Hello everyone. Before talking about your new roster, let's get back on ESL One. What did you think about this event, both concerning the organization and the competition?

kennyS: This major, just like the previous editions, was a real success. The tournament set new records in term of viewership and it's promising for the future! Regarding the show, I found Cologne less impressive than Katowice, especially because the event took place right after the holidays. To be honest, I didn't take a tour of the venue at Gamescom. Seeing the crowd and the enthusiasm there was, I think you could spend a great week-end at Gamescom. We have been used to high-level organization from ESL, and with ESL One Cologne, it was another great event by them.

Competition-wise, it was of course disappointing for us, as I think we had the capacities to achieve a way better result by making it out of the group stage. I was really confident in our BO3 game, but unfortunately a tournament never starts by the final phase and we quickly reached our limits. Our biggest regret is our “throw” against Cloud9, which marked the turning point of this tournament for us. Vox Eminor was then just a formality, but we played Dignitas on their best map and we began on T side… which was probably our worst side all maps combined.

CS:GO set new records this week-end, with more than 400 000 viewers. Do you think the game can keep growing this fast? What would you change to the game to attract more viewers and players?

Maniac: I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg regarding what CS:GO can bring on a competitive level. I have the feeling that we are currently in some kind of virtuous circle. What I mean is that the investments and the number of reached people grow together. The more spectators we have, the more money the sponsors want to spend into tournaments. Tournaments with a huge prize pool make the fans enthusiasm even stronger, and so on and so forth.

Regarding the improvements for the spectators, I think we have to look at MOBA HUDs which are really viewer friendly with a lot of information displayed on the screen (map, scores, items on LoL…). CS:GO has already made a step in this direction, with the enhanced spectator HUD, and I think we have to keep going this way! As for the players, I think the personalization of the game is an attractive feature that developers should bid on.

After having experienced the competition from the inside and the outside, what do you think of cobblestone and overpass which had a full-scale test at ESL One? What are your thoughts on the recent modifications that has been made to these maps?

KQLY: Adding new maps to the game is an excellent idea. It gives some new air to the game, both for players and spectators who can be bored to always see the same maps being played. However, the way these maps are added to the game has to be revised. Forcing these maps into the game one month prior a major event… I don’t agree with this because the teams don’t have enough time to prepare these new maps. After speaking with the devs, I better understood why they did this… They tried to get feedback from professional player’s way before the event, but they did not get enough answers. This is why they forced these maps in the game, to get this feedback.

Regarding cobblestone and overpass, we mainly focused on overpass with LDLC. We unfortunately did not had the occasion to play this map at ESL One. I really like this map. A lot of strategies can be created, the colours are great, and everything is bright and clean.On the other hand, I find cobblestone too dark. The idea of adding a map with the only argument that it used to be competitive 10 years ago is a bit light, to be honest. I prefer seeing new maps, like overpass, rather than a map everyone knows, which was taken out of competitive gaming.To make it short: yes to new maps, no to recycling old maps.

Regarding the recent updates made to these maps, it is true that Overpass A bombsite needed a small revamp. Removing this room is a good idea, as terrorists had to check every corner to get into the bombsite A, which was giving a real advantage to the CTs. I think the map is more balanced now, but if you have other ideas to improve it you can post it on the Steam forums. The devs read it, listen to feedback and are ready to make modifications for the map to be the most competitive it can be.

For KQLY, Valve is doing the right thing

What is your opinion on the ESL One VETO system, as a player, and as a spectator?

apEX: As a player, I found this VETO system to be totally random and giving a big advantage to high seed teams. To make it short: during group stage, after the VETO there were 3 maps remaining among which was drawn the random played map. The high seed team could choose the side they started on… Imagine yourself starting T side on nuke when you could have played dust2 or inferno which are way more balanced… my new team mates know what I’m talking about!

The same can be said about BO3, where we had to play on our worst map in semi-final against NiP. There again, the last map was randomly selected: cobblestone, whereas there was two maps on which we were more prepared remaining, being dust2 and overpass.From a spectator point of view, I think this format is the best as it prevents watching Inferno 95 games out of 100.To make it short, an alternative has to be found to make the outcome of the matches less random to please both the players and the spectators… an alternative I haven’t found yet!

What did you think of LDLC’s and Epsilon’s performances, and of the tournament in general (NiP winning its first major, Fnatic again in grand finale…)?

kennyS: Epsilon showed an interested level throughout group stage by beating both HellRaisers and NiP very easily. Then, they had to face Dignitas in quarter finale which was far to be the easiest team to play against, and they logically lost to them. Despite this loss, they had a good event.LDLC showed their A-game and made it out of the group stage quite easily. Before seeing them playing in the winner bracket, I had difficulties to evaluate their real level. When they won over Virtus.pro in quarter final, it was clear to me that they would go to the grand finale. For their semi-final, they were facing NiP who wasn’t at their best, with a heavy loss against Epsilon in group stage, and a difficult quarter final.

To conclude on the French teams, they all showed a great level at this event (except us…) and could have created the exploit. The trophy was really disputed, which was great for the show. NiP, with a rough start, showed a lot of mental strength and won the important rounds. This is the reason why they always manage to rank good at events, even when they encounter difficulties in the early stage of the tournaments.

Fnatic is without a doubt the team which has the best shape right now, they add up the good results and seem to be untouchables since some time. This is not a surprise to see them in the grand finale of ESL One Cologne. For the other teams, Cloud9 made it out of a quite difficult group stage and nearly made the exploit when they played against NiP.

Let’s now talk about your team. After a good Gfinity, you don’t manage to make it out of the group stage for the second time at a major event. What happened? 

Ex6TenZ: The answer is in two steps. On dust2 (the first step), I still can’t figure out why we lost this map. We were ahead of them on a tactical point of view. We just had to apply what we prepared and we would have win this match. We make a good T side (11-04), but I felt that we were lacking of lucidity, confidence, our positioning in clutch situations and our communication weren’t that great. There was a big lack of serenity. But well… we won an eco after losing the pistol round, and our new B split where we just have to press Z and kill flashed guys allows us to win several important rounds.

When we switched to the hard side, our lack of lucidity became bigger. We have the advantage on a lot of rounds but we just can’t finish by lack of reflexion, by precipitation, and with messy backups. We played like kids on who the fear of losing is stronger than the eager to win.

ESL One will remain a bad memory for Titan & Ex6TenZ

We were used to see you with a large panel of strategies and solutions to every situations, but at this even we had difficulties to recognize this style. Your game was quite poor and without great originality. What happened, as an example, on the T side of nuke against Dignitas?

Ex6TenZ: We had only one weak map among all the ones we prepared: nuke (here’s the second step), because of our terrorist side. The fate made us play this map when we were not properly warmed up. Despite this, you have to know we had really good finishing.

Unfortunately, when you are not able to go further than T red without losing 2 players, it is difficult to think about winning. This was a recurrent problem since almost 1 month in practice, and we had the confirmation of this problem when we played Virtus.Pro at Gfinity. It should have been fixed, and we pointed it out, but the work hasn’t been done, and that’s a shame.

Since you were recruited by Titan, the team only made results that meets this investment occasionally. What feedbacks does the organization gives you upon these results? 

NiaK: We are lucky that Titan’s management is really implied with the team. They stay informed of everything: our evolution in the game, our strategies, the group life and our daily problems… This relation allowed us to keep their trust and to bounce back with new perspectives. I am really happy of the relationship we have with our organization and I sincerely hope we will achieve big things by the end of the season… they deserve it.

Do you think the life and training in a gaming house is as beneficial as expected?

NiaK: As you mentioned it, the life in a gaming house includes two aspects: life and work. Life-wise, I would say we encountered quite a lot of difficulties which put weight on everyone’s minds.  Being permanently with each other requires a lot more energy and distorts the distance you usually take with daily things. It was kind of hard to reconcile different life habits and educations.

Gaming-wise, despite our results, the record is different to me. Working in the same place is an advantage: the relationships are more direct, nobody can sneak off, the environment has less incidence and it allowed us to do some video debriefing. Sitting in front of the television, the players just had to watch and memorize their errors. There is a true potential of work in gaming house conditions.

If I had to weigh up the pros and cons of these first months in gaming house, it would certainly lean towards the cons. Yet, I don’t regret the decision to bring the team into a gaming house. This is an experience which allowed us to learn and evolve. I also think that if we had been in a different context, with a more homogenous group, the record could have been different.

With our new roster, we will change our methods. Dan and Mathieu are still students and can’t live in Bruxelles. We will keep the gaming house but we will only use it as a bootcamp facility on short periods, when the player’s agenda will allow it.

Let’s talk about the recent news. Could you please explain the reasons that led to the player changes that recently occurred? 

NiaK: To really understand, we have to come back a few months from now. The end of the VeryGames era was particularly difficult to handle for the group. The ESWC, where we were dispersed marked a rupture in the team. The preparation for DreamHack Winter was chaotic and we arrived there divided, far from being on the same page. This period led to many regrets, because beyond the performance which should have been better, we didn’t manage to draw lessons out of it. Titan and the gaming house thus seemed to arrive right in time. I saw this project as the ultimate way to rally the team around a new challenge, with the hope that a more united and homogenous group emerged from our individualities.

The first weeks were promising, the team was rallied, we had a planning, training methods, and the environment was no longer a source of distraction… Nonetheless, this euphoria pushed us too far into preparation and we lacked of realism and distance. Despite this, we only failed Katowice from a little, and I stay convinced that if we made it out of the group stage, we would have achieved big in bo3. The record was not this bad, and we showed it right after with a good performance in Fragbite. It didn’t prevent our old demons to wake up and we arrived at Copenhagen Games the same way we arrived at DreamHack Winter… divided. From this point, the foundations of the project were questioned, and Richard decided to leave the team.

The return of Kenny bring back some fresh air and some motivation, but the loss of a game influencing player quickly made itself felt. We were in a better dynamic but gaming-wise, we had big shortcomings. This is when we decided to bring a coach in (Poireau), to have someone to assist Kevin on the strategies, to improve his vision of the game and to have some distance on our style. Despite this job being new, and the little amount of time he had, Arthur was useful to the team and worked efficiently on the strategic aspect with Kevin.

You all know the end of the story. Despite more means and a lot of work, there was a new fail. It was inevitable to reconsider the things. We were facing three types of problems: we were divided on the ideological point, instability in our game, and immaturity. This is a general analysis and I don’t blame anyone specifically. When you spend that much time together, everyone has its own share of responsibilities. We didn’t manage to bounce back after all these failures, we needed to change things to retrieve some consistency in and out of the game.