Auto Assault NDA lifted

[Hoax]

But that's the future in name only. It's like fantasy books were the world is basically destroyed and magic takes over from technology again. If the future is just like the past calling it the future is just an excersize in nomenclature, it has no real meaning.

I disagree with you there, here's a stupid example.

In the future, the technology the relied on for all the ease/comfort of modern day life fails somehow.  Humanity is tossed into a dark ages, cue magic or something resembling it reappearing for whatever reason.  Now you have a world where there are still the shells of old cities and small pockets of working technology but for the most part they have had to replace it with steam or whatever they can manage to maintain.  Easily you can tie the whole future thing into the storyline, with machine cults looking to revive the old tech while other factions seek to maintain the current balance of power, for the good of themselves or the planet or whatever.

This is totally different from the past with more technology, wouldn't you say?

Better yet, if you can stomach anime go watch some of Scrapped Princess its not a great show but it is solid and gives a fairly decent example of what I'm trying to describe.  It is set in the future but the world looks like the past, with bits of the future strewn about and not fully understood by the masses.  I wouldn't exactly call it steampunk but it still illustrates the difference between the two scenarios decently.

[Glazius]

Future steampunk really makes no sense. It's the future and things run on steam? The future is less advanced than the present is today? What makes it the future exactly?

Obviously, Nemesis has taken over the world.



Yes, that's a giant brass battlesuit with a boiler backpack.

--GF

[Modern Angel]

They're currently pimping out their extended playtest. That's right, folks, the servers are going to be up for an amazing 48 HOURS STRAIGHT!

Jesus, they're what? Two months from expected release?

[Yegolev]

Their datacenter will probably smell like melted plastic from all of the exertion.

[Trippy]

They're currently pimping out their extended playtest. That's right, folks, the servers are going to be up for an amazing 48 HOURS STRAIGHT!

Jesus, they're what? Two months from expected release?

Heh. Though to cut them some slack if they can keep them up for 24 hours between reboots that should be good enough to launch with. EVE has daily reboots and it has been doing fine.

[Signe]

If anyone is still interested in this game and they have a Fileplanet account, they can do the beta.

[Zetleft]

But that's the future in name only. It's like fantasy books were the world is basically destroyed and magic takes over from technology again. If the future is just like the past calling it the future is just an excersize in nomenclature, it has no real meaning.

I disagree with you there, here's a stupid example.

In the future, the technology the relied on for all the ease/comfort of modern day life fails somehow.  Humanity is tossed into a dark ages, cue magic or something resembling it reappearing for whatever reason.  Now you have a world where there are still the shells of old cities and small pockets of working technology but for the most part they have had to replace it with steam or whatever they can manage to maintain.  Easily you can tie the whole future thing into the storyline, with machine cults looking to revive the old tech while other factions seek to maintain the current balance of power, for the good of themselves or the planet or whatever.

This is totally different from the past with more technology, wouldn't you say?

Better yet, if you can stomach anime go watch some of Scrapped Princess its not a great show but it is solid and gives a fairly decent example of what I'm trying to describe.  It is set in the future but the world looks like the past, with bits of the future strewn about and not fully understood by the masses.  I wouldn't exactly call it steampunk but it still illustrates the difference between the two scenarios decently.

Better yet go watch Thundarr the Barbarian
ARIEL, OOKLA RIDE!

[WayAbvPar]

I got a mail recently granting m 24/7 access to the test servers instead of being limited to just the testing times . I  am assuming that every beta tester got one- my testing feedback consisted of < 1 hour of play time, a few posts on the beta boards, and incessant bitching here.

[Modern Angel]

The hot new thing is that Biomeks are levelling at an absurdly fast rate (some went from 20 to the new cap of 40 in one day) while Mutants level at a crawl which would make a Korean 24/7 internet cafe dewd proud. The meks scream "cry more n00b, grind a little while themutants cry nerf.

Interestingly the game looks and feels alot better with this last build than ever before. It's like some magical threshold was crossed and it because stable with a nice interface. I don't think the worst problem with this game is going to be stability or anything technical. Rather, I think these guys have no fucking clue about pacing, class balance and the like.

[Margalis]

20 to 40 in one day? Is there some exploit or something?

[Modern Angel]

Nope. There are that many more Biomek quests and they give that much more experience. Some people, in their rush to defend NetDevil, bring up that alot of companies like to see people get to the level cap. That's not much solace for the people playing Mutants, who are apparently the complete and total polar opposite.

Now it may be that ND doesn't want levels to be some massive cockblock and their level cap to be like GUild Wars': not the end of the game and easily attainable. That doesn't explain the gross discrepancy between levelling rates. Given that release is in April by all accounts this is a BIG problem.

I'll give them some props, though. The game is playing smooth as a whistle on my system with this last build and I don't have a screaming rig by any means. They shrunk down the tac arcs on the guns which means I'm not just opening up on fifty mobs at once and decimating them. If they make crafting something less like reading Braille at 20 feet and fix the above issues they might have something worth playing for a couple months; it still wouldn't be something I could play super long term but most games, frankly, aren't. I don't have much confidence they can get those issues sorted this late in the game, though.

[HaemishM]

Interestingly the game looks and feels alot better with this last build than ever before. It's like some magical threshold was crossed and it because stable with a nice interface. I don't think the worst problem with this game is going to be stability or anything technical. Rather, I think these guys have no fucking clue about pacing, class balance and the like.

Stability was never the problem for the user. The game sucking more cock than a pr0n star was the problem.

[Modern Angel]

It always ran like shit on my mid range system. It doesn't now so, yeah... it was a bit of a problem for me. The game's gone from MY EYES to Meh...ooooooo an ER game! in short order. It could become pleasantly middling by release.

This isn't sounding like a ringing endorsement, is it?

[HaemishM]

Sounds like The Avatar of Meh.

[Strazos]

I thought that was in DDO?

[Stephen Zepp]

Still curious about the network related user impressions 

how's lag/latency/warpage?

[Modern Angel]

Lag etc used to feel bad to me but doesn't now. Towns are still a little clunky but at least they slowed down how fast your avatar was moving and turning. You don't feel like you're speed skating anymore.

[Lanei]

Still curious about the network related user impressions 

how's lag/latency/warpage?

I've never rubber-banded - huge positive.  A spike of latency or packetloss can cause enemies to 'pop' inside your visibility radius, you can also take an attack or two of adamge without seeing the mob attack you.  Both of these things get worse the faster you are going, but are infrequent enough for me on a cable connection to not be an irritation.  I've never come close to being killed by lag of any kind.

[Murgos]

Still curious about the network related user impressions 

how's lag/latency/warpage?

My first experience with AA was last night (8 - 11pm EST), I haven't made it out of the newbie area (humans) but network issues were non-existant.  Good job for a Saturday night, there were lots of 'tards zipping around and I didn't notice any problems in that area.

Some other initial thoughts.

Kill Frenzy (Is that what it was called?)  Excellent idea, needs more cowbell.  Really rock that thing, flashing lights, combo counters, bells, whistles and try and work it into more situations, can't really do it (at the newb level anyway) against vehicles.

Badges are fun, take more hints from games like GTA and the other racing stuff, i.e. more exp for crazy jumps, there is no reason you shouldn't get a badge for doing a 720 in mid-air and landing it.  Heck, it's a car game - embrace the racing and stunt jumping aspects.  Random tracks in the middle of nowhere that track top 10 times or jumps with top distance and 'style' points listed for top 10 (100?) would be fun (screw the fourth wall).

Which brings me to handling, maybe it's just that I was driving a newb car for the 'tank' class but car driving physics could really be tighter, a better sense of acceleration, handling, etc...  Couldn't really spin out, donuts were meh, no feeling of 'punching it', catching air even seemed anti-climactic.  I'll try a different race/class combo and let you know if I see any difference, of course it could be that I was in a newb car too but this aspect of the game needs to be very tight and very fun from the beginning.  It's a car game and people are going to expect car game feel.

The newb area - grey and brown?  I know it's post apocalypse land but seriously you want people to make it out of the newbie areas right?  Not put them to sleep?  Just saying, color is good - don't think it has an impact?  Log into EQ2 and go between Qeynos (colors) and freeport (brown) BIG difference and most people will tell you that its because Freeport is too dreary.  I hope your whole game doesn't have this problem but seriously redo the newb areas a little so that they are more inviting.

Give me a better reason to be fighting.  A good way to do this would have the newb areas be a small city showing the 'promised life' that we are trying to protect, school children playing in playgrounds, normal people going to work, starbucks, etc...  Some emotional investment other then Murder, Death, Kill - remember even Mad Max was ultimately fighting to protect the small bits of community left.  Something more than a mention in passing anyway.

And certainly not least:

Get rid of the part in the voice over where the narrator talks about the 'Final Solution.'  Invoking Godwins law in the first 5 minutes of your game?  Gimmie a break.  Unless I am killing Nazi's don't go there, especially not to tell me my team are the instigators of that crap, fuck that.

[Lanei]

Kill Frenzy (Is that what it was called?)  Excellent idea, needs more cowbell.  Really rock that thing, flashing lights, combo counters, bells, whistles and try and work it into more situations, can't really do it (at the newb level anyway) against vehicles.

Agree with you on making it shinier and more obvious.. nice thing for it though is that if you group, every kill by everyone in the group ounts towards everyone's bonus... which can make it get huge if a group of people roll into and start flattening a base.

[Yegolev]

Get rid of the part in the voice over where the narrator talks about the 'Final Solution.'

Whoops!

[Krakrok]

Noob areas:
The noob Biomek area is also pretty meh as it feels like a fantasy steampunk mine. I was pretty turned off by the game until I got past that part. The crappy mutant alien crab monsters (who look like they got lost on their way into Asheron's Call) persist though. Where are the mutant bunnies and cows?

Car Customization:
The customization seems dumbed down (like it was much more at some point and they removed it?). You a have standard number of "RPG" style item slots which is all fine and good but then you have a bunch of cosmetic add ons like bars and spoilers which do nothing. Wouldn't it have been better if the cosmetic add ons actually did something like give +1 armor or +1 speed or some such to mod the handling of the car? The car customizer looks good but the car paperdoll sucks. I don't get it. They have better graphics on the website in Flash than they do in the game.

Interface:
The interface felt pretty amateurish. It's no PipBoy5000 I can tell you that. It didn't seem polished and the default size was horrible. It looked much better once I shrunk it down to as small as it could get. The map system looks good compared to the rest of it. The "health", "power", and "exp" is immersion breaking. The least they could have done was use a little green vehicle graphic that turns red as you take damage (re: Planetside).

The other interface boxes feel cluttered and confusing. Why are the medals so small? And when I earn a medal why isn't there a big fanfare and a large picture of the medal splashed on the screen? The least they could do would be to make it scriptable in Python or somesuch ala WoW.

Why do I have to sit on a vehicle pad and watch it say +35 HPs over and over to "heal"? Couldn't it be a garage or at least a robot arm that fixes my car? Immersion breaking. Way to make it feel like I'm playing an RPG w/ a car facade.

Gameplay:
Targeting for the turret with the mouse is a bitch. The cars I tried stop on a dime. The different handling on different terrain is neat. I kept getting collision detection error dialogs in the noob area. The car I upgraded to is a dune buggy and keeps flipping over like a bad SUV every time it nicks some bad world geometry.

The destroyable world objects are awesome. You can collect crafting material by destroying everything you can find in your path (trees, signs, rusted cars, fences, etc). Ramming damage is neat. There was no death penalty other than the time it takes to heal up (20 seconds) and get back to where you were at which is nice.

The "camps" of mutant crabs are pretty lame as they just sit there. Most of the other enemies drive around and fight other factions (and you). The freeways are a bustle of activity with NPC car wars going on 24/7.

It's fun just driving around blowing shit up and feels a lot like Mad Max in that regard. The last mission I did was to run through this snaking canyon full of baddies in 180 seconds or whatever it was (fun). But the mission before and after that is to kill a boss tank with a bazillion hit points (unfun).

PvP:
The arena combat interface was clunky (nothing like Random Arenas in Guild Wars). I had 10 minutes to kill the other guy as many times as possible which usually consisting of us both getting tired of running and then blasting each other at point blank until one of us died. The arena had a "heal" jump which was rather lame as it lets you get to full heath again whenever you want. It looks like there is a central shared leveling area or battleground where the 3 races will have to fight it out. And they also mentioned "Base Attack" battles ala CoH/CoV.

Towns & Characters:
Towns also feel amateurish and have no soul. It is your standard lifeless MMORPG vending machine town. It's no Fallout or Wasteland as there aren't even any names I recognized (like Vegas, Needles, etc). They should have licenced the whole character creation/graphics package from Cryptic Studios (they're both NCSoft) and just dropped it in for the characters. I didn't read a single mission dialog box so far.

Overall:
I got to level 10 over the weekend and for the most part it feels like WoW which I suppose is good if they want to sell boxes but I felt cockblocked at every turn. Every time I turned around there was some weapon or mod that had a level limit or class limit on it. The name and color schemes of the different enemies felt cockblocky. If I killed something really high level (by running someone over for example) all I received was the regular experience for something of my own level.

And while it was fun it still felt grindy. Around level 9 the grind really started kicking me in the face. By level 10 I've run out of missions to progress it seems without grinding exp to be of the right level to complete the current mission. Did I mention I'm sick of the fucking level based cockblocks already?

It's a half fantasy half post apoc theme park with cars and vending machines in the same vein as WoW.


Bottom line:
Fix the sucky interface, less cockblocks, and polish in more post apoc elements so it doesn't feel like a fantasy RPG with cars and dirty textures.

[Hoax]

Nice write-up, its too bad that we're way to far down the path to release for them to fix those things.  Oh and the fact that they overlooked something as simple as the robot arm and sparks versus +35hp when your repairing your car just proves they are  too stupid to make a good game.


learn2dev newbs

I nominate this for the frontpage, if somebody can come up with a witty title.

[Yegolev]

I nominate this for the frontpage, if somebody can come up with a witty title.

Auto Assault Assaults An Asshole

Remember kids: always avoid alliteration.

[Sunbury]

The car I upgraded to is a dune buggy and keeps flipping over

Did they add that recently?  When I tried it a couple months ago you could not flip your car no matter what, except for those super long zone-length jumps, and only if you landed on a slope.  Even then it just righted itself.

That was one of my complaints.  It was like playing any other driving game in 'god mode'.  Only way to take damage was to get shot at.  You could drive into a concrete wall at 85 mph with 0 damage.  I always wondered how bullets fired from little pistols had more energy to cause damage than a wall at 85mph.

[Krakrok]

Did they add that recently? When I tried it a couple months ago you could not flip your car no matter what, except for those super long zone-length jumps, and only if you landed on a slope. Even then it just righted itself.

I have no idea. I only got the invite maybe 12 days ago. The original noob car was pretty difficult to flip. I expect the vehicle to flip if I'm driving like a maniac but this was overkill.

It really is too bad because they have about 50% of a good game going on but the other 50% of it keeps kicking you in the teeth for no reason.

[Modern Angel]

Exactly. There's half the game that makes me want to like it so, so much even if it's not the most polished thing. Then the grind kicks in and the not enough quests and the dumb quests and the stupid arena PvP and the crafting which is almost oh so cool but then ends up not making any sense... le sigh.

[Signe]

Try it before it's too late and you have to pay for it to try it!  (brought to you by IT )

Auto Assault
Free Beta Offer!
Your chance to play Auto Assault for free before Launch!
   Auto Assault® is about to hit store shelves and we’d like YOU to join us in the final days of beta testing to witness the birth of a genre-defying online role-playing game.

Signing up is free, there are no obligations to buy and since you already have a PlayNC™ master account, it’s very easy!    
What is Auto Assault?
   Auto Assault® takes a bold step away from traditional fantasy-based online role-playing games. Where other games feature elves, swords and sorcery, Auto Assault® is all about Mutants, chain guns and tricked-out, high-powered vehicles. You’re a road warrior - horsepower and firepower are what really count as you take your place as a survivor of a post-apocalyptic Earth.

Auto Assault® features:

    * Destruction: The Havok™ 2 physics engine lets you destroy buildings, level towns and send enemy foot-soldiers flying through the air!
    * Speed: Other MMORPGs are left in the dust! Combat, travel, finding a group…everything is designed to get you into action fast
    * Customization: Choose your vehicle and swap out weapons, armor and more for looks and performance
    * Power: Choose incredible skills and powers as you level up and become a member of the road warrior elite
    * Combat: Take on other players – skirmish on the highways, group together for massive outpost raids or enter the Arenas
    * Loot: No two loot items are the same! You’ll always be on the hunt for that perfect gun, engine, armor and more to add to your unique vehicle
    * Create: Repair and back-engineer guns, engines and more to equip your own vehicle or sell to others.


To sign up for your place in this - this fastest, most destructive MMORPG ever – simply click here

We’ll send you your own serial code key that is valid from Friday, March 17th at 4pm (EST) through Tuesday, March 21st at 3am (EST).

We hope to see you online and look forward to your feedback as a member of our vibrant Auto Assault® community forums    
On the Web
Visit the Official Website!
   An arsenal of visual delights awaits you in the Downloads section of our website where you'll find wallpapers, a screen saver, our latest and greatest video and lots more. We're adding stories, links and goodies frequently so check back often to see what's new and keep up with the latest information.    
   Here are some helpful links to get you started:
• DOWNLOAD: To download the most recent version of the game - now faster and easier than ever - direct your browser to ftp://ftp.autoassault.com/client/.
• DISCUSS: Chat with other members of the community and share your thoughts with the Auto Assault team on the official forums at http://boards.autoassault.com/.
• GET HELP: Need assistance? Visit the support section where you can search our Knowledge Base for answers to frequently asked questions or submit your question via the Ask A Question tab. Our friendly Customer Support team will have you zooming down the highways of the Central Wastelands in no time.

[Lantyssa]

I got that offer about ten minutes ago.

Cars games never held much interest for me and unless something has changed from everything else said in this thread, I shall accept that you are still right before taking the effort to download it.

[Signe]

Even if I hadn't been in this beta briefly, I probably wouldn't be that interested, either, for one of the same reasons I'm not keen on EVE.  I like looking at how cute I am in games.  It's a nice contrast to the mirror. 

[Lantyssa]

Damn those mirrors.

[Der Helm]

    * Loot: No two loot items are the same! You’ll always forever be on the hunt for that perfect gun, engine, armor and more to add to your unique vehicle

Uh oh, this does not sound good.

[Murgos]

Its sort of Diablo IIish in effect, what it means though is that they can drop LOTS of loot because statistics is going to keep the really good stuff few and far between.

[tkinnun0]

That worked great in AC2.

[Murgos]

I kind of like how it works here.  When your in a bit of a scrum and killing stuff left and right it's not uncommon to pick up 9 or 10 things in quick succession.  After the fun dies down a bit you go sort through the random drops and see if anything worthwhile is in there.  The better stuff for your level seems to come 'broken' though and you either need to go fix it or try and find someone who can before you can equip it.  My best loot though has all been the mission earned stuff.

I am still a newb though and not even to level 10 yet so YMMV later on.  I have also been studiously avoiding the boards this time and have absolutely no idea whats coming or what I am doing in the bigger scheme of things.