Titan’s turmoil – the seven and a half month fall of CS:GO’s second best ever team
Titan's failure at Dreamhack Summer to reach the final of their fourth straight offline event resolutely confirms that the team, which had been on top of the CS:GO world back in October of 2013, is long gone. Even when the French side still retained the same line-up as during their peak, with now departed star shox in the side, they have failed to reach the top four of both of the large field international tournaments they had attended in 2014.
The team which once boasted the world's best player and looked to be the true successors to NiP's domination now find themselves without their best ever player, four months removed from their last tournament title and in all kinds of trouble on, seemingly, all fronts. Since cementing their spot atop the world, Titan have won less than $65,000, out of a possible $293,000, and collected only a single additional title. This is not just the story of the seven and a half month fall of the world's best team, but also an autopsy of the corpse, looking for clues as to what caused the wounds they sustained over that stretch of time.
Early ups and downs
The early history of VeryGames in CS:GO is well known, as they finished runners-up to NiP in their first four offline events. Following that string of frustrations the team had seen veteran name RpK retire, allowing them the opportunity to bring in rising aim star ScreaM. Despite the upgrade in raw skill, VeryGames saw their results take a hit, going from being convincingly the second best team in the world to failing to make the final of the next four offline international tournaments, which also featured rivals NiP.
The ascent of teams like Western Wolves and Virtus.pro certainly played a role in VeryGames' drop down the podium, but the team itself also struggled to find a way to integrate its star players. Where before the dilemma of the team had been finding a way to make star AWPer kennyS' sniping impactful against NiP, they now found themselves also unable to incorporate ScreaM's talents, with the Belgian not able to elevate their game to the level of the new class of elite team.
At the time, all eyes were on the role of Ex6tenz, in-game leader of the team and notoriously strict tactician. In Counter-Strike, and indeed many team sports, there has always been an interesting dynamic at play between the tactical side of the game and the dimension of skill. Superior tactics can allow lesser players to best better opponents, thanks to out-positioning and out-thinking them, but it's almost an unwritten rule that the most skilled players require a degree of autonomy to find a comfort zone from which they can operate to a high degree of proficiency.
Each team must decide, based on their own specific personnel, to which degree they will emphasis coordinated, regimented tactics or loose, open-ended play. The former demands each member of the team to be a cog in a greater machine, steered and controlled by the in-game leader's decision. The latter allows for star players to direct some of the action, according to their own pacing and in-the-moment decision-making, with the other pieces in the line-up attempting to facilitate those stars and their decisions.
VeryGames had benefited consistently from their tight and focused strategical approach during the RpK era, essentially unbeatable for anyone but the Ninjas from Sweden. Now they found themselves with more than one star who was seemingly unable to produce the big plays demanded of them and perhaps as a result of the system forced upon them. Were it just kennyS struggling to make his all-star plays count, then kennyS could have been blamed, but with both kennyS and ScreaM placed in a precarious position, questions could be asked of Ex6tenz' approach.
Change for the better, but not entirely
The key moment, as we can now see, came with VeryGames' May 7th decision to replace kennyS with shox. This move would not only solve the problem of what to do with kennyS but would also take some of the weight off the shoulders of ScreaM. Shox quickly established himself in the team as not only a fragger but also a clutch player, allowing him to clean up messy late-round situations and keep the team in games. With a new player taking up much of the spotlight, ScreaM's required contribution was seemingly lessened and he began to find more of a place in the side.
VG were able to win EMS One Summer, though Virtus.pro having defeated NiP in the other semi-final took away the legitimacy of it as a true world number one spot contender's match. Until they beat NiP they would still not have shaken their appalling winless record against NiP, 0:7 in series and 0:14 in maps played offline, or moved within striking distance of that elusive top spot in the CS:GO world. Winning a second Mad Catz event that didn't feature NiP, having previously won one back in April, meant little in the bigger picture, for the aforementioned reasons.
When the team lost to NiP in their first offline meeting in the shox era, 0:2 in the quarter-final of September's Dreamhack Bucharest, it might have seemed, to the outsider, as if little had truly changed in the French-Belgian side. Sure, they were back in position to be called the world's second best team, but they were still yet to take a map off their rivals. The team could feel hard done by to receive a fifth to eighth placing, their first ever finish outside the top four of an offline event, since they had only been matched up against the Swedes due to their opponents having lost a game in the group stage. But beating NiP was all that mattered to VG at this point in time, and in that quest they were still frustrated.
The run to the top
Those 11 offline tournaments had yielded three titles, but as long as NiP continued to place highly and win events themselves, VeryGames and the rest of the world knew that it would take a victory over NiP and the title at the same event for the French-Belgian side to be able to stake a claim to being the world's best CS:GO team. In October the dam broke and VeryGames defeated NiP 2:0 in a Best-of-3 (Bo3) series, going on to win the Starladder Starseries VII season.
Proving that was no mere fluke, shox and company clashed once more with NiP, in the final of EMS One Fall, two weeks later, and again took down the Ninjas, winning 2:1. With two straight offline event titles, two straight Bo3 series wins over NiP and 12:2 map record against top level competition over the two events, VeryGames had now established themselves as the world's best CS:GO team. The seemingly unattainable goal had been reached.
Shox was playing at a level of individual performance that seemed to transcend the game, for the first time calling into question GeT_RiGhT's status as the brightest shining of the game's stars. NiP and GeT_RiGhT had enjoyed their time at the top, now it was, seemingly, the shox and VeryGames era. In fact, this would be the only moment that the team would hold that number one spot convincingly.
Gradually stumbling
Less than a week after securing the EMS One Fall title, VeryGames took part in the ESWC tournament in France, home soil for most of their line-up. Defeating NiP for the third straight offline Bo3 series in the semi-final, they should have routinely taken the title, also a third straight, and continued to fly the flag atop the CS:GO mountain. Instead, having done the heavy lifting of putting down the game's greatest ever team, VG shockingly lost out 0:2 in the final to Clan-Mystik.
Had Clan-Mystik been an elite team, or even one in the making, then the loss would have been easily reconcilable, but this was a team who had been unable to win a staggeringly underwhelmingly fielded Dreamhack Valencia event two and a half months earlier, with four of the same players in the line-up. Looking across the line-up, observers would find no names which had been touted as potential top five individual players in the world. For all the miraculous plays on CM's side of the equation, a large part of the ESWC result looked to be an uncharacteristic drop in form from VeryGames.
Beating up on a Fnatic side with a new in-game leader, pronax, in the final of the MSi Beat It tournament, allowed Ex6tenz' men to put another title on the board. However, all eyes were set towards the Dreamhack Winter event of late November, with $100,000 set as the first place prize. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's first ever truly major event had seemingly come at the perfect time for NBK and his team-mates. If they could overcome their recent stumbles then they could leap up the all-time prize money list, gaining ground on a NiP team who had been forced to settle for cheques frequently much less than a fifth of such a payday.
An early loss to coL aside, VeryGames moved through to a semi-final rematch against NiP. With the other semi-final containing surprise names Fnatic and coL, everyone expected this match to decide the title itself, with whoever progressed being an overwhelming favourite to leave with the crown and the $100,000. VeryGames narrowly lost the first map, crushed NiP on the second and then fell in an unsettling deciding map, an extended pause arising when they had finally gotten into a position, on the dominant side of the map, to perhaps put together a run back against NiP's lead in the game.
Despite that semi-final loss, NiP's failure to secure the Dreamhack title in the final meant the case could still be made for VeryGames as the world's best team. NiP were two and a half months from their last tournament title and VeryGames still held the upper hand in recent placings, especially with underdog teams like Clan-Mystik and Fnatic being the beneficiaries of NiP and VG not winning the last two big international events.
A year which had begun with VeryGames seemingly still a million metaphorical miles away from taking a title, had ended with them tentatively pencilled in as the best team in the game. Shox was still playing at an elite level and it seemed, with NiP stumbling themselves, that matters could be resolved by Ex6tenz, in time for the next big international event.
Free-falling
2014 saw the team change over to the Titan eSports organisation and head out to Dallas, USA, for their first event in their new colours. With NiP and other European teams choosing not to attend the ESEA Season 15 offline final, Titan were overwhelming favourites to take their first title there. Their most dangerous opposition looked fairly tame, as the coL team which had upset them had gone on to be entirely neutralised by Fnatic in the other Dreamhack Winter semi-final and iBUYPOWER had not even progressed beyond the group stage. If either could pose a threat for Titan, it would surely be coL.
On American soil, it proved to be the other way around, in the end. Titan had crushed iBP in the upper bracket and then just squeaked past coL to reach the final. With iBUYPOWER, the team to emerge from the lower bracket and needing to win two straight Bo3s no less, one could be entirely forgiven for expecting an easy cruise to the title and the $20,000 first place prize. Certainly Titan seemed to imagine such a storyline was set to play out, as it has been said that one of their stars was playing mp3s in the background of the first Bo3. After Titan lost that first Bo3 0:2, things got serious really quickly and they made things much more competitive in the second, only to narrowly lose out in the last map.
What should have been an easy run through a relatively weak field became one of the most embarrassing letdowns of a team billed as the world's best in the game's history. When NiP had lost series while occupying the top spot in the world rankings, it had always been as a result of their opponents elevating to a higher level of play, but Titan had suffered a dip in form reminiscent of their ESWC finals failure.
"Only one week before moving to the gaming house! Can't wait !!"
-SmithZz, tweeting ahead of Titan moving into a dedicated gaming house
Less than two weeks after the killing of the kings in Dallas, a familiar historical storyline, Titan moved into a gaming house, set for a more than one and a half intensive bootcamp in the lead-up to EMS One Katowice, the next CS:GO major tournament. In the latter part of February, Dreamhack hosted an invitational in their new Stockholm studio and Titan were able to score wins over NiP, bringing their record to 8:1 in their last nine maps played against the team who had been 14:0 over them. Perhaps things were looking up.
Less than a month later, EMS One Katowice had arrived and Titan were hungry to get a bigger slice of the $250,000 pie they had only been able to nibble $22,000 off of last November. Losing to Virtus.pro heavily on mirage was no shame in itself, with the Polish team on home soil and coming into the event with heavy hype surrounding them. What was a shock was Titan's elimination in the group stage at the hands of HellRaisers, the former Astana Dragons team, in a 14:16 inferno game. They had to sit in the stands and watch NiP run to the final of another major and another new team (Virtus.pro) take the next major title.
Titan left the second CS:GO major without even a top eight finish, the first time in their history they had failed to reach that mark and only the second time they had ever finished outside of the top four in an offline event. Living in a gaming house and playing for a new organisation, results were at a premium and Titan needed to come up with something soon, else questions would be asked.
Just over a month after EMS, it was time for Copenhagen Games in Denmark. Despite a bracket which seemed to put them on a course to face Virtus.pro, the EMS champions, in the semi-final, Titan found themselves bounced out 2:0 by LDLC, a French side made up of some former Clan-Mystik members. It had now been more than four months since Titan had reached the final of a big offline tournament. After EMS, their claim to being CS:GO's best had finally been shattered, now it was hard to even make a case for them being in the top four teams out there, with two straight finishes outside of the top four in big events.
The return of kenny and back to their old ways
Even at this moment, hope could be held out by the most ardent Titan fan that they had the pieces in place to turn things around and return to the top. That faint flickering hope was seemingly extinguished on April 28th, as it was announced that shox would leave the line-up and kennyS would be brought back, essentially reversing the transfer of almost a year prior.
KennyS had been a stellar performer for Recurse and Clan-Mystik in his time outside of VeryGames/Titan, but his game had largely benefitted from the more free-wheeling and unfettered approach of his teams, circumstances he had never experienced the luxury of in the precisely-tuned VeryGames machine. While kennyS clearly represented the next best option after shox, it was difficult to see how a team which had been struggling with shox in the line-up could improve by returning to an unsolved puzzle from a year prior.
Less than a week after kenny's return, Titan headed out to the Starladder Starseries IX offline finals. Results looked more than promising initially, with a 2:0 win over EMS champions Virtus.pro in the upper bracket, but then kennyS and his newly reunited team-mates fell to Na`Vi 0:2 in the upper final. Na`Vi had not even qualified for the offline final, they had been a replacement for the absent Fnatic, but had now upset both NiP and Titan to reach the final. Titan would not get a chance to rematch the Eastern Europeans, losing a three map lower bracket series against NiP.
Titan had not faced NiP offline since their win at the Dreamhack Stockholm Invitational, so their record was still an impressive 8:1 in maps and 3:0 in series since the team had risen up to the top of CS:GO. NiP winning this series reminded observers of the previous era in which Titan had fielded this identical line-up, back when they had gone 0:6 in maps and 0:3 in series against the Ninjas.
At this month's Dreamhack Summer, Titan had a chance to show that circumstances would not return to those of a year prior, unable to reach event finals and still losing to NiP. Their only credible opponent in the group stage was HellRaisers and again the French-Belgian side lost to the men from Eastern Europe. Progressing out of the group in second place, they found themselves the victim of a bracket draw which yielded NiP in the quarter-final.
The three maps would be the same as in Kiev, albeit in a different order. Again Titan lost nuke, this time as the first map, but they were now able to win on inferno to force another deciding map against their oldest rivals. Dust2 had been the only map they'd won at StarSeries and this time the outcome would be almost entirely reversed, losing out to NiP and being eliminated outside of the top four for yet another big offline event. The only international events that year which Ex6tenz's men had been able to score top four finishes in had been four team tournaments at the offline stage.
Matters looked awfully familiar: kennyS in the line-up, unable to reach the finals of tournaments and again being stopped by NiP in the key moments. Add in the team's problems with losses to lesser teams (LDLC, HellRaisers and iBUYPOWER) and falling out in the group stage, something which had never been an issue in 2013, and it is clear that something is wrong in the world of Titan.
The kennyS conundrum
Where the dilemma of what VeryGames was to do with kennyS in early 2013 had been over whether to keep him in their line-up and strict tactical system or release him and recruit a different player, the dilemma has now become a different one altogether for Ex6tenz. At Dreamhack Summer, commentator Semmler explained that he had heard it said in a French interview with Titan that the team had decided, upon recruiting kennyS back into the fold, to move away from their execution-based approach and towards a pick-based style, playing into kenny's AWPing strength.
On the surface that may sound like a good approach, being as it emphasises the skillset of kennyS, their primary star at this point in time, but it should naturally lead to a number of concerns, upon analysis. Firstly, if he is not using his heavily-researched approach to the tactical side of the game, then Ex6tenz goes from being one of the world's most valuable in-game leaders to just one among many who are calling simple tactics based on the initial kill or death. In such a scenario, Ex6tenz is not a good enough individual player to bridge the gap in the team his strategical mind used to fill.
With kennyS taking over AWP duties, it leaves SmithZz struggling to find the right role. Despite using the gun in an entirely different fashion, he had been quite comfortable in using it and had his own spots on the map reserved for him, allowing Titan another element of positional and tactical information gathering. Left with only a rifle, SmithZz joins Ex6tenz as a man with less to offer Titan.
Finally, playing the game around ScreaM allows the Belgian aim monster to again side-step the glaring light of the main spotlight, but not as much as before. Even a fully in form kennyS is not comparable to the all-around player shox was at his peak in the latter half of 2013. That shox was contending, with GeT_RiGhT, for the title of the most complete player in the game. He could pick up kills at any point of the game, contribute calls of his own during rounds and close out key rounds in big games. Deny kennyS an AWP, through limiting his team economically, and he cannot have the same kind of impact on a game that shox had.
In the shox era, ScreaM had a lot more leeway in terms of when he was required to be a dominant force in the game. Now he has no room for error if Titan wants to win against the elite sides. ScreaM had so far shown no aptitude for being "the man" in Titan and even as a second star has often benefited from NBK's elevations in play, covering the occasions on which he has been lacking himself. If Titan is going to become a top two team in the world again, it will take ScreaM playing a level higher than he has ever manifest with any consistency during his time in this team.
Possible changes
It had been rumoured in late 2013, even with the team atop the world rankings, that Ex6tenz might have retired at the end of the year. With a toolkit possessed of the potential to win major events, it makes sense that he would stick around for another year, nobody likes to go out with big titles potentially left on the table. With Titan flagging, couped up in their team house and without a tournament victory on the horizon, one wonders if the Belgian won't seriously consider retirement at some point in 2014.
That he had relinquished the reigns of the team in a tactical sense, from one of the most controlling in-game leaders to one basing his play off the hit-and-miss style of a single star, does seem telling. Call it a big gamble to return to the top or an easier potential transition from the Ex6tenz era into one of a new in-game leader, speculation would certainly not be unfounded.
If Ex6tenz and SmithZz can both no longer play the roles that they made famous in 2013 and the team living in their gaming house has yet to produce any positive results, one would do well to ask if a drastic change shouldn't be made soon. If the team moves out of the gaming house, then could not shox return to the line-up? The player cited the environment of the team house as a reason for not wanting to continue on with Titan, but having gone on to join Epsilon it's clear that he still retains an interest in playing top level CS:GO. One could imagine a number of ways the team could go with a returning shox: taking out ScreaM to try a new constellation of kennyS and shox at the same time or removing SmithZz and going for a heavily skill-based power line-up.
As Titan stands right now, I could well see them winning series over most of the elite teams, but it seems very unlikely they'll return to being the best team in the world. There are too many holes and too many questions in and around their team to see them being able to knock off 2-3 elite teams in a row to take a major title convincingly. The charm of Titan previously was that even in their losses they retained such a distinctive style that they were always a team of interest. Even if they lost to NiP, the clash of styles was as much a battle of contrasting philosophical approaches to the game as it was the fragging power of the team's star names. That Titan seems to be gone for now, seemingly never to return.
Since establishing themselves as the undisputed best team in the world, with their EMS One Fall victory, the team has won only around $64,000 out of a possible $293,000. To put that in contrast, NiP have won around $164,000 out of an idenitical possible $293,000. Titan's only tournament title during that span of time has been the Dreamhack Stockholm Invitational win, not even close to a major, despite featuring top teams. NiP, on the other hand, has won Copenhagen Games, won Dreamhack Summer and placed top two at every offline event, with the exception of ESWC.
Titan were the premier exponents of the heavily-tactical approach to CS:GO. They were convincingly the best team in the world for a brief period of time, and debatably number one for months beyond that. Now, Titan are a team that has seen its best days long since passed. How will they solve the kennyS conundrum a second time around? What happens to the roles of Ex6tenz and SmithZz in this era? Can ScreaM become a legitimate star with any consistency? Will they remain in the gaming house? Will Ex6tenz retire? Can shox return at some point?
There are many questions to be asked of this team, but the question of whether they will become the world's best again is not one many would waste their time asking right now.
Photo credit: ESL, SLTV, fragbite, ESEA News
