Act of War: Direct Action

GameReplays:Do you play a lot of HT in your spare time? How's your micro?

Atari:Well unfortunately not as much as I'd like to, but I try and check in a couple times a week anyway. I get my a$$ handed to me on a regular basis!

GameReplays:A while ago there were talks about Clan support, any word on that? ast we heard from Eugen was that they were working on a patch. Can you let us in on any details? Does atari plan to keep patching the game? Making improvements and changes? Anything general you'd like to let us know?

Atari:As we get further from launch we gradually divert resources more and more over to other projects, so it's really hard to be specific. We have talked a lot about what could be done in terms of continuing to improve the game, but there also comes a point when you need to take the "if it ain't broke don't fix it"-stance. For all small glitches and imbalances and issues that's still in there, I think we all feel that the overall experience is pretty solid and the modding tool allows you guys to experiment yourselves to get exactly the game you like.

GameReplays:What are your veiws on the AOW community now?

Atari:One word - AWESOME! We're extremely happy with the responsiveness and continued enthusiasm we see, and try and do our part in keeping this going too.

GameReplays:What do you think about CNC3? AOW still pwns CNC right?

Atari:We all love C&C and are really excited about what TW will bring -- we really hope they can get it right this time...

GameReplays:Balance wise... do you think TFT has a problem with getting the bank early game? Due to the versatility of the AK-74? (turning it into a MM-1 and RPG?)

Atari:Well, every tactic has a countertactic and personally I haven't seen this as the greatest imbalance. It really depends on the map, map settings, and general circumstances.

GameReplays:New franchises usually have a hard time entering the gaming market, considering that, how well do you think AOW has performed? And how well do you think a hypothetical AOW 2 would do now that AOW has, shall we say, gotten the foot inside the door?

Atari:Overall we're very pleased with the reception of the game -- of course it's always nicer if it had sold even more but it keeps ticking along very nicely as new gamers discover the game. Our recent "Gamer's First" program (a price drop to $19.95) has added quite a lot of new gamers so we haven't seen the last of AoW.

GameReplays:Would you support future tornaments if we could get around 50-100 players? What would you include in prize support?

Atari:It'll be on a case-by-case basis -- we recently sent out a box of goodies to GameReplay's demo tournament [actually, it's still sitting here in the office -- we need an address to send it to!!], including some strategy guides, HT boxed editions, Dale Brown's AoW novel, and some other secret prizes...

GameReplays:If you could go back and change one aspect of the game what would it be?

Atari:Very interesting question... in terms of adding something, it'd probably have been a meta game on top of the RTS part where you would have had a world map with global hot-spots, so that you could basically set up your own dynamiac campaign instead of the linear one. If I could have changed anything in the existing design, I think probably the camera system (to allow you to zoom out more; would have killed the system specs though). For High Treason, naval combat was actually a very late design addition; about 2 months into development Alexis at Eugen called me up and suggested we add naval combat s an additional mutliplayer mode, as he felt the ones we'd specced out (Marine One Down and SCUD Launcher), while really fun, felt like thry didn't contribute that much new content. We never even discussed adding naval combat in single-player skirmish mode as well, but in retrospect; sure, I'd probably swapped out the resources we ended up spending on the Marine One Down and SCUD Launcher modes, on rewriting the naval unit pathfinder instead.

GameReplays:What are your views on the ESL ladder?

Atari:We love it! Anything that empowers the community and eliminates the fact that game development has to be done by game developers is great!

GameReplays:What are you views on GameReplays?

Atari:Hands down -- the best RTS fan site out there! I regularly check in on the other sections as well, not just AoW.

GameReplays:The speed scroll requires you to hold CTRL and middle mouse button to speed scroll. But could this be inverted? Cause you are using the speedscroll more than camera rotation.

Atari:Personally, I use camera rotation way more than speedscrolling (I typically set up map location keyboard shortcuts instead of speedscrolling -- perhaps explains why I suck so bad... ) I'm fairy sure though this can be done using the modding tool.

was this pqlear speaking?.. i haven't seen him on the atari forums for months!.. I don't know how he can say the aow community is "AWESOME". All you have to do is login online and you know it's not.
Anyway it's nice that you at least got an interview.

and the modding tool allows you guys to experiment yourselves to get exactly the game you like.

Oops my bad i'll fix that.

I think part of the problem is Atari doesn't believe in online play, which might be answer why they didn't care about the small online community Direct Action had, and why they didn't do anything to fix it before they released High Treason.

It really bothers me how a good game like this doesn't get any attention, and how a crap game like Bfme2 (in its current state) did so much better.

Uhh, question number 2 is just a repeat of the first answer. Might want to fix that

Very good interview. My only concern is is this quote from PQlear:
Unfortunately that's not the best solution to balance problems. The most important part of the multiplayer aspect of a game is community. The bigger the community, the better it is to play regardless of whether the balance is perfect or not. If everyone was making their own version of what they think was balance, then you'd have multiple small communities splitting up the already smallish community of AoW. This is not good at all. Balance changes need to be made official simply in order to make it easier to find players to play against.

GameReplay recently held an interview with the guys at Atari, so here some info for you guys: