Auto Assault delayed until 2006.

[Hoax]

GTA2 driving, I'm assuming first person is out of the question + EvE customization of ship parts and complexity of design (turret speed, rof, tracking, arcs, damage, ammo, reload times, ect.) should = fun I think.

What're they doing wrong?

[stray]

+ no lvls

Seriously, is that asking too much in a vehicle game?

[AOFanboi]

Auto Assault, Dreamfall (TLJ 2), new Zelda all delayed until 2006... are they afraid of some stupid console launch this Fall/Winter or something?

[dEOS]

My opinion after seeing the AA videos is that the gameplay will be boring fast. That's just by seeing videos... To me, it is dramatic that your game feels bland just by looking at some promotional video.

I believe they realized that and are trying to solve those game aspects somehow.

[shiznitz]

Auto Assault would be a pretty good idea for a console MMOG, actually.

[Llava]

Here's an article that covers some basics.

http://igo.ampednews.com/gamehub/1109/previews/358/

So now I can talk about the combat system and classes.

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

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.

As you might expect, there's no strafe.  When they figure out how to make cars do that, parallel parking is going to be so much easier.  There's go, reverse, turn left, turn right, and brake.  I don't think I can go much into the physics and how well the cars handle because the article doesn't really bring that up, and I'm just trying to provide a spinless version of the information they released.

But go ahead and read the article, ignore all the "kick ass" and "awesome" comments, decide for yourself.  I'm not going to state my opinion, I believe it's NDA protected.

The fiction behind each of the factions is interesting on the site.  I can't discuss how much (or little) of a role that played during my game experience.

[Hoax]

"While battles are turn based, as in most massively multiplayer titles, the turns are completely hidden, so the combat feels real-time, as if Auto Assault were an actual shooter."

How is it turn based exactly?  Its early but I'm fairly certain that makes no sense.

[Mesozoic]

I suspect they're referring to the system of a character attacking at regular intervals with a dice-roll chance of hitting, etc.  IE standard MMO combat, not FPS combat.  The turns are probably "hidden" in the sense that the guns, etc look like they're firing near-constantly while in the background the game is timeing cooldowns and rolling dice. 

IE, its a sham.

[Lt.Dan]

Two biggest problems with AA
1. after an hour you've seen all the gameplay.  Auto shoot and a limited number of specials - bleah
2. Aside from graphics they don't take advantage of the post-holocaust setting.  Everything is still fed-ex, kill the monster stuff.  No resource collecting, blockade running, smuggling, building up your town, radiation storms, etc.  It's just a reskinned fantasy setting.

[Krakrok]

This makes me sad considering a lead guy of Auto Assault says one of his favorite games is Wasteland. Rosebud anyone?

[Yegolev]

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

Retarded.  I don't want to read anything about AA after seeing this.

[Mesozoic]

I put $5 down on the damn game a few weeks ago, back when it was supposed to be
a) cool, and
b) out by Oct/Nov or something.

Now it
a) sucks, and
b) is delayed until Spring 06.

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

[Shockeye]

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

Go in and have them move your pre-order money over to a different title.

[Hoax]

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...

[HaemishM]

How can they possibly justify having a healer class?

The same way Battlefield 2 can justify having an engineer able to heal a vehicle from the inside!

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...

Originality is hard?

[Llava]

How can they possibly justify having a healer class?

Well, for the Mutants...

Mutants have a connection wit a radioactive substance that can be found throughout parts of the world called Blood.  They use it to enhance their vehicles.  Their healer class has a very close connection and can use it to repair vehicles on the fly.  Or that's what I've gathered.  I don't believe any of that info is under the NDA.

I don't find it too hard to imagine a Biomek throwing a machine at another vehicle that would automatically administer repairs.

So flavor-wise, it's not really that out of place.  Gameplay-wise... <shrug>.

Who knows what'll happen after (what we're assuming is) the redesign, though?

[Hoax]

Fair enough, you got me there but it still pisses me off.  I swear to god if the "rogue" vehicles get a bonus if they hit somebody in the back of their car I'm going to stab myself in the face and then sue NCsoft.

[andar]

This game does not deserve its own thread.  NCSoft shouldn't delay it, they should cancel it, along with Tabula Rasa.  Shooters in which your chance to hit is equivelent to your l33t RPG stat highness?   As lame as the end of that last sentence.

[dEOS]

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

That's exactly what you see in the in-game video. Just a total mess of auto-shoot and you driving frantically through landscape.
That would have been fun on my Amiga. But sadly for them we are in 2005.

[shiznitz]

AA would be helped by terrain that actually took skill to drive through - narrow bridges, tunnels, jumps, etc. Make either the driving or the shooting depend on player skill.

[Sky]

Planetside does vehicle combat rather well.

[Hoax]

If your going to remove aiming, which I dont like but am ok with then you better beef up the thinking required with the rest of the game.  You better at least come close to matching an EvE Online level of item complexity.  I've said that all along.  If they try to cookie cutter the items, or even worse make stupid "Grazlack's vicious chaingun" style ub3r drops then they can go fuck themselves.  It sounds to me like its too simple and they tried to diku a non EQ clone with the expected level of success.

none.

[Llava]

I don't know.  I'm just not really up for learning a whole new item system.  I just want fun >.< I'm tired of explaining what that is.

[Margalis]

What is with the freaking auto-aim/auto-attack in these games! First E&B now this. I can understand a MMORPG having auto-aim/auto-attack because it's not that different from some CRPG stuff. But a space or car shooter with auto-attack? It truly boggles the mind.

E&B should have been about piloting your ship and dogfighting. Sadly neither flying or fighting mattered at all. Sounds like this is the same deal.

Here's a great idea, maybe in the next Gran Tourismo they should make the cars just drive themselves...

If they want to have levels and you get better weapons at better levels ok, but for god's sake in a game about driving and shooting, please let me actually drive and shoot, not watch the computer do it for me.

[Llava]

Well it's not autoattack.  You hold the mouse button down and it shoots.  It shoots with infinite ammo and seems to roll hits/misses in addition to requiring you to actually have the target in the stream of gunfire, but it's not QUITE autoattack.  Kinda like how holding down shift and click in Diablo wasn't auto-attack... even though it did make you attack automatically.... it at least had something to do with your position versus the enemy's position and didn't require you to select a specific target on whom to center your attack.

[Hoax]

I'm still going to say that form of combat can work fine, as long as there is a very robust car customization system akin to EvE's shipbuilding.  But the second someone said: 

"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."

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...

[Margalis]

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.

[schild]

Seriously who thinks that rolling hits and misses makes sense?

Blizzard and the few...ho-zillion people playing it. Seriously, money funds this shit. It makes sense to the people with the money because an actual gibbering retard can play these games. What's better than getting every social person playing a game? Getting all the anti-social people playing a game together also.

And charging them $15 a month.

This isn't a knock against Blizzard or EQ or anything else. It makes perfect business sense, that's all there is too it. The more skill, thought, or gaming aptitude it takes to play a game, the less people can/will play it. Look at Katamari Damacy, everyone from 5 to 55 is playing it. It's like those old Puzzle boxes that had every age group on them. This is exactly why I think WoW sent us back into the stone age in terms of MMOG innovation. Of course, I'm a total pessimist.

[Llava]

You don't miss in Guild Wars.  Enemies can use abilities to have a chance to block or evade, or if you're using a projectile they can try to predict its arc and dodge it in mid-air (though they do a surprisingly good job of predicting where players will be when they hit), or if you're firing from a very long range it can (rarely) stray from the target, but generally speaking if you swing your weapon you can expect to hit.  100% chance unless you factor in something else (and those something elses actually have a purpose and are fantasy-realistic).

So.  It can be done.  How come it isn't?

[Sky]

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...

I wouldn't disagree with what you said.

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

Actually it was EQ that fucked the genre, WoW just sealed the deal.

[Dren]

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?  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.  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.  While that is actually fine for smaller dev houses you then run into production quality issues that have already proven to pound great ideas into the dirt.

It is the same problem I have with restaurants.  The really good ones that actually put taste into their meals make most people upset.  So, you get all these franchises that make mainly bland crap.  To find the great food, you go to little hole in the walls or specialty diners that take 1 hour to seat you and might have bugs on the floor, or they costs an arm and a leg. 

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.  :-D

[Pococurante]

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

Depends on what you mean by innovation.  There are more people playing MOGs now than ever before.  WoW clearly brought in an immense number of people who'd never been interested in MOGs before.

Technical innovation will probably be in the more "serious" applications like the Games for Health initiative.  This is the sort of thing I'd like very much to get into.  I'm of the opinion the real use for virtual world technology is in health and education.

[Merusk]

Dren speaks wisely, and so must be ignored.

Silence, Dren!

[schild]

So, in short.

Harrison Bergeron is the god of MMORPGs? Right, got it.

[Pococurante]

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