“Cute and Creepy” Spore expansion pack listed by US retailers

I’m actually looking forward to the release of this, but not for the reason that most might think.

If the expansion is at all sloppy when it comes to injecting the new content into Spore, it might give us some further clues as to how the modding community could do even greater things with it. The creature creator is grand and all, but it would be so much more nifty if it were possible to design something in a 3D app and import that for one’s creatures.

“it would be so much more nifty if it were possible to design something in a 3D app and import that for one’s creatures.”

which would totally take away the point of doing it in game. The creatures possibly the only good thing about spore

More creatures bits is the last thing it needs. The editors are fine, its the gameplay itself that’s lacking.

@David

I don’t see that.

The thing is though, I’ve been dipping into the Sporepedia quite a lot and I’ve probably viewed thousands of submissions already and there are always a few problems that resurface on all creatures.

Due to the lack of certain parts, it means people have to be “creative”, and this is met with varying levels of success. There are some areas though where this just doesn’t work. Almost every Lion I’ve seen is pitiable, for example, due to the lack of a mane-piece. It’s possible to achieve a certain degree of maneness with the hair piece, but that only goes so far.

Now if one could add their own pieces via a 3D editing application, then one could create their own Spore bits.

You wouldn’t have to worry though, there are various reasons why unsigned parts could and would never appear on the Sporepedia, this would purely be something for the person’s local copy. And it would suit the more artsy-fartsy of us out there who’re actually really trying to create something with the editor, as opposed to just fooling around with it.

Hell, even Yahtzee made fun of the Fisher Price nature of the editor. Mods could help ease the issues there, by a great margine. I don’t see how modded in bits would ruin the game, they’d empower it.

But then… as I said, I think we’re looking at the creation tools from two entirely different perspectives.

@JPickford

Couldn’t agree more with that.

The mods do help to a degree to fix the insipidly broken space stage, but I’d love to see an addon package by EA designed to add stuff to the space stage to improve it.

For example…

Space Stations: These could probably be built to allow the player to have a fleet. Any system with a space station could allow players to take more of their own people’s ships into their posse. There could also be upgrades to the station that allow for different kinds of things. For example, one upgrade may allow for cargo ships that ferry spice from planets in a system with that kind of upgraded station to you, so you wouldn’t have to visit them. Another kind could be an enhanced communications platform so you could talk with other systems that do have said platform from a distance. This would be great for economists who could buy out systems from the solar-system view.

Mercenaries: There could be a space-borne police force, comprised of numerous races. There could be the option to opt into this for the player, they’d have to pay a tax to the mercs for their protection but the benefits would be worth it. Based on the amount of tax paid, there could be different per centages of protection. This would mean that one would have to run back to one’s colonies less if one were at war, much less if it were due to pirate attacks, and so on…

Ark: This is much more complicated, with certain upgrades a player could build an Ark. An Ark could be used to store different forms of life and could be called in via one of the ship’s tools, at which point life could be freely traded back and forth with the Ark. The player could also pay to upgrade the Ark, which they could then dispatch to deal with ecological disasters as opposed to having to rush off to a planet to do this themselves.

Missions: After running a bunch of the normal races, you may become renowned with the races as someone who gets things done. Perhaps this would occur when the player obtains the Missionista 2 or 3 badge. When this occurs, the races would start contacting the player and offering jobs, these contracts would pay 10x/15x more than the normal mission payout.

Unification: This would work in a similar way to how the other stages end. Once the player has enough alliances, they could declare a Unification. This would be an end-game space solution for those who didn’t take the military path. It would mostly be for show, but it would also allow the player to gather together a great force to actually finally defeat the Grox with once and for all. I don’t know how this could work for militaristic players though, but they seem to have found their own way via the planet buster, so that may not be an issue. Once the Grox are defeated, the Unification could simply serve to provide better trade prices, and better mission payouts for the player cooperating with Unified planets.

These five elements would greatly help fix the space stage by introducing an element of strategy. This way, a person could run missions early on and become renowned, and then use the money from renowned systems to buy and upgrade an Ark, and then to start peppering space stations throughout their outposts and upgrading them. With the Ark they could upgrade their planets to T3 more easily and then the space stations would start relaying spice to them. With a good spread of planets the player could then go about seeking either Unification or the militaristic domination of the Universe.

In other words, it would help give the game the sense of flow that it desperately needs.