The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Auto Assault: Worth a Second Look (no56k)
s3rial one
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
THE LONG-WINDED INTRODUCTION:
-
Auto Assault was released in April of 2006, to a collective "meh" PC gaming community. Despite being published by NCsoft, the game's little-known developer (NetDevil, the people responsible for Jumpgate and its cult following) seemed to be in over its head. Jumpgate's fans reviled the game for eschewing Jumpgate's excellent physics and skill-intensive combat, while the legions of your typical MMO players were put off by the presence of cars, absence of half-naked elves, and gameplay that required more skill than clicking 1-2-3-1-4 for six hours on end.
In all honesty, Auto Assault probably deserved the bad rap. It was buggy and not particularly complete. The car-based combat sounded cool in theory, but in actual execution, fell flat. I found myself, an early beta tester and years-long Jumpgate player/fanatic disgusted with the game, and like everyone else, I wrote it off.
...but things changed. I moved into an apartment and for the first time in years, have a real life
So, my PC was resurrected, and we returned our eyes to PC co-op, but really, there isn't much. RTS skirmishes against the computer got stale, and really, traditional MMOs are about as boring as can be. So I figure we'd try something off the wall: Auto Assault. It's running a 14-day trial, with no credit card required. Consider us both pleasantly surprised.
But, without any further verbal meandering, let's talk about Auto Assault, and not why I'm playing it.
WHAT IS AUTO ASSAULT?
-
Auto Assault is a MMORPG of sorts, but certainly not your standard fare. AA's world is futuristic and post-apocalyptic, with cars. If you can't fathom that, Mad Max isn't too far off.
The game, exactly like Jumpgate, features three warring factions: the humans, the mutants, and the biomeks. The humans are elitist snobs with futuristic-looking cars and fancy shield technology. The mutants are religious fanatics who have developed powers from the nuclear contamination, and the biomeks are essentially cyborgs.
The gameplay is faster and more action-oriented than your typical MMORPG. You choose a class (yes, the game has classes, more on that in a minute), then drive around in your car, using your special abilities and shooting things. Most individual enemies are very weak; the game's focus is on taking on large groups of enemies at a time, sort of like City of Heroes
WHAT CLASSES CAN I PLAY?
-
Classes in AA aren't going to blow you away; each faction has four classes: a heavy fighter, a light fighter, a support class, and a pet class.
The heavy fighters are pretty straight forward: they mount the biggest guns, drive large trucks (and later on, tanks), and their skills tend towards passives and special attacks.
The light fighters are also what you'd expect: the drive light trucks and cars (and eventually motorcycles). They're fast and agile, and mount small weapons, but have access to stealth skills and their attacks tend to focus on doing a whole lot of damage to a single or small group of targets.
The support classes tend to drive heavier trucks. They have a lot of mass, high HP and defense, and while almost every class in the game has access to at least some manner of self heal, the support classes are the real healers. They also have tons of buffs and debuffs, access to a few pets, and a fair array of offensive skills. In the grand scheme of healing classes, these guys are more WoW shadowpriest than FFXI white mage.
Then, finally, there are the pet classes: they summon a whole lot of different kinds of pets, and have the skills to support their pets and their teammates, while somewhat lacking in offense of their own.
The thing to keep in mind is that each faction's take on the class is different. While they usually have some similar core skills (e.g. all the support classes have a heal, and all the heavy fighter classes have a self regen and passives to boost their damage), they also have different skills. For example: while the human light fighter (Bounty Hunter) can call down an orbital strike on an area as his big attack skill, the biomek Agent can use a computer virus that spreads like a disease, dealing damage over time and debuffing its targets.
If you want to take a look at the game's (really cool) skill trees, look
WHAT DOES THE GAME LOOK LIKE?
-
Graphically, AA's pretty forgettable. It doesn't look like a work of art, but the car designs are damned cool, and the game certainly does an adequate job of conveying that apocalyptic feel. The reason: physics. AA isn't a graphical feast because damned near everything in the game is destructable. Cars, buildings, people, trees, you can blow it all up. That tends to put quite a load on your PC, hence, the game's pretty demanding. Still, it looks pretty good:
You can find more screenshots here. And in case anyone is wondering, yes, the game does have PhysX support.
WHAT'S THE COMMUNITY LIKE?
-
AA's community is very small by MMO standards, but tight-knit. It seems like everyone knows everyone else, but it's not like you log in and there are hundreds of people around all the time. Thankfully, the game is highly soloable, and at the high-end PvP areas, everyone tends to congregate. Don't worry, leveling is
WHAT ELSE SHOULD I KNOW?
- Well, for starters, AA is by no means perfect. Like every MMO, it has its balance issues, but the developers do seem genuinely responsive.
- AA has joystick & gamepad support
- Searching for builds on the forums is largely a waste of time. Experiment, and have fun. If you screw up, respecs are available. Your first one is free. After that, the price increases each time. I'm not sure where the price cap is, or if the cost reduces over time, though. There is a respec machine in each faction's main city, and a respec can reset your skill points, crafting points, stat points, or any combination of the three. So experiment. Have fun.
- Like any MMO, this one's roughyl 10 zillion times more fun with a friend.
- There are a lot of fetch quests, but multiquesting is easy, and the perceived speed of being in a car that's going 80 MPH instead of a guy running at 5 MPH makes all the difference in the world.
- The game's really changed a lot since it launched. Give it a shot, even if you've already played.
-
First, the bad news: the client download is
The good news? Setting up a trial account is easy: just go here. And even through it says you need a trial account to start downloading the client, you don't. Just fire up the download (on the link provided) while you wait for your email.
So, hopefully I'll see a few more people in game. AA isn't perfect, but you know what? It's a really enjoyable, fast-paced diversion from the usual MMORPG crap. My roommate and I started a trial mainly out of boredom, and we're both planning on sticking around.
tl;dr - AA's bad press is outdated, the game's a nice change of pace, try the free demo.
s3rial one on
0
Posts
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
at the end of the day though my time felt better spent playing a diferent game. the fun of driving up a hill wears off pretty quickly.
not trying to bash the game, it just felt a little lacking in fun. I really did like getting a new weapon just so I could see the color/animation of its attack, but after that I felt no need to improve my character.
- There's no PA guild that I know of. If we get a bunch of people playing, though, maybe we can work something out.
- The end-game is primarily PvP-oriented, but there are some "raid" areas and an instance or two. The thing you'll notice about this game, though, is that groups tend to be small. I don't even know what the maximum size is, but most of them are 2 or 3 people. With the right class makeup, that can handle the big bad end-boss mob. You'll find that PvP is different than other games (e.g. WoW), though. It moves really fast, and has more of a skilled component.
- Yes, you'll get out of your car, but wish you didn't. The main cities will have you running around on foot, with some comically awkward animations.
- I think the scenery definitely works. It's more Fallout than Mad Max, but it depends on what faction you start with. The Biomek areas are mostly desert/wasteland, with blowing sand and the like. The Human areas are standard wasteland sort of areas, but cleaner and studded with the Humans' hi-tech buildings and clean-up robots. The Mutants are mainly in jungle areas.
Well, there's just one server. My roommate and I are playing Human, but I figured maybe once we get a feel for each faction and maybe a few people sticking around for a while, we can settle on one place.Keep in mind that leveling, especially early on, goes really fast. You'll be level 10 within a couple hours, so restarting with a new faction or some such isn't a real inconvenience.
I have no problem with human, although I'm pretty sure they outnumber the other factions significantly and the community is a bit more asshole-ish with regards to each other.
I know when I played mutants they were super-friendly to each other, almost creepily so. I was turned off to mutants initially because they have an almost fantasy-esque feel to them. (It's justified scientifically in the game, but the feel of many of their powers is magical).
Biomeks I haven't really explored much.
Not really. It's more like Carmageddon the MMO. While the "man behind the curtain" may be similar to a lot of MMO's the gameplay is entirely different.
So it kinda sucked.
Is it better now?
so all in all, I actually thought the game was fairly decent. But im just naturally biased against MMOs and the monthly fee, so when the beta ended. I didn't sign on for the full game
Enlist in Star Citizen! Citizenship must be earned!
As it is right now, skills take different points at different levels to level up, and have different level caps. For example, the Lieutenant's Combat Deployment skill has 20 ranks, and takes a total of 83 skill points to get to the cap, while Plan of Attack has a total of 8 ranks, and takes 36 points to cap. Plus, players get a different number of skill points based on their level. It's a confusing system. They're normalizing it with the next major patch (which is on the test server now).
With U4, players will get 2 skill points every level, every skill will have 10 ranks, and each increase in rank will cost 1 skill point. The exception are the level 80 skills, which will take 10 skill points and have 1 rank.
Long story short, skill acquisition is about to make a lot more sense.
Under the new system, a player can essentially cap ~16 different skills.
NetDevil's also adding an auction house (which should help crafters quite a bit, I'd think) and a mail system.
Furthermore, pets are being overhauled, although I don't quite like the change. Basically, pets are going to be limited to one per type, but the pet will be much more powerful. Frankly, I like having half a dozen combat drones following me around, though.
Did they do anything to reduce the sense that you were driving a toy car? There was something wrong with the scale that made it seem... unrealistic. And I'm assuming the handling issues were properly sorted out?
Also, re: pets... considering how bad pets were in beta, to the point of being essentially useless, any improvement must be good. Are there still lots of immobile pets? Those were the worst... waste of skills, at the time.
I must admit, though, that playing a mutant engineer was a lot of fun. I had a biomek, too, but during beta the hazard chip mek power was a liability not an advantage, so that race lost a big part of its appeal.
> turn on light
Good start to the day. Pity it's going to be the worst one of your life. The light is now on.
*Edit* Holy hell that is a terrible download. Good going, NCSoft.
They still have stationary pets, but you can de-summon them on a whim. Honestly, I think you should just have your oldest one killed off when you try to summon a new one at your limit; they do this with some deployables like the engineer's grav traps, so I don't know why they don't with stationary pets, but they're better. Pets as a whole are better. They certainly aren't going to tank for you, but for just shelling out damage and soaking up a bit, they're very good. The Mastermind and the Lieutenant are considered the two best solo PvE classes in the game. The Archon is also very good, but not as strong in a group because its not as specialized.
There's no denying that "kill 30 troopers" becomes much more fun when you realize you can run them over. :twisted:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Your sense of humor is scary. D;
IOS Game Center ID: Isotope-X
...and it's not like flamethrowers or laser cannons or contamination-spewing vulcan machineguns are standard MMO fare.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
That being said I might try out the trial for old times sakes. I wonder if pre-order codes would work with it?
twitterfacebooksteamsomemusicofminetoomuchgunshegeekshow