Chapter 14: Battle for the Strongest King

Half an hour later, the fourth match arrived as scheduled.

Still encountering no familiar faces, the fourth round was easier to play than the previous three; luck had favored him with an opponent who had already secured a perfect 3-0 record and completely lost their fighting spirit.

Several high-rank players who had originally been full of confidence intended to bet on their dreams and form a team to conquer the professional circuit.

Who would have thought that at the doorstep of the LPL, before even seeing what lay inside, they were beaten relentlessly one after another; with bruised faces and swollen noses, their professional dreams had long been lost in some corner, and now the only motivation sustaining them was probably not wanting to end their conquest journey with a clean sweep.

After all, they were all top-tier masters from their respective servers—they had to save face!

Unfortunately, in the fourth match, they very unluckily encountered Jiang Ming's NXG.

At 17 minutes, NXG once again secured their fourth victory with a crushing momentum, locking in their qualification for next January's LPL preseason.

Just at this moment, Jiang Ming looked at a message privately sent to his phone by the head of his own streaming platform.

"Riot will update the ladder ranking system tonight; the new season will introduce a completely new ranked system."

Ranked system!

Jiang Ming's eyes lit up; the battle for the strongest king across all major platforms, and also the opportunity for him to negotiate cooperation with the YY platform, had finally arrived.

Accompanying Season 3, the first change closely related to players was that the tier ranking system replaced the ELO ladder score system, which is the bronze and silver tier division system most familiar to players in later generations.

The existing rank points were transformed into hidden points, as players called them.

Bronze, Bai Yin, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and King—six tiers in total; except for King, each tier is divided into five sub-levels, and reaching one hundred victory points at each level triggers a promotion series, which is divided into BO3 small-tier promotions and BO5 large-tier promotions.

As for the King tier, it is the title held by the top fifty players in victory points on each server after reaching Diamond One.

Regarding Riot's reform of the ladder score system, Jiang Ming considered it a very wise decision.

In the past, ELO score fluctuations often brought frustration to players playing ranked matches, which was detrimental to low-rank players maintaining activity.

After changing to tiers, high-rank players have the pursuit of the strongest king, while low-rank players have the goal of the Gold tier seasonal skin.

This could greatly enhance players' game activity.

In the previous life, once the tier system was released, it sparked a terrifying wave among players of staying up all night to rush high tiers, or even female players reaching Diamond in one night.

Of course, the tier system was not perfect; the promotion series mechanism was considered to increase randomness for a long time, with some players complaining about the "tier-locked" phenomenon, as well as the resulting issues of boosting and throwing.

Not to mention the future, right now many video UP owners openly advertise boosting shops in their online stores.

It was just that Jiang Ming's ambition did not lie in making quick money riding the "Western Great Development" wave of LOL at this stage; otherwise, under the title of the top ladder player of the national server, attaching a link to a boosting shop would leave no one else qualified to compete with him.

Jiang Ming knew very well that boosting was something he could not touch; although the rules did not explicitly prohibit it now, once you got involved, it would explode like a bomb when you reached a certain position in the esports field in the future.

"But does YY sending this to me mean they are preparing to join the competition?"

Jiang Ming had some guesses in his heart; it seemed the wind stirred by the wings of his little butterfly had indeed brought some changes.

In the original world trajectory, YY would not reorganize into a certain Shark TV until 2014, lagging behind the neighboring certain Shark TV by one year; moreover, that certain Shark TV had made extensive use of the LOL boom in 2013 to sign up LOL streamers in large numbers, even setting a huge prize for the number one King of the national server, seizing a huge amount of market share, so that for a long time, before that certain Shark TV dug its own grave, the certain Shark TV that missed this wave of game player growth had always been stuck in the position of eternal number two.

Just as he was thinking, the phone call marked as the YY head came through on his mobile.

"Hi JM, am I disturbing you?" a cheerful laugh from a middle-aged man came from the other end of the phone.

Jiang Ming walked slowly to his computer and sat down, smiling: "No disturbance, but I'm curious, Brother Xu, is there something urgent keeping you working late tonight?"

Urgent?

Of course it was urgent.

On the other end, Xu Tao pulled at the corners of his mouth; if he didn't call you tonight, by the time the LOL tier update happened at dawn, your JM ID would probably be carrying the prefix of another streaming platform.

The announcement of the tier update, ordinary players might have just found out recently, but Xu Tao knew that for a top player like JM, there must have been news long ago; the other party's lack of reaction during this period was entirely waiting to see if YY had any corresponding moves.

"Highly educated streamers are hard to deal with..."

Xu Tao felt somewhat depressed, but he still explained YY platform's next plan to Jiang Ming over the phone.

"Brother Xu's meaning is that the YY platform is preparing to increase promotional resource investment in the LOL section, wanting to use the LOL tier update as an entry point to create a strongest king tier summit event with prize money, right?"

"Yes, that's correct; as long as the game ID prefix is added with our YY Stream, you can apply to participate in the event."

"What do you need me to do?" Jiang Ming got straight to the point.

What do you need me to do?

Big brother, you're asking a question you already know the answer to.

Xu Tao was helpless; do you think it's easier for a top player with full game understanding and superior personal skills to get the first King and the title of King number one in front of other platforms, or to expect ordinary streamers recruited now to have more hope?

Currently, the entire YY platform has no one with a higher ladder score than JM.

Complaints aside, Xu Tao knew the other party was asking their platform to offer corresponding conditions.

"JM!" Xu Tao weighed his tone and said, "The platform's cooperation with you recently has been very pleasant, and we also hope we can continue; there is something I can reveal to you in advance: in the second half of the year, the platform will undergo reorganization and upgrade optimization; at that time, for head streamers like you, the platform will provide huge resource support..."

"Mm."

Keep talking, I'm listening; put the big pie aside to bake for now.

"So before the reorganization, the platform needs to seize the traffic brought by this wave of League of Legends tier reform; we hope you can add the platform prefix to your ID and obtain the title of the first strongest king of the national server!"

"Regarding conditions, becoming the first King on the entire server comes with a platform reward of thirty thousand yuan; reaching the summit of Zone One separately rewards another fifty thousand!"

"In addition, after completing the summit task, we will change your live room gift split to 40-60 in your favor, and guarantee no fewer than four homepage recommendation resources during the summit push."

Xu Tao finished stating the conditions offered by the YY platform in one breath.