good understanding of where they can be and where they will be hitting. Either we make a play ON them or we just go to the other side to avoid them. All the players in the team has a good understanding of this, you need to have this understanding to play at this level. You need to always keep up or you will lose some of this
understanding as the game is shifting. When I played at TI6 I spent all my time focusing on what we needed to do to win.
Depends on the person who says it, as every player has a different personality. A lot of the ideas that they come up with is based a lot on their personality. Some players just have a lot of ideas you just have to filter and just kind of ignore. Some people have a lot of good ideas but don’t want to say them because they’re shy or whatever. I usually just try to listen and use my understanding of the game to evaluate whether an idea is good or not. Me and the coach has to stay neutral about the reason to why we lost, because it’s very easy to get this mentality where you just blame the draft and you’re not focused anymore.
We were prepared and we had a really big advantage and we really felt that we were the best team. But suddenly one of our players just didn’t know what he was doing, and we couldn’t really salvage it. To me it was really unexpected. The way I solved it was just telling him that he fucked and he needs to get his shit together, and I definitely feel that it worked out.
Our goal is obviously to win everything we play in, but our main goal is definitely to win TI in August.
When anybody is saying anything, nobody is holding themselves back, everybody is fine with talking.
Everybody feels good, both about me and about other teams. I’d like to think they can approach me with any problem they have, I haven’t experienced otherwise.
I want to take more responsibility than the other team members. Some of the other guys play other games and maybe they’re not thinking as much about the game as I am. I’m talking a lot with our coach about what other teams are doing. We’re also responsible about the draft. And that’s fine. Keep working even if we’re winning or losing.
There’s a psychological effect based on who you’re playing, if you’re playing and unknown team everyone is a lot more chill. And when you play a well known team people might be more stressed out and feeling more pressured. Sometimes we might perform worse when playing a better team. When playing against these tier 2 teams I don’t really care or prepare, because we’re just that much better, we always have something in our arsenal of strategies that we can use. The smallest mistake can sometimes turn into a huge lead, which can make you really feel the pressure.
When I played for Team Secret and we won a lot of tournaments and suddenly they just picked up some new players, and I had to build a team for my own completely from scratch and qualify for all tournament. And I managed to get second at the biggest tournament (TI).
We just keep talking and understand that we have to adjust a couple things and keep making ourselves play better. Sometimes the team chats are more serious than others, where we discuss how we really want to do it and lay out the plans for both sides.
The last team I was they would be fucking lazy and not really say anything, they wouldn’t communicate well and it didn’t really feel like they had what it would take to win. It was unpopular and I felt like an asshole when I had to yell at them all the time because they didn’t work hard enough.
There was a time in this team after just a few weeks, people didn’t respect my word when I said something, people would argue back and we wouldn’t really get anywhere even though I knew I was right in these situations. I talked to Sam about it and explained to him how I felt and he said he felt the same way. We had a team chat and we talked about there was a reason why they chose me as a captain, if you want to improve you
need to listen to me and Sam. I didn’t really call people out but people could understand that they were at fault, and after that chat it became better, even the next day you could feel that it was a lot easier to just talk to people.
They don’t really ask me for advice because most of them have played the game almost as much as me. Usually when they make a mistake they already know. There’s also teams where it’s not going so well and people have no idea what they’re doing.
The first 10 minutes in every game we’re going to be doing the same thing and every time we have an idea it has to fit into this concept, because we feel this is the best play to play the game right now. It’s just in my head I guess, it’s somehow based off of experience and my own ideas. You could say it’s based off of experience or maybe I get an idea by watching someone else do something which is wrong and I get the idea from that and I get inspired. I watch and play a lot of dota, so maybe it’s just that. Im actively trying to think about these things, I’m thinking about the game a lot
The goals is always to try to win all the time, if not every game then the entire tournament. You need to address the loss correctly, if you lose focus and talk about the wrong things then you don’t learn anything. If you do that everytime you will get a sense of progress, when we lose we know that the next time we’re going to do better.
I spend a lot of time playing the game and the fact that I take the game so seriously makes the team motivated.
They’re just motivated by themselves right now by having a lot of progress. This is not something that I really have to do super much about, since we’re doing ok right now. The reason we’re still motivated is because we’re still losing sometimes, so we still need to win which keeps us motivated.
I joined a team and I knew it wasn’t the team for me and it was very demotivating, I still played but the heart wasn’t really in it. So I just left the team, which was a really hard decision to make. When I was kicked from Team Secret I was actually thinking about just quitting right there, but there was a short window of just 3 days to register for tournaments and I just wanted to chill. But the people around me motivated me to keep going. He just needed a little kick from someone, like his parents or teammates to keep going.
I tell them how it is with the simplest logic that I can, I’m pretty good at convincing people with this logic. They chose me for a reason and Im here to help them, if they don’t want to listen what’s the point. Having to explain them that first is a really good step, secondly just talking to them with a bit of humor and logic goes a long way.
Very determined about the game, but very casual about other things. Passionate, wants to all in on something.
Very easy going and nice person overall. Friendly.
By travelling and playing so much with people of different nationalities and stuff I have a really good understanding of people and how people think, just by playing a video game. No matter what subject it is and looking at your own mistakes is important, it’s something you learn when you lose and it can’t always be my teammates.
We’re not really that close to discuss these things, usually there’s someone else to talk about these things.
Usually I don’t know them that well to be on that level, or we have managers or someone else that people can talk to.
It’s very easy to tell if somebody doesn’t agree or is annoyed with what you’re saying or having issues with their pride or doesn’t enjoy getting called out or whatever. I definitely sense it, but I usually don’t say anything.
There is some emotion in the room and what not in 30 minutes or so it’s usually cleared up.
Some players I have more faith in than others. Players have set roles that doesn’t really allow too much
flexibility. Fear and Crit usually play heroes that have the same “job” in the game. Sumail is perfect for the kind of x-factor role
I have experienced it myself and with others that they suddenly realize that it’s for real when there’s a huge crowd in front of them. You can’t think rationally, because your mind is full of being scared. It’s some kind of anxiety, it’s pretty hard to explain. It still happens to pretty much all players. I would have a harder time streaming, I can’t really focus on the game because I focus too much about what people say in the chat or what they think.
The crowd thing definitely motivates me and you want them to cheer for you when you win and not the other way around. When we choked against VP recently it might have been a main stage thing, the pressure of the crowd and only having this one chance.