In the run up to the player break there was a lot of conversations online as to whether Complexity would need to make a change to their roster in order to recapture their early CS2 form but the team quickly put that to bed as they ended their season victorious at ESL Challenger Jonkoping.
With the new season set to begin, we spoke to Complexity star floppy about the team's decision to not make changes and Complexity's struggles in the first half of 2024.
I'm feeling good. To be honest, I didn't take much of a break, I've just been playing a lot of CS and I've got 70 hours in the last two weeks just from pugging and aim training. It's been chill.
Well, it's BO3s so I think that's something important compared to a load of BO1s played in a row. Our first game is against VP, and that's always going to be tough competition so it should be fun.
It's definitely different, and it's cool to switch things up, but that might be more of a question for messioso than for me.
I think every team prefers BO3. MR12 BO1s is just ridiculous, no one likes it for sure.
It was something we definitely needed. We'd been playing a lot of events and getting close to playoffs in a couple of them, but we'd been struggling in terms of our expectations.
We wanted to win it and we did.
Yeah, especially with Dallas and being knocked out in a day against Liquid and MOUZ. We really wanted to play in front of the home crowd and we didn't manage to do it so it was really disappointing.
Even something like YaLLa Compass where were 2-0 up and then lost three BO1s in a row and didn't make playoffs, that was also super annoying for us, so to go and win Challenger after that was definitely needed.
We had some good runs, including Challenger, semis at Pro League, and making the Major and beating Liquid too was super important So it wasn't the worst, but we definitely wanted more than that.
I think part of it was because we were playing so well so everyone was watching us to see what we were doing. We were just getting countered more compared to the rest of the teams.
But that's normal, if you're doing good then everyone is going to take your stuff and that makes it harder to play against teams who know what you're doing all of the time.
I wouldn't say there were any conversations directly, at least not towards me.
Obviously, my performance wasn't good last season so it's definitely something to look at, but nothing was set in stone.
I think you don't really know what goes on within a team unless you're on the team yourself, that's something I've learned. A lot of people are just purely speculating.
But, every team just wants to be the absolute best. At least being in the top five is super important in order to maintain your roster.
In terms of how often teams make roster changes, I think it's just different in esports as well. Six months in CS is like a couple of years in an athletic sport, it's just a different eco-system in that regard and the amount of tournaments we play in CS compared to something like VALORANT where your season is done in July is a bit ridiculous.
Things like that are a part of it and then there's internal issues between player personalities as well, so I think there's a just a lot of different factors.
Yeah, the calendar is just ridiculous. I feel like I'd get so bored not doing anything for like five, six months. I couldn't play ranked for that long, it sounds miserable.
[laughs] That is a possibility, especially in NA I think. I think a lot of these guys could form a squad and win ECL maybe.
I don't think it would hurt, that's for sure.
Yeah, I agree with that, there's definitely a tier 1 versus a tier 1.5 situation. Some teams stand out, like MOUZ for instance. Especially when we played against them, they're just an extra step above the rest compared to some other teams within the top 10-15, there's just little mistakes that they don't make compared to other teams, including us.
I think, individually, from my standing I just need to step up a bit. I said earlier I haven't taken much of a break because right now is just not the time, I need to be putting in more time not less.
I just need to play better so I don't bring the team down as much.
That's a tough question because there's a lot of players that you would consider inexperienced that are still good regardless. donk is literally 17 and has played six HLTV LANs and he's insane, so I don't think experience is an important factor in that regard.
You have older players who have played longer and have experience and they can still be a bad, so it's more subjective than that.
I like to have an NA crowd, it's good to have them rooting for us and chanting "USA! USA!" It's really sick. Especially at a Major.
I'd like to play G2 because they've got malbsMd and Snax now so it'll be interesting to see how they play. Also Liquid, I'd like to play them as well.
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