Snappi: "MR12 is a horrible tactical change and it dumbs down Counter-Strike"

The Danish captain offered up a number of alternative solutions after making his thoughts on MR12 clear.

ENCE had limited time to practice Counter-Strike 2 ahead of IEM Sydney due to a run to the semi-finals of ESL Pro League Season 18 and participation in BLAST Premier Fall Showdown Europe, the latter of which still ran on CS:GO despite some players voicing their dismay with the decision, including Nikola "⁠NiKo⁠" Kovač and Marco "⁠Snappi⁠" Pfeiffer.

"We practiced Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then we left for Sydney on Thursday," the 33-year-od Danish captain told HLTV after his team qualified for the playoffs of the Australian event. The European combine beat Lynn Vision and fnatic in their first two Counter-Strike 2 matches despite limited practice, but even with the positive results, Snappi isn't happy with the state of the game.

ENCE's captain voiced his concerns regarding the state of the game in a post-match interview on broadcast and expanded some of those points in our interview, diving into why he isn't a fan of the switch to MR12 and offering alternatives that Valve could explore. He also touched on the difficulty in playing matches without any demos to research teams' tendencies and explained how he thinks peeker's advantage in CS2 will buff ENCE.

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Congratulations, qualified for the playoffs. Not the easiest game, can you just walk me through the series from your side a little bit?

It was a really tough game, we didn't have a lot of reps on the maps. I think 2-4, and we only had 2 on Overpass and it's a map that changed a lot, so obviously we needed to convert on the important rounds. In the second round we lost a three-on-one and we lost to a full USP eco on the other one, it was obviously not good enough. The map slipped out of our hands and they played better, so that was why it became tough.

Just in general, it is a bit hard because whatever gimmicks the opponents might have, you can't know beforehand, right? In 6-12 months you have some material, some demos, whatever, you can check out the opponent and you know what to do against whatever comes, but right now you're kind of playing blind prior to the match. Like, especially on Anubis CT, they did some things that we hadn't seen before because it's a new game and we didn't know how to counter it. We will know for the next match if someone does it, but in this match we obviously didn't and then it's tough.

I interviewed NiKo a couple of hours ago, and he said something very similar about teams coming out with stuff you've never seen before. Tell me about how hard it is to adapt in-game with the amount of variety that there is right now.

It's hard to adapt for multiple reasons. It's hard to adapt because maybe you don't know the exact and right counter, and then when you know it, it's only MR12 and you don't even get to counter it in the end. Because of MR12, you only have maybe three or four real gun rounds, meaning that it is really hard to actually do a proper counter if you don't know about it beforehand.

The last time we talked to you it was just before your last EPL match, you ended up eliminated. Going out of that and coming into your next tournament as a CS2 event, what has that process been like? When did you switch over to practicing CS2 and what has your approach been like there?

We only started practicing last week. We practiced Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then we left for Sydney on Thursday because we had the BLAST Showdown in CS:GO, so that made us have a week less practice than the majority of the other teams, maybe even two if some teams started during EPL where we obviously went to the semis and therefore didn't have time at EPL to practice CS2.

It's been short, but I think during the event and before playoffs we will be way more ready because we will have two or three more practice days, we have more time to look into some of the other teams and matches, and we have time to grind. I think we can improve a lot just before the playoffs, so I'm just happy we're there. We didn't actually have a goal, but achieving playoffs for us without any prac for us is already a success.

Let's talk a little more about actually playing CS2 here, obviously it's a little bit different on LAN compared to online, some teams have said they like it better, it's a little less peeker's advantage-based. How are you feeling?

I feel like it's similarly trash. Both are not feeling good, and the peeker's advantage is super big still. In our team we didn't really notice there is any difference from LAN compared to online, maybe I'm wrong about that, but it still feels like you have a really big peeker's advantage.

You were talking about MR12 earlier and not having much time to counter teams, what has that change been like outside of just having less rounds to play?

I think it's a horrible tactical change and it dumbs down Counter-Strike. There were way more opportunities to make changes if we wanted to decrease the match times. I've said it multiple times, you could go to 1:40, 1:45 round time, which would decrease 10-15 seconds of each round, and I think that makes for faster and more fun and more explosive Counter-Strike.

You could decrease the amount of timeouts to two or three, which would also take out one or two minutes of a map. You could then also take out five seconds of freezetime, that's two-and-a-half minutes over the course of 30 rounds. All of these small things add up, also decreasing the bomb timer to 35. In total, you could probably decrease the maps by eight or nine minutes, and I don't understand why we didn't do that before we changed it to MR12. I think a lot of people were yelling and yapping about it, and therefore this change happened without actually thinking about the consequences.

Because I do think that one of the big things is that good, tactical Counter-Strike is also about adapting to your opponent but now there are only 12 rounds. When you actually a lot of the time read the pattern and do the good calls is from round 11-15, but those do not exist anymore, and therefore I do think that Counter-Strike should actually consider some of the changes that I'm saying rather than changing to MR12. I know it's not going to happen, that is over, but I do think we have dumbed down Counter-Strike.

Something that NertZ mentioned [at EPL] was that he thought ENCE could be better than Vitality in the near future. Vitality are obviously eliminated now, you're in the playoffs, how are you feeling about that potential now?

I don't really compare ourselves to other teams, but I did think we have a lot of potential in CS2, especially with the peeker's advantage. We have a whole team of aggressive players that like to swing, and that works in our favor that a lot of our players, especially a guy like Maden, is probably getting buffed.

So, I would say that a lot of the changes that have been done in terms of the peeker's advantage is to ENCE's advantage [laughs], but I'm not sure it's a Counter-Strike advantage.

Going into your next match, it'll be a chance to qualify straight to the semi-finals. You'll also be able to play in the arena in Australia no matter what, how are you feeling about both of those things?

I feel amazing about playing in the arena, I saw videos from some of the other years at IEM Sydney and it seems like the Australian crowd is amazing. Also, it's good that we're playing G2 now in the quarters because then we don't face them early on in the arena, because I obviously think jks is going to have all the fans on his side, right?

I'm just looking forward to playing in the arena, we came in with no expectations and we're super happy and super excited that we're in the playoffs. We're going to enjoy the experience of being in that arena, every arena is a nice experience for the team so for that we're super excited.