A Pow-Wow with JLongshot

While talking to popular and notable forum guys is cool, more important is talking to the less talkative people who make up our community. You see, some of the things they have to say are more important than we can ever believe. These guys shun the spotlight, do more reading on the forums than anything else, and while they'll never post a "Farewell, MAG" thread on the forum to announce they'll never be back, when they leave, the game is hurt by it more than you know. They are quite simply, The Salt of MAG. The guys whose opinions should perhaps matter the most.

I started off this sit-down LISTENING and letting JLongshot (The leader of BHz and beta member of the original VE alliance) have the floor. Here are a few things that were on his mind:


On Change in MAG: I personally think that change is good in MAG as long as the game is evolving. I am certainly looking forward to a new skill tree, more specific skills sets, and new guns. The thing that most people get wrapped up in are what they see as "negatives" like weapon tweaks or map changes. The community would be a lot better place if people just learned to adapt and go with the flow. I certainly understand the frustration of a weapon performing differently, but it's not catastrophic to have to re-learn weapon physics. I've been here since week 2 of the first closed beta and I can attest that the LMG has had the most significant changes. I can't say that I like what it has become on Valor but rather than complain about it on the forum and blame the devs for my incompetence, I simply moved on to a new gun and changed my play style. Any player, regardless of gun skill, can find a role in MAG. I find it rather fun to totally change my specialty, my role, and my weapon of choice.

On his frustrations: Obviously, the player base is a gimme. It's like night and day playing with other competent clans versus dropping into a game filled with randoms. Some of the fault is really ours as a community. Many of us testers probably lost our cool with regards to teaching others how to play a few weeks after launch. It does get old explaining the same thing over and over again and it's also much more challenging to "police" the MAG community than it ever was in a game like SOCOM, where if players didn't conform, they were simply kicked. In SOCOM even if it was a player on the opposing team, you could just message a player on the other side as to what the troublesome player was doing (glitching) and 30 seconds later you don't see them in game anymore.

His message to forum regulars: you won't know me by name because I simply don't post that often. However, I have been here for a long time and my post count is not reflective of my experience and nor are my stats for that matter. If you take one thing from this, I ask that you give you everyone a fair shake....even if you bump heads on the forums. During beta days X-Frame and I used to go back and forth. We rarely ever agreed on anything but I played in game with him a few times and surprise....he wasn't the person I had made him up to be in my head. The same can be said for a lot of these guys you see on the forums. I have recently had a chance to play with guys like Billski and DOCEROC and both were very different from what I expected. Also, if you get a noob in your squad...please try and train him up a little bit before you start calling him names and yelling. You can't help them all but I like to think that there are a few more med-kits on the Valor battlefield because of my clan and other Valor clans that take the time to train.

Why are their a lack of worthy threads on the MAG boards? In my opinion you have 3 types of posters who create useless threads: 1) The rage poster who jumps off game, doesn't search, and posts   2) The forum regular and PMC fanboy/fangirl that just can't hear anything but what his or her PMC is having problems with in game   3) The troll who cares nothing about anything but griefing the poster. You can usually find him/her in game driving your Hum-V into a ditch.

How would you regulate the forum spam without censoring? I don't know if there is any hope for a cleaner forum but I think there is a ton of repeat and useless posts that could simply be deleted. Is it censoring? maybe....then maybe there needs to a a section just for the whining and another just for general questions to players.

Who's you're biggest MAG nemesis, and why? Myself..... So much to do, so little time. My game suffers the most at the end of the night when I'm tired and just going through the motions. I also have a tendancy to try and do too much to help out others with repairs and other support functions. Who has killed me a few times in one game that I have taken notice of and other might recognize....Probably Terror3st (Sp?). Not a big fan of Motion Sensor, Sensor Jammer, and Sprinting knife combo. It gets me every time.

Why are you still an active MAG player? No other game makes you focus on so many things the way MAG does. You play another shooter and it fells like Pong. Not to mention, I really enjoy the company in the my clan and people I have met in MAG. Some of my clanmates and I have been playing games together for 7-10 years (SOCOM 1).

What one word comes to your mind when i say MAG Training Mode? How about an acronym....FUBAR.

If you could have one dream "game type" what would it be? King of the Hill.....Lets hope its as good as it sounds.

Bots have been mentioned as a way to resolve the player numbers? What's yout take on that? No thank you...unless you have a co-op mode where it's your group verse AI and that kind of takes away from the game concept.

What new MAG content would you like to see? Honestly, I'm getting it....Expanded skills, new guns, new mode. I would still like a way to distbribute ammo in the field.

If there was one change you could make to MAG what would it be? Leadership & Equipment Tutorials.

In your opinion, what is MAG's greatest strength? It's the only game of its kind: Large scale, objective based, team oriented gameplay. AWESOME.

What weakness hurt MAG the most? Imbalance at launch: Read into that how you will but when a large % of testers went SVER because there was a known map advantage it just started the downward spiral.

What qualities did Thagmor and Bryoxide bring to BHz? Well,Thag and I have been playing games online together for 3 years and he has what I look for in any clan member or friend: common interests and all around good person. I met Bry in week 2 of the closed beta and he was one of the founders of VE along with Harbie, BigBoss, FENWAYFREAK, and oh man...I'm gonna get grief for not remembering all of the guys from the beta. In the end, I play MAG and all games with people that I get along with and enjoy similar games. I don't need a 2.0 KDR or some other stat layer. Give me a team oriented, mature player with a med kit and mic. I'll take that all day long.

Whats your take on VE disbanding? They were a prominent Valor Clan, why'd it happen? Well....Most would tell you it was because Harbie retired from MAG and I would agree but I think anytime you try and combine multiple clans to one clan list with one leader.....you're bound to have some fallout after a bad match or two. Aside from the guys that are over at Raven or have quit playing, you'll find most of VE on BHz, 006, & a couple other tags....but they are likely still in our group playing together to this day.....just not under the VE tag.