We caught up with Vici Gaming captain and support player Xu 'fy' Lin Sen for an interview, in it among the things we talked about are the aftermath of Bai 'rOtk' Fan's retirement, Black^'s future, fresh blood in the Chinese scenes and the role of the support.
The interview started off by talking about fy's awareness of how big his Western fan base is, following this, the interview moved on to ask about how fy was doing after rOtk's departure and his undertaking the role of the captain. fy says that "After rOtk's retirement, a lot of the pressure has been on me (as the captain) [...] but i think this is a good experience for me as i will probably need to do it in the future."
Regarding the in-game dynamics of Vici Gaming in relation other teams, fy says that he consults his teammates during the drafting stage and that when in game, decisions are made by the team as a whole. He adds that "before playing a match, they (VG) will analyze their opponents and decide on their first round of bans and picks [...] as for the rest of the picks he is the one who usually decides." Fy also compares the eastern and western drafting styles, stating that "in western drafters tend to be on their on in contrast to the eastern ones who get together as a team when drafting."
Moving on, fy talks about the lack of new core players. He feels that the "Chinese teams do not trust new players on a mid position as they treasure good tournament results in all tournaments." He also reveals that he thinks this is not optimal for the Chinese Dota scene and that the Chinese teams should learn to trust the newer players; saying that "teams should trust the new players and thus allowing them to grow as opposed to putting a 23 or 24 year old there (as they will retire soon)"
The next topic covered is the performance of the teams in the DAC, fy feels that it is surprising that there are only Big God and VG are in the top four. This is because as he say "playing against IG and LGD in scrims they seemed pretty solid, but in this tournament they did not perform well." As for Secret's performance, he mentions that "after going flawless in the group stages and losing to them (VG) in the brackets made Secret doubt themselves (resulting in a poor performance)."
Towards the end of the interview fy was asked about Black^'s future on the team, he says that "now that we are at the grand finals, i feel pretty lucky to have Black (on the team). This tournament he has been playing quite well."
Check out the full interview here:
Interview conducted by Sheever and camerawork by tniin
Editor's note: Some of the quotes by fy found in the article are not translated by the translator in the interview.
Headline image by ESL
More content on GosuGamers
