G2P.7ele in the spotlight!

I caught up with 7ele of G2P for a small interview to get some insight on how the new team is doing.

First of all I think some congratulations are in order with you finally making it into one of the bigger teams.
You already had your short run with Team Rockit where you
proved to shmoe and the scene that you can compete with the big teams. This, eventually lead up to you completing the old MVP lineup when joining G2P.

Back when the lineup was first announced a little over a week ago there were quite a lot of people wondering who you actually are and how you got in this team so why don't you start off with a little introduction.

Thanks but no need to congratulate me. It has only just begun and I think I have a lot more matches to play before the community even considers me “proven”. All I say is that I’m trustworthy, always show up and always try to be at my best to help my team make the difference in a match.

My name is Nick "7ele" V. I’m 22 years old and I've been playing ET for about 7 years. I used to play OC Premiere for a couple of seasons when ET:QW came out and got asked by my former team KAPOKS to dare the step towards ET:QW. Soon I started to play some mixes with the guys from team-nl.qw (Players from epsilon.bf2 & team-nl.bf2) and they decided to pick me up as 6th for the upcoming Nationscup. During the Nationscup they wanted me for their main team "team-ephix".

In the period that followed I got to play versus a lot of good teams such as Nationscup teams, Speedlink, Dignitas, 4Kings, Kompaniet & Epsilon. We even managed to achieve silver in Nationscup by knocking out Germany & Poland in the playoffs. I learned a lot about pressureplay and how to play and communicate efficiently. Most importantly, I learned how to adapt to a certain role within a team and how to maximize that role to the benefit of the team.
After a short stay at Team-Coolermaster during the final days of ET:QW I returned to ET and started to adjust my game. Target was active for 2 days a week for over half a year and when you play active like that on premiere level you simply get better really fast. After a long period me and NoHead split with target after irresolvable lineup and motivational issues with some of the players.

I was surprised that Rockit wanted to pick me up as rifle even though they still had Flopjehz in the team. I liked the teams’ atmosphere and we had a lot of potential as we cruised our way into the Eurocup playoffs. After the breakup shmoe still kept in contact with kARnAJ (who was going to replace reaz for Rockit at sage) and decided to check upon Frag’Stealer and numeric after the breakup of nevo. They managed to pick up their buddy zMk to complete a very promising lineup. At the time I was already in conversation with P5Y too about G2P sponsorship and I’m glad everything worked out.



Another thing that came up on the release of the news was that the lineup was quite an intriguing one to several people. Questions that rose were who was going to pick up the noobstick? You or zMk? Is this team going to work out ok with the majority off players being more damage oriented than objective oriented?
What's your point of view on these questions now that you've played together for a little while and had some officials as a first test?

There was never a discussion who picked up the rifle in the team. Basically the new team started out with me and kARnAJ (rifle, fdops) looking for 3 players (medic, medic, engi smg). After picking up the 2 medics
( numeric & frag) they asked zMk to play as engineer smg and I don’t think he has any problem with that. zMk is an excellent player and he has performed well with the smg in the matches we played so far.

I think we have a very promising lineup. What you normally want in a team is 2 damagedealers (fdops, medic), a supportive medic, a multiclasser and a rifle that is able to adapt to the team. With kARnAJ and Frag’Stealer being 2 of the top damagedealers in the game we have a very solid foundation. Numeric is a smart ingame leader and has been decisive with his revives already. zMk with his engineering history can easily play the role of a multiclasser and I try my best to provide as much support and harass as I can with the rifle. I understand that the team is considered a bit aimheavy but as long as all players are focused towards the same goal I think this only gives us more opportunities for the future.

Regarding the officials: Our primary goal is the SAGE LAN and everything that happens before the LAN is not that important to us. I guess you could say that we don’t care about the results but want to focus as much as possible on learning from mistakes and strategical problems.



Talking about those officials. We've just had the end of the SAGE:ET Seeding Cup groupstage where the team took home a nice homerun winning all 3 groupstage matches. The last one had a rather unexpected outcome to most of us with G2P taking home the victory from Anexis eSports. Was this also the case for you and the team or were you pretty confident going into this game?

We’ve been feeling confident since the start of the team but we went into the match against Anexis with the mindset: “let’s see what we can do”. We weren’t expecting anything, but mainly we didn’t want to get crushed and wanted to test several strategies to see if we could throw them off their game.

I’m not sure what I should say about the match itself. We were just a lot stronger on two maps that are not considered lotto maps which felt strange against a top team like this. I would even say we were unhappy afterwards with our performance on supply allies which we could’ve done within 7 to 8 minutes but failed because of a bad depot and truck stage where Anexis managed to hold on by a thread.

I think people shouldn’t take this match too serious. Of course we played a decent match but normally Anexis eSports is much stronger. After all, it’s only a seeding match.



Now that the groupstage is over and the first glimpse on the playoff brackets were released here I think it's fair to say you'll get easily into the second round along with Dignitas, spot16, Anexis & nevo. What's your initial thought on the brackets though? Will there be any exciting games in the first round? Do you expect any surprises?

I’m not expecting any upsets or exciting matches in the first round if every team performs to their standards. However, ET is ET and anything can happen. What’s strange about the brackets however is that groups B&C are crossed (nr1 of group b vs nr 2 group c, nr 1 group c vs nr 2 group b) for second round and groups A&D have not been crossed (nr 1 of b vs nr 2 of b, nr 1 of d vs nr 2 of d). So for me it seems weird that we meet our toughest opponent of the groupstage as our first real opponent in the playoffs. The tournament states it selects the seeding out of performances out of the groupstage & playoffs stage. A seeding tournament should have a clear result where teams face as much variation in opponents as possible to determine the strength of the team. Anexis is considered to be one of the 2 top teams in ET so there is a good chance we will lose this match meaning we get knocked into the loserbracket right away. I think for future reference it would be good if the brackets would be published before the groupstage starts.



That being said. How do you estimate your chances getting through the second round off the playoffs? You will, as things currently stand, most likely face Team Anexis again here due to the strange bracket seeding. You've beaten them once already in the groupstage, but can you rely on that win to name G2P the favorites or will you head towards this game once again with the mentality off the underdog team?

I don’t want to focus on a single opponent but if I must respond I can say we go into the match as underdogs. If Anexis cares about their seed for the tournament they will step up their game in the playoffs and I guess everyone knows that TLR/Anexis have been known to put down an unmatched performance under those circumstances.



If you'd take home this victory you'd end up facing either Winfact or spot16 in the 3rd round so the time left towards the SAGE:ET Lan promises to be quite an interesting one so I wish you guys the best of luck in both.
I'd like to know however whether there are any concrete future plans for after the LAN. Are there any other cups on the schedule like the upcoming ESL Summercup?

We did not sign up for the ESL Summercup yet and have no plans for upcoming tournaments. Our goal is to prepare as good as we can for the upcoming SAGE LAN so it might be good for us to pick up some more officials along the way but mainly we want to focus on making our teamplay stable and foolproof. I would like to state that we are a team that wants to stay around after the LAN so we will be looking forward to the next Eurocup after SAGE is over.



Talking about the Eurocup. The SAGE:ET Seeding Tournament and LAN are not the only competitions currently running. We still have the CB Eurocup running in which you just played your last game the previous night. Since G2P is a spinoff from the old Rockit-Team, you ended up in the loserbracket as Ri and had to start off from there pushing through to the 3rd round straight away thanks to the PowerGaming squad folding after the E-Series Lan and a noshow from Team-Anexis.
Tonight though, you took up the guns with Nordic eSports. A game of which we know the outcome already: 3-1 in the favor of NE. This concludes your endeavor in this seasons Eurocup but is there anything else you wish to share about this?

This is my first Eurocup and even though it’s a weak Eurocup, 4th-8th place is a decent result. First of all I want to congratulate Nordic eSports with their win, it was a deserved win. We played a weak game and could not recover from the first stage loss on goldrush. Also our attack on supply was not convincing enough. I played a very weak game on goldrush in which I was not able to help my team at all. But like I stated before in this interview, we want to learn from our mistakes and I think this is a good opportunity to do so.



To finish up, I’d like to end with a little quick-fire session for old times’ sake. Here we go:[list][*]Your all time All-star team (excluding yourself)?
Night, rELOAD, kris, tiigeri, teKoa, Winghaven (6on6 > 5on5)[*]Biggest inspiration in ET?
Night and his decisive moments.[*]Most Underrated player?
kReSti[*]Most Overrated player?
WooDy obviously![*]Favorite food?
I like a good steak with either fries or potatoes![*]Favorite alcoholic beverage?
Goldstrike! Don't mess with the Legend.[*]Favorite music?
Upbeat music. anything from dnb & dubstep to innovative classical, rap & rock[*]Your thoughts on Brink?
I don't see it succeeding and I don't think it's a fun game so I didn't buy it. However I do think crossfire and it's community should allow room for Brink to develop.[/list]
Well then, I'd like to thank you for making some time to do this interview and wish you and the team the best of luck in your upcoming matches. If you wish to do any shoutouts, now is the time ;)

I want to thank the guys and girls from Massive, Target, Codelust & Rockit for the fun times in the past years. I also want to thank those who were fun to talk to on the lans(cc5, aef, e-series). I also want to give a shoutout to everyone in G2P for the great support we’ve had over the last weeks. Finally I want to announce that I’m working on a sequel of the movie of the month Januari: 7ele – aggression. Stay Tuned! :]

Source

This was my first interview ever so some constructive feedback would be welcome. I know it's a lot to read but didn't really find a way to shorten it in. If the feedback is positive I might consider doing more interviews in the future.