floppy: "We were definitely expecting Inferno today"

With the Major in Antwerp starting to get underway, Dust2.us' Ryan Friend managed to catch up with home-town favorite Ricky "floppy" Kemery. The pair spoke about floppy's time in VALORANT, preparing for Complexity's opening matchup versus Vitality and the team's apparent desire to refrain from many roster changes.

So, I'm here with Ricky "floppy" Kemery, you've got your stickers, you're at the Major, first time, very big event, welcome to Belgium. How does it feel?

As I said last time, it hasn't really settled in yet until after, but it's exciting to be at LAN after COVID-19 and stuff.

Obviously, COVID-19 has played a huge part, you went under a lot of changes during COVID-19, you were a part of the original Cloud9 team - the North American one - then they switched over to the Colossus, and then you even switched over to VALORANT just over a year ago. And then, you came back, so now you're here, it's been that year, what have those past two years and that experience taught you about how to become a better player?

I think the last year's definitely been a bit of a rollercoaster, so much stuff has been happening, but I definitely have learnt a lot about myself in the last two years, and I think it helps my overall mindset of being the best person I can be in and out of the server, and VALORANT was a blur for me, I played for six months and I didn't really enjoy it, I've come back CS and now I'm having fun - I love CS.

You're going up against Vitality, it's going be tough, what are your thoughts going into this, how have you prepared and are you ready?

We were definitely expecting Inferno today, and I think we have the potential to win because of LAN BO1s, I think BO1s are a bit more random than BO3s obviously, so I think anything can happen from us or them. It's LAN, let's go, let's get it.

Is there any player that you're trying to shut down or exploit on that Vitality side? Any site or game plan?

We didn't really look at anyone specific, but I think if you go on HLTV and look at misutaaa's rating, it's not really too good for him. And I think that's just because of his team, it's not even his fault probably, I feel like it's just a communication thing because they all have to speak English so that's probably an issue in that regard. But we weren't really looking at any specific player overall.

So far in North America, we've seen a lot of teams come and go, a lot of organizations come and go, obviously it's become a bit of a more strained scene and, at the Major, we don't really have a lot of North American representation, does that weigh on you at all when you're coming to events like this, that you feel like you have to represent your region?

Yeah, I mean there's only like three big orgs that really represent NA; us, Liquid and EG. But, I think it's more just about being grateful for the opportunity, for these orgs to stay invested in NA CS, it lets me play the game and participate in Majors so it's always fun to do that. So you just have to be grateful for it.

And one final question, we've seen that for a lot of the teams that you've been on - especially that early ATK roster that transformed into Cloud9 - you guys don't really make roster changes. You try to keep it consistent with who's in the team, and you stay very current like that. Is that something, you feel, is significantly more beneficial, to grow together as a team compared to trying to immediately replace players with someone who might be more talented?

Yeah I think I agree with that, that we like to have the same roster for a long time because it takes time to get better as a team. When you look at teams like Gambit, they were Gambit Youngsters for a year, and then were on Gambit for a year after that and now Cloud9, so they haven't made any big roster moves besides HObbit. And before that, they had supra, I think, so I think if you stay with a core team, you can get better over time as long as you work on your mistakes and recognise what you're doing good - anything can happen if people try their best.

Complexity's Major campaign has already kicked off with the side being demolished 16-1 by Vitality, a showing Complexity will look to forget sooner rather than later.