RTCW 2018 Interview Series: #3 - Source
Virus047: This week we get to reintroduce the community to one of the best players still shooting bullets from an MP40: Source! Let’s do this!
Virus047: The community might know you as Source (or in my case in game… “That F**king hacker!”), but everyone else in the world knows you by another name. Tell us a little about yourself and let’s get to know the person behind the nickname.
Source: My name is Dustin and I come from Ontario, Canada. Currently studying computer science, which takes up most of my time. I also enjoy weightlifting. I’ve been playing computer games since I was 3-4 years old, and been playing fps since I was 6-7. First played RTCW on a computer at radio shack right after it came out in 2001 and ended up getting it for Christmas that year.
Virus047: The last several years you have been well regarded as one of the top shots in the NA RTCW community, and you have repeatedly found yourself teamed up with equally talented players for most of your RTCW competitive history. Can you let the community know how you got to this point in your career with a quick rundown of your clan history and perhaps a quick summary of some of the players you played with that you would yourself regard as the top shots in the game.
Source: I didn’t really get into the competitive scene until a later on than a lot of people (2004-ish), in large part because I was pretty young, and I had assumed that most of the guys playing were older than I was. The first actual team I played with was Nothing to Prove (CAL-M) but I wasn’t very active. That team was made up of guys that I had already played with for a while… Brujah, Neo, Knifey. I played again with those guys in Dark and played with some variation of that team for the majority of the time that I played until the last league died. After that I played at ECGN a lot with Juventus, Flogzero and Anialatem. When TWL announced the Mayan Apocalypse tournament we decided to make a team. After that I ended up playing with Exile for maybe a month before TWL shut down season 13 due to forfeits. I played a lot of OSP pugs with Cky, and we played on a team for the Wolfenstein 2009 (trash) Intel tournament. He created a team for one of the revival tournaments, and I ended up playing with some version of that team for most of the time from then on. It’s hard to pick out teammates because some guys get stuck playing less glamorous roles. I think that most of the players on Envious etc. were top shots in the game at that point. Warrior impressed me the most playing with Envious because he could still wipe out the other team with 120+ ping.
Virus047: You mentioned a few notable shrub teams in |DaRk| and Paco Familia. |DaRk| never went very far in any playoffs that I can recall but at one point Paco ended up playing for the TWL Season #7 Shrub Championship vs. Syndicate Soldiers way back in 2007. Care to fill in the details on that teams run to a Championship match?
Source: Dark wasn’t really a shrub team although we did play it for a season; most of the players on our roster weren’t interested in playing Shrub. Paco Familia was basically the ones that were interested plus Snitch, Timer, and Shrubnub. That match was a let down. We rolled through the regular season/playoffs and then ended up having to play Tundra in the finals. I personally like that map, but Timer and Shrubnub had never played it before and since the game was presumed dead after that season, none of the other teams would scrim us. The season itself was 5v5 but since Brujah happened to be available for that match, SS agreed to play us 6v6. We didn’t stand a chance on that map. Despite that, I would say that the rest of the season was enjoyable.
Virus047: Back in 2010, TWL hosted the Mayan Apocalypse Tournament after not hosting anything RTCW related in over 3 years. You found yourself on Black Hawk with Juventus, Anialatem, Flogzero, Snappas, and Snitch to name a few of your teammates. Even though you guys ended up losing in a super close 3-2 match to Exile. What was that tournament run like and can you give me a rundown on the finals match vs. Exile (Common, Redman, CKY, Lacerate, Snoop and Radigan)?
Source: Our team was a parody of ECGN players/clans and we used obnoxious names/tags/binds to sell it. The tournament was exciting because so many teams signed up including a lot of players that hadn’t played in years (guys from affliction, clan capitol, necrotic, etc). Unfortunately, the activity didn’t last far beyond the tournament and TWL cancelled the season that they held afterwards within a few weeks. That match was really close – there were multiple full holds on both sides. Things went sideways a couple of times on offense – we got docs near bridge a few times but not without a massive TK artillery and other shenanigans. In the last minute, Redman killed our doc carrier after we mistakenly thought that we had killed all 6 enemies off a spawn camp, but it was only 5. It was definitely not the way that we intended it to go.
Virus047: I’ve brought up two questions in a row that featured events with you playing for a team that lost in the finals of a competitive event. Can you tell the community how you reacted to both losses (Paco losing to Syndicate Soldiers and Black Hawk losing to Exile)? Do you still remember those losses and did they have any impact on your career moving forward? Also do you have any thought on what your teams could have done differently that might have changed the outcomes for either match?
Source: I don’t think that there is much else that you can do but take a step back, try to figure out what went wrong and think of ways to improve. If I’m on the losing end of something, whether it be a firefight or a match, my instinct is always to admit that I could have done something better. I don’t think that those losses had much of an impact on me moving forward, but it does bother me a little bit when thinking about. In the loss to SS, I don’t really think that there was much else we could have done save for playing a different map; that’s just what the state of the game was at that point. Tundra wasn’t in the regular season, so no teams would have scrimmed on it anyway. Against Exile, we made a few errors on offense and in particular we just weren’t patient enough when we had the docs, we should have been more methodical about checking corners and protecting the doc carrier.
Virus047: The later RTCW revival cups back in 2012-2015 had NA teams facing off against EU teams which caused for some nightmare scenarios when it came to matchups, match times and pings. At the time the Euros still held such a dominate presence in the game and unfortunately many times the team you were a part of would reach the finals or semi-finals only to fall short to an EU based team. Why would you say the NA based teams couldn’t cut it against their EU based counterparts?
Source: There are a lot of issues with NA-EU matchups, in particular the pings and the lack of good antilag. We rented an NYC server in good faith to try to make things work as best they could with the EU teams, but most of them opted to force us to play on servers in Sweden, etc. in return. I think that credit is due to the top EU teams, many of which had been playing together for years leading up to that tournament. One.soldier is the best team that I have witnessed playing the game. We scrimmed them a couple of times and took a few rounds off of them, but when it came down to match time they were virtually perfect. Those guys had also played with each other for years and years, and I think that was the hardest thing for our team to overcome. Unfortunately, there weren’t very many NA teams and the ones that played, we could easily outgun. The best way to improve is to play against people that are around your skill level or a little better, and we didn’t really have much opportunity to do that asides from 1-2 scrims vs EU teams in the middle of the afternoon.
Virus047: Do you have a favorite match memory or moment from the recent revival cups as mentioned previously from 2012-2015 that you would like to share to the community?
Source: Almost every match that Envious played was entertaining. Between people shit-talking each other (mostly people shit-talking Booty) and Cky screaming obscenities while being shout casted, there was rarely a dull moment. When we played a drinking game vs Team Cross Breed and we were all dying of laughter. I think that was the only match in which Donkey said a word on comms.
Virus047: Players come and go and during your career you have had the pleasure of playing with some of the best players NA RTCW has had to offer to the community. Can you pick out one player which isn’t currently playing today that you wish like to see return to play RTCW and why?
Source: That would definitely be Neo. He was without a doubt the most solid medic that I have played with, including all of the people that I play with now. Our team could make a major mistake and he would always be in position to save the day. Knifey (his brother in law) tells me that he’s a console gamer now… that’s a shame.
Virus047: You were a part of the super team, Stable, in one of the earliest revival cups back in 2012. This team was basically the entire NA community on one roster for that event. What was this team like and as a follow up, what can you tell us about the split up between Parcher and CKY since you were right in the middle of the event. I recall this was the start of a very tense rivalry between the two players and the teams they ran and I know the community wants to hear about your perspective during that time.
Source: that team was fun to play with, but ultimately there were too many people on a single roster. Matches were fun, but it was hard to get playing time in when you are subbing 1-2 guys out each round. I don’t think that Parcher expected so many people to come out and be active and he just wanted to get people excited about competitive play. Next time around, Cky decided to make his own team and get some of his old teammates playing again. He wanted Parcher and I to create a second NA team that could rival them. Ultimately, we disagreed on who to recruit and I ended up joining Cky’s team after it became obvious that some of their players weren’t going to be very active. Whatever else happened between those two I’m not sure of but they seemed to have worked it out and I think everyone is on good terms now.
Virus047: I’ve asked this question before to other people I’ve interviewed but I’m always curious to see a player’s perspective on the reason they keep playing RTCW after all these years and with so many other gaming opportunities available to them why do they keep strapping on the combat boots and coming back?
Source: There really isn’t any substitute for the type of gameplay that RTCW provides. There have been a few games over the years that try to follow a similar formula (Brink, Dirty Bomb) and while I have tried to get into them, the gameplay is focused towards casual play, unlocks, etc… they lack the intensity and skill of RTCW, and always feel like an off-brand version with gimmicks. I’ve played a lot of FPS in the past (especially Q3, UT99, Tribes), and with similar results their current installments just feel like shitty clones. I don’t really have a lot of time to play games right now, so I don’t want to get invested in anything unless it blows me away.
Virus047: This current cup, is a draft event. You as a captain have had the pleasure of building your own team during this draft style event. Can you tell the community what it was like prepping for the draft, actually doing the draft and how you feel about your team now that the draft is over and you have had two weeks to see your team in action?
Source: Prepping for the draft was pretty easy, I feel like I had a better grasp of a lot of lesser-known players skills. Doing the actual draft was a little bit less easy because you need to balance out your team to play on every map and take into account availability. Picking the best player available isn’t always a good strategy because the next pick you get may be at a lower skill-tier. I think that I got some good players rated a lot lower by other people. The first scrim we played we got destroyed. Since then, we have been rolling pretty well with good teamplay and really good comms. We need to work on our offensive pushes, but I’m confident in the group that I have.
Virus047: Currently the NA RTCW competitive community sticks to the more traditional maps like Ice, Frostbite and Village when we host pub nights and competitive events. Do you think the current community should look into building new custom maps or perhaps find existing maps that might have good balance and expand our rotation to help spice things up so things don’t get too stale? This could potentially bring in new players into the fold as many players are sick of playing the same old same old.
Source: Creating new maps is difficult to do from start to finish. Going from an alpha build to a final version requires a lot of detail work, potentially dozens or hundreds of hours. On the other hand, some existing maps have great ideas behind them and just aren’t executed in a balanced way. There are some maps like Assault, Base, and Sub that could be improved greatly just by altering the spawn times and/or time limits. Offset spawn times (eg. 27/30) means that the offense isn’t always attacking at the same point in time of a spawn cycle, limiting the effectiveness of spam and spawn camping. Long story short, there are other maps that should be played, and people should be open to testing new things in pugs. In fact, I happen to be working on a few map redesigns for competition, one of which should be out in beta soon.
Virus047: A semi-follow up…. What is your favorite map and why?
Source: My favorite map is village. The biggest reason that I like it is because it is asymmetrical, as opposed to the straight-line directed routes that most maps offer. There are a number of ways to get around, spots for panzers to hide, and its well balanced. The only complaint that I have is that the allied spawn is poorly designed. The most exciting moments come after allies grab the gold and axis have to defend the truck somewhere between the tavern and the bridge. It can get pretty hectic, and that’s what makes it fun.
Virus047: We have perhaps 30-40 semi-active players in the NA community. Give us a name of someone currently playing who you feel is a much improved player now vs. when you played with or against them back in the day and why you feel that way?
Source: I think that would have to be Reker. We’ve played together a lot over the years, were teammates on Dark, and while he was always a decent player he was also pretty inconsistent. His shot has improved a bit, but his overall game has improved a lot. He’s probably the most annoying flag grabber right now, at least on ice.
Virus047: Thanks for your time! This has been a very informative interview and I know the community will enjoy reading it! Thanks again and have a great day!
Source: No problem and thanks for doing these and everything else.
Virus047: Any shout outs or messages to anyone before we wrap up?
Source: Shout out to all the people that I’ve played with over the years… I’ve enjoyed playing with most of you. Also, shout out to Cypher for padding my headshot column, and Nikon for still not knowing that the last flag on the HUD is always the spawn flag.
NEXT INTERVIEW COMING SOON!