NiKo believes that the Falcons' slow season start is partly due to their failure to properly harness the confidence gained from their Major victory.
Falcons have improved compared to their early-season performance in BLAST Premier: after being eliminated early in the BLAST Bounty and failing to advance past the quarterfinals in the eClub World Cup, they now reached the semifinals in the Portuguese event—but still fell 0-2 against Spirit.
NiKo described the team's performance in this tournament as highly fluctuating: there were some highlights, but more negative aspects—playing well in one match, then poorly in the next.
Q: The season opener was disappointing, but do you think there are still some positive takeaways from this tournament? Ancient looked much better today, and you convincingly defeated G2.
NiKo: Hmm, yes. There were some positive aspects, but more negatives. Our performance throughout this tournament has been very inconsistent: we'd have one good game, then a terrible one the next, constantly swinging back and forth.
I would say the biggest positive factor was yesterday's match against G2. We played really well, not just because we won, but also in terms of the way we handled the game and our performance and mindset throughout.
Just like today, I can feel that our mental state has remained on point. We've never given up, we've been fighting the whole time, and we've known that at any moment in the half, we have a chance to come back. These are all positive factors.
The negative factor is obviously that the map pool for our tournament this time was absolutely abysmal, constantly losing our own map picks. I think we lost every single map pick throughout this tournament, and when you lose your picks, it's hard to win the series.
We must also seek greater consistency. Our current performance fluctuates too drastically between day and night.
Q：Where do you think the instability of the map pool comes from? Is it because you're trying to break the habit of always picking Dust2, so there are inevitably some teething problems?
NiKo: Yes, obviously Dust2 is our only reliable map right now, but we also know that, for example, Spirit is also very strong on this map, and sometimes we simply don't have a chance to pick it.
It's tough for us right now, even including Anubis. Anubis feels worse in our scrimmages than Ancient and Nuke, so it's also hard to choose. Maybe we should pay less attention to how we perform in scrimmages and focus more on how we handle these maps in important matches.
This is something we must analyze in depth and identify the root cause. It is causing us instability right now; and while it may not necessarily create tension during matches, psychologically, it is truly difficult to keep losing on your own chosen maps.
We will seek improvement, hoping the situation will be better by EPL.
Q: When many people look at an IGL like karrigan, they feel they have to accept his duality: he can deliver key performances in major tournaments like during the Major, but in lower-tier events or group stages, his team sometimes drops off. Is this something your team is aware of? What are your thoughts on this?
NiKo: I think... I'm not too sure. To be honest, I don't want to overthink this, I don't really believe in that saying.
It feels like we just didn't perform well as a team. I don't think the problem lies with him alone or with me alone. As a team, we just didn't quite find our rhythm.
I feel we failed to sustain the confidence we had during Major. In fact, the harm this confidence brought might outweigh the help it truly gave us.
As for this logic regarding Karrigan, I don't buy it. We're in this together and just need to find ways to improve. We know we can play better and we must play better, no doubt.
If we can do it on offline stages, we must be able to do it in the group stage. If the situation were reversed, I might say, "Well, maybe we were a bit nervous and made wrong decisions." But if we can perform in the knockout stages, we must be able to perform in the group stage.
So we must find out what caused these problems in the group stage and try to do better.