Auto Assault Q&A Feature

A fortnight ago TVG had the opportunity to speak to Scott Brown, President of Auto Assault developer NetDevil. Since then we've had to sit on the interview (until now) hence NCSoft's aversion to discussing subscription fees and a release date during the chat. For those of you yet to hear the news, Auto Assault is out on April 13th in both North America and Europe with a subscription fee of £8.99 a month.

First off Scott, the setting of Auto Assault is a post-apocalyptic world, which is far from the more tradition fantasy world that many MMOs seem to follow. What sort advantages and disadvantages does this create during the various stages of development?

Well the advantage is that we have almost a blank slate for the writers to create with, there's not anything that's like it and so they can write stories about almost anything they want - and I think that they have. The disadvantage is that it's difficult for players to get their heads around what the game is, because not only is it not fantasy, it's also not characters based. You have an avatar that is you when you're in the towns, when you're in the world its vehicle combat and so a lot of people don't understand what to expect when they first get into the game. A lot of the comments that we do hear is "Woah, this is nothing like I expected!" and so that's been our biggest hurdle really.

"A lot of the comments that we do hear is 'Woah, this is nothing like I expected!'"

Looking at it Auto Assault comes across as an almost Mad Max setting, would you agree with that analogy?

I think that Mad Max is an easy comparison, but Mad Max is very low-tech, whereas Auto Assault is high-tech, it's just that there aren't a lot of resources left anymore. So you're really just fighting over and collecting the remains of the old world to build high-tech war machines which are your vehicles.

At the moment you're going through the Beta Test stage of development. What has the feedback been like from the community?

Right now the majority of feedback is based on balance where one faction is too strong or enemies are too weak, that seems to be the primary feedback now of things we're working on. Along the way they've had lots of ideas about how to make the UI better, and I think that we've implemented a lot of those suggestions already, but at a higher level I think people are pretty surprised by the game and once they get in and start playing they realise that this is not what hey expected. The initial feedback that we get from people is that this is not the game they expected.

Are you looking to capture current MMO players or are you looking to get newcomers to the genre?

Well it's both. I think we've made a game that from an RPG side should be appealing anyone who likes MMOs. At the same time, we've added enough action elements and things like allowing you to use joysticks or gamepads to control the game that action gamers should find a game they really enjoy as well, especially players who had wanted to play an MMO but just either found that the setting or the genre wasn't what they liked, or the pacing wasn't what they liked. We think that when they try Auto Assault, they'll enjoy it.

How had you ensured that the gameplay is structured very much like an MMO rather than the pick-up-and-play gameplay that vehicular combat games generally go for?

From the very beginning our thought was how do you combine the pacing of an action game and the adrenaline and the playability, with the long term several year character developments that people love about MMORPGs. So what we did was combine them in the combat system where you have weapon arcs that represent the range and spread of fire that you have on your vehicles and so it's up to players to keep enemies inside of these arcs all the time, that's the action side of it.

The RPG side of it is that when you fire, it's all based on your attributes, your class, your equipment, enemy attributes, and maybe the equipment of the target that you're trying to fire at that determines whether you hit what you're firing at, and if you do hit it, how much damage you do. So that's how we came up with the compromise between the action piece and the RPG piece.

The other thing that we did was we kept it to four different classes similar to other MMOs so that players coming from other MMOs would have something familiar in terms of what the different classes and how the different abilities breakdown.

We also have a really standard mission system so that should also be familiar with players of other MMOs.

"I think that World of Warcraft is nothing but great"

Other MMOs have been charged with having "Fed Ex" style quests; how have you ensured that missions in Auto Assault don't fall into that category?

If you break things down to the lowest level, we have similar kinds of mission in the game; what's different is the implementation, how you get there. One of our thoughts is that we can make getting from A to B fun; you're jumping your car and driving around and smashing through buildings and there are creatures coming up, and so even while you're travelling it can be fun and adventurous. That's one of the things that's different about even say a delivery quest in Auto Assault compared to other games. Just getting to the point of delivery can be fun.

The current trendsetter in the MMO genre is obviously Blizzard and World of Warcraft. How much pressure does a game with that much success put upon other MMO developers like you to create a successful title?

I think that World of Warcraft is nothing but great, it's an outstanding game that's brought millions of new players to the MMO space and shows that paying a monthly fee is something many, many people are prepared to do. So anytime an incredible game like World of Warcraft comes out is only good for MMO developers.

Outside from the towns in Auto Assault, is the gameworld made up of Instances, like NCSoft's Guild Wars, or is it closer to other MMO titles like World of Warcraft?

It's much closer to World of Warcraft in terms of instances than Guild Wars. There's massive maps called Highways where you play with other players and you come across other players doing their own quests; then there are smaller exits off the Highways, which are instances, just for you and your convoy, our name for parties.

Have you decided on the final monthly subscription fees yet?

At this point, an NCSoft Representative answers: NCSoft Rep: We haven't announced that yet, competitively priced I believe is the term to use in these situations.

Scott: But it will be a monthly subscription.

And then you'll be able to pick up pre-paid cards, I'm assuming?

NCSoft Rep: NCSoft finds that the timecard system works for all of its games that have monthly subscription fees. I may need to confirm this, but I believe that you buy one timecard from NCSoft and you can apply that to any of NCSoft's titles so you don't buy for a specific one. So anything that comes from NCSoft that requires a monthly subscription fee will fall under that system.

Obviously at the moment all the focus is on Auto Assault, but have any ideas been mooted about an expansion pack, and how do you anticipate the game evolving?

Both NCSoft and NetDevil only develop Massively Multiplayer Games, and we both companies understand that a game starts at launch, and doesn't end at launch, so there's a number of plans and features that will be both free expansions and paid expansions.

So you're expecting patches with quests and you'll also be doing larger expansion packs later in the year I'm assuming?

We've no announcement about any expansions yet, but certainly there will be several things coming, and some of it will be coming free as part of the subscription fee.

How successful do you see the game becoming in the immediate future and then beyond that?

Well I certainly think that it will do really well. I think that because it's a game that's very different that it will take a while for people to come around to the idea of what it is. I think that word of mouth will play a big part in the success of the game so as more people get a chance to play and see what it is, they'll bring more and more people into the game.

"I think that word of mouth will play a big part in the success of the game"

Is the emphasis more on Player versus Environment (PvE) missions or on party missions? How do they balance out?

We designed the game to be playable solo so the majority of the game can be played as an individual if you like. Of course grouping has some of most amount of fun to be had in an online game, and so we give you lots of incentives to play as a group like different rewards and better XP. There are some areas of the game that require grouping to play, so it's a fine line between making sure you can solo the game and having good reasons to group. I think we've come to a pretty good point with that now.

Where do you take the game from here? After it's launched on PC do you think there'll be a time when you'll see Auto Assault on Xbox 360, and what do you think about the Xbox Live model?

Well I think the Xbox is very, very cool but we don't have anything to announce yet.

Yet. But do you think that it's a platform that potentially you can see yourself moving onto in the future?

I think that Auto Assault is a game that's friendly to console gamers certainly; it works well on a gamepad so I think that even if it's not on a console I think that console gamers who try it on the PC will find it a lot easier to get into compared to other games.

Do you have a more specific release date for Auto Assault at the moment other than Spring 2006?

NCSoft Rep: We don't have anything more specific than that at the moment, although we're expecting to announce something shortly.

"I think that Auto Assault is a game that's friendly to console gamers"

So do you expect the game to launch before or after E3?

NCSoft Rep: We have no concrete dates to announce as of yet I'm afraid, sorry dude. I'm afraid that I can't confirm anything.

Is it going to be a simultaneous European and North American launch?

NCSoft Rep: NCSoft is a global company and therefore strives to release all of its games globally. I think Auto Assault will be no exception.

I think that wraps it up, Scott thank-you for your time; best of luck with the rest of development.

No problem, thanks for your time. Thank you.

Auto Assault will be released by NCSoft for PC on April 13th 2006. NetDevil are currently running a competition for Auto Assault at the spoof website theapocalypseiscoming.com where players can win a raft of goodies. We'll have more on the vehicular combat MMO shortly...