Hmm I'd prefer not to pick relics else we'd always choose the most powerful ones... and it's cool sometimes to find something not as good as you expected !

I agree with you on the relic creation, forging items is something very exciting ! An option to also try to add a very powerful effect but with a random drawback would be nice too... Like trying to play with elements over our skills...

@Cervomix - The beauty in such a system would be that artifact & relic would have its pluses and minuses built around its specialization. So what you may consider the best I may not. Additionally I may like one item for a faction that I play and another one for a different faction.

I was thinking the custom creation thing could be a bonus feature for the player after he wins say five game, on a given level, with the same faction, the game allows him to create a new artifact for that faction. If the player win the games playing different factions then the game allows him to create relic.

The sweetness would be if SD allowed said items to be uploaded to a metaverse and accessed by all if they so chose.

@Annatar - that could be a say 2% chance event every time you use the item. Why not?

Well as far as I know (from the past interviews and such) Brad said that he wishes Spore hadn't come out around the same time because now their system will be thought of as a copy-cat.. so it sounds like they are basically looking at that kind of functionality with item creation. I remember even things like armors, clothes, etc mentioned as being user-created.

Well, if they do something like that it shouldn't be a flat chance. Should depend on your Channeler's "level"/experience/mana pool/difficulty of what you're trying to create, so on so forth. A late-game channeler who specialized extensively in one field of magic shouldn't be able to effortlessly make a minor/mild artifact, and a pretty good chance at a major one (or at least a guarantee that he wouldn't blow up the city trying if it fails). But an early game channeler or one who spent all his power elsewhere would probably not have very high chances of succeeding at the Ground Imploding Artifact of Ultimate Doom.

Drawbacks on relics should be the only way to create really powerfull items.

I would rather there just be a list of all artifacts/items that can be found, and when setting up a game you can go through and check off which ones can show up in the game (probably makes more sense to have to uncheck which ones can't show up). In addition you should be able to set the abundance and quality of items.

Neither of these features should be difficult to implement, and the ability to choose which items can/can't show up on an individual basis already has to be in game in order to control user-created content. I think this is an area where more options = better; partially because implementing these options shouldn't be particularly taxing, nor will they have to be tested extensively (or at all) for game balance.

I would be really disappointed if the game forces me to choose a limited subset of available items to appear in the game. Based on my preferences I should be able to decide that they'll all show, that none of them show up, or to set guiding parameters for the game to choose for me.

Edit: I'm actually not sure if I understand what you mean by "relic." What is the difference between a relic and an item? I'm used to relics just being an extremely powerful, and usually rare, class of items. Is this what you mean?

By abundance/quality I mean the overall number/average quality of items in the game. Kind of like the "habital planets" slider in galciv, as an example. So you could choose to play a game where items are extremely rare, but chances are if you find one it will be a very powerful one. Or you could play a game where items turn up all over the place, but are usually not very impressive. I didn't mean that we could choose how many of each artifact showed up - there shouldn't be more than one of each.

On the other hand, now that I think about it, it would be interesting if there is a certain class of 'generic' items that needn't be unique.

Why would artifacts be tied to a faction? Anybody can find an artifact (item?), and most/everybody should be able to use them all, but maybe to greater or lesser extents. If items are tied to specific factions then there would be no point in capturing enemy heroes' items in battle, which would be a real let-down.

I'm still having trouble seeing what sets a relic apart from any other item other than its quality.

Personally I'm against all unlockable features. I have never played a game where an unlockable feature has added quality to it; they're almost always used as a cop-out for actually making the game replayable. 

I think it would be nice to have various categories of relics you could choose to include in a game or not.

e.g. defensive, offensive, enhancments, etc

I actually think it's quite important that games do copy Spore. I think the technology and ideas are brilliant, and it would be good for the industry if they stick.