C4LLM3SU3: "I definitely expect us to do better and better"

LV are going back to China after a long end of the season away from home, which they capped off by advancing through two Major stages before being eliminated 1-3 in Austin.

We caught up with Lynn Vision's Qihao "⁠C4LLM3SU3⁠" Su after the Chinese team's loss to Legacy in the 1-2 pool of the BLAST.tv Austin Major's Stage 3, which ended their run in Texas.

Lynn Vision made it through two stages in Austin, and were eliminated 1-3 in Stage 3, making them 12-14th, the same result TYLOO got at the FACEIT Major in 2018, but did it not only with a Chinese core, but a full Chinese roster.

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Lynn Vision are finally out in Stage 3, you've been here since Stage 1. It's always tough to go out but are you at least happy with the team's showing here in Austin?

Yeah, generally, I like the result we have. We broke the 2018 TYLOO record with actually a full Chinese roster. That's a big achievement we got after seven years, so we're happy about what we did, but our final game, we weren't performing that well. But anyway, we're happy to be here.

You were playing against another team that was here since Stage 1, was it a bit heartbreaking to lose to another Stage 1 team?

Not really. We already beat them on Dust2 before, probably they prepared for us because it's a BO3, so maybe we spent more time on one map, like for example Dust2. For the third map, I think our things, some strategies and the setup, wasn't working for us because we know how they play but the strats we were calling were not actually working.

It was very one-sided, why do you think the maps weren't competitive. On Dust2, z4kr went crazy, but the other two maps were a bit onesided. What do you think is the reason you couldn't be more competitive on the other two maps?

I haven't watched the demos yet, so I actually don't know how we lost, but we know Inferno is a tough map for us. We know their Inferno is pretty good, 13-3 against Vitality. You know, it probably was an accident, but we know their Inferno is pretty strong. I think still, the calls we were making just fit into their calls, probably, because they were contesting us and we didn't notice. We just died without any notice. We just died like spammed through smoke or sometimes not lucky, you know?

You're the rare player who has experience in Asia and [North] America, which usually don't have a lot of overlap. There's talk about [NA] not getting good practice or their playstyle, which could be extrapolated to Asia, where maybe you don't get the best practice. Here, you've shown that you can make it to Stage 3 of a Major. What allows a team like LV to do this while North American teams struggle so much?

I think it's the chemistry between the players. Sometimes, if you go over strats, from 0 to 100, you're completing the progress. Sometimes that would work, but you cannot fix problems between players in detail, like how they communicate with each other.

I'm seeing NA teams change their rosters constantly. A player stays on a team for like a month or two and then they switch to another player. I saw top NA teams in ECL, like mid to top... Like, the players are changing, I can recognize their name but they're switching from team to team. They don't have a stable roster, so I think that's the problem, sometimes you need to give a new roster time to fit each other's play.

It's like for us — we built the roster in January, and then I joined the team in February. The first big tournament we played was EPL in Stockholm, and our performance was very poor, but after that we bootcamped in Serbia and got a lot of improvements. Then we beat both teams, Rare Atom and TYLOO in the Chinese MRQ. We kept practicing and didn't take breaks.

Our performance at IEM Dallas was pretty poor, too, because we didn't have time to take a break after ECL, and we went straight to LA to bootcamp so we can face a lot of NA teams and EU teams that stayed here, so our scrimming quality was pretty high and that's probably why we were performing better than other Asian teams that were involved in this Major's Stage 1 and Stage 2.

It's been quite a while that you've been here in North America now. Is it going to be nice to get to finally get home and get some rest for the new season coming? What do you hope to see with this team when you come back in August?

We're definitely going to take a break, and we have some matches going on in China to get more VRS points and get more involved in S-Tier tournaments. What I expect from the team, I think communication is the biggest part we need right now, sometimes during clutches. But we'll see, I don't know yet! We'll see, yeah, but I definitely expect us to do better and better.

You mentioned the MRQ. It's been deleted now, so what do you make of that?

I was kind of disappointed at the decision that Valve made because if there's no MRQ, then some young guys probably don't have sponsors or organizations, and they just lost a chance to get to a Major. The top 32 according to VRS are guaranteed, but that maybe kills young peoples' opportunity. Yeah, I feel kind of disappointed.

There's a rich community in China with so many memes and its own world that the West is kind of far away from. How do you think we could kind of bridge the gap and get people here more interested in what's going on in China?

Yeah, probably like those hosts, rich people, organizations that host tournaments and invite top teams to China to play, I think they want to get more cultural influence. CAC is coming up later, with the top 16 getting invited to the tournament, I think. We need these kinds of tournaments to be hosted in China.

Our VRS points are very low, we don't get chances to get involved in some tournaments. Like, in Mongolia they're hosting tournaments, as well, and some Mongolian teams were speedrunning their VRS points, and I think we need more of that in China.