Season 13: Premiership Interviews #2 HYS

by huhy

Interview Transcript

Admirable: Welcome to the second of ETF2L’s Season 13 Interview series where Premiership players are lined up before the one-man firing squad known as Admirable.  Today we have Premiership first timer, HYS, of Nitrose in our sights.  Any last words?

HYS: No! No last words… heh…

A: OK I’m not actually gonna shoot you, but this is gonna be tough man… I’m just warning you… ya know… psyche yourself up mentally.

H: I’m psyched, mate! I’m psyched!

A: I’m gonna start you off with an easy one. Alright!

H: Go for it!

A: Before we get things fully under way I will first have to assess your TF2 fashionista credentials.  What hats and miscellaneous items are you going to be sporting in the upcoming season?

H: I’m not bothered about all that stuff. I’m just gonna wear probably the samurai hat for demo I guess, and no miscellaneous.

A: Oh well! At least you make up for you terrible TF2 fashion sense by being an incredibly handsome young man in real life.  Before I met you at i46, I had you pegged as a bit of an oddball from our various online interactions, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

H:  Oh am I going to be the next victim of the Kritzkast kissing sessions online?

A: Wow! Wow! It’s supposed to be me hitting you with the heavy blows here… but you know, I like to keep an open mind… Perhaps! Perhaps! Do you have anything to say to you female fans out there? From the most handsome man at LAN perhaps?

H: Ah… wouldn’t go that far mate!

A: Ah nothing for the ladies, nothing for the ladies…

H: Nothing.

A: You’re a taken man, aren’t you?

H: I’m a taken man!

A: Say no more then. Say no more! OK then… that was uh… that pretty much died on its arse. We’ll move on to the next question…

H: Hahaha!

A: Insomnia 46 seems to have been a breakthrough event for your team, at least in terms of getting some recognition from the competitive illuminati, with Dunc predicting that Nitrose (and I quote) “could be the silver dagger that takes down the Americans next time they cross the pond” in his post LAN write-up.  How do you deal with this sort of hype? Are these new expectations creating an additional level of pressure that perhaps wasn’t there before?

H: Ah, simple answer to that, probably no. I don’t think we… don’t really… I guess some players like droso and… they like to read around the scene and I guess they take some of that to heart and it means a lot to them, but I think most of us are… enough for it not to mean that much.  So I would say that there is no real pressure to us because, as you said previously, no one was really expecting anything from us because arguably on paper we’re… we have one of the weakest teams individually if you match player for player. Uhm so I guess that’s a good thing, I’ve always preferred the underdog tag, if you like, associated with different teams… and we hope that’ll continue, we hope… well I guess that could make a difference to our team if we start… if people start seeing us as a big threat.

A: Yeah… absolutely! Obviously success isn’t something that happens overnight and you personally have been putting in… like… putting together teams in ETF2L for a few seasons now; what is it about the current roster that clicks? What were the key qualities you focused on when assembling the new Nitrose… ah… roster at the start of the summer?

H: I think the first stint… the first stint I had a go with like where we were really trying was obviously idk… and obviously I had droso as a member of that team and he is again now… ehm… and obviously you make a lot of mistakes in the first… the first line-ups that you learn from after… and I won’t really name and shame any of those mistakes, but I guess it’s hard to pin point it… I just look for people… really this team was kind of a bit of a fluke because we just had fun together, just players that I knew of or players that I enjoyed their company. I dunno… teamplay wise it just seems to be something that clicks and we work quite well together. There’s no real… I dunno… it just happened by chance… fluke!

A: So you think that personalities are the most important thing, to make sure there’s no real clashes there and people actually enjoy playing with each other? Is that the… the most basic level you want to achieve?

H: I think so… I guess the main thing that I’ve learnt from building a few line-ups that have broken down to… I guess university and falling behind in work there… ehm… I dunno it’s hard. In this case it’s just pure personality, I think is why this teams survives and I think the key is just keeping people together… and you see that in so many line-ups nowadays that have worked through the divisions, if you keep the same line-up together it can progress.

A: Well like in terms of your individual players, what do you think they bring to the team? Like obviously… I think like Cyber is an absolute beast in DM, he’s pretty underrated?

H: I don’t see him as being underrated. I think a lot of people think that Cyber is exactly that and that he is our carry player. It depends from the perspective that you look at it from, obviously a lot of people perceive things very differently from looking outside in, but if you play with these guys every night you know exactly what you’re gonna get from everybody. Cyber is definitely one of the strong players on our team… it’s always been the case… whichever pocket soldier has always been important to teams I’ve built I think… and they have to obviously flow well with the demo, which is of course my role, but you Cyber is… obviously we had wolve prior to that who went on to 2Strong, after with the previous Nitrose line-up and that could have maybe gone somewhere as well… but players weren’t available when we came back… we had to take the only player that was still there and that was Trax(antic) and that’s why we built fresh and obviously Cyber was quite a lucky find cause a lot of people thought he should have stayed on demo but I obviously disagree and think a few people would disagree with that now.

A: Yeah. What was the situation with dOnut as well? Obviously he had played pretty much only with French teams up until that point? I’d seen him on a few LAN games ya know… I’d always thought he was a great off-classer as well as a good scout ya know… his spy play and stuff was quite sensational. How did he sort of come in to your team or how did you become aware of him?

H: Well I’d kind of pursued dOnut for a while and his loyalty was to being part of LDLC… ehm… but he was obviously a clear carry for that team for quite some time and he doesn’t have really any higher level experience… but I always find that I play well with one scout that players more defensively and one scout that plays aggressively cause it sort of complements my aggressive style. So it was kinda just that he became available and he obviously has a good connection with droso… obviously they… dOnut doesn’t have the best comms but they have a whisper key set up and they play quite well together and he’s been constantly improving his comms throughout. So it’s just by chance that he became available and we kinda pounced on it.

A: So they whisper in French on your Mumble?

H: Yeah! They have a whisper key on Mumble and they talk to each other throughout the game and droso kind of eh… speaks for dOnut at times, but dOnut is getting better and better.

A: Well sorta coming back to what Dunc said I guess… it seems fame can be fickle, as after your recent defeat to Crack Clan in the Process One Night Cup there was a comment from Dunc “certainly not the ntrs I saw at i46”. Do you think Nitrose deserve to be in the Premier Division in Season 13? Are you just a LAN-hype team?

H: To address the first thing… if you come back to me with that last part of the question… I don’t think that’s very fair because I think CC have only got stronger. When you look at them in the last season of Prem they didn’t exactly play bad and that was, with all due respect to players I’m gonna mention, obviously with ReveraL, p0le and Tarkus; that’s a lot weaker team than you’ve got right now when you put people like TviQ and minimoose in there… so I don’t know… but for me Crack Clan only got a lot stronger now and they are gonna be a contender for the Prem. So to go 2-4 with a merc scout playing who’s barely ever played with us wasn’t too bad, that’s be our persective…

A: Yeah!

H: So I guess… uh what was the second part of the question?

A: Do you think Nitrose deserve to be in the Premier Division in Season 13 or are you just a LAN-hype team?

H: I don’t think we’re a LAN hype team, I mean that was a few people’s first LAN experience… I don’t think… I still feel like we didn’t really do ourselves justice… if we’d have gone past TCM… it would have been a lot better… like maybe we could have even gone on further. We’ve known for a while… we’ve only been playing quite casually and we’ve coped with a lot of the top teams… so we were always confident but like what I remember kaidus made comment on Pirate Radio about us getting smashed at LAN and big boys stepping it up, all this sort of thing… and although it’s hard because yeah it’s online results and they don’t mean a lot when it’s PCWs… I was kind of quietly confident but I didn’t want to put that sort of pressure on the team. To answer it simply, I don’t really think we are a LAN-hype team, we’ve been performing all summer just playing two nights a week, so we felt like we could be there; we felt that we deserved that spot.

A: Yeah, I can see where you are coming from… and eh… taking all things in to account, what are your aspirations for the team in Season 13? Do you think you have a shot at the anonymously donated €2,500 prize pot and Tt eSports swag?

H: Probably not. I don’t really think we’ve had the right preparation going in to this season, because like we only had two nights’ practising for i46 and we didn’t really play much that month at all… like I say cause we were playing with Qun for a while… up to the event… and then we had people off left right and centre and I was busy as well… and like I say we’ve only been playing two or three nights a week and that’s with mix rosters, just the last couple of weeks just, since obviously we came back from the event. So it’s… I don’t really fancy our chances, if you like.

A: I’ve heard that you guys are only really play two nights a week…  are you planning to step it up or is that just literally the only time you have?

H: We discussed it as a team and we kind of agreed that we didn’t want to play any more than three and that suits us down to a tee… it keeps us motivated and it gives us eh… a disadvantage I suppose over those that can play four or five, but like I say the team has never been about crazy DM, so I don’t think that affect us as hard as it would other teams.

A: So you prefer ah… quality over quantity?  There definitely is a risk of burning out if you are going super keen and playing five nights a week.

H: I think so. In our case we’ve always been happier playing less… so… yeah we could maybe step it up a little bit from that, but like I say we’re not deathmatch players… I think the people that are deathmatch orientated they need to play regularly, they need to stay on top of their game, aim-wise, and our team is more about coordination than it is about aim… so not much of an issue for us.

A: Well, how do you think other teams will fair this season? Who do you see as your closest rivals? Which team is most likely to fold?

H: Ah, our rivals personally I guess obviously Punchline is a big one, because they hate a couple of our members… that French rivalry, even though the majority of the team isn’t French from Nitrose, there is obviously a strong rivalry between the two teams; so they are one of our rivals, but I guess the other teams like Qn, Decerto, obviously Quad’s team that came in to it, CHINESE MAFIA… those I guess will be the teams we will be scrapping for points with.

A: Tell me more about this… this French beef! Was there any drama at LAN? Obviously Punchline were there, Nitrose were there… anything happen? Any dirty looks exchanged across computer screens?

H: Well, we wanted to play for the 7^th spot with Punchline… eh but they didn’t wanna play a match. I’m not sure… I don’t want to stir shit really… say the least I guess… I think it was felt by some people that perhaps they didn’t wanna play because if they were to get beaten it would have been quite horrible for Punchline to handle, but we were quite keen on playing. So I guess that’s something that a lot of people probably didn’t know! Ehm but… I don’t, there was nothing really… not much… I knew Tek because I’d play with previously with Trax and I always saw his potential… like he always was always gonna be a good player… he’s obviously known as a bit of a DM beast now, so it’s nice to get to meet him and the other guys, but there wasn’t really any trouble at all.  I just know that droso in particular and maybe dOnut… they don’t really get on with the other French guys and vica versa… there’s some sort of hate there.

A: Yeah I think a lot of people hate droso… but he’s a lovely guy!

H: Yeah he’s a top bloke!

A: Mmm I think it’s good that there’s more drama and a bit of beef in the Premiership, ya know, it makes it interesting… I think that is one thing the Americans have over us! But eh… beyond ETF2L are Nitrose planning to attend any future LANS? Maybe in France?! Eh like… what sort of relationship do you have with the Nitrose organisation?

H: We have a fantastic relationship with Nitrose and we are obviously happy they could support us and we obviously want to extend our thanks to them, cause it’s quite rare these days and there is not really a lot to gain for organisations to support TF2 in many respects because the prize money simply isn’t there and when you spread it between six players and an org takes a cut it really isn’t financially a brilliant game to put money in to. Although I would obviously welcome more money and things like that… it’s… I can understand. So really we are quite lucky with them.  We discussed the potential of top French LANs like Gamers Assembly and things like that.  We also kinda looked in to… I think it was… was it Dreamhack? I think there was some things floating around about Dreamhack, so we did look in to things like that, but there is nothing really that solid there.

A: But you would be… at least in theory, interested in continuing to improve upon your LAN performances?

H: We obviously wanna improve, but we just can’t dedicate the sort of time to improve at a rate that I guess… everyone would like to… ourselves and other people including obviously want the community to improve… the teams that are in it.

A: Yeah, that’s fair enough… so… just coming to the last two questions here I guess. What do you think about the ETF2L’s moves towards a stricter, more professional rule set in the Premier Division?  Should these same rules apply to all Divisions?

H: That’s difficult I’d answer the later part of the question by saying no, I don’t think that should apply to everybody. Especially since a lot of ETF2L is composed of or made up of lower division teams… ehm… and some of those are not all that keen or motivated by being at the top as others, so it would probably be a little bit unfair to enforce that on others… but obviously I welcome that approach, especially for us, it’s important to me because then I can get the league games out the way… there’s not as much faffing around as a leader in terms of organisation, cause people have to do it, like gotta take a wildcard or organise within a certain date, getting defaulted to be played, so you don’t stack up all these games; it’s obviously good for me.

A: I’ll be devil’s advocate here a bit… like… why should teams in the lower divisions have it any easier? Surely when you sign up to the league you’re not eh… shouldn’t be taking it lightly… ya know you should be expected to your games around the time that they are scheduled… you know there are other teams out there too that eh… you’re impacting on like whether it’s to do with scheduling  or fakenicks and stuff like this. Why can’t people just be expected to behave like decent people?

H: I can see your point of view and I obviously take that on board, I just think that obviously these scenarios are very different because obviously Prem and Division 1, they play for prizes and the other divisions… they don’t. So in some respects we have to say make it fair for all divisions then and everyone have the same prize available and that sort of thing in order for all that stuff to be level.

A: Well, it was actually interesting, I’m not sure if you heard it, but in Darn’s interview he said that the prize money, like that amount, didn’t really mean a lot to him. Would it better if we had perhaps distributed it across divisions? Would that be useful?

H: I dunno, it would just be even less wouldn’t it?  If it’s already not that significant then it would be even less significant, if you get what I mean. Like… I think that’s still something to play for… the prize money is still something to play for… it’s just not… when you divide it by six it just simply is not a lot of money really. Maybe in terms of winning the full amount, that’s a bit different I suppose… like just to one player… but it’s still good that that’s there and I’m glad that someone has donated that… and I do think that it does give motivation and something to play for for some teams… it’s better than a kick in the teeth at the end of the day… it’s nice to come away with something for your efforts… I’m pleased that it’s there, but obviously I don’t think we are really contenders for that money… so yeah it’s different for us I guess.

A: Well, we’re coming up to the nineteen minute mark here, so I’ve got one last attempt to try and.. ya know… bait some drama out of you. I’ll start off by saying… you are of course a ETF2L Anti Cheat Admin… am I right?

H: That’s correct, yeah.

A: Would you like to do any finger wagging and warn those naughty players not to cheat? Perhaps even bust out some bans right here, right now? Is there anyone you want to out, live on air?

H: Ahaha! I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Good attempt, but nah. There’s nothing really to say about that.

A: Put on your stern adult voice and say “Don’t be cheating, children!”

H: Don’t be cheating, children!

A: There you go… wow! And eh… any opinion on the whole AnAkIn drama… matnuN, Tarkus, getting banned, ya know, this whole thing? How did the ETF2L Anti Cheat team see it? Was it just cut and dried? Obviously you got the bans out quickly, but was there any debate there?

H: We just made sure that those… that the evidence that we were provided with was obviously legit… and obviously a lot of people had some opinions about it being able to be faked quite easily and those kind of things. We just made sure that it was obviously kosher and that we weren’t just banning people on fabricated evidence, if you like. So… but no I think obviously there was some debate about whether players should be banned if they haven’t played in league games and all this sort of thing and obviously my opinion that I put across was that… if you are cheating regardless of if you managed to evade the system and not get a VAC ban… players that do get VAC banned… they’re not necessarily cheating on league games and they get a one season, sorry, one year ban as a result so the other players deserve the same treatment.  It’s obviously a shame because some of those players probably didn’t cheat in the league, but if you are stupid enough to load it up in the first place then you deal with the consequences I guess.

A: Yeah! It’s just a lot easier to enforce that way, it has to be zero tolerance in my eyes. I absolutely agree with you. But eh… just to wrap things up here I’ll give you a chance to maybe shout out your sponsors or… tell someone you love them!

H: Hehe… eh… I guess just a shout out to my team… eh obviously in some respects shout out to Evilmoon as well, because obviously he stayed with us, he kind of had an offer to go with the Finnish line-up with Darn, obviously they tried to take him for that line-up and he obviously decided to stay with us and I guess that’s kind of what our team’s all about, that friendship and putting that ahead of other things… and obviously just to clarify as well… a comment that Darn made about the try hard thing… that’s not really the case with our team… we obviously… we could play well and finish in in a decent position or we could flop and come all the way in the bottom… it’s one of them things, it’s one game in a season… not really showing the same level on consistency, kinda depends how we play… but yeah… just obviously shout out to my team and the sponsors, people at Nitrose that have always been behind us and obviously shout out to all those at i46 as well… it’s nice to meet everyone!

A: That’s beautiful man! That’s beautiful! I’ve got a tear rolling down my cheek right now… but I will say, I have been Admirable, you have been HYS and this has been the second of our ETF2L Season 13 Interview series… stay tuned for more!