Velocity Gaming, one of India’s leading Esports organizations, recently announced the addition of two world-renowned Valorant players, Adam “ec1s” Eccles and Domagoj “Doma” Fancev, to their active roster. This move comes as a significant boost to the Indian Esports community and the Velocity Gaming squad.
In this exclusive interview with TalkEsport, Mr Manoj Kashyap aka VLT Sentinel, the Owner of Velocity Gaming, discusses the team’s journey in the South Asia VCL tournament, their motivation, and the challenges they face.
TE: What do you think are the biggest challenges your team will face during this tournament?
VLT Sentinel: Lack of practice mostly as we took time to finalize our imports. We don’t have enough practice time to build a good foundation on maps and agent pools.
Velocity Gaming debuted with their new roster at the VCL and defeated God’s Reign in their opener. India’s leading Esports organizations had earlier announced the addition of two world-renowned Valorant players, Adam “ec1s” Eccles and Domagoj “Doma” Fancev, to their active roster. This move comes as a significant boost to the Indian Esports community and the Velocity Gaming squad.
Q : Who do you think are the strongest teams in this tournament, and how do you plan to beat them?
VLT Sentinel: OG, GR, RGE, I mean teams at this level would not be easy opponents, we have never focused on building on something for 1 particular team it was always a plan to win the entire series. Just stick to the basics, focus on communication and trust your instincts.
Q. Can you contrast VLT’s previous iteration with the current one? What do ec1s and Doma bring to the table that previous rosters failed to..
VLT Sentinel: I would say loads of experience and calmness overall, both of them played valorant at the highest level possible and played amongst the top 5 teams in the world so the experience they bring and the different thought processes they bring to the table is unmatched.
Adam “ec1s” Eccles, along with Domagoj “Doma” Fancev, who is a veteran In-Game Leader (IGL) has competed for elite international teams such as Team Liquid, Ninjas in Pyjamas, and 100 Thieves.
Q. What role does Amaterasu play going forward?
VLT Sentinel: Anuj is currently recovering from a serious back injury. I am sure he has a lot of valorant left in him. We will try and accommodate him to the best of our ability once he’s fully recovered. For now, he’s helping our coach DAV and IGL ec1s with the information he has regarding our region,play style etc.
Q. A plethora of Indian teams are turning their heads to International players, will that trend hold up
VLT Sentinel: It’s not easy to fund and run INT’L players for the long term, PC esports itself is difficult to monetise plus the INTL players cost more than our local talent so it’s definitely a money problem more than anything, that being said to achieve the larger goal we don’t see a way around this other than to invest in them.
Q. What’s the team motivation going into VCL? How have things shaped so far with the new roster?
VLT Sentinel: Motivation obviously is to join GE on the main stage and hopefully relieve VAL CLASSICO on the VCT PACIFIC level, it’s a long way out but this is where anyone has to start looking at all the other teams invest so much into this ecosystem where 3 years back where we sadly had 10 teams is really encouraging for me. Coming to my new line it’s been really good so far both players were able to adjust to Indian conditions quickly so looking good so far.
Q. How different is it for Indian players to play with International members than a full Indian roster? Were there any issues highlighting language barriers?
VLT Sentinel: Communication is a major part of FPS games and in clutch situations, you tend to speak your mother tongue. To come out of that and talk in English was not easy but my players put in the hard work needed.
Q. If you were to talk about scrims and other practice factors, how efficient would you rate your team on a scale of 1-10?
VLT Sentinel: Scrims would be 7/10, and other practice fronts would be 9/10. The idea is to get them both to be a 10/10. It’s a work in progress.
Q. Unfortunately, VLT didn’t make it to the franchising, how did you all take it from there all the way to playing your first match in VCL?
VLT Sentinel: Riot had a very comprehensive selection process, I knew it would be difficult for VLT from day 1 itself when I looked at the RFP.so to be honest we were kinda prepared for it but all we wanted to know the road map to franchising if we did not get selected and now that we know we are super excited for VCL.
Velocity won their VCL opener against God’s Reign and will play True Rippers in their next match of Group A. The top 3 from every group move on to the playoffs while the bottom 3 are eliminated from the VCL Split 1.
