Mindfreak Interview



The core of your team has played as either For Valour or Violent Resolution for a long time (including a brief stint with Archaic). What were your motives to join the Mindfreak organisation?

Joining an organisation gives you stability as a team and certainly helps your e-peen. This obviously goes along with the far more material things such as servers and whatever else a particular organisation and its sponsors provide. Mindfreak was not an organisation I had previously heard of having been relatively inactive for a long while. That is probably a testament to the management team that have grown it quickly which can be accredited to their pro activeness. It is certainly helpful having a management team behind you that are active in the community and compete at a competitive level themselves.

Your team has a lot of well known, old school names in your line up along with some newer editions. Can you give us a run down on the roster changes/additions you've gone through since BC2?

Our roster is significantly different now than the For Valour/ Archaic one that competed in the opening competitions in BC2. We still sport the 'core' of that team on our roster (apart from Disco); however a few of those players are taking a less active role in BF3.

Leading up to BF3 we built up a roster of players who I had played alongside and become good friends with from (db]] in 2142, vRes in BF2 and the Archaic side in BC2. As we did this a while before BF3 was actually released, some players decided that they no longer had the time or desire to play competitively and thus we have picked up a handful of players whom I had previously not played with. These players include, Ablitterator, Firewizard, Razz and most recently Ozprey.

Blit - Infer. Was pretty big in euro.

Antix - Comes from FV. Big in the repairing of armour and can handle himself in the air. Cannot Inf.

dluX - From the vRes side of things. Good on the ground and in the chopper and can take a leadership role when needed.

Encore - Another infer who can take up an armour role. Better known as CHOOK001 from DB's 2142 side.

Firewizard - A good pick up to help us out on the ground.

Glip - An old BF2er who had a decent stint with vRes and will be taking up an infing role for us.

Hospi - Another one from FV who mainly plays AT and helps call the shots. Proficient in armour when needed.

instazZ - DB 2142 player who whores the armour.

mistt - vRes boy who takes up an inf role or engi bitch role when needed. His main focus however is the jets and choppers as well.

Ozprey - New to the team from a CSS background. Played with dluX's team in BC2 where he learnt to scrim BF. Now brings up an inf role for us.

Razz - An old school 2142 player from AG who we will be using as inf. 

Shaun - 2142 DB player who goes alright on the ground

Roz - An FV boy who is no stranger to armour. Taking a somewhat less active role but will be filling an armour position when his playing

Pyro - Another FVer who is known for his big game inf skills. Playing as a reserve for now due to other commitments but can run on the ground with the best. 

Sereval - vRes, DB, FV. Plays by himself on most maps trying to shoot armour.

As this is the 1st Major tournament ever for Battlefield 3, do you believe it will be important
for your team to prepare as much as possible and showcase some good skills to establish yourself as a top team going into the new year?

This is certainly the case for me personally and I imagine most of the team. I believe we have already garnered a reputation as one of the top few sides based off of scrim performance. This would be of little avail however if we do not put on some good performances in the first real matches in BF3. I therefore find it important that we perform well in this competition.

What would you say are the key Battlefield strengths of Mindfreak?

I believe our strengths going forward and hopefully where we will outplay our opponents will be in our mid-game decisions. In vRes we always looked to counter hard and play aggressively and this is something I would like to bring to Mindfreak. Sadly, this aspect of Battlefield doesn't play as large a role as in previous titles for a significant portion of the maps. I'm finding that BF3 has shifted some of the emphasis onto specific positions for players or small groups of players. Onto the 'micro' side of things if you will, over the 'macro'. Due to this, we will need to refine the details of what we are doing on each of the maps before we play each match.

If you had to name one of your players as an MVP who would it be?

I'm not sure where we would be without Antix. His unwavering commitment is something that we could all aspire to. In-game he seems to have this extra sense for where the enemies are located. It is as if he can smell them for lack of a better descriptor of this sense. Playing with someone who possesses god given attributes such as this, changes your perspective of what can actually be achieved in-game. It certainly raises your expectations of what you can actually achieve yourself. He is a real, living inspiration to those in the team. Particularly to one of our younger members, Ablitterator. Antix uses this innate ability to expertly predict which side of the APC/Tank that he should bail on, such that he will not be killed whilst repairing said vehicle.

Now that there is a proper scheduled tournament happening, do you believe you will change the way a normal week goes for your team. Will you guys scrim more, prepare specifically for each match, how will you and your team prepare for this tournament?

We were already scrimming frequently before the tournament was announced. Although prior to the news of the tournament we weren't going at full pace as I did not expect us to need to be hitting our peak into well after news years, leading up to the finals of the first CG ladder. With the advent of this competition we will be putting in a big few weeks to prepare ourselves appropriately.

Previously, we were primarily focusing on roll outs in short prac sessions before scrims to learn the maps and how they played. This was to avoid wasting time planning and running through mid-game lock downs and pushes that could potentially be of little use. Now that there is a competition that we need to be prepared for, we are turning our focus to the specifics of the maps following fallout.

We will certainly need to keep playing as many of the maps as we can but the main focus will be getting some scrims in the night before and on the night of our matches. Personally, I will try to increase my pub hours as well as going through everything that needs doing on each of the maps.

With the map pool released, are you and your team confident with the selection of the maps for this tournament?

We have scrimmed all the maps in the tournament on numerous occasions now apart from Caspian Border which we have only scrimmed the one time with no prac or strat. That obviously makes it a map that we will have to squeeze some time into before we play OGA, who will no doubt be tough competition.

A map that we had found some issues with is Seine Crossing. This is a map we have since put some work into and seen significant improvements. However it is likely that it could use some more work given that we will be playing iM on it.

What do you think are the most important things for your team to do to solidify yourself victories throughout the tournament?

As has already been touched on throughout this interview, we will need to practice the specifics for our attacks to get off the bleed and our lock downs.

I also believe that having successful roll outs and then setting up a tight lock down will be of particular importance. The bleed in this game is extremely deadly and thus getting it early will put the pressure on your opponents in a match environment. They will then have to step up to the plate and produce a coordinated attack to get off it.

Who do you think will be your biggest opponent in this competition? Are there any rivalries between yourself and other teams?

iM should be the toughest challenge but teams such as OGA are likely to prove to be a force.

I don't think there are any major rivalries for us in particular but for a competitive person such as myself, there is always the desire to beat teams for other reasons then just getting the win on the board.

What are your predictions for this tournament, do you expect there to be any upsets?

It's hard to make many predictions with great certainty based purely off of scrim performances. However I believe that OGA, iM and ourselves should place in the top 4. It's even harder to predict further then that as I haven't been keeping up with how everyone fairs against each other.

In regards to upsets, I don't really know. I don't think there are really any dark horses in the tournament. There is obviously the potential that a highly rated team may lose to a lesser rated one but it cannot be predicted if this will occur nor who it will involve.

How do you guys think you will go in this tournament, what do you expect from you and your team?

We should be making the top 4 provided we get some wins early on and pick up some games against the top teams. I don't expect much from myself personally given that my success is directly tied to the performance of the team.

Do you think Battlefield 3 has any real future ahead of it in terms of competitive gaming?

It has the potential. It has managed to gain the backing of the BF community as a whole as well as gaining the interest of those from other games. However it will need added features if it is to further grow as a competitive game. Features such as spectator mode in particular, will stop top teams from giving up on the game after only a few competitions and will do a great deal to interest those from outside Battlefield.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Would like to thank iM for running the comp.

Mindfreak for picking us up as well as all our sponsors, Razer, AMD, Enermax, eNuzi, iPGN and Rectron

lmao.

Good read. Best of luck to you MF

good read guys... GL in the cup!

Good luck guys!

good luck firewiz!! (:

Antix is the reason I wake up in the mornings....

Professional vehicle bailer dw guise

lolololol

Antix also provides us with some of the freshest dirty dutch somalian electro.

antix also has a big nose

will do you a swap, Bulletforce for severel.

I'll give you 24 hours or I will proceed with a forceful poach (no-one has ever said no to a free tritton headset)

how many is that

headsets or poaches?

I can't tell if you were meant to say Sereval or actually meant several