Counter Logic Gaming’s Kenneth "koosta" Suen has been an up-and-coming player in North American Counter-Strike for a while now, but his time in the spotlight with Team Liquid was marred by instability.

koosta took the time to speak to theScore esports on Day 1 of Northern Arena Toronto to discuss his comfort level on CLG and the state of the team with their new players.

You've been part of CLG’s roster for a little while now. Are you feeling comfortable in the team yet?

I mean, even on Liquid, it was kind of hard to get comfortable because we were constantly swapping players and then I came into CLG replacing jdm [Josh "jdm64" Marzano] and we played two tournaments before tarik [Tarik "tarik" Celik] and pita [Faruk "pita" Pita] both left. I mean, eventually, I think with this roster’s gonna be pretty stable, but it's definitely taken a while to just get to that point where you can really feel comfortable.

Yeah, you talk about that comfort level. Ever since you were on Enemy you've been touted as kind of a Golden Child of CS:GO. Does that affect you at all?

I don't think the pressure got to me as much as like...it was just a weird spot to be in on Liquid because it was s1mple [Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev] and adreN [Eric "adreN" Hoag], then it was me and s1mple, then it was me and adreN and we only had like a month with each player. So yeah, it was weird.

Enemy was the only team I was on before in CS:GO and coming into a new environment like that and constantly swapping players it was hard to get a read on what the team wanted out of me.

Yeah, so would you say then it was less about the pressure from the outside than the internal instability?

Yeah, I'll say like...especially since I was used to having big performances — granted it was against lower level teams — but I was used to having high-scoring games and I didn't really have those on Liquid. I kind of got into my own head and then we started swapping players out. And the outside pressure, I stopped going on Reddit, so it's whatever.

For sure, but it still feels like you're not 100 percent as far as comfort level goes, how are you working towards that?

I think most of it just comes down to roles. If you're switching players, no one really knows what role they're supposed to fulfill, but after you've been playing together for a while you know exactly what to do in every spot and that really helps with the overall comfort level. You can take it a lot slower and a lot calmer when you have that system in place.

You're rifling, Cutler is AWP-ing, and hazed is IGL-ing. How’s that setup working out?

Yeah, we've been practicing with these roles ever since ELEAGUE, which was a couple of weeks ago, so I would say it's been working out pretty well. Obviously, we all have work to do, individually and as a team, but I think in the future it could turn out well for us.

How's transitioning from being an AWPer to a rifler been for you?

I didn't expect it to be too hard, the only thing is, I don't really know my own strengths and weaknesses right now, so I don't know really what to play around. Other than that, I kind of just do whatever I think needs to be done in the round and usually it works out.

Given some of the age differences, how are interpersonal relationships within the team?

I know Garett [Garett "Grt" Bambrough] has been talking to them a lot about what he wants them to do. Obviously, we don't really know each other that well and it's not really anything different than picking up other players. They're still players, you know? The age thing isn't really a "thing."

Grt himself is a fairly new addition to the team, what does he bring to the dynamic?

I know he's been working with Ethan [Ethan "nahtE" Arnold] and Subroza [Yassine "Subroza"' Taoufik], and him and ImAPet [Chet “ImAPet” Singh] try to scout out other teams that we're about to play and take notes on them. When he's in-game with us, sometimes he tries to make reads.

He always has something to say during tactical pauses, which is good, but hazed doesn't really want help as an IGL. hazed just wants to do his own thing, so there's not really much Garett can offer there.

And his role is kind of limited with the coach ruling from Valve.

Yeah, especially with that. I think most other tournaments are still allowing it, like I know in ESL Pro League you can still coach and talk, but at the Majors you're not going to be able to do that so it's gonna take some getting used to.

Did the ruling screw you guys over in any way?

I mean, he's not in-game leading from the coach position, so we're fine.

Regarding your first set against NRG in Northern Arena, was that kind of a case of lack of preparation or was that more people not hitting shots or hitting the right tempo?

It's the former. We haven't really gone over Mirage for too long and most of the time our results weren't that good in scrims. People say you can't judge stuff off of scrims, but when you haven't won a single scrim on Mirage it's definitely not one of your stronger maps.

I think, like I said earlier, it's a lot of the role stuff. People aren't really sure what they need to be doing on the map, so once we get that ironed out I think we'll come back a lot stronger.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.