Chapter 190: Global Ban-Pick

After the annual awards ceremony, there was originally the Demacia Cup as the final tournament of the year, which also served as a "litmus test" for new rosters.

Several strong teams, including V5, BLG, WBG, and TES, all released news that they were preparing to field their full starting lineups.

Furthermore, this Demacia Cup could be called a historic "reform," as it adopted the "Global Ban-Pick" mode alongside the LCK region's KeSPA Cup, making it the most highly anticipated Demacia Cup yet.

Speaking of "Global Ban-Pick," this is actually not uncommon in other MOBA competitions.

To summarize simply: "In a best-of-three or best-of-five series, once a champion is picked by either side, it is automatically disabled for the remainder of the series and cannot be used again."

For example.

If a player picks Aatrox in the first game, the system will automatically disable it for the second game, meaning no one can use it, and it does not need to occupy a ban slot.

If a best-of-five goes the distance—in a single series, there will be at least 50 different champions!

Compared to the present, where a best-of-five series often sees the same dozen champions being picked over and over, this directly increases the possibilities by five or six times!

Whether in terms of viewing experience or imaginative potential, there will be a world of difference.

Just look at the S12 stage.

Top lane Aatrox and Gnar, jungle Sejuani, Viego, and Maokai, mid lane Azir, Akali, and Sylas, bot lane Aphelios, Jinx, and Sivir, support Yuumi and Renata.

Even a viewer picking champions from the chat could draft a team!

Truth be told, Riot had this idea long ago; after all, there are plenty of "successful examples from other games" to learn from, and it is clearly capable of increasing the watchability of the tournament.

However, rashly reforming a traditional tournament structure that has existed for twelve years is definitely a highly risky challenge.

It means the unknown for the officials, the players, and the audience alike.

But the push for this reform actually started with the LCK region!

The management of the LCK league was suffering.

From the S8 season to this year's S12 season, the neighbors had won four titles in five years, and the entire region was shrouded in a massive gloom from top to bottom!

DWG finally managed to win one back in S10, and the LCK took the opportunity to push for "franchising," which was equivalent to officially transitioning to "commercial operation," leading to an extreme focus on metrics like viewership.

But this year's crushing defeat has already caused a clear shockwave within the region!

Many voices appeared on major Korean forums: saying that not even a dog would watch the new LCK season!

The problem is that the overall strength of a region and so-called genius players cannot be conjured out of thin air overnight.

Championships are not a result that anyone can control.

————So, is there any other way to increase "viewership"?

There is.

The league management thought of this: the "increase tournament watchability" tactic!

If the matches are good enough, people will naturally watch; that is certain.

Thus, the management quickly took the initiative to apply to the officials, wanting to use their own off-season KeSPA Cup to test the "Global Ban-Pick" format and see the response from the regional audience.

Riot was naturally very happy to oblige.

With the LCK willing to use itself as an experiment, even if the final response was poor, it wouldn't be the officials' fault.

And the LPL region heard about this.

As "arch-rivals," they were naturally unwilling to fall behind, immediately following suit and using their own equivalent Demacia Cup to conduct trials.

At the same time, the European and North American regions, also among the "Four Major Regions," were happy to watch the chaos; since these were secondary tournaments anyway, they treated it as a gimmick and immediately followed suit.

This move caused the secondary tournaments, which usually didn't receive much attention in major regions, to become extremely prominent and highly watched!

Unfortunately.

Because on December 8, 2022, the country officially announced the lifting of the three-year pandemic controls, entering an era of full reopening.

And it was during the first wave of concentrated outbreaks after the reopening that several LPL teams immediately reported that their entire rosters had been infected, including Top Esports, who had specifically returned home early from the Top 16 for safety reasons, and they were also all infected on the eve of the Demacia Cup.

V5, however, was perfectly fine.

But He Youjun was genuinely worried about these precious players on the team; once they got infected, it would inevitably affect the truly important Spring Split later on.

Finally, after communicating with the team members.

Everyone made a unanimous decision to skip the less important Demacia Cup.

For the V5 team, the only regret was not being able to test their lineup on the stage in advance————after all, no matter the tactics or lineup, only on the stage can the true level be verified.

Still, as the saying goes, scrims only have reference value.

As for Ye Bo's regret.

Aside from one less chance to compete for a trophy, he was actually quite interested in this "Global Ban-Pick."

Soon, the Demacia Cup and the KeSPA Cup began.

After a week of grueling battles.

In the end, 【BLG】, appearing with their full starting lineup, took the Demacia Cup championship.

The KeSPA Cup was won by 【HLE】, also appearing with their full starting lineup.

And the unexpected result was————the four major regions, almost without exception, reported positive feedback!

Except for a small number of traditionalists who didn't like change.

The vast majority of new and old viewers expressed unanimous praise for the "Global Ban-Pick" format!

The reason was simple: the audience only cares about the final result.

Indeed, it was just fun to watch.

In the secondary tournaments of the major regions, there even appeared extremely niche champions like top lane Olaf and Darius, jungle Rengar and Ivern, mid lane Zed and Talon, and so on!

Isn't this much better than 8 out of 10 games being Jinx versus Aphelios?

And if it were the traditional format, these niche champions would have no chance to appear unless they received some massive meta buff.

Only under this format is everything possible.

Riot officials were very surprised by the feedback they received.

But Riot also quickly realized that perhaps this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for reform!

After all, the result was exactly what they wanted to see.

The design team makes so many back-and-forth adjustments every year, and the ultimate goal is to get more champions onto the stage.

There is even a "KPI indicator" within Riot————using the number of champions picked at the annual World Championship to help evaluate the balance team's annual performance.

Finally.

After overnight discussions by Riot's top management, a conclusion was reached.

On the second night after the Demacia Cup and KeSPA Cup ended, Riot Games released an official announcement on their official media accounts in each region:

【Riot Games: For a Brighter Future】

【We have received feedback from global viewers regarding the new rules in various regions and encourage all major regions to use the "Fearless Draft" mode during the Spring Split. We will continue to collect player feedback regarding whether to continue using it for international tournaments later this year.】

Once this announcement was issued, almost the entire League esports circle was shaken!

The netizens' reactions were also intense.

【Change! Is a good thing!】

【Holy crap! Farming! Farming is actually right!】

【The Demacia Cup was fun to watch, I support it. It would be best if it could be used at Worlds too. I've really been watching Azir versus Orianna for almost ten years.】

【I don't approve! The laws of the ancestors cannot be changed! You might as well go back to S3 and redo the double Zed battle in the fifth game.】

【Mixed feelings, I feel the professional players are under a bit of pressure. The biggest drawback should be that when it gets to the fourth or fifth game, there might be a lot of clown moments.】

【Dead weight players should get out! Damn, you make millions a year playing professionally, and you tell me you only know how to play three or four champions? I can only say if there are players eliminated by this format, they should have been gone long ago!】

The audience held their own opinions.

After all, it was previously just an experiment in secondary tournaments; no one knew what the effect would be in the hands of those strong teams in the top-tier professional leagues.

But for the professional players, this format was truly a case of "some are happy, some are sad."

Especially some famous "one-trick pony players."

It can only be said.

Only when the tide goes out do you know who has been swimming naked.

After the Demacia Cup, there was also the first "Weibo Cup," which used an "invitation system" to bring in major LPL teams to compete.

And it also used the Global Ban-Pick mode.

Since this tournament was an "online event," V5 was very willing to participate, wanting to use it for training.

But the Weibo Cup, as the name suggests————is a tournament hosted by the Weibo financial backers behind WBG.

And this tournament... actually didn't send an invitation to V5, which clearly had massive traffic!

Even when V5's operations staff took the initiative to ask about participating, they were politely told, "Sorry, the entry slots are full."

Of course, it wasn't just V5; JDG and TES were also not invited.

In the end, it was no surprise.

The newly rebuilt WBG team won the Weibo Cup championship!

WBG's only "opponent" in the Weibo Cup was BLG.

This year, WBG brought in former DWG and former T1 coach Daeny to be the head coach of this luxury battleship.

I have to say, at least in the Weibo Cup, they really did look like they had been reborn.

Daeny seemed to be at ease under the Global Ban-Pick format, frequently using clever strategies, battling BLG for five games, and finally winning to secure the trophy.

And this WBG team had the Incheon top and mid, plus the old V5 mid-jungle, and the bot lane of Gala and Liu Qingsong, the old RNG and FPX core...

The traffic was visibly explosive!

The Anti-League forum affectionately called this WBG team: 【The God Squad】.

It could almost be said that they were the team with traffic and attention in the new season that was on par with V5, and perhaps even higher!

This is also understandable.

After all, if one really had to name a "traffic-driving player" within the V5 team, at most there is only Ye Bo.

【This is our God-tier squad! Invincible!】

【Oh? You almost flipped over against a predetermined champion, and you still dare to call yourselves "invincible" when even those galaxy battleships don't dare to?】

【How bold! Who are you calling a random person invited off the street to compete!】

【Brother Bin, why have you already lost the solo tournament + team tournament + Weibo Cup before the Spring Split even started? Didn't the BB space say he was going to win the championship this year? Is he lying to us!】

【Don't spread malicious hate, isn't the Demacia Cup championship a championship?】

【Our God-tier squad is aiming for S13 this year. If BLG can play a 3-2 against our God-tier squad, with just a little adjustment, we at least have the strength of a runner-up, you know!】

【So noisy. Brother Bin said there's no need for adjustments at all; WBG is just hogging the global ban-pick advantage. Maybe there won't be global ban-pick by the time the World Championship patch hits! Let's see if we don't mess you up then!】

With the Weibo Cup over, the Spring Split officially enters the countdown.

All the team players have also started to get busy.

In addition to nervously preparing for this brand-new, subversive tournament format, they also need to cooperate with the officials for various promotional material shoots for the new season.

A thick competitive atmosphere has already begun to permeate.

And when it came time to shoot the promotional photos, many "invisible changes" began to manifest.

For an average player, two clicks and a few shots are usually enough.

But Ye Bo was stubbornly forced by the director to pose in over a dozen different ways, with separate requests to make "cold," "optimistic," "mocking," "smiling," and other expressions.

Anyone who didn't know better would think he was auditioning for an actor!

When it came to filming the promotional video, it was even more obvious that Tengjing intends to establish Ye Bo as the new generation benchmark for the region.

In almost every shot involving "more than three people," he is positioned in the center C-spot.

From the perspective of Tengjing's top management, this is only natural and follows the logical course of events.

Although old traffic-driving players like TheShy, Rookie, and JKL are still active, they are visibly at the end of their careers.

They are far from being as "full of future promise" as the just-turned-18 Ye Bo.

However, if one stands from the perspective of the fans of these old traffic-driving players.

They are becoming increasingly unhappy!

Isn't it just one championship?

My idol has one too! What's so amazing about that!

As it happens.

The schedule for the Spring Split has been officially announced—the first opening match is 【WBG vs. V5】!

Weibo, Tieba, and Xiaohongshu have been arguing for a week, giving sharp reviews on the tiers of each team for the new season.

This has also added quite a bit of heat to this match, which was already destined to be the center of attention.

【To be honest, V5 can at most be ranked third in the new season, right? Those signature picks of Ye Wen have absolutely no ban-pick advantage anymore!】

【Ranking third is no problem, but I want to ask, who exactly is ranked second and first—can you let their mid-laners come out and say something?】

【Knight, Rookie, Scout, Yagao, Xiaohu: "Damn it, can you fans stop bragging and dragging me into this? It's not you who's getting liquidated!"】

【Rational analysis: on paper, JDG, V5, and WBG are the first tier; BLG, TES, and LNG are the second tier; EDG is barely third tier? The rest are just pure trash!】

【Let you fanboys be smug for a while longer! Wait for the opening match, and we'll show you what a God-tier squad is!!!】

Regarding the upcoming Spring Split opening match and the brand-new tournament format.

The V5 members were not too nervous or anxious.

Top-laner Flandre was originally the first-generation scientific inventor, researching all kinds of technology, having even done so before TheShy.

As a veteran, "champion pool accumulation" has always been his strong suit.

The two young junglers go without saying; since there has always been huge competitive pressure, they are definitely more self-disciplined than anyone else when it comes to practicing.

And Ye Bo is the least resistant person to practicing new champions.

Although it is not hard to foresee that he will definitely be the biggest "targeted objective" in this tournament format in the future.

Ye Bo is still somewhat excited and expectant.

As for the bottom lane, Deft's situation is similar to Flandre's; it's hard to say if he has anything particularly invincible—but there are definitely no weaknesses in his champion pool!

The only one slightly uncomfortable is Beryl.

After all, this guy has always been known for "meditation training." Once this format is implemented, he must also increase his training volume to practice more champions.

But the most critical thing is still.

Up until now, this V5 lineup has not yet been verified by the competitive stage.

Including V5's supporters, and even the team members themselves, they are all somewhat unsure.

Except for Ye Bo.

He is as super confident as ever!

Simply because he firmly believes that their team is a very good team, and even if they are still in the adjustment period, they have already produced quite a bit of chemistry.

The eve of the opening match.

Ye Bo, having finished the last training match, stood up to pump up his teammates.

"Invincible, brothers! Let's play just like that!"

"The first MVP tomorrow treats us to a meal~~~"

Flandre leaned on his shoulder and teased with a smile: "Oh no, even the most steady Master Ye has started popping champagne. Why do I have a premonition that there are flags everywhere behind us?"

Xun, who is serving as the starter, jokingly raised his hand: "Uh, did you say what we're eating? If I treat you to something cheap, will I be bullied?"

"Don't worry, Master Ye treated us to Shaxian snacks for the first time! Clearlove ate three big bowls in a row!"

Deft watched everyone joking around, smiling gently as he leaned back against the chair to stretch the soreness in his waist.

He really likes the atmosphere of this team.

Everyone gets along happily, has a lot of fighting spirit, and has a strong sense of purpose.

Beryl, with dark circles under his eyes, wailed: "Tired! So tired! I haven't done my daily commissions for three days in a row... Ye Ni Jiu Si is a devil!"

Everyone returned to their respective rooms to rest.

Ye Bo glanced at the time; there were still a dozen minutes until twelve o'clock.

His consciousness submerged, still appearing on the dragon pit wall, which is also the place where he usually sits and daydreams with Akali.

On the bluestone-paved ground, Akali was swinging a kunai adorned with silver chains—she almost reflexively let go the moment she saw the figure appear!

"You're late today."

Before her voice had even faded, pink-white cloud leaves suddenly shook down from the tree beside them.

A girl wearing star-patterned pajamas hung upside down from a branch, the stardust falling from her hair tips shimmering. Just looking at her face, one could tell she was a mischievous spirit.

"Aiya!! You're finally here!"

She dangled her legs, stuck her tongue out at Akali behind her, and cried out with a drawn-out, strange tone: "Ninja sister's wooden-man game is suuuuper—boooo—ring!"

"The little troublemaker wants to review her hidden weapon lesson, does she?"

Akali threw out three shurikens, wanting to pin Zoe's bubble skirt hem.

Zoe, however, condensed the starlight dancing at her fingertips into a cotton-candy cloud, cleverly blocking them, and made a playful face at her.

Ye Bo walked over to Akali's side and sat down with his legs dangling.

Sniffing the faint violet-scented breeze and the warm breath that was vaguely drawing near, he enjoyed the rare leisure time.

Staying in the pot for a while seems to wash away the fatigue of a day's training and instantly fills him with motivation to move toward the goals ahead.

A sweet scent of cotton candy drifted from the right.

And suddenly, a pulling sensation came from both arms at the same time.

"Today you have to accompany me to practice the angle of the Portal Jump!!"

"The fourth form of the Shuriken Flip still has a force-exertion point that hasn't been corrected."

It seems it wasn't as harmonious as it looked.

Ye Bo had seen Akali staying in the pot alone, which was quite boring.

After some hesitation.

He ultimately chose to summon the second level-seven "Hero in the Pot": Aspect of Twilight - Zoe.

Now it seems that this little troublemaker has indeed brought a bit more vitality to the pot.

(End of chapter)