ropz: "I got a pretty humble reply from Valve"

Robin "⁠ropz⁠" Kool gives insight on how Valve are dealing with feedback on CS2 as well as his thoughts on FaZe's recent excellent form, which has continued at the CS Asia Championships.

FaZe have been on a tear since the professional scene transitioned to CS2, claiming the first Big Event trophy at IEM Sydney, winning the Thunderpick World Championship, and building their win-streak up to 13 in their opening matches at the CS Asia Championships.

One of the driving forces behind FaZe's resurgence in the new game has been ropz, a player renowned for putting in the work to exploit every facet of the game. The Estonian lurker carried FaZe to the Thunderpick World Championship title, picking up the MVP nod in the process, and his sublime performance guided the team to victory in a hard-fought series against MOUZ in Shanghai.

After a mammoth day of play that began with successful 28-25 overtime slog against Ninjas in Pyjamas and ended with a tough 2-1 win over MOUZ, ropz gave his thoughts on FaZe's immense recent form and provided his insight on CS2's latest improvements and the dev's work on the game.

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Slog of a day, a very long match to start and then a full best-of-three against MOUZ. Tell me about your feelings after these two games in your group.

Everyone in the team was hella tired once we got to the MOUZ match even, so it was definitely insane that we actually pulled through. Going into the start of the day, we didn't expect another Ancient which is going to 50 rounds, 60 rounds, it's like the third time we've had this, so... it's a bit of a yikes, but again it's really nice to be on the winning side of that game.

Back when we lost to ENCE in Dallas of last year... or was it this year even? Losing track of time with all these overtimes (laughs). So it was this year, and if you play a match like that, I think even if you lose you feel good about the match, because you're kinda making history when you push the rounds to so many overtimes and stuff like that. It doesn't mean you feel sad, but it definitely hurts a bit to lose a match like that and I'm glad we won today.

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FaZe defeat MOUZ 2-1 to secure semis berth in Shanghai

Making history with the 13-0 in Sydney, and now also the longest CS2 LAN game so far. Just setting records left and right, what's going on?

I don't know what it is. Sometimes it always works out for the viewers and the crowd when we play, we play those long matches, we can pull a 13-0 out of the bag randomly, we just make the game entertaining. It's been a long time that I've seen fans and people saying that we're the best team to watch, and yeah, I guess there is a reason to.

Since losing your first game in Sydney, you haven't lost a single match, so you're 13-0 up right now. How does it feel to start off CS2 so dominant?

That feels great, to start off CS2 so dominant. It's been a long time coming for us, we had a lot of rough patches before CS2 and I'm really happy that we managed to turn it around. This streak is... I mean, we'll keep it going, I've tried to anti-jinx it at one point. We had the final against VP in Thunderpick the other weekend, and then I looked at our streak and was like, 'oh, we have 10 wins in a row now, there's no way we get an 11th,' I was trying to anti-jinx it to be funny and it kinda worked, I guess.

Everyone is working hard, the thing is that right now we're obviously losing time with travelling so much, playing events back-to-back, so we don't even have new stuff to work with right now. There's some stuff which we haven't had time to play in the matches which we've done in practice, but we're definitely running out of things to play and we're using so much of our feeling, confidence, and improvisation right now to grind out the rounds. I think we're doing a good job in mid-rounds, and as long as we have the initiative I think we're going to be able to win any round.

Speaking of grinding, you were doing a lot of that individually, karrigan saying you're cooking (ropz laughs), et cetera.

What have you been working on? Obviously the whole team is very motivated coming into CS2, but just for you personally, how are you feeling about what you're able to do with it?

For me, I try to take advantage of as much as possible currently. Obviously everything is so new, I think there's stuff which hasn't been played or some new undiscovered metas are still to come. I'm just a nerdy kid you know, I've spent my whole life behind the computer and when I'm back home I did the same thing. CS2 is out and I'm just using all the time I have to find stuff.

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karrigan: "ropz is cooking and he let me finish the cook"

I thought karrigan was the nerdy computer kid in school?

(smiles) That's what they say, yeah.

You've been very vocal about how the game could develop, what Valve could do, some fixes. What has that conversation with them been like, in terms of what you've been telling them?

They definitely listen to my feedback. I've given them feedback, there's been many different things like movement issues, issues with maps not being polished yet, there's a lot of clipping issues on different maps right now, cheating in Premier and matchmaking obviously.

But most of the stuff that I send, I think they definitely see, and some of the stuff they've actually replied to me that what I sent to them has been fixed. Sometimes I send them stuff that is not really an issue. There's stuff that has been not so good from CS:GO and then it's carried on to CS2, and I make clips or videos of that and then I'm writing to them, 'this isn't specifically a CS2 issue, it's kinda the same in CS:GO, so take it with a grain of salt.'

Even if I send them feedback, I mention to them that this is not going to be the perfect fix or perfect solution. I don't have the expertise... well, I guess I do, but I don't think I should have the authority to say what's wrong or what's right, so I always leave it up to them to decide and I think that's the right way to go.

I also got a pretty humble reply from them, that they are trying to do their best with CS2 and they are working their asses off, and even if it's not perfect now, they are using all of their time. Sometimes they don't even know what is right or wrong, but they are reading and viewing all the feedback they can so they can make a correct decision on the development part.

A pretty big update came out today, it addressed some of the desync between subtick and its feedback, also spread, et cetera. How did that feel in-game today?

The one thing you notice instantly is the spread. There was a note in the patch which said that it has been synced in the Premier games, like the Valve official matches, that it was already synced there, but now you have it synced across the whole game. So in offline LAN events here, when you go to a workshop map to practice against bots, that feels really good, you have tracers now going where they actually should on your POV and it doesn't mess with your head so much anymore. That was definitely affecting people's sprays, so it's a big improvement.

I did read they also fixed the jump height inconsistency, which is one thing that I have given them feedback about, and there were recently a lot of examples of that on Mirage and Inferno where that could happen, where the inconsistency could decide whether you make a jump or not when you go upwards.

Those are two that I definitely noticed, I think the other part is more subjective, like when people get peeked or when you hold an angle, dying behind corners. I think dying behind corners has gotten better, I was reading some tweets and people are saying that it's not happening as much now and there's less examples of that happening, or none at all basically. That's definitely gotten better.

Peeker's advantage and holding angles, it's always hard to really say whether it's good or bad, because it's always kind of subjective. Maybe the other guy really had a good prefire or something like this, he knew your position, so it's hard to say for that part, but as long as they're doing something it should be getting better.

One of the big changes was also the one-frame difference between when you shoot and when it shows on your screen, did you feel any difference with that?

Now when playing I didn't feel a difference. I think this change is very minimal, it can make an impact on how you play and how you shoot, the registration and how fast you can get a frag. You can probably notice the difference when you go into a slow motion test and see the difference between the old patch and the new patch, there you could definitely see it, but it's hard to notice when you're playing.

I did want to touch on a piece of news that came out very shortly after Sydney. It was reported that Twistzz was set to make a move out of the team. Did that catch the team off-guard, and how has it been playing with him with that in mind?

Nothing is confirmed yet, so I can't speak much on this. Obviously there's a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes, a lot of rumors and stuff. All we can do is just stay away from the internet and not read too much into these to not mess with our heads. Inside the team we have a really good vibe right now and the results are showing that. Everyone is feeling super, super good, we finally have success after having a bad half of the year previously.

Does it feel weird at all to be starting to have this success and have that piece of news come out?

Well... yeah. I mean, this stuff happens all the time I guess. I think there's a point where Vitality were doing a lineup change and people were saying 'dead team' and stuff, but... ironically, that kind of turns out the opposite, more often than not, and you have a good performance. I'm super happy that we're at this point currently with the team. I think the five of us that we have, we fit together so well and we have such good chemistry. Sometimes we can have some small issues with each other, but we talk it out so fast and it's all in small moments which impacts the game. I'm really happy to have these four guys with me.

Bringing it back to this tournament, a lot of talk has been had about how the Chinese fans are crazy in a good way, they're in the hotel lobby, they're swarming for autographs. How has that felt and what's it been like playing this tournament for you?

It's definitely a different status of celebrity in this part of the world. So many people come up to you basically anywhere. I mean I understand them because it's not often they get the chance to meet the pros, and it's rare when we come to China and play a big tournament along with the other top teams. There's both sides to this, obviously I'm happy to sign all the stuff I can and meet everyone that I can, but sometimes it gets too much when you're in the lobby of the hotel, or people are going to the gym, people are going to smoke outside and do stuff like this but everytime there's someone asking to sign, and it's not one person, it's 10-20 people every time.

But yeah, China is insane in terms of the people here that love us, super glad to have these people behind our backs, and I just wish that we can be here more often so they can get more chances.

Going to the playoffs, just general perspective on that and the potential for lifting the trophy here?

It would feel good to go back-to-back in this tournament, obviously we won it a long time ago now with Finn and also frozen on the other side of MOUZ. We are super pumped, and as long as we beat the jetlag I think we'll have a good chance.

That's the only thing holding us back right now I feel like, especially today. It's been a long ass day, playing the best-of-one, 50 or 60 rounds I can't even remember, and then you have to wait for MOUZ to set up and another best-of-three. Can't imagine what NIP is going through right now, and the other Chinese team Wings Up.

It's a race against time right now, but as long as we beat that, I think we'll have a good chance to win.