Darkspore Beta on Steam now! - Games

That's what I assume. There is no solid tie between the two games aside from the general mechanics such as the editor or how they walk.

Holy shit, this is actually tons of fun. The difficulty curve is really well-laid out and matchmaking with other people is actually enjoyable. I must say I really love the graphics, the ice on Cryos is very sexy, not to mention the trippy-as-fuck Zelem's Nexus. The game feels alot like Diablo as others mentioned, but it isn't a bad thing. The game really is better than it sounds and I'd definitely recommend trying the beta. It's a shame it ends tomorrow :sigh:

It's a decent enough Diablo clone... but here's what I hate about it: It's Dark[b]Spore[/b], and it uses Spore's creature creator interface as its inventory screen. Those two facts alone would make you think that this is a game where you get to build your own genetic hero and fight with him online alongside other player's genetic heroes. Or maybe you would expect that the game would be procedurally generated in some way, to provide infinite variety in the enemies you have to fight. Wrong on both counts, it turns out! No building heroes from scratch, since every player gets the same list of prebuilt heroes to choose from. Granted it's a big list, but it's such a buzzkill to get into an online game and realize that the other two players have some of the same heroes as you with the exact same skill set. In the creature creator, all that you can do is change the size of certain body parts (e.g. feet, eyes, but not the actual shape of your hero's body), the skin color, and stick on extra cosmetic bits. The trouble with this is that all of the heroes already come with tons of little cosmetic details. If heroes started off plain and uninteresting but could be slowly built up to appear badass, that would be worthwhile. But instead, equipping your character mostly winds up to be sticking little spiky bits onto a character already covered in spiky bits. That, combined with the fact that there's no player-chosen stat or skill development (as in Diablo) means that there's almost no feeling of ownership of a hero. No matter how much time you spend in the editor or leveling up, there are tons of players out there with the exact same hero appearance (maybe in a different color) with the exact same skills. I think that the devs missed a huge opportunity here by making the creature creator play a role far smaller than it deserves. But I guess that's par for the course, because Spore did the exact same thing! Aside from that, there are just some plain stupid design choices. Considering that hero customization is negligible, the biggest aspect of player choice is what loadout of heroes you want for each mission. Given that fact, it's incredibly surprising that they make switching loadouts such a pain in the ass. You can only switch heroes when you're not in the "choose mission" screen, but you can only see which enemies you're facing (and thus which heroes you need to counter them) by choosing a level. So if you choose a level and find out that two of your current heroes will be absolutely useless, you have to spend about a minute just navigating through menus in order to switch them out. Ridiculous. How about putting the hero switcher and mission selection screen in the same goddamn place? There is no reason why they have to be completely separate (with an unskippable cutscene every time you switch between them D:). Plus that would alleviate my previous concern with playing coop and the other players having the same heroes as you. Every level felt exactly the same with just an appearance change. One or two environmental hazards that can be blown up, obelisks with items, and the same six enemies over and over and over again. And then there's the ship's computer, which talks [i]constantly[/i] as you play each level, trying to make the game seem more interesting by adding in "story". You know what, I don't care if this wreckage is from a crashed progenitor ship that was destroyed because heroes were reconstructed using destabilized EDNA because it doesn't affect the game [b]at all[/b]. You can't just make an entire game that's one big grindfest, then write a story on top of it and just have someone read it to you as you play. Eventually I started skipping all of the level's intro videos (and was looking for an option to turn of the computer's voice) because I felt no connection to the story whatsoever. In Diablo it's different, because the story is something you personally uncover as you play and because it's all tied to characters that you interact with and get to know. In Darkspore there's a complete disconnect between game and story. The more I write, the more I realize is wrong with this game...

I don't really see how creating a creature would really benefit the game. It's not that type of game.

What the hell? For some reason my email isn't working, I can't log in. Maybe the beta already ended.

[QUOTE=Larikang;28929470]It's a decent enough Diablo clone... but here's what I hate about it: I wana make my own heroes but oh wait if I did that then I'd still need to select skills and oh wait then PvP would be imbalanced as shit since everyone would just take the most OP skills and there'd be no strategy to it since you wouldn't know what type/skills/anything derp herp hire me i make gud game decisions Wrong on both counts, it turns out! No building heroes from scratch, since every player gets the same list of prebuilt heroes to choose from. Granted it's a big list, but it's such a buzzkill to be able to make strategic decisions in PVP based on the enemy heroes/skills. In the creature creator, all that you can do is change the size of certain body parts (e.g. feet, eyes, but not the actual shape of your hero's body), the skin color, and stick on extra cosmetic bits. The trouble with this is that all of the heroes already come with tons of little cosmetic details. I'm just going to type out a bunch of :words: without playing the game since every little bit is customizable and you can load up details on your hero and it's very rare to see two heroes looking the same since everyone tends to make their hero differently. In fact the only time they look the same is when people don't change anything at all. I think that the devs missed a huge opportunity here by making the creature creator play a role far smaller than it deserves. But I guess that's par for the course, because Spore did the exact same thing! Aside from that, there are just some plain stupid design choices. Considering that hero customization is negligible, the biggest aspect of player choice is what loadout of heroes you want for each mission. Given that fact, it's incredibly surprising that they make switching loadouts such a pain in the ass. Switching heroes is based on squads but I didn't play the game long enough to figure this out so I'm going to complain and bitch. The more I write, the more I realize I didn't play this game enough to understand it...[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Larikang;28929470]It's a decent enough Diablo clone... but here's what I hate about it: It's Dark[b]Spore[/b], and it uses Spore's creature creator interface as its inventory screen. Those two facts alone would make you think that this is a game where you get to build your own genetic hero and fight with him online alongside other player's genetic heroes. Or maybe you would expect that the game would be procedurally generated in some way, to provide infinite variety in the enemies you have to fight. Wrong on both counts, it turns out! No building heroes from scratch, since every player gets the same list of prebuilt heroes to choose from. Granted it's a big list, but it's such a buzzkill to get into an online game and realize that the other two players have some of the same heroes as you with the exact same skill set. In the creature creator, all that you can do is change the size of certain body parts (e.g. feet, eyes, but not the actual shape of your hero's body), the skin color, and stick on extra cosmetic bits. The trouble with this is that all of the heroes already come with tons of little cosmetic details. If heroes started off plain and uninteresting but could be slowly built up to appear badass, that would be worthwhile. But instead, equipping your character mostly winds up to be sticking little spiky bits onto a character already covered in spiky bits. That, combined with the fact that there's no player-chosen stat or skill development (as in Diablo) means that there's almost no feeling of ownership of a hero. No matter how much time you spend in the editor or leveling up, there are tons of players out there with the exact same hero appearance (maybe in a different color) with the exact same skills. I think that the devs missed a huge opportunity here by making the creature creator play a role far smaller than it deserves. But I guess that's par for the course, because Spore did the exact same thing! [/QUOTE] There's a pretty large arguement as to why the characters were pre-built on the Darkspore fourms [url=http://forums.darkspore.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3087]here.[/url] Also, now when I enter my email it asks for a beta key, when I put it in it says it's already in use. :sigh:

[QUOTE=Chilblain;28930513]There's a pretty large arguement as to why the characters were pre-built on the Darkspore fourms [url=http://forums.darkspore.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3087]here.[/url] [/QUOTE] All those reasons are bad. [b]Load Time[/b] The load time is barely impacted at all, you only have to load like 4 creatures for your match and that can be done in the lobby. Textures and parts are all packed in the game so there's barely anything to download. [b]Animation[/b] Who really cares about this? As he says, it barely ever goes wrong. So when it does you tweak it a bit. You could just have more animation choices for editing and it would work out better. [b]Editor Skill/Quality[/b] Spore's editor is extremely easy to use, that's the genius behind it. If you really can't make anything there were premade creatures in Spore you could have them in Darkspore aswell. [b]"Penis" Monsters[/b] I saw 0 lude creatures in Spore, after 60 hours of play time. If it really bothers you that much you can report and quit. [b]Gameplay Objectives[/b] Collecting weapons, colours, textures, parts, armor, upgrading your base, improving your rating, progressing through the game, and more are certainly enough. [b]Hero Skills and Abilities - With base models installed with the game Maxis is able to create abilities that go along with each hero's build, animation, and back story[/b] Give the ability to choose your own abilities, if that's too overpowered allow players to assign developer made "sets" to whichever character they like. Build the character and write the backstory as you see fit.

[QUOTE=lunarwalrus;28931360]All those reasons are bad.[/QUOTE] I agree with you. I don't really buy excuses for why something is dull. Spore was exactly the same though, so i'm not surprised in the least. The creature creator had no impact in spore except for a few minor parts choices.

Oh suppertime, your points seem so much more valid because you're being a massive dick about them. [QUOTE=suppertime;28930391]I wana make my own heroes but oh wait if I did that then I'd still need to select skills and oh wait then PvP would be imbalanced as shit since everyone would just take the most OP skills and there'd be no strategy to it since you wouldn't know what type/skills/anything derp herp hire me i make gud game decisions[/quote] Consult the lengthy list of balanced PvP RPGs where players get to choose their own skills and stats. [QUOTE=suppertime;28930391] In the creature creator, all that you can do is change the size of certain body parts (e.g. feet, eyes, but not the actual shape of your hero's body), the skin color, and stick on extra cosmetic bits. The trouble with this is that all of the heroes already come with tons of little cosmetic details. I'm just going to type out a bunch of without playing the game since every little bit is customizable and you can load up details on your hero and it's very rare to see two heroes looking the same since everyone tends to make their hero differently. In fact the only time they look the same is when people don't change anything at all.[/quote] "very rare" being almost every matchmaking game I played... [QUOTE=suppertime;28930391]Aside from that, there are just some plain stupid design choices. Considering that hero customization is negligible, the biggest aspect of player choice is what loadout of heroes you want for each mission. Given that fact, it's incredibly surprising that they make switching loadouts such a pain in the ass. Switching heroes is based on squads but I didn't play the game long enough to figure this out so I'm going to complain and bitch.[/quote] This was not made clear at all in the beta. You can have multiple squads with different collections of heroes in each? I played the beta for a few hours and didn't catch any of that. [QUOTE=suppertime;28930391]The more I write, the more I realize I didn't play this game enough to understand it...[/QUOTE] And none of your counterarguments, even if they were valid, change the fact that it's an incredibly shallow, repetitive game - even by action RPG standards. As for those reasons why people can't make their own characters: [quote][b]Load Time (also, "Invisible/No Detail Heroes")[/b] - If players were allowed to create their own heroes then players would have to download the creatures created by others. This takes time and would increase the load time when matchmaking. Matchmaking is the time it'd have to be done because that's when you are paired with other players whose heroes you'd have to see. Another possibility is invisible heroes or heroes with no color or detail if Maxis were to let it load even while playing. Why is this not a problem in Spore? Spore is a single player game. Players can choose creatures to download from Sporepedia or from Sporecasts. Spore has time to download the creatures before you meet them in the game. In Darkspore, this isn't the case. Darkspore has no idea what other players you're going to meet up with until you team up with them. With base models already installed with the game, it's a matter of loading the model into memory from your hard drive. This is speedy.[/quote] Spore's creatures (and I believed Darkspore's item stats) are procedurally generated, allowing them to be stored in a highly compressed form. That's how it was possible to store Spore creations inside PNGs. Download time for a handful of PNGs is negligible. As for loading time, consider the speed of the creature creator. How long is the delay between creating your creature and it being fully animated for you to test out? How long is the delay between choosing a coloring scheme and it being applied? That's about how long it would take to load such information. Hardly seems like a gamebreaker in terms of loading time. [quote][b]Animation[/b] - I can't tell you how many times I've tried to create creatures in Spore that just don't seem to walk right, or turn right. Don't get me wrong, Spore does great in getting this right more often than not. Darkspore is meant to be a step above. With base models already installed with the game, Maxis was able to create custom animation for each hero. This includes custom weapons held just right in the hand. And we don't have anything awkward like a cannon on the back aimed towards the sky that, in the game, shoots through the front of the hero to the enemies.[/quote] I have a feeling that part of that can be attributed to EA's admitted "dumbing down" of the creature creator in order to level out gameplay between characters. The sins of the father, etc. Even then, would the infinite variety available from customization not be worth the minority of bad eggs that might result from it? If a player is lazy and has a cannon shooting through the front of the hero to the enemy, who cares? Players who care about their heroes (which I bet would be the majority), would have the ability to fix such problems. [quote][b]Editor Skill/Quality[/b] - Let's face it, not everyone is great at creating Spore creatures. Especially my early ones looked really crappy. There's a skill involved there. Darkspore isn't limited by that. With base models installed with the game, everyone gets to use awesome looking creatures right out of the box. I might add here, too, that I was never able to create as awesome looking creatures in Spore as I see in Darkspore; I saw few that could get even close. So with base models from Maxis we get quality creatures.[/quote] Easy solution: include awesome looking creatures right out of the box [i]and[/i] let players create their own! [quote][b]"Penis" Monsters[/b] - With base models installed with the game, I don't have to play with ridiculous or disgusting player creations. Yes, players can still place parts in less-than-modest places, but I don't have to watch a Homer Simpson or a Toilet walking around as a player-made creation. I'm thankful for this. There is a place for this type of creativity. That place is Spore.[/quote] To be honest, I hadn't thought of this before you mentioned it. But that sounds awesome! A blacklist feature could allow overly sensitive players to block players with offensive heroes. [quote][b]Gameplay Objectives[/b] - This may be a lesser reason, and I can see more people disagreeing with this one, but have 100 select heroes gives us something to work for and collect. Collection is huge these days. People love collecting. Not everybody; some see it as an unreasonable limitation. But many do like to collect. People use the Pokemon reference and maybe in a degrading way; you've "gotta collect 'em all"! But then again, Pokemon has been hugely successful. At any rate, it's one reason.[/quote] Or collectibles could just be in the form of items, creature parts, paint styles, etc. Then we could have the best of both worlds. [quote][b]Hero Skills and Abilities[/b] - With base models installed with the game Maxis is able to create abilities that go along with each hero's build, animation, and back story.[/quote] How about a class-based system like most action RPGs? Rather than each hero having fixed skills, arrange the skills into skill trees (which could be huge, given the number of heroes in the game). Every time a player wants to try out different skills for a class, they can create a new creature of that class and explore a different skill tree. Judging from Spore, skill animations could be handled procedurally.

Real reason why they didn't include actual character creation. They are lazy.

[QUOTE=Carbon Knight;28933222]Real reason why they didn't include actual character creation. They are lazy.[/QUOTE] Yeah, they made an entire lengthy game with some decent depth and great visuals and then thought "Gaaaaahh, I don't want to take the coding from Spore, make some new visual things and get the editor working.". No, the real reason it wasn't included. This isn't the game for that.

[QUOTE=Take_Opal;28933816] with some decent depth[/QUOTE] Say that with a straight face.

I can. Easily.

I never played Spore, nor was I following this game, so I wasn't really expecting anything, and I've found it quite decent.

[QUOTE=lunarwalrus;28931360]All those reasons are bad. [b]"Penis" Monsters[/b] I saw 0 lude creatures in Spore, after 60 hours of play time. If it really bothers you that much you can report and quit.[/QUOTE] I don't know how spore worked but I'd imagine there'd be some sort of step in-between that validated if creatures were okay to put on the internet. And since you can't implement such a step in a real time game... Then again, it just also might be the fact that people didn't make so many penis creatures and they got caught really quickly. My main problem with this was that I've already seen all the heroes in the beta. There's 25 of them with 4 versions of each (different stats/colour schemes) and you can unlock all of the basic ones in the beta if I'm right.

I played the beta, it was rather fun but a little bit repetitive.

[QUOTE=kirederf7;28982535]I played the beta, it was rather fun but a little bit repetitive.[/QUOTE] Well yeah, but wasn't Diablo?

[QUOTE=Mingebox;28982547]Well yeah, but wasn't Diablo?[/QUOTE] True.

I tried the beta, and I thought it was pretty fun. I just don't fall for hype and get super disappointed and pissed off like most of you guys do. It's a good game, just not worth the high price which is just going to keep getting lower anyway.

[QUOTE=Larikang;28929470] Every level felt exactly the same with just an appearance change. One or two environmental hazards that can be blown up, obelisks with items, and the same six enemies over and over and over again. And then there's the ship's computer, which talks [i]constantly[/i] as you play each level, trying to make the game seem more interesting by adding in "story". You know what, I don't care if this wreckage is from a crashed progenitor ship that was destroyed because heroes were reconstructed using destabilized EDNA because it doesn't affect the game [b]at all[/b]. You can't just make an entire game that's one big grindfest, then write a story on top of it and just have someone read it to you as you play. Eventually I started skipping all of the level's intro videos (and was looking for an option to turn of the computer's voice) because I felt no connection to the story whatsoever. In Diablo it's different, because the story is something you personally uncover as you play and because it's all tied to characters that you interact with and get to know. In Darkspore there's a complete disconnect between game and story. [/QUOTE] I disagree with this especially, this game already reminded me of Metroid Prime with the art style and music, and I loved reading all the information about the ancient ruins, alien ecology, and strange technology. I will agree thought that the story is rather thing, but I still really enjoy the AI's dialogue.

[QUOTE=Stizzles;28982670]I tried the beta, and I thought it was pretty fun. I just don't fall for hype and get super disappointed and pissed off like most of you guys do. It's a good game, just not worth the high price which is just going to keep getting lower anyway.[/QUOTE] What hype? I'm going to play this now if anyone wants to, I'll be ingame.

Something I really like is that the aren't afraid to pot powerful or interesting modifiers on items, like one that increases your attack speed after using an ability, or increasing AoE damage by 30%. Lots of ARPGs make the sense of balancing items like they were an MMO.

[QUOTE=lunarwalrus;28982699]What hype? I'm going to play this now if anyone wants to, I'll be ingame.[/QUOTE] The original Spore was hyped to hell, and when this was announced people were basically led to believe that this would fix everything wrong with Spore, instead of being an entirely different game with some of the same aspects of Spore.

[QUOTE=Stizzles;28982725]The original Spore was hyped to hell, and when this was announced people were basically led to believe that this would fix everything wrong with Spore, instead of being an entirely different game with some of the same aspects of Spore.[/QUOTE] If you were retarded sure. One is an RPG and the other a simulator. You'd pretty much have to be an idiot to think this would fix "the mistakes of spore" when it's not even in the same genre.

This is like Diablo but with less customization that matters. My verdict is mediocre game, good idea.

[QUOTE=Pixelnator;28983067]If you were retarded sure. One is an RPG and the other a simulator. You'd pretty much have to be an idiot to think this would fix "the mistakes of spore" when it's not even in the same genre.[/QUOTE] But you see, people don't care about that, they think that just because it has "Spore" in the title it's a new version of the original Spore. :downs: Silly, but a lot of people do that.

I've thought it was cool how the poison melee guy's passive that applied poison to all attacks stacked that robot guy's low cost, spammable ranged squad attack.