Trell — After the game Thursday night vs Infused, I caught up with Team Dignitas players to see if we could get some answers to some of the burning questions I had. Beware the large wall of text!
First of all, this season in ETF2L can hardly be called one of your best so far. Is there anything in particular you believe is the reason behind this?
dajackal: Two new players, hymzi back to play demoman, changed calls from Finnish to English.
cookye: Oh you know, the lineup change.
Haza: The main reason for that is probably the fact that we’ve only played together for 3 weeks. Even though there’s 4 players that are the same, hymzi who’s switched to demo plays differently than mafu did, longás probably doesn’t play scout the same way hymzi did and I don’t play soldier like Punpu did (in addition to not being as good). Also some of the matches (against cc and infused for example) were pretty even and I think we couldve won both of them, just didnt. Only 1 cap differences or so. So personally I’m quite surprised we’ve even managed this good.
Hocz: Recent changes in our lineup has definately been the reason for this. Hymzi going from scout to demo and we have taken Haza to play soldier and longás as scout. Mafu and Punpu will be concentrating more on their studies and therefore can not play that much. It might not seem so big change for everyone because our new recruits are very good players but at this level of TF2 it is the little things that make the difference between winning and losing. We have improved a lot with our teamplay but it still needs little work. Also we need to work our rallyenglish comms a little. As you propably know we previously had a full finnish lineup.
Hymzi: I think none of us were really expecting anything from this season.. We just changed our lineup and i had to change back to a class that i really don’t enjoy playing anymore + we had to bring in new players. We have been playing couple years with only finnish comms, so it was expected that its gonna take time to get used to. We are starting to get used to it now though.
longás: Hymzi going back to demoman, Haza as soldier and me as scout with the “language change” are the main factors behind this bad season. We’ve been playing together for less than 1 month and we are getting really close scores against other top teams, we are improving fast and we’ll keep doing it. The team didn’t expect too much from this season and they are happy with the team progression, there aren’t sad faces so everything is fine.
We’ve seen Hymzi move back to playing Demoman, would you consider that this is a key factor in why your results haven’t lived up to expectations?
dajackal: Sometimes yes, like dunc said “hymzi is like a hamster on crack” – you never know what he is up to.
cookye: Yup.
Haza: Well this is more or less explained in my previous answer…
Hocz: It is part of the reason. Hymzi has been playing scout for us quite a while and now has to remember the old tricks to play demoman. The main reason is of course teamplay. It’s like playing with a mix team vs a prem team. That mix team becomes a prem team again when you play enough games with the same lineup.
longás: As I’ve said, that is just one of the reasons. He was one of the best demomen back in the days and he is showing that he can rape now as he did.
What was behind the decision on Thursday on Snakewater to go for last and not hold the points you had in the Golden Cap situation?
dajackal: Holding is for pussies.
cookye: We wanted to cap.
Haza: We had a massive uber advantage, but only ended up killing 3 of them on last (medic without uber one of them) while losing 6. So we SHOULD’VE capped that pretty easy but it was just a deciding failure, nothing more. Also, defensive tactics are for pussies.
Hocz: If I remember correctly, we had an uberadvantage. It was the right decision but the push failed because we didn’t focus targets, we spread out too much. I don’t think you will ever see us using engineer and heavy to defend cp4 or cp3. So called safeplay is more likely to fail and gives your opponent the chance to play aggressive and do whatever they want.
Hymzi: As for the snakewater.. You are bunch of pussies who think you should just sit around and wait for the time to run out.. not our style. Besides atm we treat all the matches we play as pcw’s.. for now anyways.
longás: These finnish guys are just crazy, they cba to stay 5 mins defending a point because that’s not their style and I like it. We lost?, yeah, but we won’t fail the push the next time.
Do you feel there have been any games this season that you really ‘should’ have won?
dajackal: Every game of course.
cookye: All of ‘em.
Haza: Don’t know if we SHOULD’VE won infused or cc (only games i can remember atm) but we definitely could’ve if we hadn’t failed at key points. But no, I don’t feel we would’ve deserved the win any more than they did.
Hocz: We could have won every game. All of the teams we played are very good and the results we’re expected. Well maybe not expected, more like understandable.
longás: All the games have been really close for us this season and we could have won all of them. I think we haven’t had luck in that, but getting these kind of results with a team which have been together for 3 weeks is a really good signal in my opinion.
How do you rate your deathmatch ability vs a team like Infused, who are widely thought to have a great one on one mindset?
Mike 2 strong?
dajackal: How can you beat MGE mike?
cookye: Fuck infused.
Haza: As everyone knows infused is filled with great deathmatchers but what I consider more important than actually winning 1on1 situations is playing together and winning the bigger “team fights” meaning focusing the same targets, attacking at the same time etc, and we’re probably not as good as the other teams in it atm but I’m confident that we can match any of the top teams’ deathmatch abilities as we play a bit more.
Hocz: In my opinion we have quite similar dm skills with Infused.
longás: I think we’ve shown that our deathmatch skills are as good as theirs. All the players in premier have a sick dmatch but that is not what make you win games, it helps, but there are players in lower divisions with the same dmatch abilities than a top player but they can’t play in premier.
How do you feel longás is fitting in with the team that has notoriously been all Finnish?
dajackal: For a spanish, he is quite nice.
cookye: I like his style.
Haza: Extremely well, I like his motivation to actually think what we can do better and then try it out. But we do still make some quick situational calls (unnecessary to longás) in finnish so ofcourse its harder/slower to communicate in english. Don’t think that’s really a problem tho.
Hocz: I think longás fits our team really good. He can take feedback and is very interested in improving our game. That is exactly what we need. Of course we had to start using english comms, but we can still use some finnish to cover the most improtant things like cursing.
longás: There a lot of things that I need to improve but I think I’m fitting well. I’ve taken the role of the aggresive scout and sometimes I die stupidly because I don’t have enough coordination with the team. The “language barrier” isn’t being a big problem, these guys know how to speak english really well and they are getting used to it very fast.
What, if anything, would you change about the ETF2L ruleset and allowed weapons?
dajackal: Nothing.
cookye: I dunno, lol.
Haza: First of all, ban snipers. Period. Even tho we have one of the best snipers (cookye) I feel the game is much more fun without them. Also a great sniper can change a game too easily imo. Personally I’d like the golden cap rule to be timelimit 0, roundlimit 1 even tho it could mean 20 minute rounds cause just the idea of putting up a turtledefense on cp3 after capping it is just gay. Unlocks are fine atm but to be fair I really don’t even know 90% of the weapons that have been added since the game release. But I wouldn’t start messing with them as they tend to come up with new weapons on a weekly basis. Wouldn’t mind allowing original tho. And I’m not even gonna start with the map pool.
Hocz: Nothing comes to mind at the moment, the improvement from last season is so huge that I don’t think I can afford to say much.
longás: The admins have done a good work this season. I like the unlocks, 8 teams in each division and the maps. Maybe obscure was a bit “forced” because I feel that the map has a lot of potential but it’s not good enough to be played in leagues.
Finally; if you could pick a dream team from any current players in TF2, who would it consist of?
dajackal: Team Dignitas.
cookye: extremer, shintaz, clockwork, minimoose, drleånn, mirelin
Haza: 6x dunc, definitely. Amazing multiclasser.
Hocz: F2, hocz, Mike, mafu, cookye, stefan – I would pick the most annoying players to play against and would like to be part of it so that I wouldn’t have to play against them. F2 for being the hardest medic to kill, Mike for being Mike, mafu for rollers, cookye for sniping, stefan for jumping around like a headless chicken and meatshotting like a boss.
longás: F2 – medic, Retsh0ck – demoman, hocz – pocket soldier, Pescanova – roamer soldier, stefan – scout, quad – scout
I’d like to thank the guys from Dignitas for answering my questions and basically putting up with my constant nagging yesterday to get their answers! Hopefully this was as good a read for Vanilla readers as it was for me.
Cheers,
Trell ;)
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2011-11-05 by Trell.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.