Having now finished his second year as a tier one player, G2 superstar m0NESY says that his 'learning years' are over.
With the best seemingly to come in 2024, we sat down with m0NESY with m0NESY to discuss the adaptation to CS2, everything he has achieved so far, and his goals for the future.
It's been a pretty crazy year for you in terms of the tournaments you've won, how are you looking back on it?
Taking this year and the previous year into account, personally, they're both learning years for me. I didn't really expect what has happened, I only expected myself to learn a lot coming into tier one and I wanted to take everything as a lesson. I got a lot of experience and that's also why we won so many tournaments.
Are there any big regrets despite that?
No not really. I don't want to think of it as a regret because I don't like to regret things, but maybe I didn't get what I wanted from CS:GO, which was to play in the playoff stage of a Major. I'm going to do it in CS2, that is my next goal, so I don't really regret but that one is what it is.
It's okay, we'll do it in CS2 and I don't really care, it's not good to look at the past.
In terms of CS2 then, you've been pretty good so far individually, how are you feeling about the game now that it's been out for a few months?
The game, I would say, needs some fixes still, but it's pretty good. Some of my teammates maybe don't like the game and I can understand them, it's a totally new game there's a lot of stuff, no 128tick, bullets aren't always going in the right place, and people have to get used to it pretty quick, but personally I like the game and how it's feeling, I also like everything new I'm learning in the game as well. The game isn't as dynamic as it was in CS:GO, but it feels good to me and I don't cry about it.
A lot of people in these interviews have been saying CS2 is random so far, but we've seen FaZe and Vitality dominate tournaments, does that go against the idea of randomness?
Well, some people starting playing it earlier, for example ropz with FaZe. When they game came out he started grinding a lot and they look pretty good, even with a new player.
It depends how fast you get used to the game, you know? For us, we didn't have that much time after Sydney we had a small vacation, made some changes, and we didn't have a lot of time to prepare after that. Now that we've had a bootcamp, we've had a chance to play a lot of CS, to grind a lot, and now we're getting back into our good form.
I don't want to say it's random, because the gamesense from CS:GO has gone into CS2, but shooting-wise and movement, some new things with HEs and smokes, it has changed, but it's almost the same as CS:GO.
If we look ahead to next year, what's your biggest hope for the game itself?
I don't have too many thoughts about it, but I just want the game to get better. I don't know, there's a lot of bugs, people can hack your account while you're playing, there's too many things in the game to get fixed. Sometimes I even message Valve privately to fix things, but they do it and they are listening a lot to pro players. The game should be fixed maybe in the next two or three months, I don't know how long it will take. But they are fixing it, and I like that, because in CS:GO we didn't have too many updates because the game was really good.
What about for yourself and the team?
I just want to win as many tournaments as I can and as a team. I want to win everything, as much as possible. For the first two years, as I said before, I took it as a learning challenge for myself, I was speaking Russian in the academy and it wasn't easy for me to change to English. Even outside of the game, all of my friends in the academy team were my own age but here you have people who are ten years older than me, and that wasn't easy either when I joined G2, but I'm really happy with the progress. Next year, I just want to fight and be the best version of myself.
Does that mean next year you think you're no longer learning and we'll see the real m0NESY?
Yeah because I just gained a lot of experience, and now I just want to win everything because I feel like I'm ready and I feel like it's going to be a good year.
You said earlier you want to play in a Major playoffs and the fact you didn't get to in CS:GO, looking ahead to Copenhagen, what would be your expectation for that Major? When you look at people like s1mple, ZywOo, NiKo, is a Major maybe where you temper your expectations and say "okay, it's fine to just make a playoff before winning one"?
Coming into the Copenhagen Major, firstly, I always put some mini-goals for myself, and that's wanting to make playoffs. I want to play in the arena for a Major because that's always been my dream: to play on the Major stage. I've played on big stages in Katowice and Cologne, but never the Major stage, so that's a mini-goal for me.
The big goal for me though is to win a Major with NiKo. I really want to win a Major, and I think he deserves one more than anyone else. I just want to win a Major with him.
You mentioned your mini-goals, have you achieved the goals you set out for yourself this year?
This year? Of course, yes. When we lost against FaZe at Katowice 2022 at my first big LAN event, we lost from like 15-7 or something and I said to myself that I would go back and fight for the trophy again and I did. It was a mini-goal to play in that grand final again.
This year, if you take Cologne and Katowice as a mini-goal, wait no, not even a mini-goal... that's ridiculous... it's huge to win Cologne and Katowice this year. It was different, impressive, amazing that we could do that.
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