[Translation] Evgeniy Zolotorev - NaVi Esports Director January 30th, 2017 17:50 GMT Text by dfs Evgeniy Zolotorev:

"We decided to not cater to players"

Exclusive interview with Natus Vincere Esports Director — Evgeniy Zolotorev. Host — Ivan “Faker” Demkin asked all about the new Na`Vi Dota 2 roster.

Exclusive interview with Natus Vincere Esports Director — Evgeniy Zolotorev. Host — Ivan “Faker” Demkin asked all about the new Na`Vi Dota 2 roster. — For those who aren’t familiar with what an Esports Director is about. Can you please elaborate on that a bit?

— I assume that the functions of the Esports Director depend on organization. The standard stuff is all regarding the teams, rosters — travel, merchandise, tournament attendance, contracts, fulfilling sponsorships obligations, leading managers, analysts, scouts, coaches. In Na`Vi I have a slightly wider amount of duties: I also do the selling to sponsors, since I was doing that before this position. Plus I work with all our media: SMM, tournament reports, etc.



— In simpler terms, when it comes to a team, you govern and control the creation of a roster.

— Their creation and their functioning, the boot camping, plus finances, budgets and so on.



— Na`Vi has a huge history of changing rosters, it had completely different players with completely different personalities, from foreign countries, like Puppey and Kuroky. Now Na`Vi decided to gather a half European half CIS mix. How did this roster came to be? Why did you decide to gather an international roster? Why not focus on CIS?

— We didn’t have a goal to build an international roster. I’m basically a headhunter. This time, as opposed to all previous attempts, we decided to not cater to players. All previous rosters were more or less formed by the players themselves. This time we approached it from a different angle. Initially we made a selection based on statistics: MMR and tournaments. Next step was to make a selection based on played heros, we understood what would fit us, on what position. Next we were running proper interviews with all candidates that were left. Not an ingame one, a personal one, to figure out personalities, characteristics, competence, ability to work in a team, life values, interests and so on. After that we started to try out some of the guys. Going through the half of it we realized that we aren’t ready to have koreans, malaysians, known ones, I guess I could say now that we talked to Chuan, he was the first in our head for our 4rth position, but in the process of it we realized how much logistic trouble it would be. A boot camp and LAN tournaments are one thing, but online tournaments and practice with all the ping is another. So we decided not to go in that direction anymore. We didn’t have any preference over CIS our Europe, we talked to all players, and made choice with no attachments to scenes or places of origins but to player skill and personalities. We managed to play with all those guys, we practiced against Team Liquid, Virtus.pro, Vega Squadron, Team Empire and a few other mix teams. We had mixed results, about 60/40, but we didn’t look at results, we looked at communication and comfort. Plus we found the ingame leader, it was Pajkatt. He has high leadership potential. We worked a a coach for Digital Chaos, which was a big plus, since players often see things only from their perspective, and he had the opportunity to look at things from a different point of view, he saw how the team works from a different way. Right now we highly expect his help in building a competitive team.



— Approximately how many players did you try out?

— Meaning in-game try outs — less than 10. rmN- was one of the first, and we understood that he fits in the team early, same with Pajkatt. We had a lot of trouble finding the 5th position player. On one hand we had Biver, a young player, playing dota relatively recently, having great micro, everybody got blown away, but we had an alternative — Misha (from team Comanche), with a slightly worse micro, but with leadership capabilities, he wanted to be the one to draft, to call in-game, but this they there would be two leaders in the team, which is difficult to run.



— Pro players I talked to think that having a fully international roster is better than having, for example, 4 CIS players and one European, since having 1 English speaking and 4 Russian speaking players is harder communication wise. Did that affect your decision at all?

— I was present during all practice matches and I can say that Pajkatt has no problems hearing russian at all, probably due to his LGD.int experience. Nevertheless, yes it was also a factor. Right now some info and calls are given in Russian, some in English. It is easiest for rmN-, since he can speak both, and it is probably the hardest for GeneRaL, since is English is very so-so, and as a result he gives the least amount of info in-game, but it is fixable and he will work on the language. It is not too bad, he understands and talks, but there is a barrier.



— In your roster announcement, for every player there is a contract length note of one year (with Pajkatt, Biver and rmN). Does that mean we will be seeing this roster until the end of 2017 regardless of results?

— We as an organization aim for this partnership to last for longer than a year. Obviously, you can terminate any contract from both parties. We hope we chose the kind of people that will be able to effectively work together long term despite any lows or highs. That is what I like about CS:GO scene, if there are any changes, they are mostly very pinpoint specific, since players have more respect for contracts. It is different in Dota scene, every quarter there are some crazy shuffles to the point of losing track of who plays where.



— Does it have to do with CS:GO players being older on average?

— I believe it has to do with the tournament system — the Valve CS:GO Majors do not have as big of a prize pool as in Dota 2, they are moderate. In Dota if you were to win a Major then nothing else would matter. In CS:GO there is a system of Major, Minors, rankings, you can lose a spot at the Major if you change too many players and so on. That system is more effective.



— What are your goals for the first few months of the new roster? For example, Virtus.pro CEO Sneg1 said that he didn’t expect the team to show any results at all in the first months of their forming, he wanted them to build chemistry and develop as a team in that time. Do your goals match with that?

— I hope that they do match. There is one short term tournament goal — Kiev Major. To get there we must play well for these two months, wether it will be a direct invitation, or close or open quals — time will tell. Long term — we want to attend all Majors, we want to attend The International yet again, since a part of our fans considered our last year to be a failure due to finishing in top 16, but even though we dropped in the tournament itself, we were the only CIS team there and we don’t want to miss any TIs at all.



— Regarding in-game structure. Will there be any role changes who how do the new players fit in?

— Dendi is still mid, GeneRaL is still offlane, Pajkatt is in-game leader, drafter and carry, rmN is position 4, Biver is position 5.



— There is a lot of focus regarding media and image in Na`Vi. Will it stay the same with the new roster, or will you give them more room to be left alone and play and wait for the results first?

— I do not entirely agree that we were overwhelming our Dota 2 players with media, since our last roster didn’t have much of media of it, for the most part it was all on one player. SoNNeikO gave one interview, Ditya Ra wasn’t anywhere in our media either, same with ArtStyle, and there was a bit from GeneRaL. We prioritize the game first — if there is a boot camp or any kind of tournament preparation, then obviously, no one bothers players about streams or retweets or any sponsor related activities. Nevertheless, we do have some kind of a business model after all, for the organization to exist and be effective we have to please our sponsors one way or the other. The plan minimum for the players is to stream, we would like everyone to stream, plus some personal requests. But the most important thing for us to everything regarding the fans — pre- and post-match interviews, signing sessions, everything we lacked with our previous roster. Interacting with fans is more important than any sponsorship obligations. Weather you won or lost you should be there to sign an autograph for the people who came there for you, you must give them something back. We had problems with that previously.



— Do rmN and Biver have open enough mindset about interacting with fans or are they more closed, like Ditya Ra or SoNNeikO?

— They are way less introvertive. One of the criteria for picking then was openness and ability to speak up. I don’t think many people know, but we were on the edge of cancelling our attendance at Boston Major qualifications because of certain inside problems in the roster, and those problems came mostly from people holding and building grudges inside and it all blew up.



— In closing, any thoughts or wishes for the fans?

— Firstly, I want to wish everyone happy holidays. I want to apologise for taking a long time time before announcing the roster. It wasn’t to build any hype or anything, there kind of things take time and negotiations, for example the rmN transfer documents were signed only this morning. I would want to ask our true fans to take it easy on the guys at least for their few first steps, because it also matters. They read a lot of comments, believe it or not, they care, and it affects their self confidence and it is very important for achieving results. We love you all.



Source: www.youtube.com - 27 Dec. 2016

Translation: DFS

Editor: Clubfan http://i.imgur.com/Q1jSb9X.jpg (c) Shiro; http://i.imgur.com/lSDLLKb.png (c) drav