First, a little background: I've been a long time supporter of this game. I first caught a glimpse of this fantastic concept back in late '04. In June '05, I was accepted into the beta program. I spent most of my time on one side and one class (Biomek Mastermind), hoping to help make this into a solid class to play. I tend to favor pet/support classes and the like.
Seeing this article was a bittersweet moment. I was happy to see that they finally owned up to mistakes that were made. The fact that I was right about some comments and passing thoughts I've had (like how they need to play the game themselves) made me sad. I've invested a lot of time and energy into this game, more than any other MMO I've played. Now I feel like a bit of a fool. I've had many arguments about issues in the game, including my own class. Was it all for nothing? Time will tell.
Getting to the article itself, I have to start with some of the comments made in "The Ugly."
-- The main problems were the flip side of the good. Players had difficulty identifying with vehicles and asked for avatars. There were difficulties with driving controls. Game concepts were unfamiliar. "Everyone knows what a Fireball does," said Hermann, "even I'm not sure what Hazardous Cleansing does." --
The vehicle / avatar issue seemed like nothing to me, at the time. It still does. Maybe it's because I'm used to it from my vehicular combat games. EVE got by without much of an avatar system. I don't think this was a big enough problem to mention it and there were far worse problems, which I'll get to later.
These "Unfamiliar game concepts" were outlined in the manual. Outdated as it is, it still gives pretty good starter info about what's what in the game. Descriptions on the skills also give a good idea of exactly what things do The problem is too many people don't even bother to look at them. They just dive right in and ask quesitons as they go along. There's not much a developer can do to address that, short of halting progress in the game whenever a new concept comes up and vocally communicating it to the player.
They go on to comment about being in beta too early. I think the real problem was releasing too early. While they had to push things back to redo entire zones, they still felt the need to push the release out for E3 '06. PvP was barely tested. They spent maybe a month on it and release day came.
-- Scott was candid talking what went wrong with Auto-Assault. "Performance," he said. "We had bad frame rates. Our specs were too high. It's too complex. Only our hard-core players are still playing it. They dig the complexity." "We threw too much at the players," Hermann agreed. "It was too much, too soon. Entry should have been easy." --
The statement about the specs is right, but I found this to be the easiest game to get into. Even crafting was pretty simple. Make this, that and the next thing to get something made. Invest points in research and development skills to get better chances to break stuff down, open slots, memorize or experiment. This system, however, is broken and has been so for too long. This is one thing that's driven off even the more hardcore players. The system was also more complex when they had more levels of materials to collect, but that had to be cut down, along with inventory/locker space, due to high bandwidth.
It was only when you got into the nitty-gritty of the combat system that you found complexity. Resistances, attributes, defense, deflection... There's a lot more that goes into figuring out whether or not you get hit. This could've been simplified a lot more. The pet class suffered most from this complexity as the pets have been in dire need of adjustment from the beginning and their approach has been very slow. It was only a couple months ago that they realized they needed to add another stat to help them hit things. They can hit things now, but not very hard.
Now, for my lessons to be learned from Auto Assault:
* Communication with your customers is just as important as it is with the publisher. Be consistent with said communication. Ask why people stay and leave. I recently dropped my sub for LOTRO and I was quite pleased to see a survey to fill out.
* Communication within the development team should be a no-brainer, but there's a chance there was fault here, too. The 3 factions turned out rather unbalanced in the beginning.
* Treat every class with care and get them done right before release. If one class is going to be more complex than the rest, get that tested over and over again and make sure it's on par with the rest. I've played a number of support classes and seen others in action. These classes need more attention than they're currently given, as they require far more attention from the person playing them. If their experience isn't comfortable, then they drop off and the rest of the people suffer and follow them out.
First, a little background: I've been a long time supporter of this game. I first caught a glimpse of this fantastic concept back in late '04. In June '05, I was accepted into the beta program. I spent most of my time on one side and one class (Biomek Mastermind), hoping to help make this into a solid class to play. I tend to favor pet/support classes and the like.
Seeing this article was a bittersweet moment. I was happy to see that they finally owned up to mistakes that were made. The fact that I was right about some comments and passing thoughts I've had (like how they need to play the game themselves) made me sad. I've invested a lot of time and energy into this game, more than any other MMO I've played. Now I feel like a bit of a fool. I've had many arguments about issues in the game, including my own class. Was it all for nothing? Time will tell.
Getting to the article itself, I have to start with some of the comments made in "The Ugly."
-- The main problems were the flip side of the good. Players had difficulty identifying with vehicles and asked for avatars. There were difficulties with driving controls. Game concepts were unfamiliar. "Everyone knows what a Fireball does," said Hermann, "even I'm not sure what Hazardous Cleansing does." --
The vehicle / avatar issue seemed like nothing to me, at the time. It still does. Maybe it's because I'm used to it from my vehicular combat games. EVE got by without much of an avatar system. I don't think this was a big enough problem to mention it and there were far worse problems, which I'll get to later.
These "Unfamiliar game concepts" were outlined in the manual. Outdated as it is, it still gives pretty good starter info about what's what in the game. Descriptions on the skills also give a good idea of exactly what things do The problem is too many people don't even bother to look at them. They just dive right in and ask quesitons as they go along. There's not much a developer can do to address that, short of halting progress in the game whenever a new concept comes up and vocally communicating it to the player.
They go on to comment about being in beta too early. I think the real problem was releasing too early. While they had to push things back to redo entire zones, they still felt the need to push the release out for E3 '06. PvP was barely tested. They spent maybe a month on it and release day came.
-- Scott was candid talking what went wrong with Auto-Assault. "Performance," he said. "We had bad frame rates. Our specs were too high. It's too complex. Only our hard-core players are still playing it. They dig the complexity." "We threw too much at the players," Hermann agreed. "It was too much, too soon. Entry should have been easy." --
The statement about the specs is right, but I found this to be the easiest game to get into. Even crafting was pretty simple. Make this, that and the next thing to get something made. Invest points in research and development skills to get better chances to break stuff down, open slots, memorize or experiment. This system, however, is broken and has been so for too long. This is one thing that's driven off even the more hardcore players. The system was also more complex when they had more levels of materials to collect, but that had to be cut down, along with inventory/locker space, due to high bandwidth.
It was only when you got into the nitty-gritty of the combat system that you found complexity. Resistances, attributes, defense, deflection... There's a lot more that goes into figuring out whether or not you get hit. This could've been simplified a lot more. The pet class suffered most from this complexity as the pets have been in dire need of adjustment from the beginning and their approach has been very slow. It was only a couple months ago that they realized they needed to add another stat to help them hit things. They can hit things now, but not very hard.
Now, for my lessons to be learned from Auto Assault:
* Communication with your customers is just as important as it is with the publisher. Be consistent with said communication. Ask why people stay and leave. I recently dropped my sub for LOTRO and I was quite pleased to see a survey to fill out.
* Communication within the development team should be a no-brainer, but there's a chance there was fault here, too. The 3 factions turned out rather unbalanced in the beginning.
* Treat every class with care and get them done right before release. If one class is going to be more complex than the rest, get that tested over and over again and make sure it's on par with the rest. I've played a number of support classes and seen others in action. These classes need more attention than they're currently given, as they require far more attention from the person playing them. If their experience isn't comfortable, then they drop off and the rest of the people suffer and follow them out.