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A Lesson from Spore
CactusmanX
Member Posts: 2,218
Ok so Spore has it's problems, but there are some things that it did well and things that I think MMOGs, or any game really could learn from.
What I am refering to is the customization, the concept of not only giving players the tools to customize the appearence of creatures vehicles and buildings but create it using simple yet flexible tools.
This could be applied to MMOGs in terms of character creation, for example say you select elf as your race, you could then choose from catelogs of elf ears, eyes, mouths, hair, torsos, arms and legs that you could piece together, resize and color.
Or apply this to crafting, you could choose from different blades, guards, handles and pommels, resize and recolor to make the weapon you wanted both statistically and visually. Or expand this to vehicles and guns in a sci-fi game or castles, boats, clothing and armor etc.
Of course there would be limites on the size of objects and people.
The concept of piece-wise construction is a rather simple one but I think it could have lots of promise in a MMOG and you could use a layout similar to what spore has. I just don't know how difficult it would be to implement the feature in an online game.
Anywho, so what do you guys think?
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Comments
Every game that allows someone to have this thing called freedom or customization has failed.
AC>EQ's customization but EQ>AC in terms of the mainstream.
Shadowbane>Most games in terms of customization but once again Every Other Game>Shadowbane according to most people.
UO>Most games with its sandbox approach and customization of characters (skill wise as well as pure looks) but once again EOG>UO to most people because of its graphics and learning curve.
Perfect World>All free games in terms of customizing your character but blah blah blah it's not as good as others with a linear game path.
The point is that people like to be guided and don't want freedom. If you don't believe me, look back at all the games that allow for amazing customization and look at how far they've made it. None of them are the big games right now because:
Spoon Fed Quests+Linear Gameplay>Freedom and Customization
That's just how MMOs are.
Devolopers arent willing too put this level of effort into their games, they have shown that already.
The only company that comes close is cryptic, and not anyone has made an effort to use the level of detail in city of heroes, nor will they take queues from champions online. You wont see the level of customization that spore has in any MMO, you wont even see depth in an MMO for a long time to come.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
And that's why current MMO's are mainly shite. It's not that Freedom and Customization bomb a game, they just aren't developed properly with those features. There is a very fine balance you have to hit and no one has done it yet.
If SWG was polished much further on launch and wasn't an 'empty sandbox' but rather a huge sandbox with lots of adventures and well done quest strings as well as strong PVP, it would have been a killer game. So far, every game has tried to go extreme one way or the other. A hybrid is what's needed.
BOYCOTTING EA / ORIGIN going forward.
it is a good idea, however i remember reading somewhere (sorry cant find the link) that the only reason why Spore could do what it did was that it used some sort of weird gravity system and very strange animation techniques. the reason why every game isnt doing the same is they spend much more time on content rather than customisation. i agree that they should be able to add in eyes, mouth, legs kind of customisation and it would be nice to carry that over onto armour and weapons.(dyes are ok but they can only go so far)
LOTRO is going to introduce (and i support it) legendary weapons that "level up" with you. this means you can focus on that one weapon you always loved and not dump it because you out lvl it or its stats arent what you need. combine that with (correct me if i am wrong) WAR's armour system where you get heads of enemies and trophies on your armour (they were planning this a while back, not sure if it is still there). anyway combine those 2 systems and your character not only looks good (in your eyes) but it can (and should) be quite unique.
i doubt we will see any companies focus so much on these aspects (in 2+ years of development they cant even implement all the content they want) until they pick up their game and actually release decent products
MMO wish list:
-Changeable worlds
-Solid non level based game
-Sharks with lasers attached to their heads
Horrible post. Character custimization was the one thing City of Heroes got right.
And look at Second Life. It's nothing but freedom and its yearly revenues are staggering. The funny part is that the players provide the content- not the developers
Terrible post
And how do you think Counterstrike got here? Team Fortress?
Oh yes you can do a lot of stuff with a secondlife like engine. Pretty much morph your character into a dragon that's the size of a house if you really wanted to and were clever enough to work with and around the creation system. Occasionally you can even end up finding stuff that looks better than stuff you see in a lot of MMOs.
Granted that goes way to far for what I'd want to see in an MMO, just being able to custimize the stats and modify the skin a bit is enough for me. for crafting not with fricking sliders but rather with the materials used and processes used.
I find it amazing that by 2020 first world countries will be competing to get immigrants.
Spore came across as a rather half assed effort to me.
I suspect they got pushed into releasing early.
You can't MMO + high custom , unless to plan on having servers and connections that can ad hoc d/l allllll that massive amount of content from each player in the area.
Spore as a game just sucks. As an creative platform its not bad.
See the problem with spore is that it is ONLY CUSTOMIZABLE in its graphics/art and player ability only changes in the very first stage. Other than that its the same thign over and over. I never went to the middle of my galaxy because well i had everything i could want just selling spice and terra forming anythign i saw in my area. If i played the game agian for em right now it would offer nothing to me, and i only spent a day and maybe a half on it. (other than i could make stuff look different).
Spores real goal should have been in creature, tribe, civilizations, planet, etc customization of abilities and skills. If i put these feet here and these legs this long my creature should move x fast because that is how the physics of it would work. A big mouth should do more damage but have draw backs, bigger teeth .. same thing. But instead its just a neat 3d art program.
ps to the post after mine, you can bypass it if you know whats up
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one ..." - Thomas Paine
Actually, the lesson from Spore is :
DO NOT INSTALL IT !
If you did, you put a DRM Rootkit onto your system called SecuROM.
SecuROM is made by Sony and monitors all activity on your system for activity that it does not consider 'legal'. It also sends reports over the net to EA and Sony regarding your system activity.
Uninstalling Spore does NOT remove the Rootkit.
You can search your Registry and Hard Disk for the word 'SecuROM' to confirm it as being on your system.
You will need to Wiki and Google 'SecuROM' to find the special tools and instructions to remove it.
Don't be fooled by the empty looking Registry entries. If you see them, then SecuROM is there, running, and Active. It uses Registry hacks and security holes to hide itself and make itself unremovable.
If you installed Spore,
Good Luck
That was kind of the point I was making, I am not talking about the rest of the game, I am talking about the customization, specifically the concept of creating an item or character by parts something that MMOGs do not have much of. Statistical customization is good and all but is lackluster without some aesthetic control.
Don't you worry little buddy. You're dealing with a man of honor. However, honor requires a higher percentage of profit
Isn't the DRM an invasion of privacy? What can we as consumers do to protect ourselves other than not purchase and install the game?
Sadly, nothing.
At least right now.
Isn't the DRM an invasion of privacy? What can we as consumers do to protect ourselves other than not purchase and install the game?
Yes it is an invasion of privacy but sadly the only thing we can do right now is not buy the games that use this restrictive DRM and let other people know about the problem on gaming and web retail sites
Hopefully EA will learn this lesson through a loss of sales sooner that later.
@Josher.... the post from shoal is bang on correct and in no way paranoid these games with DRM on them also limit the amount of times you can install them on your system, so everytime you unintall the game, reformat/clean your system or buy a new comp you lose one of 3 attempts to put it back again.
The other thing about Spore, is the lesson that while you can give people creative tools to make stuff with, a large amount of them will use them to make obscene stuff. Custom and user generated content is great, but it has to policed, otherwise you have a game full of genitalia.
R.I.P. City of Heroes and my 17 characters there
CoH and CoV had pretty powerful customization tools. The closest to a preset look in those games was the random generation button. I think it would be a good thing in most games if it had preset looks and preset peices of avatars as well as an advanced option in which things could be altered for the people who want a more unique look.
The character preset generation or lack of does not actually effect the popularity of a game as far as I'm concerned, its a very very minor part of a game. Its silly to think that games with good customization are less popular solely because of it.
I think I have a different SPORE game then you have, with my version I have allot of different mouths to choose from with all sorts of different abiltiy's, so my version sin't a neath 3d art program, same goes with allot of other things I can ad to my character. Space is where it's at, you gain allot and I do mean allot of extra's/specials during the course in Space, the ground game comparedto space is actualy very limited, but the ground game is importent to how you start your civ.
But I do know that just like any game some like it some don't, some play what it has to offer some not, and some seem to have different versions and some not....meh...
btw working on a Star Wars version of my galaxie in Spore, will post soon something about it when I am satisfied with what I have created.
Developers ARE willing to make a great game with customizable characters. City of Heroes anyone? It's amazing how this game gets overlooked so much. Developers are scared that companies like Marvel are gonna sue them because they gave their players too many lego blocks to build with.
Players will make their Legolas, Setheroth, Goku, Ryu, Spiderman, and every other kind of clone. Then the company has to go out of their way to find these rip offs and remove it from their game, otherwise they get sued for making money off of other peoples IP. And promoting players to use the MMOs engine to charcters of other IPs.
That was what happened with CoH. So instead, most games focus on the character's face and that is all.
I've had a simular crafting idea about actually changing the look of the characters armor as you craft it. If you add trinkets or horns you get to actually place where the trinkets go on the armor and what their size is. that would be an awesome crafting system.
Spore and COH have nothing on the customization of the upcoming mmo APB. Don't believe me? Watch this VIDEO. Make sure you watch the end where they make characters out of star game designers Richard Garriott, Shigeru Miyamoto, Peter Molyneux, and Warren Spector. The video was taken off a projection screen at the game developers conference so the graphics are actually much sharper than you see.
Own, Mine, Defend, Attack, 24/7
I wasn't too interested in trying Spore.
But I heard an interview with Will Wright on NPR, and he went into more detail about the game then i had read about yet. Made it sound like a lot of fun.
He said decisions made at each stage of your creatures progression can have major effects on your creature in the future.
This kind of cause and effect customization would work perfectly in MMORPGs i believe.
If you craft a lot during early phases of your characters life, it could effect all kinds of skills and abilities you may get in the future.
Just like pvping could effect you differently in the future, then lots of pve. Or the way you fight, what you use to fight, any number of things you can think of.
Even down to the food you eat. If i drink milk more during my progression, maybe i have higher constitution but lower stamina, then if i drank water. Or any number of creative things you could think of.
The idea of progressive cause and effect in an RPG is very intriguing, and I can see where spore might bring this concept to the fore front again.
"The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius."
-Oscar Wilde
Hey,I installed the creature creator trial some days ago.Do i have any problem with SecuROM or does it come only with the full game of Spore?
Yes I agree it would be great to see deeper customisation options in our MMO's. Sadly there probably wont be any BIG changes for quite some time. On some other notes, I loved the amount of options you have in CoX when it comes to character creation. They did a tremendous job in that department. Also I recently bought Spore and in my opinion it friggen sucks. I hate it. It's really boring and the creature creator is the only great thing about it. Just a big waste of money for me sadly, and I REALLY hope that stuff about spore installing a program where EA has access to your pc info isn't true. What a piece of junk. : (
This does not bother me one bit.
All there trying to do is stop ppl copying there game far on them i say
IMO a Spore MMORPG would be teh awesomez.
Maybe if single player does well enough (which I sincerely doubt unless they get rid of that ridiculous and insulting "prove to us you are not a thief" DRM) then we might get lucky enough to see a massively multiplayer spinoff.
(That and Will Wright's curious dislike of direct multiplayer... hmm what gives man? Multiplayer = perfect copy protection. No nasty DRMs to screw up your baby.)
As for customization in othe MMOS... absolutely. However the problem isn't how to give players the tools, it is very easy to give players an ability to build castles and continents on a whim. The problem is in how to restrict those features in a way that will make a good game while preserving maximum possible freedom of expression. (Spore obscenities are a very good example of problems inherent to this model). EVE online strikes a particularly good balance there.
In short - this approach requires masterful game design at the level which is frankly beyond the vast majority of people in the business right now. Even Will Wright who is like a god of god games chose some easier ways out and kinda slipped at appendage balancing which is currently leading to uber creature builds.
Oh, you mean City of Heroes? If you haven't played with their character creation, you should try it.
This does not bother me one bit.
All there trying to do is stop ppl copying there game far on them i say
The problem is the DRM won't stop pirates as they just make a version without it to download, the only thing the DRM does is inconvenience customers who legally purchased their game. Also you may not have a problem now but beware of the 3 install limit if you use this up you have to phone EA customer support and hope they allow you one more.