![shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann](/files/avatars/2007/51852-shaftwhore.gif "shaftwhores only by [EXE]dann"){kind=small}
Event: QC15
Here the topic switches to a number of players, all with some history with Found Em, and somehow connected to their choice for a fourth player.
viju would have been an excellent replacement for whaz. It would have probably meant even bitter blood between the two teams, but at the same time a fair shot to try and win, despite at this stage there was not much time left for practice.Memento: So viju was in BREAK before, and whaz went to them, so he was dropped.
rapha: Yes.
cl0ck: They kicked him.
Memento: Did you try to get him immediately?
cl0ck: Pretty much.
Memento: And he said No.
cl0ck: Yeah, he was very angry. Disappointed and angry at them. His interest in quake was going down over time and this was the icing on the cake.
Memento: But it seems to me you were all on the same boat, so…
rapha: But you have to think about it too, viju, DaHanG and id_ have been on multiple championship teams.
cl0ck: Yeah, they’ve been in the same championship team for the past five years. They’ve been dominating the North American scene, for the exception of a couple odd years. They were the top team, the four of them. Putting that up was just insane.
Memento: He plays…?
cl0ck: Defense.
rapha: Yeah, so for his perspective – especially his two friends that have been on a consistent basis on his team for so long, with EG – that they would cut him. He just did not have the motivation anymore. He was practicing more than Mark and I have seen him play forever, and he had just messaged John – before he got cut – “Hey guys, I have no life now, I’m committed to Tim, I’m playing five days a week. Because they think I need to play that much”.
cl0ck: Yeah, he was ready to go. Like viju. He was one of the smartest and most knowledgeable CTF players of all the time.
rapha: I mean, there’s no arguing that. It’s fact.
cl0ck: He’s won every single CTF tournament he went except for one.
Memento: Ok, so, he’s probably super pissed off, and he does not want to join another team.
cl0ck: He just does not want to go anymore. He’s over.
ZeRo4: He’s my age I think, give or take a couple of years. 28 or so. He has a career. He understands that the risk vs reward, that the time spent toward a game like this is not worth it.
cl0ck: At the time of his life – he said to me – Quake is a chore. And that was it.
ZeRo4: And that’s true. You put all the time into this, you win CTF, you win two grands. I mean, someone like that makes that in a week.
cl0ck: You’re doing it for fun at this point. And when you’re not having fun, the money is not worth the investment.
ZeRo4: This is kind of the case for all of us. We are all here to have fun. We are all at an age where we make this money, we live based on our salaries, we don’t need this money to live.
cl0ck: So long story short, we ask viju, and he’s like “you know guys…”. I mean he was really close to playing with us. He definitely contemplated it for a while. But then at the end of the day he was like “you know I just don’t want to go anymore, I’m fed of playing Quake”. And that was it.
Two alternative Found Em looked at are
Stermy and psygib. The former was an excellent choice in terms of the player, but would have meant almost no practice. The latter had played with them the previous year, and is in fact the player they went with in the end.Memento: And then you pick… ehm… ?
rapha: We went without somebody for a while…
ZeRo4: So now we have a time period of two weeks, where we were contemplating everyone.
cl0ck: We were running through every scenario, we were running through every fourth player we could pick, three steps ahead of every possible solution. And what we ultimately came up with was, we want to get psygib again. He was definitely the best option available.
rapha: That didn’t end up happening until what, a week and a half before the tournament?
ZeRo4: Let’s get back for a bit, we saw every scenario possible. We looked at cross continental. We looked at Stermy. He was number one pick in our mind.
[...] Stermy had the track record of being a high level competitor. And not only that, but he can take a game and become at the high level quickly.
rapha:If we had picked up Stermy, that would have been huge for us. I feel like we would have gelled really well and it wouldn't have taken long at all to get going in CTF. And it would have given us better direction in the few holes we had on some of the TDM maps.
cl0ck: [...] Yeah, he’s been on winning teams, he has what it takes to win. He’s self-sufficient, he can learn form his own mistakes, so you don’t have to coach him. He’s a great option.
And Stermy would have been 100% committed, but it was just a logistical issue of practice, we had to make a tough decision; do we think we can go with just a few days of practice with him right before the event, and what kind of scrims we would get right before.
ZeRo4: And from his busy work schedule, it look like it would not go. And then we were looking at who are the up and comers from CTF, cause that’s was the mode we knew we could win at. And there were a couple of players here and there.
cl0ck: So we ended up just going with psygib, we had played with him before. Originally he had expressed interest in joining us, but he was part of br1ks team. And you know, what we’ve been saying for the past 45 minutes, we aren’t going to break up a team by taking him. So we held that option off, and then br1ks team went through a bunch of changes and it look like their team was going to break up regardless. psygib contacted us again, and now that we realized this would not be affecting another team, that team was already pretty much gone, we decided to pick him up.
rapha: yep.
ZeRo4: True. And just to clarify the series of events. (because I know the first thing that will be poked at is the idea that we did the same thing as BREAK by poaching psygib). After whaz had left we all came to the conclusion that psygib would be our best option...had he not already been on a committed team. Therefore we did not approach him, however we did always leave that door open if his team (committed, yet we're having internal issues) were to disband. And that's exactly what happened. There was a shuffling of players and then sparks stated he could not attend the event. At this point psygib approached us and expressed how he's bought travel arrangements for him and his girlfriend and really didn't have a team anymore. So at this point we discussed the option to pick him up, compensate carnage, and try our best at QuakeCon.
Carnage had a minor role in the whole thing. We wasn't really playing Quake much, but since they are friends they still gave it a go. Premises were really against it though.ZeRo4: Just to summarize this whole thing. A. br1k was my fault. B. sparks scammed everyone. C Gaving screwed us over.
We picked up carnage, we’re good friend with carnage, we picked him up for a week and a half. We stated that if psygib would ever become available we would probably pick him up. And we did that; we compensated carnage.
cl0ck: And it wasn’t so much of a kick, we had a long discussion about it with him.
Memento: I think he also said he knew the situation very well, he was aware that he was a replacement.
cl0ck: Yeah, he totally understood. We had two weeks for him to start playing Quake, for the first time in two years. Learn seven new maps. And scrim nobody. It’s not possible.
rapha: We had one scrim partner [with br1k’s team], we had to bring him up, he was improving, but they disbanded. So there was no way to get any practice anymore.
Because we took the standpoint that, you know, with what BREAK did to us, how arrogant it is to say to people that you have been friends with and then do this, and then expect them to still practice with you?