I got the chance to catch up with Daniel "carnage" Sturdivant from compLexity about his team, their performance at IPL's ShootMania tournament in Vegas (IPL5), and his thoughts on upcoming tournaments.

Well hi there! 8) I'm Daniel Sturdivant, most of you would know me as “carnage”. I have been playing FPS games for a VERY long time. I have played many games at a very high competitive level including: Doom, Doom 2, Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, Quake 4, Quakelive, Team Fortress 2, Painkiller, Halo, ShootMania, World of Warcraft, Dark Ages of Camelot, and Bloodline Champions. Pretty safe to say that I'm a dork, but I enjoy my games!My main role on compLexity is still undecided. I love setting the pace for the game by attacking first! On defense, the game is always changing so there is no specific role. I guess if you had to label my role it would be a Roamer and Punisher. If you put yourself in a bad position, I’m going to kill you.As you know, ShootMania Elite has teams of 3 players. The other 2 players on my team are "griffin" and "Da bears". Griffin is from Left 4 Dead and his main role on the team is to sit around and look pretty. AND NOW, OUR LAST PLAYER - DABEAAAAAARS...This man needs no introduction; he is a CS legend, and a great friend of mine. Da_bears’s position on compLexity is a "spotter". This means on most maps he puts himself in a location where he is able to communicate to us where the enemy is, and we can plan ahead for our assault.Well first off… VEGAS! I had a blast and it was awesome meeting up and playing with everyone. However, my expectations about the tournament were not met. The atmosphere at IPL could have been a lot better. I did not like the fact that the commentators were casting right next to the players, you could clearly hear them talking and saying, "WoW what a play! Nice shot! Defense spamming DEM ROCKETS..... etc."The whole experience of IPL was amazing though! I wish we had an auditorium like SC2/LoL, but that’s something to work towards! We did win the last online qualifier for IPL, and it was completely in our grasp to move on from our group. We didn’t play the game how we knew we could play. It happens sometimes and you have to move on and not make the same mistakes in the future.Fnatic and TCM are both great teams, and it was very different playing Europeans! The European play style is a lot different from the USA. We have scrimmed Planet Xpress often, so there was no "secret" plays that we didn’t already know for the most part.I feel that our team is still learning many things about each other as players. We have not yet developed the instinct to know each other’s habits on the game field. The more we play together the more synchronized we'll get. At that point, we're going to be a force to be reckoned with! I feel that my play on LAN could have been better, and my rockets were not as good as they are when I’m at home. I took a lot of opportunities to kill the enemy and I missed quite a few shots... it’s the way it is. I can’t hit everything. My goal for next tournament is to play with utmost intensity and hopefully lead MY team to victory.Europeans have the advantage. They have better internet, more players playing, and more teams to scrim. For the US, we don’t have the player base that the Euros do. It’s much harder to see a variety of play styles when you play the same teams over and over again.If you see a team do something remarkable, you want to try and implement it into your playstyle. You want to do it better than the team who did it to you. I feel that there is a little gap right now between all of the top teams. Next tournament, we will see more choices and abilities that the offense has to offer with beta 2. Charge rockets are going to be pretty crazy, everyone will be sitting in a servers trying to figure out good angles! It should be very interesting.In preparation for IPL6 (or the next major tournament) we're just scrimming and making adjustments to our gameplay as we see fit. Our team is very vocal and we have no problem telling one another what we think we should work on in game. It’s about taking that constructive criticism and putting it to good use.These things take time, but in the end we will be a wrecking crew. I'm very happy with my team and I strive to better myself with every game. Staying alive till the end is very important. If you get killed early in a round, you give the offense time to maneuver around the map seeking a better position to pick off the other 2 players.For compLexity as a team, we are constantly working on our map knowledge. We ALWAYS know where the offense is attacking from, so there are no surprise rails coming from a direction that you were not prepared for. ShootMania is adding a bunch of maps, and this will help make the playing field more equal. It should be interesting to see how everyone adjusts and the creativity that’s going to be had with the changes in beta 2.In no particular order:Europe:DignitasColwnfnatictcmNorth America:MMESKCursecompLexitySpin MoveDNJmeatshot 8)Follow carnage:Thanks for reading, and as always you can find out more info about ShootMania at https://shootmania.ign.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/iplshootmania