Coach's Corner #2

 

 

 COACHS CORNER INTERVIEW #2: GHOST

disclaimer: the opinions stated by the interviewee arent reflective of the coachs views. dont cancel me. also this interview was done over a 2 day process.

ghost: I'm ghost and I got into competitive TF2 in 2017, I play both 6s and Highlander but I am more well-known in the HL world since that is the format I've played the longest and is the one I play at a higher level. I've been playing HL as Spy for almost 10 seasons now and 6s Scout/Demo just for a few on and off. For me, the reason I'm drawn into competitive play is that wins/losses feel more meaningful when you're playing with your friends and facing opponents who are good at the game.

COACH: How are you doing today, Ghost?

g: aw thanks for asking, im doing okay, got out of bed late and just trying to get my necessities in before doing some recreation (anime) and getting into scrims. how about yourself?

C: Thank you for asking I tumped a woods today feeling blessed

g: sorry tumpted a woods? not familiar with what that means lol

C: You don't wanna know lol

g: oh lol, okay ill google it later

C: What class do you play Ghost?

g: I consider myself to be a multiclass main but I main Demo/Scout in 6s and Spy in HL, I have dabbled into ringing HL heavy and playing Heavy in Prolander a bit too

C: Ah okay okay... Sayin you're the Ghost spy then?

g: lol one can say that I guess

C: What team do you play for currently in Highlander?

g: The team I made this season, originally called "WORLD CIRCUS", re-branded to "FEMBOY HOOTERS" by the rest of the team wanting that name and me just rolling with it, is currently in Advanced playoffs, we have quarterfinals this Monday.

C: ...

g: ...

pictured: the coach questioning whether he should really continue this interview at this point

C: femboy hooters?

g: yes, the team name was Natalbee's idea I believe, it's an allusion to some twitter memem that's been gaining a lot of traction that I wasn't aware of, I'd prefer not to have a meme name but I want to make my team happy so I approved of the name change. the original, ORIGINAL name was supposed to be Infant Annihilator but apparently an old silver team already used that team + i wanted to try something else

C: I respect that; if it's a team name that best represents your team then that's good.

g: the irony of the name is that 4/9 of us are girls

C: Damn. 4/9 of your team are girls? That's crazy

g: yep

                                                                    pictured: all mans when they realize they missed out on playing on a team with 4 girls

C: To be honest there aren't that many girls that play TF2. That's pretty cool that you fellas are running it. Moving on, tell me about your current team.

g: we have a flank consisting of lukamine on scout and Voyager on soldier, and a combo consisting of Guava on pyro, Natalbee on Demo, Grynn on Heavy, and rona on medic, for picks/others we have High impact Dolphin on engie, Powerpuker on Sniper, and me on Spy. Overall playing for this team has been a good/fun experience, I like this group and it's a shame we're going into different directions for the following season (rona's going to try her hand at leading a team and so is powerpuker, while guava and voyager are going lft to see what options they have). We've had our ups & downs and it's one of thje better of my recent HL experiences, I personally learned a lot this season but have also struggled as this is my 2nd season maining at this level of play and the competition is pretty stiff, so circa. vigil and swiftwater week I didn't perform super well while my team was struggling which was kind of unpleasant but if one isn't prepared to lose/do badly they won't be able to learn. We've had some internal drama but it's mainly died down, I find that what's difficult about competitive is that you and the people who you play with don't entirely show their full personalities until after the "honeymoon" period, so some people's personalities on this team do conflict/have issues getting along sometimes which is a big part of why this team is splitting off, which is hard for me but I've learned to just accept it.

C: That's definitely tough and a part of the competitive experience. I can relate to that; I played with sovereign for a season and while I certainly enjoyed playing with him and his team it was clear at the time I was playing much above their level and add to the fact I get burnt out very easily playing, I unfortunately had to leave.

What do you say are the strong points of your team?

g: Probably our ability to problem solve as a team and control tilting

C: Can you name some examples of that?

g: probably product week was pretty indicative of that, we'd be cluttering comms/not playing our best then we all just agreed to take a breather and calm down

C: ya eh sayin u caught a dub that week too?

                                                                           pictured: the coach feeling some type of way after he gets fact checked

g: yeah but tbh it was vs. a main moveup team

C: No need to discredit yourself. A dub is a dub even against a team that you have no business losing against. How do you feel about the current state of Silver?

g: Guess so, and haha Silver isn't really a usable term nowadays since Silver in late UGC was for a 3 div system when RGL has 6 divs now

C: Ah okay. My bad. I haven't caught up with the times.. How do you feel about the current state of Advanced?

g: Advanced was in a good state before Contra's team died and Luigi's team moved up, but after that it's been a little less competitive but compared to seasons 4-5 of Advanced, this is much better imo.

C: What happened in season 4-5 of Advanced?

g: I feel like main was especially watered down then so many advanced teams weren't really that great including my own at the time. I feel that back then because of that teams were too good for main but not quite advanced like my own back in Season 4.

C: Why did you feel like main was watered down? And why was that affecting Advanced?

g: Part of why main felt watered down then is that people were moving up pretty fast, often faster than they should, a lot of people have done this and I'm guilty of it too, I should've been in main for Season 4. My season 4 team was closer to Main than Advanced imo.

C: Ah okay, I get that. I think your team must be in the right spot then if they're stomping main teams but not quite being good enough to beat low Advanced teams. It just means your team is High Main. Tell me about Contra's team and Luigi's team, how did this team shuffle affect Advanced?

g: Contra's team was one of the other two teams to win advanced qualifiers among mine, but they died midseason, an invite team died so Home depot (Luigi's team) moved up to Invite to fill the spot, leaving two empty spots in Advanced, with only 6 teams remaining. Because of how crippled the div size was, the admins asked Main which teams wanted to move up instead of moving teams up that were like Brick's team, which were in advanced qualifiers and smack most main teams around for fun, two approx mid-low main teams chose to move up, making it so there are 6 teams that are mainly players who have played at this div before alongside "the main teams"

C: Do you feel that wasn't the right move for those teams to move up?

g: I think they bit off more than they could chew, but I still respect their ballsyness and hope they still get something out of it.

C: I'm looking at the rankings, your team is in second place for match points. Crazy! How do you feel about playoffs?

g: We have done well this season but as far as playoffs go, all I know is that this week is going to be a tough match.

                                                                                     pictured: Willmatic & the people with attitude (dont ban me)

C: What's going to be tough about this week's match?

g: S9 has a very very strong roster on their hands. They're all really good at working together; their combo is pretty good and their sniper in particular absolutely farms.

C: Ya eh who is their Sniper?

g: Willmatic

C: Goddamn... That guy is Beastly.

g: Yep, he was originally playing for flemlasky's team I believe before it died.

C: Without revealing your strats, what do you think your team needs to do to win against them?

g: I don't really know honestly

C: Damn okay. Are there any fearsome players you've faced off against in your division? Any good up & comers in your opinion?

g: absolutely, many people have done better than anyone has expected like for example my team. people thought we'd lose qualifiers but we pulled through. alot of the fearsome players I've faced are the snipers like Timeless, whalemart and Rebel. All of the snipers that I know of (I don't know the moveup teams, so excluding theirs) in this division are especially good this season as well as I witnessed illum on spy demolish my team on swiftwater, definitely an underrated and slept on spy.

C: Damn that's crazy. Is there anyone who you feel is overrated or isn't performing as hot as they should for the team they're playing for? You could also name people in the top division as well if you don't think they're that good.

g: quite a few but I'd rather not spread my sour negative opinions, it's not constructive so i'd rather not say them.

C: Okay okay fair enough. What are the win conditions for your team to win playoffs and secure the Dub?

g: we need to push together, leave together and not make monkey screeches in comms and fight too much. Other than that it's honestly very very situational, it can go either way.

C: Overall do you think this season of Advanced was good?

g: I think this was one of my toughest seasons in terms of performing, but I feel like this is probably the season I've gotten the most of other than subbing in for mds' team last season, I think it helped me build more skills as a player and helped me develop character in my interactions with my teammates and the community as a whole.

C: Interesting, I'd like to talk about Spy briefly. There seems to be many spies: the Happy Spy, the Theoretical Spy, the Evil Spy, the Dimensional Spy and even a Spy with a u to name a few. How do you, the Ghost Spy, differentiate yourself from the crowd? What makes you different from the rest?

g: That's a tough one, I think my most valuable feature is that I always keep my cool ingame, I always focus on what I need to do to better my play, and I constantly work on taking criticism and trying to apply it to my playstyle, I've also gotten much better at giving comms over the seasons, I'm not perfect but I definitely feel like I grow effectively every season. Even though recently spys been a little less fun, I don't want to give up until I feel I've maxed my potential (or if college fucks my schedule and I need a break)

C: That's good, glad to see you carry that sort of attitude. It really goes a long way. What is a pet peeve of yours that you think Spies should be doing regularly that they straight up don't do?

g: That's a tough one, I guess it's probably hesitating a lot per decloak, I'm still guilty of it to an extent, but among Spies I mentor I see them fear so much before a decloak and it just makes me feel bad because if they walked forward they'd do some insane carnage, but their hesitation holds them back, this is probably one of the things I've struggled with earlier in my career too.

C: Yeah eh okay okay, How do you practice? Do you play pubs? Play silver pugs? Run lobbies? What's your routine?

g: these days I mainly warm up on other classes, I've played so much spy that pub spy isn't as satisfying, I usually play pubs as demo/sniper/heavy, RGL pugs as demo/heavy and at the moment I play Smoked Out Pugs (advanced hl pugs run by Saturation) as Spy. Though on days where I don't have HL scrims I'm usually warming up my demo for 6s

                                                           pictured: a moment from ghost's favourite show: Family Guy

C: Sounds like a good routine. Always good to run either lobbies/pugs to warm up. All right lets move onto you as a person: what do you like to do outside of TF2? Any interests? Hobbies? etc

g: ATM I spend a lot of my time watching cartoons and working on self care such as trying to get ready for the self-sufficient college lifestyle and taking care of my physical/mental health, I've taken a break from watching anime in the past but I'm slowly getting into it. I also enjoy hanging out with some old friends over discord.

C: Damn you really into cartoons and anime huh. Is that the only genres you like?

g: something I also do so often that I forgot to mention is that I spend a lot of time listening to music, particularly a lot of metal/metal subgenres and rap.

C: Damn I like hip hop too. Do you like the Toosie Slide by Drake?

g: I actually haven't heard it haha. I like rap a lot but listen to a lot of metal mainly.

C: Damn... That's tough. You should give that & "God's Plan" a listen. My favourite lyric is she said 'do you love me?' I tell her 'only partly, I only love my bed and my mom, I'm sorry.'

Moving on, I noticed on the dislikes on your profile you have Authoritarianism listed. Talk to me about that. What is Authoritarianism and why do you dislike it?

g: Oh that's the general sentiment towards people who want to force others to change/hide/stay down or not be treated as a full person for their religious belief, gender, race, condition etc.

C: Damn I guess I dislike Authoritarianism too then. Now I got some pictures and I wanna know your thoughts on them

 

 

 

 g: lol that is not a healthy dog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

g: lol no comment just looks like a tired kid

g: xD

 

 

 

 

 g: i hate how it fits on him so well. it shouldn't but it does.

 

 

 

 

 

g: father

 

 

 

g: seen it and saved it ages ago

C: You have good taste in pictures. Lets move onto our reader submitted questions. From jel: give us a rundown on what you do during a normal day?

g:

C: From concepting: what is your favourite food to prepare & eat?

g: to prepare, definitely burgers, to eat, definitely sushi or salsbury steak

C: From costco hot dog: who is your favourite tf2 player?

g: haha too many to say lol

C: gimme your top 3

g: that'll be hard, in no particular order, my friend Jace, the one who got me into TF2 who I like to pub with, we don't do it often these days since we have messy schedules, but when we do I enjoy it. Another would probably be Ryuk, one of my biggest inspirations for playing HL Spy and comp spy in general. And lastly Grynn because Grynn.

C: Damn.. how come I'm not on that list?

g: haha we just met who knows maybe if we play a season together you'll get #1

C: Wow okay I see how it is then. Okay, from tua: who's another spy in advanced that you respect alot? Can you do a spy ranking for advanced? You don't need to include yourself if you're worried people will give you shit for not putting yourself at last some stupid cringe like that

g:

C: I seen that 88 Fingers Edward guy. He was a demon that stood in the way of dK. Skeez would often crumble under the pressure applied from the 88 frequently. Damn this Vizard guy is that nice eh, I'll keep an eye out for him.

From Private Nick: How can you justify vommiting mid match and not pausing or anything and letting it sit there for 20 minutes? Is the match so important that you're willing to disregard any and all preconceived notions of personal hygiene? I'm gonna need a bit of context here.

g: HAHAHA I knew someone was going to talk about that lol. So for context, it was pregame of cp_steel week and I threw up midscrim, I had push to talk on for mumble but don't for OBS, so it recorded the grotesque vomit noise on the VOD as well as me saying I threw up. Bon qui qui got a clip of it in ghostgrab, I thought it was funny so I clipped it myself, I knew people would rag on me and I'm okay with laughing at myself sometimes.

How can I "justify" it is that at the time, the vomit was on a wood floor, there were 0 consequences for leaving there and my head was in the game, looking back now I probably should've just cleaned it, but I chose to stick out for the scrim and clean it up in between the scrim and the match.

C: Well are you okay?

g: yes I am now haha

C: That's good to hear. At the time did anyone ask you whether you were okay or not? I don't really know the situation but something tells me people jumped to being critical about you rather than asking if you were okay or not.

g: some teammates probably did in vc, my memory's a bit foggy and yeah people who barely know me just wanted to shit on me but that's just how it is.

C: That's sad to hear. From perenne: ghost what's the next move fam? u made it to playoffs but do you have any idea what s7 looks like?

g: I'm trying to gather another Advanced team together, I don't think I'm ready for Invite/don't think it's realistic, have a few homies gathered for tryouts, but at the moment nothing's confirmed

                                                                             pictured: the coach & eerie person, ready to get the dub with ghost

 

C: Yeah eh. When do you think you'll be scrimming with that team?

g: No clue yet, but I can let you know if you'd like.

C: All right cool. I'm ready to play Advanced Pyro. From high impact dolphin: you've become notorious for doing stupid & weird shit both in & out of game, and your "reputation" has suffered for it. i know that's something you'd like to improve, so how do you plan on doing so?

g: A lot of that is really, really old stuff that blew up, I started RGL when I was about 16-17 in the middle of high school, now I'm almost 20 and on my way to college, I've grown a lot so it's just become easier to get along with most people, I'm going to keep working on my rep by just being myself, I'm not gonna constantly alter myself, I'm not gonna pretend not to be awkward, not autistic, or not to be trans, but I have a better idea of some norms/ways to interact. I'm just gonna keep being myself and doing the best I can to get along with people. A harsh lesson I learned is that not everyone will like you, sometimes it won't work out, and I've learned to try to block out overt negativity and just keep going.

C: Yeah eh. I completely agree with that. People always have something to say about you, and sometimes it'll be bad. No matter whether you make big moves or no moves at all people will target you whether it's because you did something bad to them that justifies their actions or they simply derive enjoyment out of hurting others. Do people talk down on you alot? I wouldn't know anything about your situation, but from what you describe in this interview it seems like it.

g: RGL's target demographic is kids of high school age, so people look for targets to angrily has out shittalking and rumors to get over their developing zits, it's just something I have to work around. I was a huge meme now galaxy's kind of the new meme nowadays. If someone is opely bming me/being a cockhead it's easy to just block and ignore. I left all spaces that are purely for shittalk like the RGL meme discord/galaxy's gone discord and just push out players who are single celled organisms with room tempature IQ.

*** INCOMING IRRELEVANT ALTO ESSAY, SKIP IF YOU WANT TO ***

C: I'm sorry to hear that you feel that way buddy. Sincerely. Admittedly I never really had the same problem you did and I certainly never cared about receiving validation from people online, I just like being silly and playing video games in my spare time; and I guess people just think I'm really funny and good at TF2 for some reason. The reputation thing is kinda goofy too, it's like there's a gap between people that could be easily resolved if you talk to someone one on one.

I guess an example of this would be a few days ago I was playing with my friends in a lobby and I was running Medic. And there's this guy named Firepow who was on soldier. I wasn't having fun on Medic and he didn't seem like he had a clue on soldier (although it's a lobby, normally people don't have a clue & are trying to figure out how to play it). So I asked him whether he would like to switch. He didn't respond. I asked him a few more times. I heard him talk in mumble multiple times in between me asking. He was clearly just ignoring me and my friend during the lobby so I got mad and snapped on him.

I don't know what my friend and I did to him before to justify getting ignored like that. I never even spoken to him ever before that. I think that's mad disrespectful getting left on Heard. Some people can see this as a third party and think it's a high level player getting upset that he's trying to bully someone off of a class and not getting what they want when it's very much not the case. If he didn't want to switch, he should've just said "No, I'm having more fun on Soldier." and I would have been fine with that because I don't ruin other people's fun plus it's a lobby. But instead he just ignores me, and then after he probably went to his friends and talked about how me ("high" level player, fred alumni) yelled at him painting himself as the victim, encouraging the notion that everyone in a higher div is out to get you. Straight up if you're gonna BM don't be surprised when you get BM'd back. Despite the Alto essay I'm actually not tripping over the example used. I really don't care.

Pretty much what I'm saying is that people have these really weird and strange predispositions of people without even interacting with them at all. Especially when they see a high level player and assume they're going to be an asshole or something.

*** ALTO ESSAY FINISHED, READ BELOW THIS LINE ***

C: Before we conclude this interview, anything on your mind that you would like to say?

g: I have no concrete plans for next hl season, tonight I won quarterfinals and my team and I are guaranteed at least 3rd. My team and I have been improving tremendously. Pick me up. :>

Thank you to COACH BUCKS and everyone who voted in the poll to give me the opportunity for this interview, and especially to COACH BUCKS for being patient and sticking out through my fucked up schedule to continue the interview.





Thanks to the Ghost Spy for being a part of the COACHS CORNER and more importantly thanks again to everyone who participated in this 2nd edition and actually spent the time to read the interview. I'm cutting off certain people in the strawpoll going into #3. Feel free to nominate who you want to see. The deadline for nominations will end tommorow evening when I get off work.

Feel free to post suggestions, critiques, hate etc. I'll read it and put it in consideration. Thank you to my PI dave aka chad420 and odb for the suggestions. Also suggest what colour text I should have, I'm not sure what colour is easiest to read.

Please let me interview someone off of anime hours I have work in the morning.