Greetings comrades, and welcome once more to The Red Alert 3 Lighthouse. Our next victi... urr, player in the spotlight is Das.Duelon!
GR: First, tell us a little bit about yourself. Age, general location, history. Be as vague or specific as you like.
Das.Duelon: Heyhey! I am Dylan, a 24-year old student from Germany and I am/was formerly known as DasDuelon here on GameReplays. I play the Empire of the Rising Sun faction. I used to play Red Alert 3 a lot back in the day and was fairly successful doing so!
GR: Do you work, attend school or university, or do you do something else?
Das.Duelon: I currently attend university. I am a law student and this is my 7th semester.
GR: What made you choose your online name?
Das.Duelon: Back in school, my teachers usually butchered my name when they first met me, since Dylan is a very unusual first name here in Germany. There were all sorts of different variations of how they would spell and/or pronounce it. One teacher in particular messed it up so bad that it came out as "Dülon" instead of Dylan. I (and the rest of my class) found that quite funny at the time, because we didnt think someone could butcher it that bad, especially a music teacher, who kinda should be familiar with the name (because of Bob Dylan). So I tried to use that as my online ID on the multiplayer for Battle for Middle-Earth II, but it wouldn't allow it, since it was too short and also the "Ü" wasnt allowed either. So I put a "Das" in front of it (German article) and also went with "ue" instead of the "ü", which is a common thing to do in the German language, since it's regarded as the same thing grammatically.
GR: What got you into competitive gaming?
Das.Duelon: I was always a very competitive guy. It came pretty naturally that I was competitive in gaming as well. At first I just wouldn't like to lose (who does?), but after I realised that I am actually quite good at playing the game, it turned into wanting to be the best. I was living in a very small community at the time, so I would spent a lot of hours in front of my PC anyway. That time turned into what I considered practice at the time and it would be very comon for me to spend at least 6 hours per day playing RA3.
GR: Which other games do you play and what makes them special to you?
Das.Duelon: After realising that I wouldn't be as successful in StarCraft 2 as I was in Red Alert 3, I got a little bit more casual. I am currently playing a large number of single player games, such as Tyranny, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. I really like the more relaxing nature of those games. It's nice not being on edge and enjoying the story a good game is telling. In stark contrast to that, I still play SC2 alot and I love it. The competitive-ness I talked about earlier has not disappeared : P No matter what I play - playing 1v1s in RTS can not be beaten in terms of how much I enjoy it. That, plus SC2 being the best RTS game there is at the moment, made it a natural thing for me to still play the game.
GR: What are your hobbies, apart from gaming?
Das.Duelon: I don't do alot besides gaming and university. Of course, there is the occasional night out with my buds, but that's not happening too often anymore. Seems like we got too old for that kind of stuff : D
GR: What is your favorite aspect of Red Alert 3?
Das.Duelon: There are quite a few aspects I really like about Red Alert 3. One is the wide variety of units every faction has. No faction plays like the other, not even close. Also, every single one of these units has a ability, which gives the game so much micro potential!
GR: In a few words, tell us what you would change if you had control during the development of Red Alert 3.
Das.Duelon: 60 FPS, no more P2P and more unit responsiveness. Oh, and of course, some very little tweaks in balance! : P
GR: What is your favorite memory while playing Red Alert 3?
Das.Duelon: Oh, there are too many to choose from. : P Basically, every time I won a cup or beat someone who I considered to be on the same level, if not better than me was an incredible feeling : )
GR: Are there any up and coming players you want to highlight?
Das.Duelon: I am just not active enough anymore to highlight anyone, sorry. From what I have seen, Dimon is beating everybody left and right, so I guess that is a name that pops up in my mind when I think about RA3 right now.
GR: Why did you decide to main Empire?
Das.Duelon: Empire was considered by far the weakest side when I started playing (1.08 or something like that) and I wanted a challange. I didn't know at the time that I would choose a lot of misery and suffering by the hand of Allies players at the same time xD
GR: Who is your most feared opponent?
Das.Duelon: Definitely an Allies player! I had some really hard matches against Firgli and Sofronel, but someone I always hated to play was zokker13 : P Not only because I was frustrated at his style of play, but because we didn't really see eye to eye at the time and I couldn't stand losing to him : D With that being out of the three guys I mentioned, I probably have the best win record against him, so it kinda worked out for me in the end.
GR: What would you like to see from the GameReplays staff or the RA3 community in the future?
Das.Duelon: I really want to contest with Tiberium Wars/Kane's Wrath activity. I am kinda jealous that they revived the community there : D I am not sure how to do that with RA3, to be honest. Might take new maps or some significant, game changing balance changes, I don't know. The games are really different and there is no blueprint for success, I guess. I am willing to talk about it, but usually these balance threads get really heated and end up not doing anything.
GR: Do you have any tips for improving play / for newer players?
Das.Duelon: When I started playing RTS, I didn't understand the importance of time in strategy games. I would only build, like, 1 harvester per ore/Tiberium field because I didn't want them to mine out. So I guess my tip would be: do everything you want to do as fast as you can. I am not talking about APM here. I am talking about stuff like getting your expansion up as fast as u can. If u have a 3rd refinery before your opponent, you have the eco advantage! If you get your tech faster than your opponent, you have a tech advantage!
GR: Any messages to the community, advice for others, thanks to individuals, or shoutouts?
Das.Duelon: Shoutout to yellowjacket, Rage and Chris for helping me create my maps and dealing with my crazy talk : P To everybody else: I will release a new map soon, I really hope you'll like it. It would be amazing to see it become a part of the tournament map pool, so please test it out, play a couple of games on it and let me know what you think! Thanks!
Thank you to Das.Duelon for taking the time to answer our questions. We'll be looking to highlight more players with the Red Alert 3 Lighthouse in the future. If you have any feedback, concerns, or suggestions for upcoming Lighthouse features, let us know in the thread linked below.
