Auto Assault - Crash and Burn

[bhodikhan]

"Since Auto Assault® launched earlier this year, we’ve had the pleasure of finding a community that is vocal, helpful and truly cares about the game. You, the Auto Assault® gamer, are vital in helping us to create a unique experience unlike any other online role playing game.

One of the things thatyou’ve told us is that you would like to see all servers merged into one to allow more community-oriented play. Therefore, on July 13th, all existing Auto Assault® servers will merge, bringing us all together as one big, happy, warring, power-sliding, flame-throwing family.

What does this mean to you? Well, you’re going to see many more people around in-game, but you also might need to make some decisions. For example, you may need to determine which characters to keep – 12 characters per account is the limit.

By merging the servers, you’re going to make new friends and enemies and even have the pleasure of forming a convoy with your European brothers and sisters - or you can just blow them up…all in the spirit of International relations. Auto Assault® is going global!

In addition, this move makes it easier for our team to create more inclusive in-game events, including tournaments, meet-and-greets, drop and spawn events and more.

Let the games begin!" 

[Signe]

HERE is the link.

[Nebu]

That reads more like "We don't have enough subscribers to justify multiple servers, so we're going to toss you all on one in the hopes of keeping overhead costs down."

Sad really.  As much as this game never really interested me it was nice to see them attempt something somewhat novel. 

[Soln]

What's the problem with the game? Idon't know anything about it. Eve is just vehicle combat.  PotBS will be mostly vehicle combat. 

[Rasix]

I think I said this in my review, but when I was playing shortly after launch all servers were either at "Very Low" or "Low"(1 server) population.  It was a ghost town even then.

Sad really.  As much as this game never really interested me it was nice to see them attempt something somewhat novel.

The attempt wasn't novel though. It was WoW with cars instead of elves.

Edit: for those wanting to know more about the game, here's a link to my archived review.

[shiznitz]

What's the problem with the game?  

Levelling cars. No reason to group. Very brown. Auto-targeting.

[Venkman]

What's the problem with the game? Idon't know anything about it. Eve is just vehicle combat.  PotBS will be mostly vehicle combat. 

No real "problem" per se except for the general lack of interest in it. Eve is "vehicle combat", but most of the experience is the why of vehicle combat and the preparation for it. It's war because of some larger purpose. PotBS is similar in that the team is purposely modelling some of the core meta elements around Eve (them being big fans of it and all).

AA has no such purpose. It's an FPS vehicle-based game with some crafting in it. Unless something has changed there's no permanence to any of the battles nor wins outside of personal growth. This is great and all, but as other MMOFPS games have shown, this does not capture and retain the dedicated and exclusive interest of zillions of players for very long. Adding ground-based avatars to the game didn't really do anything for the core challenges the concept faced.

Now, we could get all deep and talk about what "purpose" there is for other games, but then we get into different playstyles and personalities across both individual playerbases and the genre itself. Like, it's impossible to compare, say, WoW to Eve without taking into consideration the general "personality" of the societies of the games and how those are borne of the game mechanics themselves.

[Rasix]

It's an FPS vehicle-based game with some crafting in it.

It's not a FPS.  It might have been more interesting had it been.

[Hoax]

Problems:
1. Class-based car system?  (wtf)
2. Not an fps (wtf)
3. Simplistic sounding car customization (from what I read, something about every car has a front, back and turret gun just about)
4. Strange & Confusing crafting system (hit and miss according to many)
5. Level based as fuck (your car will crash and explode if it tries to run over a high level infantry npc right?)

I never touched the fucking thing, but if I remember right those were the reasons I didn't.

[Nija]

What's the problem with the game? Idon't know anything about it. Eve is just vehicle combat.  PotBS will be mostly vehicle combat. 

Your vehicle doesn't behave like a vehicle should, for starters. There are more problems with this game than there are minutes in a day. Possibly seconds, too!

[Rhonstet]

Your vehicle doesn't behave like a vehicle should, for starters. There are more problems with this game than there are minutes in a day. Possibly seconds, too!

Yeah.  The physics engine they have for this game is impressive, but the actual properties for objects in this game are very, very off.  Occasionally, they are so far off, the result is comical. 

For example, each vehicle players drive has a listed weight.  Some vehicles, like the speedy bikes, have very low weight, in the 500-1000 pound range.  Others, like the Erebus series of tanks, weigh 30,000+.

Now, you would figure that, should the Erebus tank actually hit something, the result would resemble a freight train hitting something.  Mainly, a lot of fire and crunching, with the tank losing maybe 1 kph speed. 

No so.  What the tank hits will either bounce, or occasionally, CAUSE THE TANK TO FLIP OVER.


Another really weird point is thrust-to-mass.  In AA, your vehicle consists of a Chassis, in which your various bits of equipment are slotted(basically, your chassis is your character).  One important piece of equipment is your Powerplant.  Other common equipment is things like 'Armor', 'Turret Weapon', 'Tires', etc.

Now, the way the powerplant works is counterintuitive and stupid.  Your overall engine power in terms of acceleration and top speed is determined ENTIRELY by the CHASSIS of what you drive.  The only thing your powerplant controls is your ability to shed heat and your 'Power'(think 'Mana').

[Alkiera]

This doesn't especially surprise me.  I played in the open beta period, so there were tons of people around...  but the comments above I can agree with.

Vehicle physics are whack.  To a certain extent, they're more cinematic(lack of falling damage), but mostly just odd.  I never did figure out crafting, mostly because I took one look at the system, saw 'wow, this is obviously way too grindy for open betaone lifetime' and ignored it.

As mentioned above, the equipment available makes very little difference to your car.  All equipment has level reqs, and one variant available for a slot isn't necessarily betterdifferent than the other.  While it wass amusing to drive around relatively fast and shoot people/things and blow stuff up... that wore thin after not long.  The quest system is there, and has wow-level features(journal, waypoints, timed missions) but wasn't terribly inspired.

If the item system had been more jumpgate/eve(different items actually affect ship stats), and less early EQ(equipment does practically nothing), it might have been interesting.  Jumpgate had the best vehicle equipment system ever; and Eve is a close second.  AA wasn't close.

Alkiera

[Trippy]

Jumpgate had the best vehicle equipment system ever

It did? Well that's odd since NetDevil developed that too.

[SpaceDrake]

Dammit, Trippy beat me to it, though I personally think EVE is a bit better in ship customization in some ways.

Really, looking at AA it's almost comical how Scott Brown & co. got burned watching Jumpgate sell poorly. They didn't realize that a lot of the mechanics of JG were good, it was presentation and world that lacked. When they go for EQ with cars, it arguably crashes on an even LARGER scale since AA had shittons of advertising.

[atricks]

   Auto assault feels more like an arcade game than a MMP game, I couldn't justify the 15 / month on it.  The pricing model on that game is just all wrong, it would be ok as an addon to something like CoH or Cov (Maybe a few bucks more) just to play it.

   But definitely not worth the full price of admission when compared to other things.  Make drastic changes with the pricing model, open it up to bundles and I might actually play the thing.

[Venkman]

Dammit, Trippy beat me to it, though I personally think EVE is a bit better in ship customization in some ways.

I agree with this, even so far as thinking Eve has one of the better character customization systems going, since I consider the ships part of the character. In how many games are one's basic actual used abilities so easily changed (once the skills are gained of course). There is no better way to allow for pure character personalization than not cap what a character can learn and forcing them into a never-changing template. Sure Eve has templates, but those are transitory as players gain more skills. Sorta like Planetside on steroids.

Otherwise, I agree on everything else said about AA vehicle performance and customization. A shame. Maybe if they just dumped the avatar-concept and stuck purely with vehicles they'd had had more resources to put to doing that part right.

[WayAbvPar]

Otherwise, I agree on everything else said about AA vehicle performance and customization. A shame. Maybe if they just dumped the avatar-concept and stuck purely with vehicles they'd had had more resources to put to doing that part right.

Exactly. While the only physical avatar a player has in EVE is his/her ship, they can fly any number of different ships. Make the character development about skills, and let the tinkerers have their way with customized vehicle setups (again, like EVE).

Basically- take the EVE character advancement model, add in some detailed mods and vehicle setups, sprinkle in the absolute mayhem that is Car Wars, use a decent physics model and make it as twitchy as possible. Then sit back and get fitted for your 10 gallon money hat.

[Strazos]

I am still astounded that this game saw such a wide release. We saw this train coming...what, more than a year ago, in closed beta? I would seriously like to ask the people who made the final decisions to release this game why they thought it was worth releasing? We know they spent a lot on advertising, and I imagine the budget was not anemic...

[Strazos]

Apparently, now Gamestop is bundling AA with the GW: Factions Collecter's Edition when you order online.

[Margalis]

E&B did the same thing where you can customize your character even though you spend all your time in your ship. The only thing your character could do was land at a base to walk around and get missions, which was really annoying.

If you are going to have a human character either give them a lot of useful things to do or else just half-ass it and give them basically nothing to do.

Its like games that let you tweak eyebrows in 4 different ways but then don't offer you many clothing options. Bad set of tradeoffs.

[Trippy]

E&B did the same thing where you can customize your character even though you spend all your time in your ship. The only thing your character could do was land at a base to walk around and get missions, which was really annoying.

The game didn't have that originally -- they put it in cause testers were asking for it.

[Telemediocrity]

Space Cowboy seems to have gone a similar route.  Of course, they get away with it because their game is free; had their pricing structure been similar to E&B or AA's, I doubt they would be seeing numbers like what they're getting either.

[Venkman]

Space Cowboy seems to have gone a similar route.  Of course, they get away with it because their game is free; had their pricing structure been similar to E&B or AA's, I doubt they would be seeing numbers like what they're getting either.

You've seen numbers for Space Cowboy? I'd be interested. Seemed like a game not really suited for a US/EU type player to me.

[Telemediocrity]

Sorry if that sounded like a grander claim than I was making; I'm just going by what I see ingame, where the servers always appear jam-packed with people, especially the newbie zones.

[damijin]

towns in space cowboy make me very 

[Hoax]

You can't have 100% polish and free, at least not usually.

Space Cowboy has a stupid combat system where some skill is involved but if your plane is a higher level you will just wtfpwn somebody.  So I guess that is another thing it has in common with AA.  MMO's: forcing the DIKU-paradigm one square peg into a round hole at a time...

[Righ]

You can't have 100% polish and free, at least not usually.

That's pretty much what Ribbentrop and Molotov decided in 1939.

[Margalis]

E&B did the same thing where you can customize your character even though you spend all your time in your ship. The only thing your character could do was land at a base to walk around and get missions, which was really annoying.

The game didn't have that originally -- they put it in cause testers were asking for it.

Devs need to learn that focus groups are very often wrong when it comes to games. Especially because they can't evaluate tradeoffs. To someone on the outside every feature is free. There is no opportunity cost.

[Venkman]

Sorry if that sounded like a grander claim than I was making; I'm just going by what I see ingame, where the servers always appear jam-packed with people, especially the newbie zones.

Ah yea. I agree. However, I'd say we've all seen that in any new title. Linear progression and common points of origina and whatnot :)

But I see others are calling this game "free". It isn't really, or at least, soon won't be. Remember this is a PvP game after all, with items tied into that system being sold through microtransactions.

The game is young right now so I'm sure most think their skill will determine PvP encounters. Given the history of this game though, and it's origin, I would wager strongly that within a month or so it'll be common knowledge that the way to win is to pay more. And, the people paying more will pay way in excess a "normal" monthly fee while doing so.

[MahrinSkel]

I really think a lot of this is over-analyzing.  The game they showed at E3 2004 was fun.  People stood in a long line to play it, had a blast, and went back around and got back in line.  You got what you expected from a game that had a dune buggy with a big honking gun on it in the booth.  You drove around like a maniac, blew stuff up, jumped over stuff, even turned into a giant robot, and generally got your Mad Max freak on.

How anyone could look at the response to *that* game and say "let's completely change the core gameplay experience from Mad Max to WoW in cars", I have no idea.  But the game they turned it into by the beta wasn't much fun, even before you realized that the customization was woefully inadequate and the crafting sucked.  At AGC in September that year I had really been hoping to get a job working on the game I had seen in May.  By November, I was glad I hadn't.

--Dave

[WayAbvPar]

I wish you had, if only for the chance you could have helped reroute it back to fun.

[Righ]

They should have contracted Patrick Buckland too.

[Alkiera]

E&B did the same thing where you can customize your character even though you spend all your time in your ship. The only thing your character could do was land at a base to walk around and get missions, which was really annoying.

If you are going to have a human character either give them a lot of useful things to do or else just half-ass it and give them basically nothing to do.

Its like games that let you tweak eyebrows in 4 different ways but then don't offer you many clothing options. Bad set of tradeoffs.

Whoa, this comparison to E&B struck me oddly... as being eerily dead-on.  AA managed to produce an automotive version of E&B.  Which is a shame, since an automotive version of their previous game would have done much better.

--
Alkiera

[Margalis]

You know, they are very similar. I didn't even think of that when I posted, I was just thinking about the vehicle vs. character issue.

But E&B was very similar in that they took moving around and shooting at things it turned it into some die-rolling nonsense. E&B would have been 100x better had the combat been for real instead of RPG.

[Morfiend]

E&B had the worst space combat EVAR! Lets take space combat about ships that fly and stuff, and make it Diku based. It just didnt work, and it sure as hell wasnt fun. Hell half the time you didnt even control your ship while fighting cause you where in formation.

I really like the idea behind EVE, but I dont like the combat very much. I just wish I had more direct control over my ship. If the combat in EVE was more FPS (Descent style) god damn would it be fun. EVE is far and away better than E&B was, but there is still to much automation for me.