"VCT has a healthier schedule" - T1 xccurate on the schedule difference between CS and Valorant, swap to Controller and the addition of stax
T1 started off its VCT Pacific Stage 2 campaign with a closely contested 2-1 loss against Gen.G. The series featured the debut of stax on a roster not named DRX or Vision Strikers. T1 showed a lot of promise in this match against the Masters Shanghai champions with Sayaplayer and iZu having strong performances in particular. IGL Kevin "xccurate" Susanto notably swapped to the Controller role and had a rough series as he struggled to find kills.
After the loss against Gen.G, I had the opportunity to chat with xccurate, discussing stax impact, match results, and more.
xccurate talks about stax's role in T1, Sayaplayer on Chamber, the current VCT format, and more
Q: Commiserations on the loss xccurate. It was a well-fought series from T1 and it looked like the team could have even won it if things went right. How are you feeling right now?
xccurate: I feel really disappointed in myself. I felt like we could have won this game today if I performed well on Split. I don't know what happened to me as I couldn't hit any of my shots. Maybe I need some time to adjust to this new role as well. For today's match, I feel proud of my teammates because we executed our game plan perfectly.
We need to fix some of the fundamental mistakes like clearing corners properly, being more proactive, and being quick with the decision-making. Right now, we are focused on fixing our fundamentals.
Q: What are your thoughts on swapping to the Controller role and letting Sayaplayer pilot the Chamber pick?
xccurate: Right now, I just trust the decision of my coach, Autumn, because it's all up to him. It doesn't matter to me what role I am going to play. I just need everyone to feel comfortable in their roles. I am focusing on my teammates and getting to know their strengths in each role. For myself, I need to adjust and improve my calling.
Q: How has stax helped you in terms of IGLing after joining T1?
xccurate: The biggest strength of stax is that he is a vocal player. On the attacker side, all the decisions and calls are made by me. On the defender side, however, I think stax and I have a balance as he is vocal and also an Initiator player. He has good reads and decision-making on when to play aggressively and defensively. He is also willing to make decisions for others, help them out, and is quite proactive.
Q: Has stax faced any issues with communicating in English as he spent most of his career with DRX?
xccurate: In terms of communication, stax knows a basic level of English so it's fine for him. Sometimes, in chaotic situations, he asks the team to talk more slowly as he can't understand the calls. Overall, we don't have any problems in terms of communication.
Q: stax played against T1 in Stage 1 when he was still on DRX. After joining the T1 roster, did he provide some valuable insight on certain flaws that T1 might have had?
xccurate: I think what we have gotten from stax since he joined T1 is a lot of good stuff. For example, we are a bit lacking in our fundamentals right now, as I mentioned earlier. Sometimes we have a numbers advantage but we can't convert it into a round win. With stax on the roster, we get to know when to play more aggressively and when to back down.
He helps us have good setups and crossfires rather than simply fighting and being overaggressive. Overall, he brings a lot of good stuff to the team.
Q: Is Sayaplayer going to be the full-time Chamber player for T1 or can we still expect to see him on Jett while you play Chamber on other maps?
xccurate: It depends on the map and it's also up to the coach's decision. One thing I realized as an IGL is that sometimes it's kind of hard for me to always play Chamber while calling everything because I need to get the first kill as a Chamber in certain situations with the Operator.
Right now, I just want everyone on the team to be comfortable in their roles while I can adjust and I think this is the best thing for T1 right now.
Q: T1 is one of the few teams that plays Chamber quite frequently. Can you explain the rationale behind this Agent choice?
xccurate: We have a lot of good Operator players. So we just want to create our own meta and not try to follow the meta created by others. We want to focus on our strengths and abuse it. For example, we know Sayaplayer is a good Operator player, so we thought maybe it's a good idea to play Chamber.
Q: As you were a former CS:GO pro player, the schedule in Counter-Strike esports is quite brutal with frequent tournaments in short periods. The VCT circuit has a lot fewer events compared to Counter-Strike. Do you think this is a good change of pace for your career or do you prefer to have more tournaments to stay sharp and keep the momentum?
xccurate: I feel like VCT has a healthier schedule than CS. Back when I was still playing CS:GO, there were so many tournaments in a single month and we always needed to travel two or three times since we were an Asian team. It was hard to overcome jetlag as we frequently traveled to Europe and America.
There was also the possibility that we would be out of the tournament after playing just one or two games which would make us go back home again making it a hard schedule.
I think Valorant has done a good job of maintaining the schedule even though I am not a fan of the format. I think the format is kind of questionable but Valorant has a much healthier schedule overall.
Q: Despite the strong showing here, T1's poor performance in the Stage 1 Group Stage means that the team is sitting with a 2-5 record. Do you feel any pressure on possibly missing out on Playoffs?
xccurate: I don't think seriously about going to the Playoffs right now because even if we win everything, we need to wait for the results of other teams and hope that they can f*** up.
Right now, we are just focusing on how we can get more wins and try to improve our fundamentals. I can see that we are in the right direction at the moment. Even if we can't go to Champions in Seoul this year, we still have next year.
Q: Any thoughts that you would like to share with the fans supporting T1 and you?
xccurate: I just want to say to the fans to keep supporting us because we just need time to adjust as everyone is trying out new roles and stuff. I promise I will perform much better in the next match.
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