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To the Auto Assault Community, (http://boards.autoassault.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=42885)

We started beta testing earlier this year and here is an update on our progress.

The beta testing period has spawned some great ideas that we want to include before launch. NetDevil and NCsoft are both companies with a strong commitment to releasing “only when it’s ready,” so we want to extend the beta into the spring of 2006. Over this time, we are going to continue tuning, tweaking, and adding to Auto Assault.

There is a lot that we will be changing over the next few months; here is a quick look at some of the items that we will be addressing.

Content for all the races: The core goal is to work on giving things a more diverse feel. The vision we are shooting for is that particular locations will have a specific feel and that the enemies located there have abilities that change up the standard gameplay.

Client performance: More optimizations to increase performance.

Level progression: Level progression will be faster paced and have more levels overall.

Character creation: There will be more details for making a character look unique, as well as customizing your first car.

New Items: More than a thousand new items are going into the game to help balance out the loot system.

Chassis: There are quite a few chassis in the game that people haven’t seen yet, but we are going to add even more.

The list that we have is literally full of hundreds of other things. Keep an eye out – the scope of changes you’ve inspired us to make over the next few months is amazing!

We will not be adding any more testers for North America a little while, but more invites will go out once the next round of content revisions is published later this fall. European beta invites will continue to be sent, but the majority will be issued to coincide with the roll-out of the new content.

We were all excited about a 2005 release, but these changes – and ones to come in the future – will make Auto Assault the best it can be.

Steven Snow
Producer – Auto Assault
NCsoft

Green is sarcasm, but what's teal?  I forget.  Pity?

To be fair, there is some difference between having 30 levels and having 60 levels that go at twice the rate. Or at least, there can be, if at each level you get new skill points or new abilities or something like that. But overall it seems kind of silly.

So does that mean if you pre-order you get to beta from now till 06?  Or have they not let pre-orders into the beta yet.

Green is sarcasm, but what's teal?  I forget.  Pity?

All of my posts will be in beige from now on then.

Thought pandas were to summon the bruce?

Truth

Just got an email about the speakers at AGC, why aren't you giving a speech on niches? You should. Put people in their place. All that.

Each "race" has 4 "classes" which are basically warrior, rogue, healer, buffer from what I've seen.

Anyone know the Software, etc. policy on pre-orders, when they already gave you a pre-order box and CD?

How can they possibly justify having a healer class?

Also why try to market yourself as an alternative to all the fantasy crap we've got being flung around then use stupid ass DnD class archtypes...

How can they possibly justify having a healer class?

Two biggest problems with AA
1. after an hour you've seen all the gameplay.  Auto shoot and a limited number of specials - bleah
...

"Combat is simple.  You have a mounted gun that shoots forward and a mounted gun that shoots behind you.  You also have a turret, and you can move this one around with your mouse.  The goal, then, is to try to catch your enemies in a dual stream of fire by keeping them either directly in front or directly behind you.  Holding right click causes all of these weapons to fire.  There are additional abilities on top of these guns, but basically the guns are the game's version of auto-attack.  You can also run over some enemies to deal damage."

Seriously who thinks that rolling hits and misses makes sense?

How uncreative do you have to be?  This is what I expected: the really fast trike should only have one weapon mount, while giant armored big rigs should get 6 broadside mounts with very limited fields of fire but the ability to mount giant fucking cannons.  If your not capable of even that basic level of "this is how it would be in a post apoc. world" thinking then you aren't worthy of being paid to make video games...

This is exactly why I think WoW sent us back into the stone age in terms of MMOG innovation.

This is exactly why I think WoW sent us back into the stone age in terms of MMOG innovation.

I don't believe EQ or WoW did any such thing as slow the genre or kill it.

Do you think that if a new game came out that satisfied everything you want it would be popular?

You may not be most people, but that doesn't matter.

My guess is that if a game comes out that satisfies those that hate WoW, that game will have lackluster sales.

It is the same problem I have with restaurants.

I could make a similar comparison to music, art, etc.

The jist?  If you are not standard or normal, you will never get everything you want. 

Meh, sounds basically like E&B. In E&B you had to have the enemy withing in certain targeting area, but that was it. Just keep them in the center of the screen and spam away. Seriously who thinks that rolling hits and misses makes sense?

Edit: It sounds like a real lack of imagination. I could think of something better after watching Road Warrior and playing Car Wars for an hour. It's like, let's take a car driving/shooting game then strip out everything interesting and add in Elf-equivalents.

He was a victim of circumstance. As are we all.

I think it is safe to say that most people don't want to rely on their skill, but rather prefer the autoattack and hit/miss systems we have today.

I'm willing to agree with you that NCsoft just did not have the balls to put skill into the game, but reserve the right to call bullshit on the idea that a MMO that requires skill would automatically fail money-hat wise.

It's hard to show it to your friend who isn't into MMOG and make them think "That looks awesome, I will go buy that now."

Is "friend" a console player?

There are many things a console can do that seem to require quantum servers and negative ping code for a MOG.

Course, if I could jump up and knock a flying enemy out of the sky by jumping on his back and stomping on his head, then rip off his wings when he hit the ground, I think we'd attract some more people.. even if you had to push more than one button to do that.

Is "friend" a console player?

Lack of fun.
I've only recently started playing MMO's cause my friends have. MMO's seem to be made up of bonuses/incentives etc that add to other games, but lack any actual gameplay or fun.

ie levelling up, skill trees, getting new items, new abilities, professions etc are all nice bonuses you can add to a game to increase the longevity, but shouldnt be the core 'gameplay'.

Take away all those things from an mmo and the 'core gameplay' you have left is 'kill x of mob y', 'collect x of item y'...

Call me crazy but im gonna compare this game to GTA. It has alot of the same levelling, collecting, professions to skillup (although not to create things), quests to go on, semi-persistant world to explore...

...But it's also fun. It's fun to just hoon around, dodging between traffic, running people over, escaping from the cops, finding things to jump off. I guess that's where the twitch aspect comes in. It's fun to level your own personal skill as opposed to watching a bar fill up (it's like watching grass grow, or paint dry). Sure the bar can add to the gameplay that's already there, but if the gameplay is the bar, it feels a little too shallow and unsatsfying for my liking.

I think it matters.  People who like high action/shooters tend to have a much higher bar for combat mechanics.  People with less or no preference on twitch/hand knowledge care much less, if it matters to them at all.

I would wager the true reason which I dont see mentioned often enough is that fps combat inherently needs AI that are 10 million times smarter then fire & forget mobs.

Well not trying to beat this into the ground but for some people fire & forget combat is prefectly fine - they're there for social reasons or get most of their thrills in some other minigame.

What does being social have to do with boring combat?

It means many, probably more, people don't consider the event boring just because the combat is simplistic.  Ever been to a rock concert?  Did it completely suck because it wasn't you on the stage?  Maybe you did some air guitar out in the audience but did that make or break your experience?

For a lot of folks being online in a game is a lot like a rock concert.  They're there for the experience and to be with their friends.

I appreciate that's not enough for you.  Just making an observation that concert promoters make a lot more money selling to non-musicians.

Ah.  Nothing to see here.  Move on.