Speaking of errors that NetDevil made during Auto Assault’s development: I think the greatest error was to ignore comments made on the beta board. It was almost as if none of the devs ever read the complaints. Another bad thing was the decision to some day segregate the beta players based on their continent. I.e. all of a sudden they removed Europeans and Aussies from the beta and put them into a EU beta. Really great! That was the day I stopped playing the beta and giving feedback. And I know I wasn’t the only one.

1. The developerteam was lazy on coding CRITICAL patches to it. By CRITICAL you will know what i mean by looking at the bugs it had when it was released. The beta, except for some weird ”gold beta member” people, was only avaible for weekends, with the excuse of ”leaving more patching time for the developers”( 5 days a week of coding patches before new beta was the public message.). Which was found to be total bullshit upon reading the forums on this ”gold beta membership (aka 24/7 beta). Which was issued to pretty much ”anyone related to the development team, anyone licking enough ass, and anyone who didn’t complain enough of the bugs.” Of course, i cannot talk much of it, it would break the NDA agreement of a betatester, but that was basically it.

2. The developer team didn’t listen one little bit on reported bugs, which were either reported by forum (a ‘’support” part of the forum, with description being ”report bugs here” ), from which they were quickly removed, or locked by developers/moderators, claiming the game’s reporting tool would have to be used for this. Which incidentally often didn’t work, at all. And had some sort of time limit of around 10 minutes between reporting 2 bugs. Yep.

Well, the post turned out to be quite a rant, but… the beta itself was a bad failure, to be fair, Auto Assault, besides of it’s failures on being terribly imbalanced experience on all classes and races, it is a good game. If you do not mind the bugs and imbalances that still tease the gameplay experience, it’s a different, innovate and fun game. So long as you do pick the right class and race.

The feeling I got from the above interview is that Netdevil does not want to answer any questions directly. Leaving it vague gives no competitor any ideas on how the game is being made, content, or leverage on facets on game play. He’s being political. What I do gain is the sense that they are actually learning from their mistakes, as anyone who takes their job seriously would do.

Unfortunately, prior to the interview I do not believe that Netdevil has given much thought to high level content. Which is unfortunate because it a lack of high level content that is killing many newer MMO’s like DDO. What they should do is design the game from its end to its beginning. This would give them a much better idea of how many hours a player would want to play before becoming bored and looking elsewhere to play.

Also, in RL we always have PvP don’t we? but it’s because of rules and regulations that most people do not go around hurting each other on a daily basis. Would’nt it make sense to have a game world that is always PvP, but to let some players be the “police”. Or to have zones within your PvE server that are PvP which can be crossed into easily. These zones could have very rewarding quests or other incentives to be crossed in to.

The first is to provide in depth combat and rewards system while keeping it accesible and fun, without any sacrifice to direct control over your ship.

The second is to provide an open game world while keeping enough content and objective based gameplay to keep players interested.

The third is to make sure they make something about the game truly stunning. If they try and cover too many area’s I think it is bound to fail.

I believe they should concentrate on one aspect or the other and make that aspect brilliant, rather than trying to make all aspects just as good. e.g make pvp very exciting and rewarding, or make trading and missions really in depth and fun.

This has potential to be good, but will it be?

We won’t know till it’s released. :P

I would stay away from all interviews and just get into beta if possible, play it, play it hard, then tell people what you think.

Even the most skeptical of veteran pilots from the original Jumgate, like Karash who joined EVE for the last few years, had a chance to talk to Scorch personally, and see the game for real in front of him. After seeing what was available even at this Alpha stage, he was overly impressed at not only how it looked, but how it was appealing. Instead of being more skeptical, he’s excited and can’t wait to play it, as am I.

Oh yeah, I liked Auto Assault, but NC Soft did have a great deal of say so in how it was being developed, and ultimately in how it got shut down. They can’t release it on Steam, because NC Soft owns the storyline, the graphics, etc. NetDevil retained only the source code for the game, and if anyone wants to get together and make an Auto-combat-MMO, they are ready to talk.

As for Jumpgate:Evolution…my joystick is waiting…

As for the look of the new game;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWCVT77wX6Q
This was shot at the Codemasters Connect08 event in Birmigham UK.

Looks amazing, cant wait. Ive signed up for the Beta testing at their site and as far as I am concerned, Bring on the Beta I want to fly!

Personally, I’d like to relive my college years from the other side, in a mid-sized cop car with a brushcutter, some blades on the side, about six forward-firing MGs, ringed with an AP proximity defense system, a turret that mounts a GL (with CS, smoke and AP grenades), and a bullhorn that blasts “PLEASE DISPERSE” repeatedly as the car dives into the center of mass of an anti-government protest.

And I’m sure some off-duty cop would just love to be one of the demonstrators with a RPG.

See, auto combat can have something for everyone. Ideas are cheap. Implementation ain’t.