If I were him I'd quit and start up another shop again. Maxis was only what it was because of Will Wright.

There are many companies publishing their titles in an independent manner in which they still get to produce the games they want to produce. Stardock, Firaxis, Valve... the list goes on. Maxis being swallowed up by EA truly was the beginning of the end.

Ccurving wrote:

SpongB6F1 wrote:
The fact is that Spore could have appealed to the casual and the "hardcore" crowd, without any essential compromises on its original design concepts. A game like Spore could have been both accessibly engaging on a casual level and have contained enough further optional depth, in terms of sophisticated gameplay and a multitude of non-rigid, non-repetitive, non-mindless "sandbox" activities, to to keep the more invested players (not to say the more mentally active...) coming back for more.

Exactly! The SPORE game could have been complex and still have cute creatures. I don't mind cute. What I mind is that when I put spikes on my creature's tail, it still charges things head-on. The frigging spike didn't make my creature's skull grow thicker, it's a weapon in and of itself!

Does anyone here play Armored Core? I was expecting that, done with animals.

I LOVE armoured core, your the first to ignite that thought in my head of what it could've been like, armoured core was awesome that way with customizing and actually having it matter.

SmokeyPSD wrote:
I LOVE armoured core, your the first to ignite that thought in my head of what it could've been like, armoured core was awesome that way with customizing and actually having it matter.

Maybe I should just play lower-quality games, that way when something like Spore comes along again, I'll be impressed rather than kind of disappointed by comparison.

But then, they even "redesigned" AC4, didn't they? Changed all the mechanics that I actually liked.

...why must everything I love wither and die? WHY?!?!? *sob*

SmokeyPSD wrote:I LOVE armoured core, your the first to ignite that thought in my head of what it could've been like, armoured core was awesome that way with customizing and actually having it matter.

Good old Armored Core. You could wing it through without looking at the details, but that didn't mean the details didn't matter. That's how Spore should have been.