cK-czm Interview

Name: Paul Nelson
Alias: cK-czm
Title or Occupation: Student
Age: 16
City based out of: Framingham, Massachusetts, USA

Methos: 
Do you play any other games besides the Quake series? If so, what are some of your favorites?
cK-czm: 
Right now, the only computer games I play are in the Quake series. I'm going to start playing CS additionally in a few days.

Methos: 
Why are you going to try CounterStrike?
cK-czm: 
It's basically because a lot of people I know think I could be really good at it, and I think it's only fair that I give it a shot to find out. With the summer ahead of me, I have time to learn any game I want, and who knows, maybe I'll get good at it and end up competing in the World Championships at the end of the year? I was really hoping to compete in it when it was originally a q3 tdm event, so it'd be neat if I could still end up doing well in it. It doesn't particularly appeal to me for any specific reasons, but it's the most played game now, and there are enough huge tournaments coming up for it that I might as well see how good I can get at it.

Methos: 
What about Quake/QW appealed to you when it came out? There have been lots of other games, what made Quake different for you?
cK-czm: 
It was the first multiplayer game in which I could always find an opponent. With most games before Quake, I mastered them and stopped playing them forever. A multiplayer game like Quake is impossible to master, so  I never stopped playing it. As for other games that came out later, I got good at Quake first, and it was always considered the most competitive game, so I only really played other games with friends from time to time (Tribes, etc.)

Methos: 
When you first played Quake and QuakeWorld, was there any players that were your idols? If so, who and why?
cK-czm: 
I didn't really have one constant hero, but I did have a few from time to time. I guess that Thresh was my hero most of the time, since he won the big tournaments, but he wasn't a "hero" in the typical sense - rather, he was just someone to look up to and compare myself to.

Methos: 
When you and I first met back in 1997, much like myself, you seemed to be an average QW player with a poor ping. Some people never rise above that stature even with a better ping. How were you able to overcome this level of play?
cK-czm: 
I actually thought I was quite a bit above average back when I had a 500 ping :). I wasn't very vocal about it, but I was one of those hpb's who thought they'd own everyone if they had a good ping. Of course, I was 12-13 years old at the time. I've always been very competitive, and with little kiddie reflexes it wasn't too hard to get decent at the game after playing it a little. Just playing fast-paced dm6 ffa's, a lot to work on my aim and relying on "common sense" to learn how to play the game properly were basically all that guided me.

Methos: 
Tell us about your clan history. What clans have you been in?
cK-czm: 
I've been in quite a few clans. In Q3, I've been in cK (Clan Kapitol) for a little over a year. In QW, my main two clans were zt (Zero Tolerance) and r3v (R3volution). I was in each of them for about a year, I think. Before that, I was in a number of clans for shorter durations, including one named MSF for a mod called "Future vs. Fantasy", and my first QW clan, "SIK", in which I'd say most of my improvement occurred.

Methos: 
A couple of years ago, I watched a QW demo of Clan R3volution with this guy named CZM. I was surprised that it was the same Crezyman that I used to play with. I was also surprised at your gameplay and especially your accuracy. Can you tell us what type of things you concentrated on while practicing to improve so much in such a short period of time?
cK-czm: 
I don't even remember taking it too seriously and practicing to improve. I just remember that now and then, people started noticing that I was playing well. I always thought that I had good aim, and felt that I was held back by an awful modem connection. When I got a fast connection, the accuracy developed very quickly. I think that later in my QW career, when I finally got a fast computer capable of giving me a steady 72 fps (this was about 2 years ago), I played a lot on the Bodycount server to develop my accuracy, and my strat etc just came from experience. There wasn't a particular way I practiced it.

Methos: 
You refrained from playing Quake2 seriously. What was the reasoning behind this decision?
cK-czm: 
I basically followed most of the other QW players and stayed with it.  I didn't really care either way, but most of the better QW players decided to stick it out, and I went along with that.

Methos: 
What were your first impressions of Q3A when it was released?
cK-czm: 
My first impressions were very positive, but when I saw how the team levels were laid out, I immediately noticed that there didn't seem to be nearly enough armor. I also noticed the somewhat poor design of the netcode. Really low bandwidth is great for modem players, but us low pingers would much rather get rid of that 50 ms "buffer" lag that it uses to smooth things out, as we don't care as much about bandwidth restrictions.

Methos: 
You have excelled in the 1on1 and clan aspect of Quake 3. What was the hardest part about switching from Quakeworld to Q3A?
cK-czm: 
Learning the railgun. Some might remember a player who played q3tourney a lot and used the name "shit4rail", that was me. Learning how to rail was definitely the hardest part about switching to Q3. I was able to get a decent rail shot when I started using cl_mouseaccel .25, but eventually turned that off and developed a railing technique that allowed me to get an innate sense of the timing associated with firing the rail, and use that sense of timing to make flick shots natural.

Methos: 
In your current clan (Clan Kapitol), you play with some very talented players, including the CPL's #1 ranked player, Fatality. Being a pretty good player yourself, what have you been able to learn from playing with such talented players?
cK-czm: 
Unfortunately I've never been able to really practice with fatality in 1v1, so I can't say my 1v1 game has improved much, if at all, from being in cK.

The best practice I've gotten as a result of being in cK was the intraclan 2v2's we played over the summer.  I think that those 2v2's were what made our main players as good at tdm as we became - it was great, for example, to watch night by night in 2v2's between czm/spook and ouija/orb as all four players started really kicking ass every game.  It's a great feeling when every player in a game is playing amazingly well, and you feel like you're all improving together.

Playing 4v4's with cK has, in the long run, made me worse, since when I realize that I don't even need to try and my team can still win, I feel like I need to.  When I first joined cK, we were overzealous about everything - we prided ourselves in not losing a scrim for months, and felt that our starters (who at the time were czm, ouija, spook, and dmx) could beat any other team on dm7 by over a 100 frag difference.  If we ever had a "close" scrimmage (50 frag difference or less) we'd go on IRC and talk it over.  We always felt disappointed if we didn't reach what we referred to as our "quota" - winning by a frag difference of greater than 100.  This "quota" kept me motivated - I always had something to strive for.

We were able to do this as a result of a lockdown strategy that did not work nearly as well on LAN.  When a player can be overwhelmed by swarms of machinegun-toting enemies, it's hard for him to hold an area on his own.  We adopted the inferior-on-the-net but superior-on-a-LAN strategy of holding a central area and sending out pairs to gang up on the enemies.  This was kind of a disappointment for me - q3 tdm seemed really fresh and interesting when we could lock the entire map down and dominate clans by using a unique strategy, while everyone else still used the old "4 on RA" strat, which basically relies on a team being able to out aim their opponents and win control of the RA early.  In switching to a more LAN-based set of strategies we've abandoned the philosophy of trying to win by huge scores, and instead have adopted one of "a win is a win."  As a result, I feel a bit bored playing tdm now since I know that most of the time, no matter what I do, my team will still win.  So to summarize, playing 4v4's with cK helped me at first, but for awhile now it's only made me worse.

My most significant improvement, and probably the peak of my playing, was before I joined cK - this was because I'd always hop on the losing team on pickup servers and often play against experienced clans with an inexperienced, random-player filled pickup team.  This really taught me what I had to do to lock a map down by myself and coordinate a less experienced team vs. a stronger one.  In addition, when you know that you are required to hit a lot of shots if you want your team to win, you tend to try a lot harder - when you know you're going to win by 100 regardless of what you do, you don't really care if you only shoot 15% rail.  I'm sure this isn't the answer you expected, but I guess the most important thing I've learned from playing with such talented players is how much more rapidly one can improve when they play with below average teammates most of the time.

In terms of learning how to play as a team on LAN, however, being in cK has helped me tremendously. They're a great bunch of guys and I have fun with them at every tournament I've been to. We have very fast communication, we talk non-stop during our matches, we react very quickly to what's going on in a game, and we're always focused on winning as a team, and I've learned so much about how all of this works as a result of playing with a talented team. Without which, I'd be a much worse LAN team player.

Methos: 
After being fairly successful with Quake 3 Arena, you decided to try the Challenge Promode Mod. Can you tell your reason for this decision and what you like / dislike about the mod?
cK-czm: 
After Cloud9 invited me to play in his Faceoff qw tournament, I began talking with him every now and then. One day he mentioned to me that he was running a CPM tournament, and that a number of players really wanted to see me play CPM. I hadn't played it since about a year prior, when east teamplay.net had a cpm port, but after thinking for a little while I agreed. I like the instant weapon switching, I feel the movement is good but a bit overdone, and I like the 15 second weapon respawns.  I don't like the armor system - maps like ztn and dm13 are fairly poor in cpm because of it.  Personally I think that cpm1a is an awful map for dueling, so I dislike the fact that it's used in cpma. 

Methos: 
Ironically, you are now back where you started. With success in QW & Q3A, you have now returned to QW for the upcoming CPL 4th Anniversary tournament. What made you return to QW after such a long time and how do you think you'll do at the tourney?
cK-czm: 
I haven't returned to QW at the exclusion of anything else, I'm simply playing it now and then in addition to what I'd already be playing. I returned to qw originally because a few friends wanted to mess around in a QW teamplay tournament, and then returned again because I got invited to play in the faceoff 1v1 tourney. I thought it'd be pretty neat if I, as a predominantly Q3 player, could win that, so I was motivated enough to come back to QW for a little. As for the Anniversary tournament, I feel confident that I'll place top 8, but as always I'll try my best to win.

Methos: 
You've been in many big tournaments such as the CPL Q3, QW, Smackdown, Faceoff BOTB (which you won), or even the COTT tourney being held now. What are some of your strategies going into these tournament?
cK-czm: 
It really depends upon the tournament. In both of the smackdown tournaments I've entered, I've basically just entered for fun.  In 1v1 tournaments, I just go into every match feeling that I'm unstoppable unless I somehow "mess up" and play below my norm. I try to get myself psyched for every game, and I now think that the best way to play well in a tournament is to practice excessively the days before it, and then play very little the day of your match except for a short warmup. This is the opposite of what my strategy was at babbages', but I think it will help me feel more fresh and alert at future tournaments. Practicing really just makes you more consistent. I don't think you need to play 8 hours a day or anywhere near that much to be very good. It's more important that you feel "on fire" by the time your match starts, so in the future, I'm going to try to focus more on that. In TDM tournaments, we (cK) always go to a hotel room before our match and just talking everything through. We did that at Battletop, Frag4, QIL4 and so far it's worked fairly well. We go through all of the maps and talk through all the situations we might find ourselves, so we don't have to ask any questions immediately before the match starts. We sometimes loosen up by making fun of our opponents, and I think that laughing a little before a serious match is never a bad thing. 

Methos: 
How do you prepare to play against a highly ranked player? Is it much different preparing for a player with decent talent as opposed to great talent? Also, do you try to study other players styles and tactics prior to playing them?
cK-czm: 
I usually just wing it, to be honest. When I can, I like to get a feel for my opponent before I play him, and find that it helps me a lot. If you look at my tournament record, you'll see that all of my close wins or losses were vs. players that I hadn't seen play before.  I don't think it's so much a "study your opponent and look for a weakness" thing - it's not like I say "ah ha!  polosatiy always goes for the upper YA when he has 37-47 armor, but goes for the lower one when he has 48-75!  and if he has 76-125, he starts jumping around and shooting grenades!"  Nobody plays predictably enough that this really comes in handy - you can sometimes note general trends like "aggression" or "running away for 15 minutes," and adjust your style to that, but not very often.  There are only so many ways you can go from armor to armor in q3, and usually it doesn't depend upon the style of your opponent. 

It's really just a confidence thing - when I watch a player's demo, I usually end up thinking to myself "blah, he isn't all that," but when I'm on the receiving end of a 60% rail in warmup and I'm only hitting 20% vs. a player that I know nothing about except that he "rapes lakerman on t4," it's possible for me to get psyched out and start feel like I'm up against a brick wall.  I think that confidence is the most important thing in these tournaments, and I like to become familiar with other players to boost my confidence before a match. 

Methos: 
What do you feel (if anything) still needs to be improved with your game?
cK-czm: 
Right now, I just need to play more. My only problem is really consistency, and when I'm actually taking the time to play a couple hours a day, I become very consistent. The only problem I've had recently is that I'll take a break for a week, play for one day, and then take another break for a week, so my aim has been a bit flaky. I really just need to play more to work on my consistency, I think my game is pretty complete when I'm in the right state of mind.

Methos: 
What (so far) is the biggest moment in your Quake career?
cK-czm: 
None of them really stand out, but I think one of the biggest ones was beating e9 in frag4, particularly in the very close dm14 game that essentially decided the match.  If we hadn't won that match, Europe might be carrying the torch in tdm today.  It was also pretty exciting when I won that close game vs. All*Aim at Babbages.  I felt bad about the game itself, but the excitement from the ending made it all worthwhile.

Quick Questions...

Methos: 
Favorite 1on1 level for QW and Q3A?
cK-czm: 
dm6, ztn3tourney1

Methos: 
Favorite clan level for QW and Q3A?
cK-czm: 
dm3, q3dm7/q3dm14

Methos: 
Favorite demo (from any version of Quake)?
cK-czm: 
cK-czm vs. All*Aim from Babbages'

Methos: 
Favorite player?
cK-czm: 
Ck-Ouijah with honorable mention to Gator (happy now?)

Methos: 
Toughest Opponent?
cK-czm: 
Si|Karma

Methos: 
Thanks for doing this.
cK-czm: 
Sure, anytime.

You can reach cK-czm at qwerty@savoysoft.com