Darkspore

[Velorath]

So... apparently EA Maxis is taking the character creations of Spore and adding it to some Diablo-style Action RPG gameplay.  Much like with Spore, most of what they're saying about this game sounds pretty great on paper, but I'm sure we'll all be skeptical after Spore's disappointing release.


Gamespot article here that has the details. 

Rather than force you to focus on a developing a single character that belongs to a single character class with a limited skillset, Darkspore will actually let you select a team of three different hero creatures to take into battle, and will also let you gather a huge collection of alternate heroes for you to use and develop as you see fit.

The game will offer five different playable races, or "genesis types" which determine the basis of your character's attacks: "bio" (plant- and organic-based attacks), "cyber" (robotic attacks), "plasma" (fire- and lightning-based attacks), "necro" (death- and poison-based attacks), and "quantum" (time- and space-based attacks). It'll also offer different playable classes that roughly correspond with the archetypes you've seen in other such games, such as the sentinel, a "tank" class (which fights enemies in up-close combat and is tough enough to soak up damage), the tempest, a "mage" class (which fights with ranged attacks from a distance and is too fragile to sustain a frontal assault), and the ravager, a "rogue" class (which uses surprise attacks and stealth to do battle). In any mission, you'll control only one hero at a time (but can instantly switch to one of your other two characters if you need their powers or are getting too beat up), but interestingly, certain powers that belong to your heroes will remain "universal" to your team and can be used regardless of which hero you're currently controlling.


You and your teammates will need to work together to survive. And you get to split the take at the end.
Each profession will have multiple abilities in battle that include direct combat, support, and evasion that will work well in solo play and even better in cooperative multiplayer. The Maxis team suggests that Darkspore will be at its absolute best in co-op, since its missions, which are planned to take place in levels which will have randomly-placed landmarks and monster spawns each time you play them, will offer substantially better loot rewards when tackled with a group, particularly if, after you defeat a mission's boss and complete its objectives, you decide to use Darkspore's "chain game"--a system that lets you wager this round's victory and spoils against a more-challenging version of the next mission. If you forgo this round's rewards, you can receive even better loot if you can successfully complete the next mission in the chain, and so on and so forth until everyone in the group either fails the next mission by getting wiped out, or enough players in the group vote against wagering.

Maxis suggests that loot and collection will be the heart of Darkspore--not only unlocking and collecting new heroes, but picking up tons and tons of items, including temporary power-ups that immediately heal your heroes and replenish the energy they spend on executing their special abilities, but also new types of equipment that can be worn on your heroes (and actually edited in appearance to change their size and orientation using the creature creator tools), as well as new, powerful body parts that can be added to new slots on any of your heroes to provide powerful bonuses…along with cosmetic body parts and accoutrements for which your heroes will also have separate slots, and can place them simply for looks. In addition, your characters' inventory screens will be accessible from outside the game on the World Wide Web, which means you can play around with different item sets and plan your next in-game strategy while you're not even playing, similar to the deck-building "meta-game" that fans of Magic: The Gathering know and love (and talk about endlessly).


The fate of the universe is in your hands/claws/webbed feet/spider creatures.
While gathering loot will be a big part of the final game, Maxis is taking a slightly different approach to creature creation, by focusing on using created critters built mostly in-house at the studio so that players can recognize hero characters and enemies (and their powers) on sight, rather than randomly populating the game with the thousands of player-created creatures. However, the studio does plan to hold contests to let players create the best critters they can, and the winners will be included into the game as regular characters. And in case you were wondering, the studio currently plans to ship the game as a full retail product with no microtransations or subscription fees. We'll be honest with you--this is a bold new step in a new direction for the Spore series, and hopefully the game's premise of combining the wacky, body-part-swapping of Spore with the addictiveness of hack-and-slash games will pay off. Darkspore will ship next year.

[Kail]

Maxis is taking a slightly different approach to creature creation, by focusing on using created critters built mostly in-house at the studio so that players can recognize hero characters and enemies (and their powers) on sight, rather than randomly populating the game with the thousands of player-created creatures.

Fucking BOO.  What the hell is the point of playing a Spore game where you don't get to create your creature?

[Sky]

I'm getting an image of Will Wright off crying in a dark corner, arms tightly holding himself as he rocks gently.

[Malakili]

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only spore.

[Samwise]

After playing Spore, this game doesn't even sound great on paper.  I'm sure the reality will be still worse.

[Sky]

I'd still be interested in the game WW was trying to make before EA pushed a "game" onto him. The "franchise" is only going downward in that very special way only a corporate drone making decisions based on demographics can do it.

M:tG metagame ftlol

[Yegolev]

I'm getting an image of Will Wright off crying in a dark corner, arms tightly holding himself as he rocks gently.

My mental image is of Will Wright and Shigeru Miyamoto both standing perfectly still in a padded room while grinning at each other.

[Xanthippe]

Beta signups are available.  Launch date set February, 2011.

http://www.darkspore.com/main.php

[KallDrexx]

PvP Developer Diary

This looks pretty awesome

[Kail]

This looks pretty awesome

How so?  I'm having trouble mustering any kind of interest in this at all.  Looks like Diablo meets Monsters Inc. to me, except without any assurance that it will be at all compelling.  The bit where the dev says "we wanted PvP to be a main focus for Darkspore" followed by his announcement that the "main" mode of PvP would be "arena games" made me literally laugh out loud.  Yeah, nothing says "PvP is our priority" more than a vanilla deathmatch mode, surely they are poised to take the market by storm with that innovation.

I'm not trying to be a dick, here, I'm genuinely wondering what you're seeing in this game.  I loved the original Spore, and would gladly jump into a sequel, but every shred of info I've seen about this game has been discouragingly generic.  It's like Spore, but with all the interesting stuff removed.  It's like Diablo, but thirteen years late.  What am I missing that looks interesting?

[Ghambit]

Gamespot is giving away beta keys for this currently.
Last beta event is tomorrow consequently, so this is your last chance to try it out.  All you need is a GS login, which is free.

http://www.gamespot.com/event/codes/darkspore/

[Malakili]

Total Biscuit did an hour long rundown of the beta on his youtube channel that is worth watching (or at least watching some of).  I actually really like the look of the game, but between Torchlight 2 being in direct competition with it, and then Diablo 3 coming after that, it has some pretty stiff competition to my mind.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut#p/c/2272A4EE84269E1F/3/fuzwBNOoPeU

[Ghambit]

Total Biscuit did an hour long rundown of the beta on his youtube channel that is worth watching (or at least watching some of).  I actually really like the look of the game, but between Torchlight 2 being in direct competition with it, and then Diablo 3 coming after that, it has some pretty stiff competition to my mind.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut#p/c/2272A4EE84269E1F/3/fuzwBNOoPeU

Umm, there's no competition whatsoever.  Darkspore comes out in 2 weeks.  T2 and D3 come out.. uhhh, who knows when.  (T2 is a maybe for July).
These games dont have long half-lives anyways.  4 months between releases is fine.

As for an opinion on the game, I can now no longer comment.   

[Malakili]

Total Biscuit did an hour long rundown of the beta on his youtube channel that is worth watching (or at least watching some of).  I actually really like the look of the game, but between Torchlight 2 being in direct competition with it, and then Diablo 3 coming after that, it has some pretty stiff competition to my mind.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut#p/c/2272A4EE84269E1F/3/fuzwBNOoPeU

Umm, there's no competition whatsoever.  Darkspore comes out in 2 weeks.  T2 and D3 come out.. uhhh, who knows when.  (T2 is a maybe for July).
These games dont have long half-lives anyways.  4 months between releases is fine.

As for an opinion on the game, I can now no longer comment.   

I guess I see Torchlight 2 as in competition with it because even assuming Diablo 3 next year by this time (maybe a big assumption but whatever), there is no way I'm going t buy three ARPGs in a single year, and Torchlight 2 and D3 are a given.

[Ingmar]

No way is D3 out by this time next year. If it is out in 2012 at all I'll be surprised (and happy).

[Khaldun]

Basically sounds like Spore Pokemon. Yuck. The only thing decent about Spore is its ability to be an authoring tool: anything that repurposes it by losing that one great feature is completely pointless.

[Ghambit]

Basically sounds like Spore Pokemon. Yuck. The only thing decent about Spore is its ability to be an authoring tool: anything that repurposes it by losing that one great feature is completely pointless.

I suggest you watch TotalBiscuit's playthrough and then rehash your statement.

[Sky]

While I've more or less boycotted Spore products thanks to what they did to WW's amazing vision....if that plays nice with 3D Vision it's on the steam sale list. Looks like it would look really cool in 3D.

And it will be very cheap, since I don't get a lot of action out of shitty clicky games. Click to move and click to attack, boo.

[Modern Angel]

I'd kill to get a full rundown of what happened between the first Spore showings and the release of... whatever it was it turned into.

[Margalis]

While I've more or less boycotted Spore products thanks to what they did to WW's amazing vision....

What did anyone do to his vision?

[Sky]

Tried to make a "game" out of a phenomenal science toy.

They should've release Spore as WW intended without interference...and then done all these spin-off games with the creator tech. Oh, well. One of the biggest let-downs in the history of pc gaming imo.

[Ghambit]

In the end it was WW's call how Spore was gonna turn out.  And he's admitted to this repeatedly.

Anyways, Darkspore has little to nothing to do with Spore, seriously.

[Margalis]

I'm not sure where this "interference" story is coming from. To my knowledge Spore was always going to be a multi-epoch game.

Sometimes people just make bad games, it's not always the fault of the man.

[Sky]

Darkspore has little to nothing to do with Spore, seriously.

True enough, I like Diablo about as much as I like RTS games. So I guess I'll just bow out of the thread, I didn't mean to turn this into what it's becoming, sorry.

[Malakili]

Given that Torchlight was 20 dollars, the 50 dollar price tag on Darkspore strikes me as a bit too much.   Especially given what I said earlier about buying a bunch of ARPGs in one year (even if D3 doesn't come out for a long time, Torchlight 2 will come out pretty shortly). 

[Ghambit]

Given that Torchlight was 20 dollars, the 50 dollar price tag on Darkspore strikes me as a bit too much.   Especially given what I said earlier about buying a bunch of ARPGs in one year (even if D3 doesn't come out for a long time, Torchlight 2 will come out pretty shortly). 

Torchlight wasnt MP and didnt have a "creature creator."  The Darkspore lobby, achievements, social stuff, etc. is essentially "free."  So there's no way in hell you're gonna get all that for only $20.
And Torchlight 2 will NOT be $20, you can bet on that.

Honestly, it really boils down to the genre you prefer.  One is sci-fi, the other generic fantasy. 
Also if you like more of a dollhouse feel, then obviously Darkspore would be the smarter choice.  Both are procedurally generated dungeons and both play at about the same speed - slower than Diablo.

[tgr]

Unfortunately, EA has put some conditions on the game that are likely to put a damper on the experience for a few gamers.

According to the game’s official online disclosure notice, Darkspore will require a “persistent Internet connection” in order for gamers to play it. This includes both retail copies of the game as well as Steam’s digital version.

Are they doing this on purpose?

[Malakili]

Unfortunately, EA has put some conditions on the game that are likely to put a damper on the experience for a few gamers.

According to the game’s official online disclosure notice, Darkspore will require a “persistent Internet connection” in order for gamers to play it. This includes both retail copies of the game as well as Steam’s digital version.

Are they doing this on purpose?

Well, that seals it then.  All the cards seemed stacked against me buying this anyway, but this is enough to prevent me from caving into a impulse pre-order.

[Ghambit]

Well, I know it's an excuse for anti-piracy but really, how else would they track achievements, leaderboards, do the social-network thing, and so on w/o a persistent net connection?

[tgr]

They could, oh I dunno, make it an optional feature for those who were to actually care about such things. Or give people the option to keep it local only, if you must see the achievements themselves, but don't care about sharing them with everyone?

[Pezzle]

They could, oh I dunno, make it an optional feature for those who were to actually care about such things. Or give people the option to keep it local only, if you must see the achievements themselves, but don't care about sharing them with everyone?

+1

I am not a gamer concerned with achievements and dorky bragging rights.  Sharing of such things should be my choice.  MMO's are the only games I can think of that should 'require' an internet connection just to play.

[Malakili]

Well, I know it's an excuse for anti-piracy but really, how else would they track achievements, leaderboards, do the social-network thing, and so on w/o a persistent net connection?

Also, I'd say 1-2 times a day my connection hiccups for about 1 minute or so.  If I am going to get booted from a game for that, and potentially lose progress since a recent save, or something, thats not cool.

[Margalis]

Well, I know it's an excuse for anti-piracy but really, how else would they track achievements, leaderboards, do the social-network thing, and so on w/o a persistent net connection?

Save that info locally and upload it periodically?

Was that a trick question?

[Sky]

Didn't Spore do that? One of the cooler aspects was meeting someone else's critters in your game. And then killing them off.

[ghost]

The lines of what is an "MMO" and what isn't are beginning to blur a bit, and will probably become even more blurred over the next five years.  I expect almost all games to have a serious online component soon, even if it is something like Demon's Souls that allows for somewhat different forms of PvP.