Chronicle: “Riot did a huge mistake” with Playoffs Scheduling

Hotspawn: How are your emotions after such a hectic final map to qualify for Toronto?

Chronicle: Obviously after not visiting the last Masters event VCT Bangkok, it was pretty sad. Obviously you really want to go to every LAN or at least some of them. And obviously the passion comes through it. Obviously emotions are insanely great because, when you qualify to Masters, it always feels like the first time, like you’re f*****g doing it. Like just beyond everything, I would say. It’s just always hard.

Sometimes the stakes aren’t just for you, it’s just a very hard path, I would say. And obviously right now, when Alfa won that clutch 1v2, everyone just stood up, started screaming like crazy. Obviously qualifying to VCT Toronto is one thing, but also qualifying in such a hard match is a different thing. It was just, like, beyond everything.

Lee Jones: You’ll have a rematch with Team Heretics next in the upper bracket final, and could face them again in the grand final.

What’s it like playing against the same VCT opponents so frequently?

Chronicle: It’s just a good chance to prove for ourselves, and for people as well, that obviously we are not a weak team. Right now Heretics is considered probably the best team. For us it’s a good thing also to prove that we are good. If we win, it’s also a good chance to qualify for the Esports World Cup for us. So it’s not just a seeding match as maybe some people will think if the EWC wouldn’t exist. It’s actually quite an important match, especially for orgs. And obviously for us, it’s the best chance to show ourselves again.

It’s also best-of-three, so maybe for a stronger team, I don’t know, it’s an advantage that you actually don’t need to show every single map of your map pool to prove that you’re good. You just have to win two maps out of three and you’re done.

Lee Jones: The Berlin studio PC upgrades seem to have done their job with far fewer tech pauses now.

Are you happy with the changes?

Chronicle: I would say [for] just a normal human being that actually doesn’t care about the tech — all good. It’s playable, normal pro players that doesn’t care about the tech stuff will not care about it at all. The FPS is there, obviously the PC is helped to make less crashes, less stutters, less freezes overall.

Obviously it’s still not a full fix because some people, sometimes — as I heard, because my eyes didn’t see them — they still experience some stutters sometimes or maybe crashes. These things happen sometimes. Obviously, you can’t just control everything, but from the perspective of the guy who actually understands the tech — I’m into hardware a lot… I have a lot of experience — I think they could have done better. With such gear achieving [that] exact amount of FPS, I think it’s something quite low because I have a pretty similar rig at my home and I achieve at least 1.5x more FPS and system stability with this rig.

So I proposed that to Riot. We talked about it for, like, 10-15 minutes because we’re in quite a good touch. I love to talk with them and they probably love to talk with me, I guess, since they keep doing that. But, overall, I still think there is a way to be better, but it’s already good enough.

Lee Jones: While EMEA’s playoffs are still going, other regions have finished already and will have quite a bit more time to prep before Toronto.

How do you feel about that difference, especially with a new patch coming?

I think Riot did a huge mistake.

Chronicle: Obviously it’s kind of criticizing them now, but I think I can’t really do anything else [other] than criticizing because first of all, a month ago we were promised that we will play on an old patch in Toronto. And now considering that even without all these postponements and problems with the tech stuff in EMEA, we were already two weeks behind every single region in qualifying. Compared to some other regions, actually up to four weeks, a literal month of preparation. And coming to Toronto, every single region against us will have two weeks ahead of preparing Sunset, which means we have a huge competitive disadvantage.

I don’t know who made the decision, but it’s a bad decision. If you really care about the competitive integrity, you need to care about these things too. Because we as players or as a team, we can’t control the schedule. Why, for example VCT EMEA is 2 weeks behind every single region, why should we struggle because of it? If you ask every team, they would rather play a tough schedule to solve this problem. It’s just as simple as that.

Maybe it’s, you know, special conspiracy theories like that Riot is an American company, they’re trying to make their American teams feel better and now they have more preparation, they’ll feel better.

I mean, I don’t know, I don’t care. But again, it’s just a very tough situation for us. But we’ll find a way to fix it. I guess it’s just another situation in VCT EMEA, like why not? We always struggle, but we always strive for success. Exactly.

Lee Jones: Finally, what are your thoughts of Fnatic’s current trajectory given the earlier struggles in Kickoff?

You’ve mentioned the consensus being that Heretics are currently ahead of you — do you think you’re better than them?

Obviously it might sound like a loser excuse, but I would say that in the group stage match against them, we also choked a little bit. I’m not going to lie. We didn’t play how we usually play most of the time. I also felt I could do better in a lot of moments, in terms of individual performance. We did some steps to fix that coming to the playoffs matches and I think we did well. So right now we are more prepared than ever to match up with them.

But again, I’m not going to lie, it’s going to be a hard fight because they are also good. They showed in their BBL match, they’re pretty solid. They’re very consistent right now. They are just not stopping, and even if they will have a challenge ahead, maybe the start will not be great, they will still come back to to the point that they will shoot heads, they will win rounds, they will win games, and we need to be prepared for that as well.

But we [are] also such a team, maybe slightly more random, maybe aslightly more shaky. But I think we are going through it and maybe we will be ready for the next match.