User:Flytdais/ideas

From SporeWiki, the knowledge base dedicated to Spore

These are just some of my suggestions for what I would like to see in Spore. It's a great game, but it's really lacking in some respects. Some of these things would make it either more realistic, more fun, or probably both. I've separated it into the stages, and I hope they put at least some of these ideas into future expansion packs.

Contents 1 Cell stage 2 Creature stage 3 Creature Editor 4 Tribal stage 5 Civilization stage 6 Space stage 7 General

[edit] Cell stage

• Right now, your only available actions are to hit things on contact, shoot poison, eat, and mate. It would be cool to see some more special abilities like "Mitosis", where you can divide up into a bunch of cells and attack a bigger cell.
• Piles of rubble and cave-like obstacles for exploring.
• Better movement controls.

[edit] Creature stage

I have a lot to say for this stage; it is possibly the worst one in Spore. Not only for what it is, but for what it could be but isn't. So I've got many suggestions:

• First of all, the "nest" concept should be rid of entirely. Or at least be made optional. A more realistic alternative would be to let players choose the lifestyle of their creature as they play — form packs, or go at it alone, or even form large swarms if their creature is small enough. And each choice should be equally balanced so that none is better than another. For example, if you want to form packs, you will be better at killing prey, but you will have to divide food up, so each member (including the player's creature) gets less. If they want to make nests, they can do that too.
  • Other creatures should be the same way. Some travel in herds or packs, and others alone (no, I do not mean rogues; I mean solitary creatures).
• Finding a mate should not be so easy. I propose two things to solve that:
  • Introduce sexes as an option. Players can choose to play as a male or female creature, or have their species be hermaphroditic (like all species are now). Again, it should be balanced; so if they choose the latter, it would be harder to find a member of your species that's interested.
  • Get rid of the nest idea and make finding a mate like a mini side-quest. The mating call command could be used to call on potential mates from far away and find their location. And when they do find the mate, they must "charm" them just like allies. So they would probably have to introduce some kind of "mating ritual" concept.
• AI in Spore is oversimplified and dull. So introduce a "Behavior Editor" in addition to the Creature Editor. Here, players can choose between different behavioral options for their species (not individual creatures). Most of these traits will be "programmed" into the species and determine how the NPC's (non-playable creatures) act and will even transfer into other players' games. I suggest things like:
  • Determine their "personality": hostile, friendly, curious, lazy, fearful, etc.
  • Choose if you want sexual dimorphism or not. You can change things like color, size, even the entire shape of the creature (but just to keep it fair and simple, you can't remove or add any parts).
  • Similar to dimorphism, edit the appearance of the creature at different stages of its life and at different statuses, if you wish (baby, juvenile, adult, alpha).
  • Determine the specifics of the creature's diet. If it's an herbivore or carnivore, you can't change that, but you can change which types of foliage and prey it goes for.
  • If it's a predator, determine its preferred method of killing: ambush, deception, pack hunting, cornering, chasing, scavenging, etc.
  • Choreograph a mating ritual step by step.
  • Compose calls, just like in the anthem creator.
  • Choose its habitat/shelter: trees, caves, underground, shoreline, etc.
  • Choose its active time of day: diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular.
  • You don't even have to choose one single option for every field! Do ratios. For example, a predator that eats small prey 30% of the time, medium prey 60% of the time, and large prey 10% of the time.
• Introduce real flying. Continuous three-dimensional movement in the sky, all that. Not just gliding.
• Do I even have to say it? Arboreal and aquatic creatures!!
• Fruit should not be the only available food source for herbivores. There should be edible leaves, sap, roots, and seeds.
• Allow cannibalism. But if your creature/pack does that, the rest of the species will act hostile towards them.
• Add caves to the terrain, where the player can explore and find interesting things. Rivers and lakes, too.
• An actual day cycle. Go from day to dusk to night. It would make things much more interesting, especially if you include some of the other suggestions I've offered.
• Add new abilities:
  • Dig - creature can dig burrows to rest in (recover health that way) or find food. Higher levels extend how deep you can dig for food or how big your burrow can be.
  • Bioelectric - creature can produce shocks of electricity to either defend itself or stun prey. Different levels 1—5 produce different effects (level 1 paralyzes target for 5 seconds, level 3 for 20, level 4 and 5 stun and damage them).
  • Bioluminescence - attracts all creatures in a certain radius to you. Can be used to find prey, gather allies, or find potential mates. Works only at night. However, be warned it will attract predators as well. Higher levels extend your range.
  • Swim - creature can swim, of course. Higher levels extend your speed and your ability to fight against currents.
  • Climb - climb trees. Higher levels let you climb taller trees.
  • Stench - similar to Bioluminescence, but it does the opposite: drives all creatures within a certain radius away from you. It won't work on certain predators, though.
  • Sonar (Echolocation) - navigate dark caves and see hidden creatures. Higher levels increase your range.
  • Intimidate - a social ability. Except, rather than cause creatures to be your allies, causes them to be fearful of you. You can then exploit them, stealing their food and intruding on their nest.
• Play from baby to juvenile to adult. Each "substage" has different challenges. You can also skip the first two stages if you want and go straight to adult.
• More corpses lying around for creatures to scavenge. A scavenging creature would have a difficult time surviving at the current rate of corpses. I know; I have tried to play like a scavenger before.

[edit] Creature Editor

• Allow for part-specific painting, like in the vehicle and building editors.
• Also allow the user to create custom galleries of paintjobs.
• Make the feet and hands fit more realistically onto the limbs. At the moment, they poke out unseemly from the ends and they're a different color and it looks fake.
• Toggle assymetry. I know, you can glitch it, but I've tried and it's difficult and inconvenient to try to get it right. Plus, you can't do it for all parts.
• Tentacles. The problem with making tentacles currently is manifold. If you try to make it with flagella, you can't change the length, curve, thickness, or any of those things like in regular parts. If you try to make it with limbs, they don't taper at the end; they end up looking like sausages. If you try to use the Whipwhick part, you can't change the thickness. So customizable tentacles should be a separate option.
• Same thing with tails. There's no good way to make tails that taper to a point and move realistically.
• You really can't edit the shape of fangs at the moment. You can make fake fangs using horns, but those don't look good. There should be a way to edit teeth.

[edit] Tribal stage

• The biggest possible improvement to the tribal stage would be to expand agriculture and domestication. Yeah, you can domesticate creatures, but it would be really cool to own an entire flock of creatures and use them for food (besides eggs — meat and milk, too) and transportation. Same thing for plants. As your tribe grows and conquers more tribes, the size of its farmlands should grow. This would realistically mirror the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculture, which precedes the change to civilization.
• This means tribes should probably start out as nomads. Players can move their nomadic tribe's temporary site at any time when resources run low at the current site (and they should run low eventually). Players can still remain nomadic all the way through the tribal stage as long as they conquer all tribes along the way.
• There should be more than five tribes to interact with. That's really too few.
• Like I briefly mentioned, transportation on animals should be considered. In fact, this can even mirror the Civilization stage. At first, you can only mount terrestrial creatures, but as you advance, you get the option to mount swimming, even flying animals.
• Bring back the Hut editor.
• When you conquer a tribe, destroying them should be an option. If you don't destroy them, you can collect tributes from them, like "food tax", but you must keep them happy or they will rebel.
• You should be able to make several different costumes for your tribe, then equip each tribe member according to their job (axeling, gatherer, chieftain, etc.)

[edit] Civilization stage

• You should have the option to found new cities, for a certain cost.
• Underwater and floating cities should be included. You can submerge coastal cities into underwater domes, or raise terrestrial cities into the skies. Perhaps underground cities as well.
• This would probably require a new class of vehicle: underwater. Like submarines. Which is fine, I'd love an underwater vehicle editor.
• Different options for making settlements. Not simply large cities, but also small towns on the outskirts, farmlands (you need farms anyway), mining communities centered around spice derricks, and of course, also huge sprawling metropolises stretching halfway across the continent. This would make things a lot more interesting, as you would have to vary your strategy when trying to conquer different types of settlements.
• Similarly, have different buildings rather than simply houses, entertainment, and factories. Such as:
  • Hospitals - more hospitals and medical centers increase the rate at which your buildings and vehicles recover health.
  • Universities - more educational facilities increase the rate at which you acquire new technology (this would require introduction of said technology in future expansion packs). New technology could include better turrets, better weapons and propulsion for vehicles.
  • Power plants - you need energy-producing plants (perhaps ones that burn spice?) in order to increase the size of your city. The more plants, the bigger your city will be. But to balance things out, power plants, like factories, make your citizens unhappy.
• There should also be a pollution meter for your cities. Pollution goes against the effects of Hospitals like factories go against the effects of entertainment centers, so you must balance the two.
• At the moment, any weapon you attach to a vehicle simply makes it stronger when it shoots. That's unrealistic and there should instead be different types of weapons, such as cannons, machine guns, heat-seeking missiles, automatic turrets (like the auto-blaster in space stage), landmines, et cetera.
• And different classes of vehicle that make use of each sort of weapon. For example, you can produce different classes of vehicles of a single type (land, sea, or air), each class with its own specialty (you can have tanks, fast vehicles, and landmine deployment), and use them all at once. This would allow for a much greater level of strategy, which oddly enough, is lacking in the civilization stage.
• Similar to what I said for the tribal stage, you should have the option of making different costumes for the different nations.
• The decorations for cities also suck. Those should be improved.
• In fact, a "City editor" would probably be a good idea. One where not only can you change the layout of factories and houses and such, but you can change the shape of your city, the closeness of the buildings, the size and shape and location of trees, and choose different types of buildings to put in different sections of the city (one type of house in the north quadrant, another in the south, and so on).
• Civilizations should be able to fund explorations into uncivilized or unconquered lands. They can use military vehicles to set up military outposts, economic vehicles to set up trading posts, or religious vehicles to set up missions.
• Toggle the symmetry in the vehicle editors, too.

[edit] Space stage

• Visiting planets gets really repetitive after a while. There should be more things to explore, more sidequests and more variety of missions. After all, this is the final stage in the game.
• Planets should not have a limit of three colonies. Sure, there should be a limit, but it should not be just three. Make that ten, or make it dependent on the type of spice on the planet. More expensive spice means less cities.
• Gas giants should not be off-limits. The game gives the excuse they're too dangerous, but there should be a technology like the Wormhole Key that lets you enter the atmosphere of gas giants, though realistically, terraforming them would be impossible.
• Open up the possibility of outer space for large-scale battles.
• Command the ships in your fleet to bomb cities, or send them to other planets to take care of pirates, to gather spice, etc.

[edit] General

• Creatures with no legs should have the option of either dragging themselves along, or hovering.
• Every stage should be longer than it is at the moment. If you made some changes to them, it would actually be fun to play for that long.
• There should be different habitats on a planet, if you want to be realistic. Not simply forested and non-forested areas; deserts, too, and polar caps, swamps, plains, steppes.
• The scale of the terrain should also be bigger. I realize making an entire planet-sized terrain on a videogame is nigh impossible, but that's not even necessary. Twice the size of what it is currently would be enough, I think.
• While you're at it, there should be a Planet Editor. Edit your home planet from scratch.
• Play as an Epic!

I don't care about creepy and cute parts. These are the things Maxis should be adding to the game.