( - SOE) - SOE Gamer of the Month ? May 2013 - 05-08-2013 08:36 PM

It’s time to meet another one of your fellow SOE Gamers!* This month, in honor of PlanetSide’s upcoming 10th anniversary, we will meet someone that’s played PlanetSide and is now an avid PlanetSide 2 player!

We are pleased to introduce Lordmondado from PlanetSide 2!


Tony “RadarX” Jones, Community Manger from PlanetSide 2, why has LordMondando been chosen as the May SOE Gamer of the Month?

His passion from PlanetSide 1 mirrors the heart and soul of the PlanetSide 2 community. His amazing support of our Test and Miller servers are an example of someone who truly makes up the core of our players.

Now, let’s meet Lordmondado!



Where in the real life world do you live?*

Wales, the sexiest of the devolved principalities.



You mainly play PlanetSide 2. How long have you played?

Pretty consistently from about the 3rd day of launch in November.



What other games do you play?

Largely PS2 as of late. However, I’m a big fan of titles like: Arma2, DayZ, Dwarf Fortress, Europa Universalis, Crusader Kings II, and Project Zomboid.



PlanetSide is about to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Can you pick a memory that sticks out in your mind from either PlanetSide or PlanetSide 2?

Well, in regards to PS2, *it’s actually surprisingly hard to pick out just one. *As a member of Digital Legion (/shameless plug http://www.digital-legion.com – Join today!), there are quite a few distinctive ‘moments’ that stick in my mind. Perhaps one that really sticks out above all the others is the massive battle that came of the NCTO’s (New Conglomerate Treaty Organisation – the NC alliance on Miller) first major event, some months back. After a relatively mild (though not uneventful) advance through our assigned sector towards what was then the VS warpgate. DL (digital legion), ABTF (Airborne task force), and XSG (Smurf assault squad) ran into what must have been 3-4 organized VS outfits at lithcorp secure mine. What then followed was a harrowing 2 hour battle, in which the base must have changed hands 4 or 5 times. Several times we would be kicked out, then manage to put a sundy up in the hills surrounding it. Then began brutal house-to-house fighting moving in from the ridges around. We’d finally take the base after about 10-20 minutes then the VS would do the same. Either we’d then manage to find their sundy with our LA scouting screen, or we’d be ground down as the they managed to effectively command the high ground around the base. One particular feature of that fight that particularly sticks out in my mind are ABTF basically staying rooted to the spot by the spawns buster maxes firing in the air, constantly, throughout most of the battle.

There are others, plenty, but that’s really stuck with me. Not only because it was a massive fight that really had us on our toes and trying to actually outthink the VS as opposed to just brute forcing them. It also showed what the game is capable when the outfit community gets organized. Most of the fun, on Miller, really reveals itself when we run into the likes of BRTD, GOON, MM, OCB, VC, ISK, DWG, DIG, SOV et al (and I really do mean et al, there are plenty of others),normally over some rather inconsequential base, and proceed to have a massive fight over it.



What type of work do you do?

I currently work in sales – less said about that the better. Brass tacks I need order to amass moniez for tuitions fees for a “masters in computing” course I’m starting this autumn. Have to pay the bills somehow.



How many hours a week do you play video games?

How many is too many? Probably about 10-20 hours, depending on what else I have going on.



What does a typical gaming session consist of?

Revolves around DL, we try to make a point as an outfit of playing the objective in relatively organized squads as much as possible. On a given night, there is a roughly 1 in 3 chance I’ll be SL-ing at least if not PLing. So, lots of time spent in what we call ‘cartographer mode’. Though we endeavor to make the planet as free as possible, we like to try and keep it light with lots of absurd conversations on our mumble channel. So its part Space NCO, part whimsical nonsense chat panel.



What Empire are you aligned with?* What class you find yourself playing the most?

I have characters I enjoy playing a fair bit these days on TR and VS. But I’m an NC man through and through – largely due to the space America aesthetic and the OP music. I mostly play Medic as I find it’s the best ‘all-round’ infantry class. With the assault rifles ability to provide a range of weapons that cater well to what I call ‘indoor’ vs ‘outdoor’ fighting (especially post GU08, really did a good job on the Assault rifles – Reaper and Carnage being two I highly recommend). It also feels good to completely restart an advance by rezzing 6 or 7 guys taken out by a single grenade by pumping my green magic nannites into their lifeless corpses, picking them up by the scruff of the neck and pushing them back into the fray. Makes me feel productive. That being said you’ll see me in an engineer, heavy and lightning from time to time.



What got you into gaming and what sort of games do you like the most?*

-Pfft. Hard to even remember at this point. I remember being bought a rickety old Amstrad for my 6th or something Christmas. I played a lot of Starwars (the 1983 one that ran off cassette) on it, and this other game that involved running around a Zelda like world, shooting aliens, and harvesting space mushrooms. It has been a consistent pastime of mine since then. Games I like the most is another toughie. By and large I’ve historically preferred so called ‘grand strategy’ games, for example the fantastic Europa Universalis series. But I’ve always been a fan of online-fps since back in the day playing Quake 2 Arena on a 56k.



What other hobbies or activities do you take part in, other than playing Video Games?

Pretty diverse on this front, with work, social nonsense, trying to teach myself Python in prep for autumn and PS2 my other main activity at the moment is sleeping. When my work load goes down a bit though I’ll be getting back into my hiking – not to plug the Welsh tourist industry or nothing. But we got a lot of good hills around these parts. It’s a sin not to be out and about on the rare day in summer it doesn’t rain here.



What is your highest ranked character? Do you have a favorite?*

-LordMondando BR 57, is easily my favourite. However, I do enjoy mucking around on my TR ‘SirYoloSwaggins’ and my VS ‘HerpunDerpington’ a fair bit. Obviously, I’m and NC man and being an officer in an active outfit has a lot of commitments to it. So ‘LordMondando’ that’s ‘me’ in game in a real sense. Yet, it strikes me as strange to not even bother with 66% of the content in game and it’s good to see how the ‘causal’ side of the player base live by running around solo. It is also important to bust some of the varying myths floating around about one fraction being OP, by actually running around in their skin for a bit. I am especially enjoying Ceres with the influx of new players; by ‘enjoying’ I mean I actually have a positive K/d – heh.

How did you choose your main character’s name?*

Unfortunately, crushingly mundane. Was an in-joke with an ex of mine, some half remembered spoonerism I blurted out at her to do with Abba I think (god knows why we were talking about that – not really my cup of tea you see). It’s what I ‘named’ my old PC when I bought it and when I subsequently got back into gaming after finishing my last round of studies at university, it’s what it automatically set my Arma2 name as. It stuck after that. Seemed distinctive enough – though ‘lord’ is a popular prefix. Most people in game who know me refer to me as ‘mombongo’



What is your favorite thing about PlanetSide 2?

Again. Tough. I think people often forget that there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s actually fairly novel in online-fps gaming and as such really sticks out to me as distinctly ‘PS2’. It’s also got a lot of subtle emergent stuff, for example see how the alerts have actually created fairly massive (and also fairly organized at times) ‘flash campaigns’ on maps like Amerish people rarely go on by default, simply by offing temporary XP incentives. When a large battle that actually has several units lead by some of the more competent officers on our server just sort of materializes in from the ether, and a 20-30 minute combined arms ‘outthink-a-thon’ involving 100-200 people appears. That always has a good ‘wow factor’ to it. Then there is the learned forum for the free exchange of ideas otherwise known as /yell – of which I’m a big fan. Also, I’m a big fan of blaring my sundy-horn just the right way so it sounds like the drone of bagpipes as I trundle into battle (originally a weapon of war don’t ya know). But… if I had to choose just the one, it’s got to be my rainbow decals. As someone is (rarely) killed by me, they are then forced to briefly watching my avatar glare down at them fiercely proudly adorned by rainbows on each shoulder. It makes me feel like the space warrior princess I always knew I could be if I just tried hard enough.



Describe your best experience from playing your favorite SOE Game?

Again, if you’re going to make me choose.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYsEJ...T6GF7AWGsn19SQ

That time we and some of our friends held off both the outfits of PC Gamer and Rock Paper Shotgun was pretty fun.



Your enthusiasm and passion for PlanetSide 2 really shines through in the way you help out on Test Server. What about the Test server motivates you to be such an active participant?

Well first off, let’s not skip around it – because it’s the raison d’etre more than anything else for the test server and why myself and others were begging from one for early on. Namely there have been issues with some ‘unintentional new features’ with patches in the past, of course the end of the day given the dizzying array of systems playing the game and the games inherent complexity, bugs are understandable. However, some of them making to live, have really affected peoples enjoyment of the game. My least/most favorite being what I called quantum non-locality mode also popularly known as the ‘desync bug’. So put simply, it’s a great resource for stopping bugs from making it to the live servers and harming everyone’s ability to play. Of course, that means it’s often quite buggy. However, I think many people are missing that is a big part the point of it.

It is also an interesting experience to drag as many of the Millerites I can over to it and to interact with the communities on the other servers. Some interesting differences there and it has been said that the game on Miller is a different game from that on Waterson or Helios. So, it is interesting to have the communities run up against each other.

Also it’s a good chance to just be given 10k certs and try a load out, especially with content that might be going ‘live’ soon so you can make informed purchases with your precious certs/Sc. I am really surprised this is not a selling point to more people. So you ever wondered what Hackmax or a Magrider is actually like fully-certed in a proper battle: Why aren’t you on the test server more?

Moreover, it is great to actually be involved in the development of new content in a tangible way. I think the PS2 development team has always done a good job of listening to the concerns of their players, and there’s a good amount of dynamic interaction between the players and themselves. I think that’s often (and unfairly) ignored. The test server is really a great refinement of that in a specific tool.

Finally, I am going to keep pushing on this. We are not there yet. The test server needs everyone and anyone to download the client and get involved. Given the fairly large array of sizable changes to gameplay in the works (not just talking about lattice, or the other things on the cards like the resource revamp, but also weapons systems are balanced on statistical models), unless these can be stress tested on mass, bugs will make it through and weapons might launch unbalanced. Moreover, new features will not really reveal their full nature (if a base is redesigned for example – 10 people attacking a base defended by an equal number, will just not act the same as if there were 100 on each side).

Increasingly – it’s time for the outfit community across the game to step it up more in regards to getting the numbers out. In the same way an outfit officer has a responsibility to his outfit members to provide them with a fun time, he also has a responsibility to direct his outfit in a manner that makes the better game (and thus a more fun period over a longer time). We do not necessarily need Higby and the gang watching in order to do this so long as people either document it and/or make a point of recording their feedback, as noted. 10k free certs, roll any whacky load out you fancy. Then just get everyone to a single base or lane at a certain time, and just slug it out for half an hour.

If anyone from any EU servers what’s get involved in what I’m calling ‘Sunday afternoon test-fests’ (idea being, as noted: everyone comes on, for just half an hour to congregate and mass test something, submit feedback on the forum and then go back to playing the regular game) please drop me a line on the forum or on twitter @LerdMumbungo . Lot of Miller is signed up, but we always, always need more. More details to come, but ideally, it will be something like 2-2.30 GMT/ 3-3.30 CET every Sunday. Early enough in the game most people can make it, but not late enough so it effects outfit operations.

Download the test client today (or tonight, whatever, just do it).

Mondando out.



We hope you enjoyed meeting this month’s SOE Gamers of the Month! Meet all of the past SOE Gamers of the Month at this*link.





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