Auto Assault: Dissecting our Baby: AA Post Mortem

Stradden

Carolyn Koh files her second report from the recent Online Game Developers conference. This time, she sat in on a talk with Scott Brown and Hermann Peterscheck from NetDevil, the company responsible for Auto Assault. In this talk, Brown and Peterscheck discuss their missteps while brining Auto Assault to market.

Day two of the ODGC saw me at the Auto Assault Post Mortem - a lecture presented by Scott Brown, the President of Net Devil and Hermann Peterscheck, the game's Producer, as they shared with conference attendees their missteps while brining Auto Assault to market.

"Want to make a great game?" asked Scott Brown, "Don't make a deal with milestones. There are better ways to do a game deal."

What Scott meant was that when it came to game design and delivering an MMOG, there are better measurables out there than milestones as contracted payment deliverables. Per the normal business models, a detailed time and progress schedule is tied to payment. However, with games development, planning out what you will be doing a year from now (or two, or three) is impossible beyond the most basic set of features. Without a dynamic and reasonably simple change process, developers will spend an enormous amount of time doing the wrong things at the wrong time or in the wrong order to meet the milestone schedule in order to be paid.

Most developers are unable to cover the costs of teams, in the event of missing a milestone. This puts incredible pressure on the publisher to pay for milestones they felt were not met, or cancel the project.

Read the whole article here.

0over0

Interesting stuff. I'm glad to see that many of their mistakes are purposefully being avoided by Flying Labs with PotBS. Maybe NetDevil should write a book "How NOT to Make an MMO."

AA is much improved over beta (was in beta and then played for a while in the past year), but it's still lacking quite a bit of content and some of the game mechanics aren't working that well. But it's pretty fun for a month or two, depending on how you play.

Every game has the potential to be great, it's all in the execution and, as they said, you only get to launch once.

Myrdek

Strange how he didn't mention the lack of things to do



Blowing up stuff and driving around is only fun for so long

Cutedge

They're still trying to spin Auto Assault as "people don't play it because it's too complex and too good for them"?

Come on.

 

Auto Assault is still the only mmo that I've played where the sound didn't work. That's a special level of broke right there.

Ryowulf

Complexity is not a probem is players if players have an idea of what to do and where to go. I didn't notice on that list "Understand why people do or don't play your game." AA is not complex. To say that it is suggest the Devs have no idea why more people didn't play their game.



The game is fun, but in the same way that the SWG space game is fun. You can only take so much of blowing up the same old things the same old ways. If you are going to have a car as an avatar you need more 'look' options, in the same way a Dwarf might have many armors and weapons to pick from that effect his look.



Anyway the biggest problem is they over reached. They tried to have a lot of things, but on a small budget.  If you want WoW numbers you have to spend WoW money.

boinged

I agree on the last comment about complexity - it's not hard to fire your gun and launch a few skills. One of the strengths of AA is that it's so easy to get to max level - I pretty much solo'd it. That's also its downfall - you don't need anyone else until the pvp endgame and even then you could get by on your own before recent balance changes. The convoy (team) max size is four people with no way to link into a 'raid' group - I think that speaks volumes about the dev's expectations of the social aspect of the game.

Jin_D3vil

I loved Auto Assault, but it isn’t a game that lends itself to new players very easily. When someone see's a driving game MMO especially the videos of AA they immediately think its either going to be very hard to learn or way too easy. It's a shame because the game was very cool and very original creation that deserved a lot more than it got.



It was a game that should have been fast paced action over a few minutes or a few hours. But sadly because of the way the game worked it felt too slow and restrictive. I don’t mean it wasn’t fast and fun, heck I had a great laugh just driving about killing things and destroying buildings like Mad Max on speed. What I mean is that the typical MMO system of calculating damage doesn’t work in a fast game like AA. I found myself driving around and fighting many enemies either completly destroying loads of them no problem at all or finding one nigh on impossible to kill even though I was high enough level and I had good enough equipment.



I found myself sitting almst ontop of the enemy and shooting point blank and not once taking off his health. The only way around that was constantly using my stealth attacks to create an opening and running away to repeat it until I could destroy him completly. I can't tell you how many times I found myself wanting to step out my vehicle and have a look at my gun's incase someone had some how bent them like in a Looney Toons cartoon and was shooting out at some strange angle.

I found that the creation system was very time consuming, not because it was very difficult to learn but the more I played the game and destroyed the world around me the more junk I carried and stored. I had to spend a long time looking at each item to see if I had any thing in my storage locker that I needed in order to create some thing. Which then means I needed to transfer it out in order to use it. I can't tell you how much hastle it was to transfer them one at a time between my character and my storage locker every time. If only they allowed you to create things without having to worry if the items was being carried or I had in storage.



All of this I could forgive because I loved the fighting but the more I tried to get people into the game the more people left it. Eventually it came down to me driving solo wondering why the heck I was paying to play with other people when I spent all my time never seeing or hearing anyone apart from in town or for the 2 seconds I seent hem flying past me on route to some where else.



I am always tempted to log back in and re-sub just to go for a little drive like I used too. Thanks Net Devil for a great game, shame for all the faults but it was an experiance like no other.

Kyleran

I found this quote to be the most profound of their lesson's learned?



"We should have been playing our game ourselves. The question you should ask yourself is 'If your own Devs aren't playing the game... who will?' Play your own game early and often. If people in your office are not playing your game, people outside will not either."



I had just assumed that in general developer's played their own games.... this was a surprise to me that they had to learn this...

Umbroso

Having been a beta tester, I can tell you that the biggest difference between beta and live was that issues that we brought to their attention during beta were quickly patched. In Live, when people who had beta tested the game brought bugs to the devs attention using the same systems as before, communication on the patching ceased. 

The reason myself and my friends who beta tested AA with me left live had NOTHING to do with complexity.  We were tired of the devs telling us that "the issues would be fixed on the next patch but that there was no ETA for the patch, OH but we have these additional features that will be coming out with that patch!"  A month later we would ask about the patch and they would say, "Well we don't have an ETA for it, but we added even MORE features to that patch!"

 

New Feature patching should occur on a TBA basis; BUG patching should be done asap.  If you have the fix for a bug/missing feature, don't announce that it's going to be fixed on the next patch which will occur SOMETIME in the future.  The communication for the devs implied that they were holding up the patch in order to add additional features.  Most of us that have been in the gaming world for a while know that new features always have some bugs in them.  Fix bugs quick; add features slowly.

Ciredric

This is and was always a small niche market game.  The developers can whine all they want, but this was never ever going to be a great money maker.

The focus should have been that the concept was wrong from the start.

Ugottawantit

I played the game during beta, and couldn't help but compare it to Eve. Your in a car instead of a spaceship. The bad part for AA is, Outerspace is a whole lot prettier than a post apoctaliptic world.  I think AA would be a great xbox game, maybe they should just port it to consoles.  One thing Devs need to realize,  is that people who play mmo's are living in an alternate universe. It's needs to be attractive for people to want to live there.

Alienovrlord

"There were difficulties with driving controls."



Well I’m glad to FINALLY see this problem brought up. I was complaining bitterly about those lousy controls when I joined late in the beta but was completely ignored.  They were not improved at all when I tried a free-trial after release.  I certainly enjoy wasting my gaming time spending 10 minutes trying to maneuver a car out of a trench – whoppee.



Character/Avatar  movement. Can you get any more basic or fundamental than that? And here they’re finally admitting they messed it up.



"We should have been playing our game ourselves. The question you should ask yourself is 'If your own Devs aren't playing the game... who will?' Play your own game early and often. If people in your office are not playing your game, people outside will not either."



What the???  They weren’t PLAYING their own game??   What the heck were they doing, playing Hero-clix?  This is one of the most appalling things I’ve ever heard from a development company.   I used to feel sorry about this game failing so miserably but if they had Devs who couldn’t be bothered to play their own game, then they got what they deserved.



The lessons learned from Auto Assault:



Maintaining a good publisher/developer relationship is important.

Treat innovation with caution.

Play your game early and often.

Polish as you go.

Avoid complexity.

Expect change and plan for it.

Focus on one good instance first, and then add content.

The one caveat they left the audience with is the one we have heard over and over again... "You only launch once."

I will agree with these points 100% but would add  - Listen to feedback and learn what to ignore as well as what's worthwhile

But knowing what to ignore as whining and what not to ignore is a hard thing.   But then if designing games was easy they'd all be best selling hits  

LeGray

imho, AA is not a bad game. it's just to "niche" for a full price mmorpg.

ncsoft should introduce some kind of multipass. that would greatly buff their subscriber numbers for EVERY one of their games.

DarkAssJ

I was in beta too, and I was dissapointed with two tings mainly

1) The aproach to avatar, well if they say cars are so different from elves, why did they made them so similar - the cars felt like clumpsy ork in bizzare armor, the all aproach to avatar cars was just to cartoony, like little toys not 4 wheels of apocalyptical destraction ! Ill not go into details of inventory and the stats system.
Abaut that the car avatars are alienating playes is a bull, Need For Speed somehow did okay. All they needed add thing like guns and armor and it would be perfect.

2) The Draiving and game world, didnt inspire the feel of speed and massive destruction, I felt more like in your typical Fantasy world as ever. Cars needed to be bigger and have more feel of weight as should the zones themselves.

And
NOT PLAYING YOUR OWN GAME!

I always thought people were reasonably and logical, I guess now I know better.

Like other poster said, It just so many times before blowing up same thing, same way becomes just a chore.
I was realy looking forward to this game.

ArshrAAm

Originally posted by Settingsun

Complexity is not a probem is players if players have an idea of what to do and where to go. I didn't notice on that list "Understand why people do or don't play your game." AA is not complex. To say that it is suggest the Devs have no idea why more people didn't play their game.

I believe the complexity referred to in this article has more to do with what goes on under the hood. The big problem is the combat system. It looks simple enough, but there's way too many factors in getting hits in and some of them cancel each other out. They were very ambitious on a lot of things, like how many materials there would be to work with. The end result was a massive amount of data being sent back and forth between the players and the server. While it was cut down considerably before release, it's still an issue that should be resolved if they intend to keep this thing going.

KoSPr0

Originally posted by Cutedge


They're still trying to spin Auto Assault as "people don't play it because it's too complex and too good for them"?
Come on.
 
Auto Assault is still the only mmo that I've played where the sound didn't work. That's a special level of broke right there.

No most people can't play AA cause their machines can't handle it, and for alot of people it is too complex.



Game was hella fun for a few months

AranStormah

<blockquote><i>Originally posted by KoSPr0</i>
<br><b><blockquote><em>Originally posted by Cutedge</em> <br />
<strong>
<p>They're still trying to spin Auto Assault as "people don't play it because it's too complex and too good for them"?</p>
<p>Come on.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Auto Assault is still the only mmo that I've played where <em>the sound didn't work</em>. That's a special level of broke right there.</p>
</strong></blockquote> <br />
No most people can't play AA cause their machines can't handle it, and for alot of people it is too complex.<br />
<br />
Game was hella fun for a few months</b></blockquote>
<br>
I'm guessing with complexity they refer to the crafting system and skill system among other things. They're obvious once you're used to them, but the skillsystem in general gave too little feedback on what was going on and what you got, not to mention it took ages to put in respecs.

But in all honesty, I truly believe Auto Assault, which I found a fun game and returned to several times, failed because it had too many bugs affecting gameplay. Buffs and their stacking was a nightmare, and allthough they'd fixed alot last time I played, it still leaves something to be desired, vehicles STILL have bugged sounds (ie some chassis play their sounds at like 10% of the standard volume), sound effects will become lagged (ie they'll still play, but first you won't hear anything from a group of sound fx and then they'll start playing off in the order you should've heard them 30 minutes ago) and of course their problems with player data being unsynched for PvP. Stuff like that doesn't cry out "pay me".

And basing your endgame on PvP in an itemcentric game is never an optimal solution. Some games pull it off cause people so addicted that they'll farm items for months to go do Item vs Item combat, but AA wasn't one of those few.

The one biggest "good thing" I can point out with AA is that it had for the most part some pretty good storylines for their quests, even though the quests themselves were of the generic type.

sololoco

This is ridiculous.  This game is not complexed at all.  The controls aren't either.  This is a very simple game to play especially if you like a fast paced game where you can zoom in and out leveling pretty fast as you go along.

I recently cancelled my account after just two months of play because after you hit the top level of 80 there's nothing to do.  Plus, there aren't that many players in the game although it's just one server.  The Mutants have the least players followed by the Bio-Meks with the Human having the most players. But even the Humans don't have that many themselves.

The mission system is all screwed up.  There are many instances where you tend to run out of missions then all of a sudden they pop up again out of nowhere. But now many of these missions are 8-12 levels higher then you are making them impossible to complete or they're 20 or so levels under you where you get nothing for exp.

Pvp is just for the high levels, there's none for the lower levels. if you want an even chance in pvp you then have to wait til you hit the top level to have any chance of staying alive.

In the Mutant side the game is geared just for the Avenger class. Avengers seem to get all the best gear of any class. Everything is either for Avengers or for everyone else. Champions have seconds, the other two classes are forgotten.  They should just make the Mutant side just for Avengers since they get everything.

The game itself is pretty good. I like it, I just wish they changed a few things around a bit and maybe, just maybe more people would return to play. And it would be more interesting, especially at the high levels.

These devs see what their mistakes are then do something about it and don't waste time telling others.

Anofalye

AA is a great game.

 

I tried that game in some beta, and I really love what I saw.  I purchase some deluxe edition (eh don't recall the terminology) and I have been happy with it.  I didn't play AA even the full month, I just didn't get the extra little motivation to log in and play.  What was missing?  I don't know.  Maybe the ending in some PvP zones cripple my driving goal I don't know.

 

But I have only praises for this game.  Oh, it wasn't perfect, and I didn't play it long.  But I buy the collector/deluxe whatever edition and I am extremely happy with that choice.  The game is neat.  I am spoiled and playing a game I find better (CoV), but eh, that remove nothing to AA.  What was it missing?  Not much, a little something that make you want to play more...and more...and more...It was like 1 of the best firecamp I ever saw, but nobody has fire to light it up.

 

I guess the game releases at "the wrong" moment in my personnal life for tastes and all, otherwise, I could have been playing that game, not much of a stretch to see myself playing it and loving it.

 

At any rate, when peoples ask me to do a top X of the best games I play, AA sometimes make it to the 4-10th position depending on the exact question, and this is great.

 

Kudos guys and I will definitely considers/buy the next title, maybe even another collector edition! 

 

PS: What would have turn AA into a blockbuster?  I know it didn't need much more, but...I dunno what exactly.  And I am a Game Designer, a High School Teacher, I solve the problems of the  world on an everyday basic.  I know it wasn't much, but, I can't pinpoint the detail, what would have change everything...you can go read me in EQ or vanguard forums and see my solutions...but...for AA...it was beyond me, and it didn't need much...it was soooo close.

turnipz

I remember a while back when AA was first released watching the trailer and reading up on it, it just seemed like there wasnt much to do.  I mean the pvm looked like crap, you didnt aim so it looked rather slow paced and boring and not enough enemies at once.  They also didnt hype the pvp war of the races/guilds or whatever so it didnt seem like it would be large scale battles between lots of people, and if I remember correctly there wasnt even a death penalty or a faction you return to when you die.  So it looked like you mindlessly drove around then saw a couple crappy enemies or a person and let your auto aim go as you drove by.



Anyways thats why I didnt even play the game and still havent, I could be totally wrong about the game.

TCoops

  I dont believe this. Basically what the poor developers are saying is "we took a risk bringing something new to the MMO market, got unlucky and learned our lesson".. "take it from us, dont bother developing anything innovative, risky or creative" ... "we should have just made our game dummed down, pretty to look at (even if it was just superficially good), and mainstream".



  I followed Auto Assault since it was a rumour. And was lucky enough to play it for a while. I thought it was the best thing in a stale genre to come along in a while. The MMO market is going down hill - nothing but fantasy clones. They are also becoming dummed down. Games used to have elements of strategy or skill in them.. That used to be the draw - testing your wits and mettle against other players or the game AI. Now it just seems like a barely interractive movie. Get wowed by graphics and effects, direct your character and watch all the action take place with little or no input from yourself. Auto Assault was a little bit different. Tried to introduce some player skill in the equation and some speed and action. I thought the system they had was innovative and a fresh change from the norm. Some players love complexity and if the model is given a chance It can become popular to all players once they are weened off the 'norm' of dummed down games.



   I think Auto Assault suffered bad luck in its release. But in no way do i think that new developers out there should heed some of that advice. Without risk taking, trying new formulas and innovations we will be stuck with WoW/lineage clones for the next 10 years- people only playing it safe. And gamers being hypnotised into a consumer norm, only playing one type of experience and being made to believe anything remotely challenging is over complex and not fun.



  

DevilHawk

NetDevil screwed over the small player base of JumpGate to work on the trash known as "AutoAssault". So in my eyes, karma came around and bit them in the arse.

 

If they want success, its sitting there.. in the code they have already written. With the old acronym KISS...(keep it simple stupid)

The company created a fantastic game engine for space related games... with near real physics that brought praise from almost every single player who came into contact with it. What they need to do is revisit that old code (jumpgate) and capitalize on Sony's past screwup with swg and create a space based mmo.

Some things to remember.

1. Make sure you retain a good publisher (3DO ftl)

2. Play to your company's strengths.. (at the time, the best playing space sim out)

3. Follow the project through... (ND dropped the ball with JumpGate after their publisher failed to advertise and market a really great game)

4. Avoid milestones.. (also avoid the term "soon" and announcing dates that are just not within a reasonable reach.

Sure, AutoAssault may be an original idea for the MMO market, but lets be realistic here... who really wants to play hotwheels? By the way, didnt your player base warn ya about this? (shakes head)

 

Note to Scorch... if ya still working ND that is, go back to JG, rework the code, recreate the stage, keep the storyline (races), and keep the physics... add in a pinch of avatar work, carrier based combat, planets.. etc...  rework market and trade and you have the possiblity of a hit MMO. There is an entire community waiting, sitting, watching and wishing for the release of a game the fills this slot. You should really take a look into it.

Derangedcowbrain

I'm disgusted that they literally (and I mean literally—see Performance + Easy + Pretty = Fun! in situ) equate "easy" as good in this. The problems of the game are not because of complexity. Every game that is out now is "easy," and it has been wisely pointed out by many that we are in the dark times of MMOs. If easy and simplistic are the signs of a successful MMO, then the past year and a half have produced the unequalled dank beauties of this age.

It is time for a renaissance in gaming.

J.S. Mills

MarL

I dont believe in niche markets... any market can be a success if done well...

Twisted metal 1,2,3 all sold over 1 million copies each....if the game is fun people will buy it.

Other genres in games are harder to make mmo's becuase you cant just copy features.. so its harder to make a "WoW" when there are no games to steal from.

Razorback

Originally posted by Kyleran

I found this quote to be the most profound of their lesson's learned?



"We should have been playing our game ourselves. The question you should ask yourself is 'If your own Devs aren't playing the game... who will?' Play your own game early and often. If people in your office are not playing your game, people outside will not either."



I had just assumed that in general developer's played their own games.... this was a surprise to me that they had to learn this...

QFT

Leemebe

I liked Auto Assualt, but it actually made me motion sick. I would have headaches that lasted hours after a sesson of gameplay.

I do hope ND goes back to work on Jumpgate. If jumpgate was created in a universe the size of Eve, it would be a first rate game. It's main problem was the size of the universe. Within a couple months you'd done/seen everything. It's commodities trading system was built as well as it's flight engine. I spent countless hours transporting loads between stations to make a profit in a game where mass affected manuverability and the amount of time it took a ship to reach zero accerleration. Only SWG FLS had a flight engine that came close to matching Jumpgates and it too suffered from a Galaxy too small.