Replayability, really?
- Thread starter The Hereafter
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Bigfoot3814
Deity
Or to me, who hasn't done anything yet. 
Kozmos
Jew Detective
I didnt think this day would ever come but I agree with Pat 100%. I reached the space age, made a few dozen errand boy quest and exited the game in disgust and uninstalled it. The game is a glorified version of monster sims. If you love screwing around in editors and customizing most trivial details of the game then this is for you. However should you be looking for actual gameplay worth then steer clear of this.
SpurnSpore
Chieftain
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2008
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- 96
I'm not so sure, having to repeat tribe again using civfanitc peoples creations
who probably played those creatures from cell to space. As against my creature just made in an editor, I have found them to be much stronger and harder to beat,with more specialized abilities.
Even if I am imagining it, that helps the re- playability.
I would expect civ players to have excellent skills in picking traits to make their Tribe/creature hard to beat
Dom Pedro II
Modder For Life
I would say that my feelings on Spore's replayability has to fall along the lines of what Patroklos said although I might not put it in such stark terms.
The game play, in my opinion, is rather shallow. The five stages of the game may be very different from each other, but that doesn't really translate into being a different experience each time you play. I mean, if making different looking creatures is the only thing you need to keep you coming back, then the game has replayability. It's fun, it's beautiful, but without more depth, I don't see myself playing this frequently and repeatedly like I have with other games.
The game play, in my opinion, is rather shallow. The five stages of the game may be very different from each other, but that doesn't really translate into being a different experience each time you play. I mean, if making different looking creatures is the only thing you need to keep you coming back, then the game has replayability. It's fun, it's beautiful, but without more depth, I don't see myself playing this frequently and repeatedly like I have with other games.
Lord Shadow
Admiral
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2005
- Messages
- 2,177
The only replayability lies in doing nearly the exact same thing from Cell to Space stage with purple elephantmen instead of your previous red lizardmen:
Cell stage: You either eat microscopic plankton or kill other organisms for their 'meat'. Doing the former is more boring since all you have to do is look around for plankton while evading larger organisms. You could attack other ones of your size, but in that case it'd be basically acting as carnivore without eating the meat of those you kill. So, not many choices here. The type of mouth you finish the stage with determines whether you're herbivore or carnivore (or omnivore, if you have two different mouths) in the Creature stage.
Creature stage: Two choices here: either slaughter species by using mediocre, MMORPG-like combat, or befriend him using childish Simon Says-like interaction. Body parts provide different attacks or 'social moves'. If you think about it, combat and socializing is pretty alike, given in the former you go through very similar mechanics to bite the other creature instead of dancing for it. No more choices than that.
Tribal stage: RTS-like part, instead of third-person light-hearted action. Same two choices as before: ally other tribes through another Simon Says-like mechanic (somewhat more complex, given you need instruments you build in your settlement, and you get to unlock more types as you conquer/befriend others) or destroy them through a barebones RTS combat system (Dune 2 and Warcraft I were far deeper than this) using members of your tribe equipped with three kinds of weapons instead of three kinds of instruments. You unlock weapons just like you do instruments. As in the Creature stage, destroying everything is way easier than playing nice. Again, you're stuck with two choices.
Civilization stage: Still RTS, considerably shallower than even the first RTS games. This time you have three (yes, THREE) choices. Well... no, not really. According to your behaviour in the previous stages, you end up either a military, economic or religious civ. So you can only follow the path imposed on you. Economic is the most boring, given all you do is accumulate cash, establish trade routes with other cities and wait till they're available for purchase. Military and religious are pretty much the same thing: you either literally destroy stuff with your land, air and sea units (of which you have one type: one tank, one ship and one plane, if you designed them that way, and that's it) or bombard them with religious propaganda in pretty much the same way you'd fire your guns at them. You have several 'powers' according to your orientation, which get progressively get unlocked as you take over cities (sounds familiar?). The last one is basically an insta-win button, which automatically conquers all the remaining cities on the planet. LAME. But then, doing the exact same thing you've been doing to conquer/purchase cities any longer would be just as atrocious. This is the worst stage of them all.
Space stage: Back to third-person. This time you have several small-scale options, like travelling around, explore, terraform, settle and such using your species' spaceship design (again, just one). However, on the empire scale, your only option is to try and ally every other race you meet, since the more wars you get into, the more you will be harrassed with attacks.
For making money, pretty much the only option is selling spice to other races (for which you need to have acceptable relations with them), either the one your planets provide or what you can buy low from other race. There are missions you can carry out for your people or the other races, but they get repetitive pretty fast and only offer pocket change, compared to spice trading.
Back to harrassing, it's the biggest issue you have. Every 5 minutes, you've to drop whatever you were doing to defend your colonies (or your allies') from enemy aliens or pirates, or prevent some ecodisaster which, if left unchecked, can totally cripple a planet's ecosystem.
This stage will hold your attention the longest, but eventually you'll find yourself doing the same stuff over and over and over. Eventually, it gets boring. There's Earth somewhere, but it's nothing more than an easter egg. And there's also the galactic core, which you can reach after a stupidly, unimaginatively challenging voyage. You get a special item there. In order not to spoil anything, I'll just say it could be something way more revolutionary than the thing you get.
The Space stage is the best of the five, but it's not good enough to redeem the dumbness of the rest. I got bored of it a while ago, and haven't touched the game ever since. It's just not replayable unless you enjoy doing the exact same stuff (with marginal differences) with a graphically different race.
There are stupid achievements all over the place, symptom of the terminal disease known as consolitis. Doing the exact same thing 10,000 times to get an idiotic badge is not my idea of replayability nor, above all, FUN.
Cell stage: You either eat microscopic plankton or kill other organisms for their 'meat'. Doing the former is more boring since all you have to do is look around for plankton while evading larger organisms. You could attack other ones of your size, but in that case it'd be basically acting as carnivore without eating the meat of those you kill. So, not many choices here. The type of mouth you finish the stage with determines whether you're herbivore or carnivore (or omnivore, if you have two different mouths) in the Creature stage.
Creature stage: Two choices here: either slaughter species by using mediocre, MMORPG-like combat, or befriend him using childish Simon Says-like interaction. Body parts provide different attacks or 'social moves'. If you think about it, combat and socializing is pretty alike, given in the former you go through very similar mechanics to bite the other creature instead of dancing for it. No more choices than that.
Tribal stage: RTS-like part, instead of third-person light-hearted action. Same two choices as before: ally other tribes through another Simon Says-like mechanic (somewhat more complex, given you need instruments you build in your settlement, and you get to unlock more types as you conquer/befriend others) or destroy them through a barebones RTS combat system (Dune 2 and Warcraft I were far deeper than this) using members of your tribe equipped with three kinds of weapons instead of three kinds of instruments. You unlock weapons just like you do instruments. As in the Creature stage, destroying everything is way easier than playing nice. Again, you're stuck with two choices.
Civilization stage: Still RTS, considerably shallower than even the first RTS games. This time you have three (yes, THREE) choices. Well... no, not really. According to your behaviour in the previous stages, you end up either a military, economic or religious civ. So you can only follow the path imposed on you. Economic is the most boring, given all you do is accumulate cash, establish trade routes with other cities and wait till they're available for purchase. Military and religious are pretty much the same thing: you either literally destroy stuff with your land, air and sea units (of which you have one type: one tank, one ship and one plane, if you designed them that way, and that's it) or bombard them with religious propaganda in pretty much the same way you'd fire your guns at them. You have several 'powers' according to your orientation, which get progressively get unlocked as you take over cities (sounds familiar?). The last one is basically an insta-win button, which automatically conquers all the remaining cities on the planet. LAME. But then, doing the exact same thing you've been doing to conquer/purchase cities any longer would be just as atrocious. This is the worst stage of them all.
Space stage: Back to third-person. This time you have several small-scale options, like travelling around, explore, terraform, settle and such using your species' spaceship design (again, just one). However, on the empire scale, your only option is to try and ally every other race you meet, since the more wars you get into, the more you will be harrassed with attacks.
For making money, pretty much the only option is selling spice to other races (for which you need to have acceptable relations with them), either the one your planets provide or what you can buy low from other race. There are missions you can carry out for your people or the other races, but they get repetitive pretty fast and only offer pocket change, compared to spice trading.
Back to harrassing, it's the biggest issue you have. Every 5 minutes, you've to drop whatever you were doing to defend your colonies (or your allies') from enemy aliens or pirates, or prevent some ecodisaster which, if left unchecked, can totally cripple a planet's ecosystem.
This stage will hold your attention the longest, but eventually you'll find yourself doing the same stuff over and over and over. Eventually, it gets boring. There's Earth somewhere, but it's nothing more than an easter egg. And there's also the galactic core, which you can reach after a stupidly, unimaginatively challenging voyage. You get a special item there. In order not to spoil anything, I'll just say it could be something way more revolutionary than the thing you get.
The Space stage is the best of the five, but it's not good enough to redeem the dumbness of the rest. I got bored of it a while ago, and haven't touched the game ever since. It's just not replayable unless you enjoy doing the exact same stuff (with marginal differences) with a graphically different race.
There are stupid achievements all over the place, symptom of the terminal disease known as consolitis. Doing the exact same thing 10,000 times to get an idiotic badge is not my idea of replayability nor, above all, FUN.
Dale
Mohawk Games Developer
- Joined
- Mar 14, 2002
- Messages
- 7,846
Lord Shadow:
I agree with most things you said, except the following:
1. In Cell phase, the type of mouth you finish with doesn't determine the type of creature you are. It's the amount of meat or organic that you eat. Eat more meat, you're a carnivore creature, eat more organic you're a herbivore creature, eat roughly the same of both you're an omnivore creature. If you click the History button (before you complete the level) you can see your progress one way or the other. I feel the goal is to end in the blue zone (omnivore zone) as omnivore mouths are the most versatile in creature (+5 sing, +5 bite for whichever path you take).
2. Trible phase, befriending is by FAR AND AWAY the simplest method to victory. As soon as another tribe spawns, give a gift then do the instrument thing. Literally, as soon as they spawn you can do this. The whole level complete in 5 minutes, zero losses.
3. Civ phase in not the worst phase, but only because of the trible exploit mentioned above. Civ is an extremely close second for the most boring.
All up I like creature phase, but only because of the wandering and discovering aspect of the phase. Nothing else. I love the feeling of struggling up that massive mountain to end on the top, and watch a spectacular sunrise with a gas giant or other in the background.
But that's the only part of the game that is interesting. The rest of the game is so shallow that it's amazing to consider that half a world renowned company spent millions on it and 7 years.
It's even sadder to think that we are the ones that get screwed.
I agree with most things you said, except the following:
1. In Cell phase, the type of mouth you finish with doesn't determine the type of creature you are. It's the amount of meat or organic that you eat. Eat more meat, you're a carnivore creature, eat more organic you're a herbivore creature, eat roughly the same of both you're an omnivore creature. If you click the History button (before you complete the level) you can see your progress one way or the other. I feel the goal is to end in the blue zone (omnivore zone) as omnivore mouths are the most versatile in creature (+5 sing, +5 bite for whichever path you take).
2. Trible phase, befriending is by FAR AND AWAY the simplest method to victory. As soon as another tribe spawns, give a gift then do the instrument thing. Literally, as soon as they spawn you can do this. The whole level complete in 5 minutes, zero losses.
3. Civ phase in not the worst phase, but only because of the trible exploit mentioned above. Civ is an extremely close second for the most boring.
All up I like creature phase, but only because of the wandering and discovering aspect of the phase. Nothing else. I love the feeling of struggling up that massive mountain to end on the top, and watch a spectacular sunrise with a gas giant or other in the background.
But that's the only part of the game that is interesting. The rest of the game is so shallow that it's amazing to consider that half a world renowned company spent millions on it and 7 years.
It's even sadder to think that we are the ones that get screwed.
Lord Shadow
Admiral
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2005
- Messages
- 2,177
My mistake. It must've been a coincidence in my experience.
I won't deny the sense of discovery is nice when you play the game for the first time. You really feel like a new creature in a strange world. However, that feeling evaporates once you're done with your first run. You've seen it all already, the novelty of the game vanishes, and there's nothing to really lure you back into playing again, except taking marginally different paths along the evolutionary route with an aesthetically different creature.All up I like creature phase, but only because of the wandering and discovering aspect of the phase. Nothing else. I love the feeling of struggling up that massive mountain to end on the top, and watch a spectacular sunrise with a gas giant or other in the background.
But that's the only part of the game that is interesting. The rest of the game is so shallow that it's amazing to consider that half a world renowned company spent millions on it and 7 years.
It's even sadder to think that we are the ones that get screwed.
As for the mountain climbing in the Creature stage, I actually didn't like it. I don't know if it's the pathfinding or some mapping error, but sometimes I got almost stuck in steep angles (once even on a perfectly flat lake shore). It took random movement key pressing and jumping and my creature spasming like it was going to die to get out of that poorly generated spot.
And yeah, it's hard to think Spore's Wright's brainchild, considering the huge amounts of money and time he spent on it. Either he screwed up himself or EA neutered his creative ability and simply used his name to earn more money selling a very average product.
I hope Firaxis and Take Two stay the hell out of Electronic Arts's way. I'll personally bomb EA's headquarters if they ever defile my beloved Civilization or any other of Meier's legendary series.
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