Lost Planet

I am going to be posting periodic Lost Planet clan activity updates from one of our dedicated community members, chaser74.

Click through to read the first clan report.

[More:]

First I want to start off with a little history of myself. You may know me as chaser74, MUTE TRAIN, or G8 SNOW NUBBIN, as these are the Xbox Live Gamer Tags I usually play under. I am 33 years old and have been a gamer since the Atari 2600. I am married with 2 kids, and a lot of you may know my son from Lost Planet and R6V. I am a competitive person and that is why I have joined clans and continue to play video games in my free time. I cannot count the number of nights I have gone with little or no sleep just because I wanted to get that next win or get back at the other player that bested me in the last game I played. I enjoy hosting games with a lot of the people on my friends list whether it is ranked or player, although I do find ranked a lot more fun and competitive. Over the past few weeks I have left my original clan due to lack of activity, and joined a second clan where most of the members are people I have played LP with since the MP Demo.

As many of you know there is currently no internal clan support for this game. Over the next few weeks I will be bringing ideas to the table from information that I have gathered from a lot of the clans that are currently battling on web sites that offer clan support for external use only. The external web sites are good but there seems to be rampant verbal abuse thrown at just about every clan that has a roster on the ladders. In my opinion this is completely unnecessary and the only way to stop this from happening is to make it so if clan A challenges clan B and they lose the loss is reported by the system and not by someone on the losing team. I understand that it wont completely eliminate the smack talk but it will reduce it to a point that more people will get involved with the game and clans.

I will start with a few ideas about clan support that I hear people want almost all the time.

Most everyone is in agreement that the minimum support for clans should be a system similar to G.R.A.W.2 where you have 3 types of matches to choose from a player match ranked and clan. I have not tried this system yet but I will soon.

The other main concern that I hear a lot is when you play a clan match it is usually best 3 out of 5 and the 5th match is always a random match type. To have a setting when you make a clan match that allows you to randomize the game type, i.e. Post Grab or Team Elimination, as well as the map it would make that 5th and final match much more interesting and competitive. Having the ability to challenge a clan internally for a 5-game match and the system recognizing the winner of each and then the overall winners would be ideal. I know that these things seem fairly simple to add to a game but I do have a background in programming and completely understand all the variables and the code that would need to be written to make this happen. I like to think that if another update was available that the developers could look at adding the match randomizer to allow a match to take place where you would not know the type of match until the game started.

Over the next few weeks I will profile some of the clans that are currently battling on some of the ladders. The clans are varied in their background and the strategies they use. There are post grab teams and team elimination as well. Look for more information on some up and coming clans as well. I will be talking with and playing some matches with the other clans that are active on web site ladders. I will also try to keep up on who is leading the ladders and what the various people that are in charge of the ladders are doing to keep the games going on their ladders. I will take a look at the rules that the websites set down for clan matches and how they are reported to the website.

chaser74 is a welcome voice in our community, and a great guy to game with, so I look forward to sharing his clan reports with you in the weeks and months to come.

Have questions for chaser? Leave them in the comments section to this post, or visit our forums and find him there.

—Brian