VPesports had the chance to talk to compLexity Gaming captain Kyle “Kyle” Freedman on the first day of the Bucharest Major group stage.

The interview was conducted a few hours after coL’s loss versus Team Secret.

Hey Kyle, welcome to Bucharest, first of all, how do you feel, how is it going so far for you and your team?

We came here straight from Poland, from the Katowice Major where it was really, really cold. After almost a day spent here, at the PGL studios I feel like this event has a better set-up for the teams because we don’t have to move around as much. We have a space where we hang out, we play Dota, I didn’t have the chance to explore everything yet but so far everything is good here.

You mentioned the Katowice Major. Complexity finished bottom four there last week and I’m guessing that was not the result you wanted. Are you going to change something in terms of gameplay, what should your fans expect from compLexity at the Bucharest Major?

We definitely played a whole lot more Dota since our last official game in Katowice. I feel like we didn’t have as much time for a lot of actual practice before we went to Poland because we had these Epicenter, DAC, and SL i-League qualifiers to play.

We had a small bootcamp before the event in Katowice but we definitely played more scrims and had the time to look into the little things that we feel comfortable with after the event finished for us. We have a lot of things that we have worked on but didn’t have the chance to show them in Poland. Right now I think we play a lot better, it’s just a question of what our matchups will be here. We played our first game with Secret earlier and that was a pretty good one for us, we just didn’t capitalize on our advantage, so yeah, that happened with Secret.

What are your thoughts on the Dota Pro Circuit as a whole? We are past mid-season already, do you like the schedule, should anything be changed, is it too much Dota, how do you see this first Pro Circuit?

There are a few things that pretty much all the players unanimously think that should be changed. Like the fact that only the top four get a share of the DPC points regardless if there is an 8 teams or a 16 teams event. If you ask me I think that’s kind of silly, it devalues the importance of the Majors quite a bit. I also think that tournaments formats should be regulated a bit more. We had no double elimination Major so far with the exception of DreamLeague but that was 8 teams Major. And to be honest all these Majors don’t feel at all like Majors. You don’t play enough games, you don’t play that much through an event like I said, no double elimination and in the end, it just feels like it’s not enough Dota on the main events. For all the time we invest into this, for all the time we spend training, for all the time we spend in qualifiers, you end up to play way too few games in the actual event.

I would love to see some round robin into a double elimination. These are just standard things that actually help you train for The International where you are going to play two best-of-three series on the grand stage one day, you are going to play loser bracket finals into grand finals on the same day. Seriously now, we did this for a long time and we can play more Dota.

And you love to play more Dota

Exactly

Let’s go to the bi-weekly patches, are you a fan of this system?

I’d start with this, adding new heroes to Captain’s Mode a few days before a Major it’s pretty silly. I mean, thank God it wasn’t Techies this time. I don’t even want to think of what could have happened if it was Techies. I feel like we should get a little bit of heads up before a new hero is about to get added to the Captain’s Mode. Techies, for example, wasn’t in the Captain’s Mode for more than a year now, so if he just shows up we won’t be ready for it.

Other than this new heroes thing, I like having more patches more often, small tweaks are great just never Techies!

Since you and I spoke last time, CompLexity went through some awesome changes. You are now part of the Jones and Goff families at the Dallas Cowboys. All the coL staff moved to Frisco Dallas, and you’ve started basically a new adult life if I can call it like that. You guys now live in separate houses, you have your own private space, and that happens after you spent quite a few years under the same roof in the coL house. How is this new life of yours?

It’s a lot easier to maintain a life-work balance now without actually going downstairs, next to the kitchen, to play with your teammates. It’s actually really nice to be able at the end of the day to close the door and be in your own space. You can say that you actually go to work now, instead of living inside your work, if you know what I mean. Besides that, we are obviously working for Jerry Jones now and we have access to certain resources, we have other people helping us and we feel that we have a whole lot more stability in our lives, which, unfortunately, it’s still a rare case in esports.

I’m glad to hear all these from you Kyle and because we are close to dinner time and I know you still have a lot more scrims scheduled for today, I won’t take much of your time. Thanks for talking to us today and good luck further in the tournament. If you wish to make any shootouts, please do.

It’s been my pleasure to talk to you and shout-out to compLexity, all our friends, families and fans. I hope we can perform here up to your expectations. We are pretty good at Dota, we just need to actually prove it once in a while!

headline image courtesy of PGL

Interviews from the Bucharest Major

PPD – “Hopefully we can make our fans proud at this Major”

KINGRD & Tavo – “It’s challenging and more fun to play against the best teams first”

Ohaiyo – “It wouldn’t be wrong to say Eternal Envy was behind my termination from Fnatic”

Yao: – “We are definitely prepared to fight”

