Stop_It: “I quit [CS], and now I just turn up with more retired friends”

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Here at EPIC40, we caught up with Tristan “Stop_it” from genetexe. He and his team finished third in their group and played their opening lower bracket playoff game ahead of this interview. genetexe are a team that regularly attends LAN, despite the majority of their members being retired from competition, so it was an interesting conversation discussing how such a dynamic works.

Stop_it, you’ve just played your first match in the lower bracket playoffs. But before that, I want to talk to you about your group stage. You guys finish third in your group, how did that sort of go for you? 

The groups, it’s very weird nowadays because EPIC.LAN groups are like really big. So it’s either really good, or they’re really bad. So you either 16-0 teams, or you get 16-0’d, or 13-0’d, which in our case, happened again, by the exact same team again. But the RAPTORS are favourites so I’m not really bothered about either. They’re also ghil’s mates, so they’re gonna try harder. So it makes more sense. But I think we should have really come second, but we ended up losing to godku. godku’s team is good but they were like, life gamers. And we’re individually better than all of them. So I don’t know.

You come through third, you’ve just played your lower bracket match against left lean gang. It was a two no match. Yeah. Does that kind of as as smoothly as you guys expected? 

Yeah, the I mean, we’ve never played Ancient ever before. Some of us haven’t seen the map. And we just absolutely farmed them on it. And they’re, like, apparently a team? So, it went really well. It went really well. And then our second map, which was Inferno. I think we’re still trying to get used to the new changes, with CS2 as it’s made it like impossible to hold A site.

The barrier’s gone, the pit’s smaller, you can’t hold from site. No graveyard. Yeah, they changed that, like they’ve changed loads of things. It’s crazy. So it’s just adapting and getting used to it. So it went to overtime, but we ended up closing it out. Which was expected.

So you’ve been “retired” for quite a little bit now. When did you sort of make that decision to walk away from competitive CS on a full time on a full time sort of level, and just come to go for like a casual sort of way?

That must’ve been 2019. When I was playing with shoobie on Lionscreed. There was shoobie, me, yelm, fluffs and ifan. I actually played really well that season. But like, I was at uni, and I was really depressed. So I was like, I can’t do this anymore. So I quit that. I was like, I’m retired, and now I just turn up with more retired friends.

I think it was described to me earlier as you just turn up to LAN and farm. Highest rated at EPIC.35.

That doesn’t really count though, I was playing with a bunch of egirls, so they were just running at us with knives so I was just killing everyone. It was pretty good LAN for me anyway.

I was like, I can’t do this anymore. So I quit that.

Even so, you finished fifth/six last LAN. You’re currently playing genetexe with Ruby League warrior ghil. It looks like a quite a stacked team, but it’s also worth noting that half the team is also retired.

I mean all of us are retired. Like ghil, actually I think he’s in the middle of writing a leaving tweet, I’m not sure.

Exclusive?

I think he is, leaked here first. KicA, retired. Tr0uto, retired. bmez, he’s definitely retired now, he has a kid on the way. And his brother’s doing well so he doesn’t really care anyway.

Despite all that, despite the fact you still come up to LAN and get quite strong performances, does it not tempt you back into flirting with the competitive scene, now CS2 is out?

It did… but when I started playing CS2 more… I feel like until it’s properly fixed, I’m not going to jump back into it because at the moment I’m dying around corners. You peak something, you jiggle it and then you die. You’re like, “what the hell? I just jiggled this?” You’re like dead from around the corner. It feels really weird. The games like, I like it, but it’s weird. It’s definitely not CS:GO. CS:GO was crisp. This is not crisp, it’s like sluggish.

There’s probably some 1.6 players I’ve spoken to who would describe CS:GO was not crisp, but fair.

1.6… I played a bit of 1.6, because I just liked to revisit all the Counter-Strikes. I played Source with my dad, but then I revisited 1.6, and that movement in that game is unbelievable. I loved the movement in that game, but they will never recreate it. It is how it is.

It’s definitely not CS:GO. CS:GO was crisp. This is not crisp, it’s like sluggish.

I’m gonna ask this is quite an open ended question what would be the one thing you probably change in CS2 coming from as a casual player who turns up to LAN, you’ve noticed a problems with CS2 and potentially wanting to go back into it competitively if it is fixed, what would you want to see created? 

One thing?

Tough question.

Probably… The movement. The movement is so sluggish, it’s not good. Like you can’t strafe jumping just feels really weird. It just feels really bad, like jumping in general feels bad. When you get tagged by an AK and you’d like to try to move away, you’re like super slow, and they shoot you through the walls.

So the next round you’re playing…

ROYALS or, oskvr, Westy etc. I can’t remember the name though. Yeah, it’s gonna be a difficult game. We just need to find where Westy, Westy is the only one that’s really not that scary. So find a way to attack Westy. But I’m sure Andrew will be around the corner just ready to swing and kill us as well.

So that being said, do you’ll be able to win that game tomorrow? And how far do you think you can go? 

I think we can win that game tomorrow. Definitely. I think it’s definitely a possibility to win that game. I don’t think… Like, it’s gonna be a tough game. It’ll be a good match to watch. But I think we can win it, yeah.