"We just got aim-diffed": Coach Zeus on Talon Esport's Fracture game against Team Secret in VCT Pacific 2023

VCT Pacific 2023 kicked off in Seoul on March 25, 2023. The first week saw some excellent matches between the best teams in the APAC region. The second match of Day 2 involved Team Secret from the Philippines and Talon Esports from Malaysia. The series lasted all three maps, starting off at Ascent where Team Secret won 13-5, then going to Icebox, where Talon secured a 13-8 victory. The series ended with an absolute washout, with the Filipino team absolutely dominating its opponent with respect to both aim and strategy.

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Multiple factors led to Fracture washout for Talon Esports against Team Secret at VCT Pacific 2023

While both teams seemed to outdo each other on the opponent's map pick in their opening series at VCT Pacific, they seemed to be on more or less equal footing when it came to aiming. In fact, on Icebox, the Thai team won by simply overwhelming its opponents with gunpowder, not letting the latter use its wide array of abilities.

However, when Sportskeeda asked coach Yuttanagorn "Zeus" Kaewkongyai about the misgivings in the game during the post-match scrum interview, he responded:

"We just got aim-diffed. We did not have the firepower to actually win the trades and the rounds. So yeah, that was the reason we lost."

Although it is possible for one to lose their footing from one game to another, this happening simultaneously to all five players of such caliber, and that too, to such a debilitating extent, is highly unlikely. So it is almost certain that there may have been other factors playing a significant role in the team getting overpowered.

The answer may be found in the conversation Sportskeeda had with Patiphan "Patt" Chaiwong. He believed that because of the amount of content that the team had to shoot, they had to sacrifice their practice time before their first VCT Pacific game. He added:

"In the five days, we only got to play 20-25 maps. We got very little scrims practice compared to Brazil."

Because of that, the side had to play the same Agent composition and strategy on Fracture as it did in VCT LOCK//IN, which could have been the reason behind it getting heavily counter-stratted.

While it is possibly a mix of both reasons as stated by Zeus as well as Patt, one cannot ignore the question that the latter raises for the overall health of the esports scene: whether content production at the cost of important practice hours is worth it at the end of the day.