Methos a interviewé czm du clan Clan Kapitol. Je sais bien que tout le monde s’en fiche mais vu que j’ai rien écrit sur nofrag ce weekend et que dans 3min la page sera vide il faut bien que je remplisse (c’est mon côté pro de grand reporter). Voici donc sa réponse la plus longue:
Methos:
In your current clan (Clan Kapitol), you play with some very talented players, including the CPL’s #1 ranked player, Fatality. Being a pretty good player yourself, what have you been able to learn from playing with such talented players?cK-czm:
Unfortunately I’ve never been able to really practice with fatality in 1v1, so I can’t say my 1v1 game has improved much, if at all, from being in cK.The best practice I’ve gotten as a result of being in cK was the intraclan 2v2’s we played over the summer. I think that those 2v2’s were what made our main players as good at tdm as we became – it was great, for example, to watch night by night in 2v2’s between czm/spook and ouija/orb as all four players started really kicking ass every game. It’s a great feeling when every player in a game is playing amazingly well, and you feel like you’re all improving together.
Playing 4v4’s with cK has, in the long run, made me worse, since when I realize that I don’t even need to try and my team can still win, I feel like I need to. When I first joined cK, we were overzealous about everything – we prided ourselves in not losing a scrim for months, and felt that our starters (who at the time were czm, ouija, spook, and dmx) could beat any other team on dm7 by over a 100 frag difference. If we ever had a « close » scrimmage (50 frag difference or less) we’d go on IRC and talk it over. We always felt disappointed if we didn’t reach what we referred to as our « quota » – winning by a frag difference of greater than 100. This « quota » kept me motivated – I always had something to strive for.
We were able to do this as a result of a lockdown strategy that did not work nearly as well on LAN. When a player can be overwhelmed by swarms of machinegun-toting enemies, it’s hard for him to hold an area on his own. We adopted the inferior-on-the-net but superior-on-a-LAN strategy of holding a central area and sending out pairs to gang up on the enemies. This was kind of a disappointment for me – q3 tdm seemed really fresh and interesting when we could lock the entire map down and dominate clans by using a unique strategy, while everyone else still used the old « 4 on RA » strat, which basically relies on a team being able to out aim their opponents and win control of the RA early. In switching to a more LAN-based set of strategies we’ve abandoned the philosophy of trying to win by huge scores, and instead have adopted one of « a win is a win. » As a result, I feel a bit bored playing tdm now since I know that most of the time, no matter what I do, my team will still win. So to summarize, playing 4v4’s with cK helped me at first, but for awhile now it’s only made me worse.
My most significant improvement, and probably the peak of my playing, was before I joined cK – this was because I’d always hop on the losing team on pickup servers and often play against experienced clans with an inexperienced, random-player filled pickup team. This really taught me what I had to do to lock a map down by myself and coordinate a less experienced team vs. a stronger one. In addition, when you know that you are required to hit a lot of shots if you want your team to win, you tend to try a lot harder – when you know you’re going to win by 100 regardless of what you do, you don’t really care if you only shoot 15% rail. I’m sure this isn’t the answer you expected, but I guess the most important thing I’ve learned from playing with such talented players is how much more rapidly one can improve when they play with below average teammates most of the time.
In terms of learning how to play as a team on LAN, however, being in cK has helped me tremendously. They’re a great bunch of guys and I have fun with them at every tournament I’ve been to. We have very fast communication, we talk non-stop during our matches, we react very quickly to what’s going on in a game, and we’re always focused on winning as a team, and I’ve learned so much about how all of this works as a result of playing with a talented team. Without which, I’d be a much worse LAN team player.
