Duster’s Interview at WePlay Bukovel Minor. does CSGO have better system over DOTA2?
WePlay!Bukovel Minor marked the LAN debut for Furia, an organization that entered the Dota 2 scene by giving a shot to a few talented new players led by Heitor “Duster” Pereira, who is the only one the roster with international tournament experience.
We had the chance to sit and talk to Duster about Furia’s future plans, about the volatile South American scene and what prevents the teams there from staying together for more than a few weeks, about the players’ mentality and much more.
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Hi Duster, thank you very much for talking to us, despite Furia’s results here at the Bukovel Minor. This was the first LAN appearance for all your teammates, and I’d like to start this interview by asking you to make a brief introduction for each player. I’m sure not many people at home know who your teammates are.
RdO, the carry, comes pretty much straight from pubs. When I was looking to form a stack for qualifiers, he was a high MMR player, and once I met him, I understood that he is a very cool guy. You know, most core players in South America have very big egos, they are arrogant, ignorant even, they are not willing to take any feedback, they are very cocky.
But not RdO.
Not RdO, he is just a very nice kid who wants to improve, to work hard. He wants the best for his teammates, he puts the team above himself, which is very rare in SA.
With murdOc is petty much the same with RdO, in the way that SA mid laners have even bigger egos than the carry players, they are even harder to work with. That’s one of the reasons why back in the paiN Gaming days we had to bring w33 instead of having a Brazilian mid laner. Most of the midlaners in South America don’t do anything to help the team. Most of them are the kind of players who want to win their lane, not the game, that’s what matters to them, even in the professional scene. But, we found murdOc, and he is just a great dude.
NS-ART is the newest guy on the team, we previously tried Tavo. We played with him in the qualifiers, but it didn’t work out. NS-ART started as a streamer, he still does that on a regular basis actually. He is one of the most hard-working guys I’ve ever seen. He streams like for six hours a day, then he trains with us for another 6-8 hours every day, he pretty much plays Dota since he wakes up until he goes to sleep.
How old is he?
27, he finished college, he went to the army, finished his service, came back to Dota, and I guess this is why he is so disciplined. He is like a big brother to us. He keeps us in check all the time, he is the one who wakes up everyone on time during bootcamps, he is doing so many things outside Dota for us. We really need someone like him on the team, because we are all really young, and you know, we sometimes fool around, screw things up, we like having a lot of fun, but we are lucky to have NS-ART to bring us back on track, to have us staying focused on the things that matter.
Hyko had a very high MMR when I meet him, which is unusual because he is a support player, and he got that MMR by playing support in pubs. That alone made me interested in him because I came from the same background, I worked my MMR and I got noticed by paiN.
Alright, so you had this stack, how did you get signed by Furia?
Furia, which are more known in the Brazilian CS:GO scene, wanted to create a Dota 2 team as well, and they approached Astini, who is probably the best guy in Brazil to ask for such a task. He is well-connected, he basically knows everyone. So, because they have a history in CS:GO where coaches have a lot of power, they have head-coaches who create the line-ups for the organizations, and because they are used to that system, they asked Astini to build a Dota 2 team. Astini saw our stack, it was me, rdO, Hyko, and murdOc, and he called us and brought us to Furia.
photo credits: WePlay! Esports
What’s the plan with Furia, I’m a bit afraid to ask because we know how volatile the SA scene is and how fast teams disband in your region.
We embarked on a long term plan, again following the project model from CS:GO. Furia took five new guys in that discipline and managed to turn them into very good players. That’s what they want to do in Dota 2 as well. We are five guys with a good mentality, we’ve become very good friends, and we won’t disband after the first loss.
As someone who is a part of the SA scene, what’s your take on why teams disband so fast there, besides the fact that they lack sponsorship? It almost feels like starting a team and disbanding it after the qualifiers or the first LAN has become a habit, the norm in the SA scene.
One of the issues is that players hate losing and when they lose they act very emotional and disband right away. At this specific time frame, it also became extremely frustrating to lose all the time to beastcoast. They are the kings of the region, it is very hard to beat them, and a lot of teams just get discouraged. After losing and losing to the same beastcoast, people lose faith in themselves. They disband or at least 1-2 players will leave and join another stack, hoping that it will be different, but they keep losing in the next qualifier and this is a circle that never ends.
The funny thing is that the same happened when paiN was dominating the scene, but back then I was with paiN, so I didn’t know how it was for everyone else. Now I’m on the other side and I see teams disbanding just because they can’t beat beastcoast. This scene is so much about the players’ egos. It matters more to be the best in your region rather than being the best in the world and work with that goal in mind.
Let’s talk a bit about this Minor. It was the first LAN for Furia so tell me how it felt, what went wrong, and what lessons do you take from the experience here.
We came here a bit more than a week before the tournament, we bootcamped in Kiev because I’m the only one on the team that played on an international LAN before. So, we wanted to have our players adapt to the time zone, to the weather here, to the food, etc, but more importantly, we wanted to be able to play in the European pubs and practice with non-SA teams. For example, every time a patch comes, the SA scene is getting behind by a lot because the pub quality is pretty bad. When a patch drops, you want to play as many pubs as possible, high-ranking pubs, to experiment, to test, to learn. If you are a high MMR player in SA you can’t even play pubs, you have to play US-East, with a high ping.
So, the players from Europe, China, SEA even, are getting ahead of us with every new patch just because they are able to play high MMR pubs, they also have better scrim partners. So, we spent quite some money to come and bootcam in Kiev, but it was something we needed to do, we needed this experience. For now, it’s a learning process for us.
Even though I have a bit of experience, this was my first LAN as a captain and I saw a lot of things that I did wrong here, but overall we just wanted to test ourselves against the other teams, and now we know a bit more about ourselves, about what we have to work on. We will go back to practice now, we will train even harder and focus on the next qualifiers and the next tournaments.
photo credits: WePlay! Esports
What do you think about the new format of the qualifiers, about merging the Minor and Major qualifiers into a single event?
I actually like the qualifiers format, what I’d like to see changed is the Minors and Majors themselves. I think Valve has a much better system for CS:GO, where you promote and gain a status as a team through the Majors. I think it will benefit the whole scene more if we would have more slots in the Minors, more teams in the Minors and less in the Major. For example, in South America, you have 2 slots for the Major and 1 in the Minor, where I think it will benefit more the lower tier teams to have more slots in the Minor. You learn a ton more and improve much more by getting to actually play on a LAN or outside your region, even if you get stomped at your first LAN.
Realistically speaking, right now beastcoast is the only true tier 1 team from South America, and it’s fine to have them secured a spot at the Major, they will win any qualifier, anyways. But for the rest, it would be better if they could have a chance to play Minors.
So, what you’re saying is that you would like a system where let’s say the top 4 or the top 6 teams from the Major get something like a Legend status and go automatically to the next Major, and this way they would free a bit the qualifiers, give a chance for other teams to grind their way to the top through Minors, ideally have more than one team advancing from the Minor to Major?
Yes, I think if we could combine what we have right now for Dota 2 with the CS:GO system, it would benefit the whole professional scene more.
Well, Valve is a company that listens to its community, so the more you, the professional players, express your concerns and your opinions, the chances for something to change are higher. I’d like to wrap this interview on a positive note, and thank you for sharing your thoughts, to wish you the best of luck in the future, and if you have anything else to add at the end of the interview, or any shout-outs to make, please do.
Yes, that’s true, they take our feedback, this season, overall is already better than the previous one. Shout-out to the Furia family and to everyone out there that supports us and takes the time to watch our games. The fans are the reason why we are here and the reason esports exists, so thank you, everyone, for making this possible.