Spore: A Failure?
- Thread starter salty mud
- Start date
Angelscotboi
Emperor
Dont want to get off topic here but I dont hate Steam.
I just dont like it. I wouldnt mind it as a download service or update service ala Impulse if it was like Impulse. Non compulsory and non intrusive. But it isnt.
Its intrusive. You are forced to install it even if you dont need it ie for single player only games. It MUST be online so if you have a gaming rig that you keep offline then you are up a total gumtree there.
The "offline" mode is laughable; firstly you have to be ONLINE to set the specific GAME to offline mode (not the Steam program) and you have to do this for every game you have on on steam, secondly periodically Steam demands you go back ONLINE to repeatedly verify your games as well as download updates.
As someone else mentioned it autoupdates which is a good idea on paper but in reality is a massively BAD idea because sometimes Developers release a patch and inadvertantly break something that worked before ie Bethesda breaking VATs (Fallout 3) in its 1.2/1.3 patch or Bioware breaking the dexterity dependant skills in Dragon Age in its 1.1 (or was it 1.2?) patch. So if this happens you cant roll back to a properly working patch on a steamworks dependant game. You are FORCED to stop playing until the problem is fixed - presuming the developer doesnt do a Bethesda on you "la la la theres nothing wrong here la la la".
The restricted installs thing is nothing new but its a MASSIVELY stupid idea; I mean EA used to do it and they have now stopped. And if EA stopped doing it it MUST be a bad idea because them lot are notorious for not listening to their customer base. Even worse its only 3 installs, EA had 5 on their games (like Spore the game we are obstensibly discussing).
And finally you can not run a steamworks dependant game without running steamworks. And i thoroughly resent being forced to install a 3rd party program in order to play a game. If its a multiplayer game fine. But i want the option, I dont want to be forced into doing it. Thats what steamworks does. Its a complete waste of system resources.
And I am CONVINCED that it caused my CTDs in Empire Total War.
Its the reason I am refusing to buy Civ 5. I wont get it because of its Steamworks dependancy.
Steam sucks. Its a horrible program. And Valve is a horrible company that has pioneered horrible business practices that are unfortunately and frighteningly quickly becoming the industry standard. An example of their disgusting business practices was they tried to bully Paradox Interactive into using Steam as their only digital download service (making all PI games from that point on Steamworks dependant) because PI work with many services including GamersGate; not realising that PI owns part of GamersGate and is not ever going to stop using them.
Thank god there are yet some good developers and publishers (like PI) ARENT going down the Valve route and point blank refuse to. I used to think Firaxis was one of them; you would have thought that they had learned from their partnership with infogrames/atari in dealing with money grubbing monolithic entities but alas they havent.
Actually. Maybe I do hate Steam after all.
And well about Spore. The only thing left to say is while Maxis is going down the releasing generic cash cow game after generic cash cow game route of late; EA's publishing business practices seem to be improving. They no longer wish to be seen as the Satan of Publishing.
I just dont like it. I wouldnt mind it as a download service or update service ala Impulse if it was like Impulse. Non compulsory and non intrusive. But it isnt.
Its intrusive. You are forced to install it even if you dont need it ie for single player only games. It MUST be online so if you have a gaming rig that you keep offline then you are up a total gumtree there.
The "offline" mode is laughable; firstly you have to be ONLINE to set the specific GAME to offline mode (not the Steam program) and you have to do this for every game you have on on steam, secondly periodically Steam demands you go back ONLINE to repeatedly verify your games as well as download updates.
As someone else mentioned it autoupdates which is a good idea on paper but in reality is a massively BAD idea because sometimes Developers release a patch and inadvertantly break something that worked before ie Bethesda breaking VATs (Fallout 3) in its 1.2/1.3 patch or Bioware breaking the dexterity dependant skills in Dragon Age in its 1.1 (or was it 1.2?) patch. So if this happens you cant roll back to a properly working patch on a steamworks dependant game. You are FORCED to stop playing until the problem is fixed - presuming the developer doesnt do a Bethesda on you "la la la theres nothing wrong here la la la".
The restricted installs thing is nothing new but its a MASSIVELY stupid idea; I mean EA used to do it and they have now stopped. And if EA stopped doing it it MUST be a bad idea because them lot are notorious for not listening to their customer base. Even worse its only 3 installs, EA had 5 on their games (like Spore the game we are obstensibly discussing).
And finally you can not run a steamworks dependant game without running steamworks. And i thoroughly resent being forced to install a 3rd party program in order to play a game. If its a multiplayer game fine. But i want the option, I dont want to be forced into doing it. Thats what steamworks does. Its a complete waste of system resources.
And I am CONVINCED that it caused my CTDs in Empire Total War.
Its the reason I am refusing to buy Civ 5. I wont get it because of its Steamworks dependancy.
Steam sucks. Its a horrible program. And Valve is a horrible company that has pioneered horrible business practices that are unfortunately and frighteningly quickly becoming the industry standard. An example of their disgusting business practices was they tried to bully Paradox Interactive into using Steam as their only digital download service (making all PI games from that point on Steamworks dependant) because PI work with many services including GamersGate; not realising that PI owns part of GamersGate and is not ever going to stop using them.
Thank god there are yet some good developers and publishers (like PI) ARENT going down the Valve route and point blank refuse to. I used to think Firaxis was one of them; you would have thought that they had learned from their partnership with infogrames/atari in dealing with money grubbing monolithic entities but alas they havent.
Actually. Maybe I do hate Steam after all.
And well about Spore. The only thing left to say is while Maxis is going down the releasing generic cash cow game after generic cash cow game route of late; EA's publishing business practices seem to be improving. They no longer wish to be seen as the Satan of Publishing.
There is a limit of installs on Spore. But you can revoke your install using this tool, resetting it to three
http://www.spore.com/patch/deauthorization
Spore still sucks.
Steam Offline mode: I select "restart in offline mode" and all of my 42 games work offline. End of story. If I'm offline, it tells me "hey you're offline, do you want to start in offline mode" I click yes, all of my 42 games work offline. End of the rebuke story. You do need to be online at least once in the installation, at the beginning. I think there might be settings to do to ensure it works. But if your brain is powerful enough to allow for breathing, then you should be able to figure it out. Bottomline is, if the game doesn't need to update and works properly, you make your Steam stop asking to go online, then it won't go nuts.
http://www.spore.com/patch/deauthorization
Spore still sucks.
Steam Offline mode: I select "restart in offline mode" and all of my 42 games work offline. End of story. If I'm offline, it tells me "hey you're offline, do you want to start in offline mode" I click yes, all of my 42 games work offline. End of the rebuke story. You do need to be online at least once in the installation, at the beginning. I think there might be settings to do to ensure it works. But if your brain is powerful enough to allow for breathing, then you should be able to figure it out. Bottomline is, if the game doesn't need to update and works properly, you make your Steam stop asking to go online, then it won't go nuts.
Provost Martin
Chieftain
- Joined
- May 2, 2010
- Messages
- 82
Is this what you're referring to? http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/flowing/core.html
They also hyped the creature stage, and the space era. People were like: "this is going to become the ultimate game".
GlobularFoody
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2010
- Messages
- 237
Count me in as well. I watched a video they made with Robin Williams playing it and thought it would be loads of fun. I never even finished my first game it was such a monumental disappointment. I mean damn, even the very first RTS games had 10x the gameplay, depth, and just plain fun that was completely absent from Spore.
The only thing I thought was actually fun was watching my creatures dance at the campfire with the mexican music playing, and that got old after the first 3-4 times.
Cell stage was fun and probably can't do anything more to enhance it, but EVERYTHING after it can't even be considered a game...just a tech demo maxis can sell because of their fame from the sims.
Yes...I'm upset I wasted $40..
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2004
- Messages
- 13,725
FYI: EA apparently isn't giving up on Spore.
Check Q4: 2011 There's a Spore title listed.
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=443622
Also this....Darkspore
Link to video.
Check Q4: 2011 There's a Spore title listed.
http://investor.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=443622
Also this....Darkspore
Link to video.
Count me in as well. I watched a video they made with Robin Williams playing it and thought it would be loads of fun. I never even finished my first game it was such a monumental disappointment. I mean damn, even the very first RTS games had 10x the gameplay, depth, and just plain fun that was completely absent from Spore.
The only thing I thought was actually fun was watching my creatures dance at the campfire with the mexican music playing, and that got old after the first 3-4 times.
Cell stage was fun and probably can't do anything more to enhance it, but EVERYTHING after it can't even be considered a game...just a tech demo maxis can sell because of their fame from the sims.
Yes...I'm upset I wasted $40..
I hope you learned something from this.
The Almighty dF
Pharaoh
Yeah. I... I don't think a video game has ever disappointed me that much. Maybe Banjo Kazooie 3, since I was a big fan of 1 & 2 as a kid.
It's like the video game equivalent of Star Wars Episode 1. All that hype, the waiting, and then... you get bad actors, good actors giving terrible performances, a god awful script, and a CGI rabbit that talks like some old timey black face character.
GlobularFoody
Warlord
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2010
- Messages
- 237
I hope you learned something from this.
Indeed. From now on, if these companies aren't going to release a demo...then I'm going to get the "unofficial demo" to try it out...
The Almighty dF
Pharaoh
I almost did this.
The game leaked a few weeks before release, and I had a preorder on the Spore deluxe edition, so I felt entitled to a "try before I get it since I'm already paying more"... but I didn't.
Not for moral reasons, I think I was distracted by... hahaha, Civ4 actually. It was when I was working on my own mod.
Well it's all been established a hundred times over but they didn't only hype the game. They lied about it. Heck why wouldn't people think that it was a more advanced Beta version - not a stripped Beta version - that became the full game.
There's alot of stuff that went on with two camps fighting each other and the more superficial (spelling?) winning. It's a pitty. Not only because people lost alot of money on something that wasn't worth the CD it was printed on but because the real thing would have been such an amazing experience.
Like many say the minigame of cellstage is the only thing that even comes close to something worth playing and having some replayability but similiar games can be played for free online...
So I don't blame you guys even though it's a lesson to be learned. I bought Doom 3 without testing it for I knew I could trust those guys to make good stuff and seeing the videos/reading about it. You just can't trust EA though. Maxis you could but not EA. Never trust the beast...also never trust satan
BTW: Thx for your signature bro. It seems i won't even be buying Civ 5 even if it came without Steam. The tech trading, developing and choosing of different paths was one of the most fun things. That stuff is just ridicilous. And that's me talking, someone who doesn't have anything against Panzer General 3 syste!
There's alot of stuff that went on with two camps fighting each other and the more superficial (spelling?) winning. It's a pitty. Not only because people lost alot of money on something that wasn't worth the CD it was printed on but because the real thing would have been such an amazing experience.
Like many say the minigame of cellstage is the only thing that even comes close to something worth playing and having some replayability but similiar games can be played for free online...
So I don't blame you guys even though it's a lesson to be learned. I bought Doom 3 without testing it for I knew I could trust those guys to make good stuff and seeing the videos/reading about it. You just can't trust EA though. Maxis you could but not EA. Never trust the beast...also never trust satan
BTW: Thx for your signature bro. It seems i won't even be buying Civ 5 even if it came without Steam. The tech trading, developing and choosing of different paths was one of the most fun things. That stuff is just ridicilous. And that's me talking, someone who doesn't have anything against Panzer General 3 syste!
The Almighty dF
Pharaoh
Well it's all been established a hundred times over but they didn't only hype the game. They lied about it. Heck why wouldn't people think that it was a more advanced Beta version - not a stripped Beta version - that became the full game.
There's alot of stuff that went on with two camps fighting each other and the more superficial (spelling?) winning. It's a pitty. Not only because people lost alot of money on something that wasn't worth the CD it was printed on but because the real thing would have been such an amazing experience.
Like many say the minigame of cellstage is the only thing that even comes close to something worth playing and having some replayability but similiar games can be played for free online...
So I don't blame you guys even though it's a lesson to be learned. I bought Doom 3 without testing it for I knew I could trust those guys to make good stuff and seeing the videos/reading about it. You just can't trust EA though. Maxis you could but not EA. Never trust the beast...also never trust satan
BTW: Thx for your signature bro. It seems i won't even be buying Civ 5 even if it came without Steam. The tech trading, developing and choosing of different paths was one of the most fun things. That stuff is just ridicilous. And that's me talking, someone who doesn't have anything against Panzer General 3 syste!
Yeah, I think the tech tree was the clencher for me. At first they started to lose me with the lack of individual leaders, since civs and leaders are now one in the same (meaning it'll be difficult for modders to add in leaders.) Then they started to lose me with the 3 DLC civs.
One look at the tech tree though... that kinda sealed the deal. All hope just kinda vanished.
Don't get me wrong. If Civ5 turns out to be better than it looks, I'll buy it. My signature only means that if it -is- what it looks like, they won't be getting my money.
