PyRoGEN.Hybr1d Interview

 I got the chance to catch up with Gaël "Hybr1d" HELLÉ from PyRoGEN about his team and his thoughts on the ShootMania Launch Tournament.

1.    Can you introduce yourself and your team (PyRoGEN) to those who might not know where you guys came from? What are your roles in game?

Hey! My name is Gaël HELLÉ or Hybr1dwtzjh from team PyRoGEN, I play with Dimitri “sprco” DELVAL and Brendan “qUAkO” ANTONI and we are French. We come from  a different universe, sprco played a few CoD and much mmorpg, quako is a well known player from Counter Strike and I played many fps (wolfenstein, cod, brink,..)! We have played for PyRoGEN since GamesCom2012 and we are a very dynamic team trying to do as many LANs and online cups as we can. Our group is well welded, we have played together for months and already won most of the French LANs(Epsilan / SLE / ClamArena). About our roles when we compete in games I'd say that qUAkO is the crazy guy, he always wants to improve and try new things to test our opponents, sprco is the steady guy, he’s doing well all the time and he keeps us in a good mood to get out from the worst situations, and finally I’m the guy that either fails miserably like a new comer or does the biggest clutches !

2.    Your team has been steadily improving for some time now.  You did not make it to IPL5, but have already qualified for the Launch Tournament in the first qualifier over teams such as Colwn and Fnatic (1st and 2nd place at IPL5).  You beat out many of the top EU teams in the qualifier (Epsilon, GG, Millenium, Colwn) before falling to 4Kings in the finals.  What can you attribute this success to? Which games were the toughest?

We were really disappointed about losing both online qualifiers for the IPL5, we were so dreamy about the all tournament in Las Vegas, but our skills were not so high at this moment. That’s why we started to practice more and more for the upcoming Launch Tournament. When the first qualifier bracket was out we weren’t much confident, we lost most of our practice and had to face the unbeaten Colwn for the slot, so we knew it was  hopeless but we tried and got it ! Starting with Epsilon, one of the best European teams, put us in the competition spirit even if it was really intense. Then after some close games against GG and the famous Millenium we won against both teams and finally came THE game versus Colwn. It was for sure the toughest game of the tournament and our toughest one since the beginning of the competition. Winning against Colwn on the score of 17 - 15 on their pick for the 5th map was a real achievement. Yeah, we are now flying to Vegas!

3.    What do you think of the new map pool for the Launch Tournament? Does your team have a favorite/least favorite map? How do you generally choose a map after losing a game in a bo3 series?

It’s really nice to have fresh new maps for big tournaments like that. I think the mappool needs to be changed every 4 or 5 months.  It’s really interesting for the competitions to have maps regularly changed  but we also need enough time to adapt our styles to them. Each player has a different favorite map, that’s why we do work a lot on every single maps.

4.    Do you have any suggestions for what might help improve maps in general for ShootMania? Do you like the defensive-sided balance? Do you think it can be effectively changed via map structure?

In my opinion, the old and actual official maps are great. There is no special need to add specific things like new blocks or something else. For me the maps are great and just need to be changed every season. I like the fact that attack side is really difficult, it’s the biggest part of the poignancy of the Elite mod. For the future maps, I let the mappers do their work for finding out new map structures that will, for sure, be interesting.

5.      How is your team preparing for the Launch Tournament? What do you think you need to work on the most? We were waiting for the ClamArena13, which we finally won, in order to prepare some new things for the Launch Tournament and feel more confident about our game style.  We are practicing a lot to keep our games efficient and to try  to find some new things to do to surprise the NA teams ;)

6.      With open beta released for ShootMania, how large do you see the community grow? What can players do to help this growth? The community is growing so much everyday! In Europe at least there are always new players, new videos, new blogs/websites about ShootMania and it’s really great. As far as I am concerned Nadeo has to keep players with new concepts and competitions so that the community can grow more and more. The upcoming joust and royal tournaments fit this way.

7. Is PyRoGEN sending you to the Launch Tournament, or will you be paying for the trip out of your pocket? Is your team looking for sponsors?

PyRoGEN is obviously sending us to the Launch Tournament, even if IPL is an essential tournament it’s also very far from home ! SteelSeries is doing  a big part in this trip to Las Vegas, so we are very thankful to them!

8. Any shout outs? I would like to thank team PyRoGEN for all they’ve done for us, the mainsponsors SteelSeries Ikoula and Cybergun and don’t forget to follow us on twitter. @PyRo_GEN (https://twitter.com/PyRo_GEN) @Hybr1dzj (https://twitter.com/Hybr1dzj) @sprco95 (https://twitter.com/sprco95) @quakWoW (https://twitter.com/qUAkwOw)

And of course shoutout to everyone working at IPL to help ShootMania grow and organize awesome events! See you soon everybody !

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