http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/9.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net
Personally, I love the game. The highs vastly outweigh the lows. But I recognize some aspects and features removed that are crippling to the experience. I think there are only two major problems with the game, and I'd like to humble suggest my take on what they are in hopes that someone on the team will consider fixing them specifically.

Most of the problems are tied into not being able to customize something, or not being able to satisfactorily showcase or explore the content. The idea of Spore, for the player, was to evolve a creature and develop their own worlds. Creatures, cities, vehicles, etc, and then to explore a galaxy which was to showcase other people's creations and to see what they made.

[quote]WE NEED OUR CREATURE TO EXPLORE AND SHOWCASE THE USER CONTENT

From Tribal Stage and on, we lost our creature, which never should have happened. We should always have the ability to walk around as one of our creatures and explore, nomatter how useless it was to the current objective. It is the preferred manner of exploration, not the spaceship, not scrolling around from a Godlike perspective. It is fundamental to the experience. The fact that we can't do it, even in Space stage, is very disappointing, and makes us just want to stay in Creature stage.

The reason people love Creature stage and Space stage the most is because of the satisfaction that comes with exploration. Scanning a creature from hundreds of feet in the air or looking at a building from the sky does not satisfy that need, nor does it showcase the user generated content, and that is fundamental to the experience.

Just let us click on a unit at any point in the game and have it convert to creature stage controls (the hologram does not cut it). All the functions of Tribal Stage can be done from there, and there are no functions in Civ or Space stage for our creature units. And this would tie the entire game together much more nicely.[/quote]

[quote]WE NEED TO BE ABLE TO CUSTOMIZE OUR CITIES

There is tons of attention payed to creating custom buildings, but unfortunately we are not able to create custom cities. The customization of cities is also a fundamental draw of the game, as we were to be able to create our own worlds.

Rather than dropping the buildings onto a locked location and rotating them, we should be able to put them down anywhere we like within range of our City Hall and throw a few plants and roads around them.

No walls, no urban ground texture, just buildings, roads, and foliage. Our units shoot over the walls, anyway, and some simple road and foliage placement features would allow us to create our own convincing (and custom) city environments.

And then back to effect this would have on exploring with a single creature. It would be profound, and very satisfying, to walk around in our own cities creations as a member of its society (perhaps its leader?), let alone to walk through others' when exploring and interacting with their races.[/quote]

It is so important that you fix those two things, as they are the only major problems with the fundamental nature of the game. They are the two big blindspots that are crippling the experience.

The gameplay is too simplistic and needs to be deepened? Sure. We see too much Maxis content while exploring? Yes. The broad range of user content doesn't download readily or thoroughly enough? Yes. Custom planets and cities should have populated the universe, not just a random mess of creatures, buildings, and vehicles? Most definitely.

But to be able to create our own Cities and walk around them and explore other players Cities and worlds is the embodiment of what Spore was supposed to be.]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3566.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3566.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3643.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3643.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3682.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/3682.page GMT ]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/4347.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/4347.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/5753.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/5753.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/5790.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/5790.page GMT
This.]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/6974.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/6974.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/6987.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/6987.page GMT http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7136.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7136.page GMT
I also seem to run into a disproportionate number of mailbox creatures, but meh.]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7215.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7215.page GMT I get annoyed when i make all these wonderful creatures, and i still get maxis made creatures filling my planet.
Still great fun though.

]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7548.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/7548.page GMT
No problem. Thanks for taking my notes

I have personally signed up for a number of Sporecasts, but that just limits me to whatever is in the Sporecasts, and the idea of Spore was to have this broad experience and not having any idea what you'd see next.

We shouldn't have to sign up for anything in order to get content, random content downloaded from the vast range of the Sporepedia should be the default. The Sporecasts and buddy lists should be just for focusing on certain strings of content.

And if I could suggest a third to my list, I would say that the planets we create should be uploaded to the Sporepedia and available for exploration as well. We very, very, very, very, very much want to see what others have done with their planets, and if we could customize our cities and walk around the worlds people have created (for instance, someone could create the Mushroom Kingdom and we could stumble upon it), that would be pretty much the optimum Spore experience.

Thanks again

[quote]I agree that this is one of the greatest games of all time, and I agree that it'd be great to be able to drop out of your ship and explore the planets you terraform. But I don't think being able to custom design my space cities further than the main buildings is necessary. [/quote]

I agree, it does seem kind of pointless to terraform a planet and then not be able to walk upon it. Another thing I might add, when we play our game from Creature stage and on, we aren't even able to explore our own planets entirely, we're restricted to one continent, and never able to explore the rest from the ground level.]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/8065.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/8065.page GMT I agree, the planets we create - at least our home worlds - should be downloadable some way. Have our race act like we play them, and get reports on who made peace, waged war, allied with, or totally destroyed our race. I remember reading that this was going to happen but it never did.]]> http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/8322.page http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/preList/633/8322.page GMT