Auto Assault: Dev Journal

Stradden · December 2006

Matt Shaffer, the Co-Project Lead on NetDevil's Auto Assault sends us this Developer Journal on Update 3 and the skill system changes.

One of the most difficult aspects of creating an MMO is keeping the vision in line with the reality. As developers, we spend countless hours talking about and documenting what we intend to put into a game and how those features will be used by the playerbase; the reality is people will always come up with ways to play the game that you never thought of. This means that we have to be able to adapt quickly and be continually evaluating what is in the game, what needs to be in the game, and what needs to be adjusted or changed. Update 3 is a large part of this process.

Read the whole article here.

martinj63 · December 2006

You have to hand it to the guys at Net Devil for not throwing in the towel and truly improving upon their game. AA can be a lot of fun....it's just not 15 dollars a month fun. If any game could benefit from a Free to play micro payment philosophy like Guild Wars and the upcoming Xsteel it would be AA. Doing this would double the number of players overnight. I hope the eventually see the wisdom of this but so far Netdevil is still trying to hang with giants and AA isn't that type of game.

knowom · December 2006

When I first heard about auto assault the first thing that came to mind was finally a mmorpg centered around carmageddon/twisted metal style gameplay, but the game lacks in the most important part of any car game the controlls feel unnatural there's sensativity on breaking so you can't powerslide or drift or anything like in a typical car game which in turn kills the gameplay drastically. It's a great game graphically and they did a lot of things right, but you can't skimp like that on one of the most important features to any car based game. The way it was when I beta tested auto assault you were better off not even using the breaks because if you tapped it once you came to a complete stop.

pschumac2 · December 2006

I just wasted my time reading a dev qq about how hard it is to balance the system and tell me pretty much nothing at all in an entire press release besides qq qq it is hard to balance.

And yeah, of course when they mess up there is no telling when they can fix it. They update the game once every 3-6 months so when they mess up it is huge. I played that game on day 1 and it was fun and interesting but after running into so many bugs, lame duck pvp, no end game (lame duck pvp is not an end game, daoc pvp is an end game).. Then it took them 5-6 months before they even patched.. Players were leaving left and right and they couldn´t do small incremental patches to fix the game... It is funny when he talks about small incremental patches because that is something they don´t do...

On top of that the worse zone in the game was Ground Zero because it was lacking in content and fullll of bugs. Sync issues when you pvp so bascially one guy would kill you while you could not do anything about it because he was out of sync. Or you would see someone shoot you once and you would insta die because he had been shooting you for 10 minutes and you just didn´t notice because of sync. There was no content in that area, it was the least developed area of the game..

Guess who they put in charge of the game??? Yeah really, they did.. they guy who was in charge of ground zero.

I hope eventually that game gets fun but to me it is dead, 2007 is a big mmo year and you will have to be good to survive it and AA simply isn´t up to par and the dev team is way under par.

JK_jean · December 2006

When I listening about auto assault, I think it is a game with cars, pistols, ... A present game. But, it's differet, it's special. Until today I don't know why, but it's a great game.

Come Play Auto Assault! -.-

It's a special MMORPG!

thepatriot · December 2006

Originally posted by pschumac2

And yeah, of course when they mess up there is no telling when they can fix it. They update the game once every 3-6 months so when they mess up it is huge. I played that game on day 1 and it was fun and interesting but after running into so many bugs, lame duck pvp, no end game (lame duck pvp is not an end game, daoc pvp is an end game).. Then it took them 5-6 months before they even patched.. Players were leaving left and right and they couldn´t do small incremental patches to fix the game... It is funny when he talks about small incremental patches because that is something they don´t do...

Um, the game came out about 7 months ago and this is the 3rd major update. How is that updating every 5-6 months?

pschumac2 · December 2006

Originally posted by thepatriot

Originally posted by pschumac2

And yeah, of course when they mess up there is no telling when they can fix it. They update the game once every 3-6 months so when they mess up it is huge. I played that game on day 1 and it was fun and interesting but after running into so many bugs, lame duck pvp, no end game (lame duck pvp is not an end game, daoc pvp is an end game).. Then it took them 5-6 months before they even patched.. Players were leaving left and right and they couldn´t do small incremental patches to fix the game... It is funny when he talks about small incremental patches because that is something they don´t do...

Um, the game came out about 7 months ago and this is the 3rd major update. How is that updating every 5-6 months?

I stand corrected, let me rephraste that part. When the game launched with a low population and players were leaving because of the amazingly large amount of game play problems, quest gaps, and syncying which made pvp in GZ unplayable. The development company took 3 months to release the first patch. Most of the community had then already gotten to level 80, saw all the problems, got tired of waiting and left. This game is old news and this game is going to either become free or go under. The development team killed it, good idea in the hands of people who could not deliver.

Kinda of like shadowbane, awsome concept but it had a team of dev´s that just could not do it.

thepatriot · December 2006

Originally posted by pschumac2
I stand corrected, let me rephraste that part. When the game launched with a low population and players were leaving because of the amazingly large amount of game play problems, quest gaps, and syncying which made pvp in GZ unplayable. The development company took 3 months to release the first patch. Most of the community had then already gotten to level 80, saw all the problems, got tired of waiting and left. This game is old news and this game is going to either become free or go under. The development team killed it, good idea in the hands of people who could not deliver.
Kinda of like shadowbane, awsome concept but it had a team of dev´s that just could not do it.

Better stated and essentially correct although I think part of the problem is with the basic conept. Most MMO players don't like playing a car and certainly want to be able to customize said vehicle from the begining more than you can in AA. Earth and Beyond had the same issue. Over simplified play as a generic ship. EVE is a little different because of the complexity of the play that it appeals to a certain niche. If you are going to make play all about a vehicle, that vehicle has to be cool as sh** or the play has to be compelling as he** or else people feel like the are driving a k-car thru boringville.

wilcoxon · December 2006

Originally posted by martinj63
You have to hand it to the guys at Net Devil for not throwing in the towel and truly improving upon their game. AA can be a lot of fun....it's just not 15 dollars a month fun. If any game could benefit from a Free to play micro payment philosophy like Guild Wars and the upcoming Xsteel it would be AA. Doing this would double the number of players overnight. I hope the eventually see the wisdom of this but so far Netdevil is still trying to hang with giants and AA isn't that type of game.

I completely agree. I beta-tested AA. It definitely had issues but was still fun. If it became free-to-play, I'd go out and buy it that day but it's not worth a subscription fee to me.

Vallenar · December 2006

I really wish this game would have taken off. With all the fantasy games out there this was a shining star during its development stage. It's to bad it launched with so many issues that it sank before it even had a chance to float.

I really hope a company can really put forth a GREAT MMO that does not center around tradition Tolkien like fantasy. I guess I am holding out hope for Star Trek or Stargate to break the tradition fantasy role. I was hoping AA would be that game. It still might with a little more work but right now it's not.

wilcoxon · December 2006

Originally posted by Vallenar
I really wish this game would have taken off. With all the fantasy games out there this was a shining star during its development stage. It's to bad it launched with so many issues that it sank before it even had a chance to float. I really hope a company can really put forth a GREAT MMO that does not center around tradition Tolkien like fantasy. I guess I am holding out hope for Star Trek or Stargate to break the tradition fantasy role. I was hoping AA would be that game. It still might with a little more work but right now it's not.

Check out EVE Online. It's a great non-fantasy MMO. It also has some really nice design elements that other MMO companies should note (especially one single "server" with expandable node system so that everyone can interact with everyone).

suske · December 2006

this game was fun but the only thing the updates do is make you relearn all the skills and redo your build every 2 months. most players have quit playing human and i won't be returning.

seems there was another game that went under cause the devs changed stuff too many times.....

Thanatose · December 2006

I played AA from early in the beta and watched it grow and evolve for a long time. I only recently stopped playing because of the lack of any decent solo play at higher levels. My Human BH is lvl 62 and hit a point where there realy wasn't anything for him to do solo. They added some new quests that I could do but those realy didn't hep. I may give it a try again and see if update 3 fixed the issues I had with the game.

HeLL_SNX · December 2006

Yeh they added some more quests to fill the gap around 60 - 70, and added an OCD arena which hands out xp for completion too. Although this game is soloable upto 80, I don't think you will be able to PVP solo for long on the contested layer as most PVP'ers are runing around in convoys atm. But if PVP is not your thing (the endgame is mainly PVP tho) you can run about on uncontested layer and still have a blast...for a while.

keelis · December 2006

I'm willing to give this game another shot sometime. Having been in the beta, it was fun to check it out. I can only imagine how far it's come (I hope, anyway).

auutumn · December 2006

I do admire someone that doesn't quite and NetDevil is one of those people however, they should either quit or remove the monthly fee. This game is fun for an hour or so then it quickly gets boring and VERY repetitive. It wont matter how many times they provide updates as their efforts are wasted as they are building upon a baseline that has numerous problems. I was in the beta and through the months that I reported issues, they rarely addressed them. This includes everything from graphics and physics to the storyline. If you want to waste your money then this is a good game to do that.

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