Ronald "Rambo" Kim is the former Counter-Strike 1.6 legend of Team 3D fame and the coach for MVP Project. His team recently competed at the SL i-League Season 3 LAN Finals, which was a rare opportunity for them to face top tier teams.

Rambo spoke to theScore esports about the progress of MVP's CS:GO teams and responded to the recent MVP PK stream sniping controversy.

The SL i-League Season 3 LAN Finals were a true international foray for MVP Project. What were your immediate takeaways from the event now that it’s all said and done?

Even though we did not advance past the group stages, the players showed that we aren’t too far off from being a contending team. Our matches versus NiP and Immortals were close games that could’ve been ours if we won a couple of key rounds.

SL i-League has been overall a great event for us and all our practice and tournament matches definitely has added to our learning experience.

You also attended Season 2, but between both LAN events you only took a single map, which sounds bad when it’s framed that way. Given both events, what are your thoughts on the progress of the team in terms of their ability to compete internationally?

Since the five months I’ve been with the team, I believe we’ve made many medium level strides in many aspects of the players’ game and the team as a whole. There hasn’t been a massive improvement in any one category, but many decent improvements in many categories like teamwork, communication, decision making, tactics, etc.

After the tournament, you guys skyrocketed to 23 on HLTV’s ranking (although you’ve fallen to rank 28 as of April 17.) Does this ranking mean anything to you guys? How did it make the team feel?

To be honest, we were surprised by the huge climb in ranks after the event. It gave us more motivation to keep training harder so we can attend large international events to reach our goal of Top 20 in the world.

IEM Sydney featured a China qualifier. You guys were notably not included even though you’ve participated in other China qualifiers. Why was this the case?

Unfortunately our travel plans to SL i-League finals overlapped with the IEM Sydney qualifier.

How do you think MVP Project will be affected by the official release of CS:GO in China? Do you expect the player base for Asian CS:GO in general to grow?

We’re hoping there will be more growth in both community and tournaments in the Asian CS:GO scene. We can see how popular the game has become in the other regions, and with more focus from publishers and related industry companies, I can only imagine good things will arise.

Despite the pedigree of the MVP PK lineup (former WeMade FOX), why do they seem to struggle in CS:GO, especially compared to the less experienced players on MVP Project?

MVP PK had to halt their professional gaming career and development due to mandatory military service. It’s only been around 8 months or so since they’ve got back into CS and find their groove again.

Everyday they are improving and it’s great to see they still have the drive to reach the top. Actually today, MVP PK qualified for the ESL Zen League finals in Australia.

Esports personality Paul "ReDeYe" Chaloner pointed out that in the video of the team's qualification to the ESL Zen League Finals (shown above) one of MVP PK's players was stream sniping. Do you have a response to this?

Some gamers and Twitch/YouTube streamers enjoy keeping the stream on in the background, because it's always a cool feeling when you can see how much of an audience there is.

The rules for online ZEN League don't state any restrictions on running the stream during a match. This being said, we apologize to any fans and the community if we have offended anyone.

Valve have made some decisions balancing the game that have been criticized by the community, such as the recent $2,000 Negev change and the R8 addition awhile ago. Given your place in CS:GO and your history with 1.6, what are your thoughts on Valve’s balance philosophy with CS:GO? Do you believe all guns can or should be viable competitively?

In an ideal game, every weapon would be viable in the right circumstances, but this gets more difficult when many weapons and items are involved.

So far I believe Valve has done a great job trying to accomplish weapon viability with bonus money for weapon kills, cost adjustments, and general round win/loss economics.