That was not a lie. FV battle indeed had a full mock competition schedule with SUG and their own team. They had more than ten hours of training every day.
It was just that FV Team was not willing to change their training schedule and play against these European and American teams.
“Shall we go for a drink?” Ye Zhizhou suggested.
The others agreed readily and went to a small bar nearby which would stream the IOI International Finals live. They would drink and watch the competition. It was simply beautiful.
However, they did not notice a slightly bald Western man silently drinking his coffee while paying attention to FV Team’s situation in the corner of the resting area on the first floor of the hotel.
Eric looked at FV Team’s huge logistics team and fell into deep thought.
Some time ago, Eric’s failure to promote IOI’s local server had disappointed Dayak Corporation. Thus, they had Chrétien to be in charge of the operations of IOI’s local server.
The domestic market was too huge. No multinational company wanted to give up.
After taking over the position, Chrétien made a series of drastic changes, including modifying IOI’s gameplay, working with Long Yu Corporation, and so on. At the very least, the momentum had started even though it was hard to say if he had succeeded or failed at the moment.
Thus, in the eyes of the upper echelons of Dayak Corporation, their trust in Chrétien was unprecedentedly firm.
That made the situation very difficult for Eric.
He was also one of Dayak Corporation’s senior executives. It was impossible for him to be demoted all the way. His rice bowl and position in the company would be preserved no matter what.
However, those who were able to climb to such a position were all ambitious. Eric saw Chrétien doing better in his previous position. It must be very difficult for him to accept.
Eric did not give up. Instead, he chose to lie low and watch the battle between GOG and IOI quietly while waiting for an opportunity to strike.
The situation seemed to be very passive for Eric. In the eyes of the outside world, he had no possibility of turning the situation around, however, Eric himself did not think so.
That was because before he returned to Los Angeles, he had seriously and deeply investigated Tengda’s various methods of promoting GOG. He had even spoken to Boss Pei once.
Eric knew very well that Chrétien could not succeed even though he was doing very well now.
That was because he had no idea how scary Boss Pei was.
Eric knew very well that the methods that Chrétien was using now, including changing the game, organizing the competition, and so on, had all been used by Boss Pei. How could you succeed using Boss Pei’s methods to deal with Boss Pei?
Obviously, Boss Pei’s counterattack had already begun unknowingly. FV battle team was the way Boss Pei found to break out of the situation.
From the qualifiers of domestic IOI to the series of “performances” by FV teams in the international competition, Boss Pei’s presence was vaguely felt. However, Eric did not intend to tell Chrétien or the higher-ups of Dayak Corporation about his judgment.
Eric’s own interests were far greater than the interests of Finger Games. If he handed over the precious information now, he would not be able to obtain the biggest bargaining chip for himself, and it might not be accepted.
Eric sipped his coffee and got up to leave.
The second round of confrontation between Dayak Corporation and Tengda Corporation should be done after IOI’s global finals ends this time.
…
At the same time, in Jingzhou…
Pei Qian had already woken up. He ate his breakfast while waiting for IOI’s global finals to begin.
The competition time was much friendlier to domestic players after entering the semifinals and finals. They only played one BO5 a day after all and would have more flexibility to arrange the timing.
“The opponent in the semifinals looks quite fierce. They should be of some use, right?”
“It’s not too much for you to win a small game against FV Team, right?”
Pei Qian felt an inexplicable sense of anticipation.
There was still some time before the competition began. The screen was still playing the FV and the opponent’s exciting performance in the top eight.
Pei Qian ate his breakfast as he read the bullet screen comments in the live-stream.
“FV, charge! All the best!”
“I don’t need you to improve anymore. Just stay where you are in the quarterfinals. Give me another 3-0!”
“Come on, come on, come on!”
However, even at the critical moment before the start of the foreign war, there were still haters who kept causing trouble and continued to spam words like “GOG is entertaining itself”.
Pei Qian could not help but feel emotional. These fake reviewers were quite professional. Long Yu Corporation must have spent a lot of money on them.
Of course, some people might not be fake reviewers but pure haters.
However, the fake reviewers were paid to do things, and the haters were not paid to do so yet they poured their hearts out. That was very puzzling.
Pei Qian had just taken a sip of his drink when he suddenly saw a bullet screen. He nearly spat out all the drinks in his mouth.
“Flamers, stop arguing. If you want to fight, fight with the bickering Machine!”
“AEEIS Fully-Automated Bickering Machine will satisfy all your requests for bickering!”
“The Bickering Machine is fun. I suggest that the haters get one each.”
“There are still so many people who have been caught by the haters? Too inexperienced. Buy a Bickering Machine to train your mentality. After you’re done with the Bickering Machine, you’ll think that the haters’ rankings are too low. They’re not worth a fight!”
Pei Qian was dumbfounded as he watched the bullet screen change direction for no reason.
“What’s going on? Why did the topic change to the bickering machine?”
“There wasn’t much sales volume when I looked at it last Friday, wasn’t it?”
For the past two days, Pei Qian had been busy checking on the work situation of the various departments. He had not been concerned about the bickering machine. In the end, he had been careless and something had happened!
He quickly took his cell phone and opened the shopping center to check. He realized that more than three hundred of them were sold on the phone’s Shopping Mall application!
What’s more, this was only the volume that OTTO cell phone owners were buying. The Fully-Automated Intelligent Bickering Machine was also being sold on other shopping platforms. The official website of OTTO Technologies was also selling it. If all of these were added together, the sales would be very impressive!
“Could it be that Chang You did not listen to me or did he publicize it?”
Pei Qian quickly checked the internet but could not find any advertisements for the Fully-Automated Bickering Machine.
“This is strange. It seems to be getting popular for no reason. What’s more, it seems to be coming from the game forum?”
“F*ck! Old Qiao!”
Pei Qian finally found Qiao Liang’s Weibo post after searching for a long time. He gritted his teeth in anger.
However, after taking a closer look at the comments and reposts of the Weibo post, he realized that it wasn’t very high.
Obviously, Qiao Liang had been adding fuel to the fire in the Fully-Automated Bickering Machine, but that was not the main reason.
This thing seemed to have gained popular naturally. There were no obvious broadcasting nodes, but everyone seemed to be particularly convinced by it.
Pei Qian was completely confused as well. He really could not understand why everyone liked this crap.
The competition officially began in Pei Qian’s confusion.
The two commentators were also in peak condition. They tried their best to live
n up the atmosphere in the venue and praised FV team generously.
IOI officials might not like FV Team but they were the only team left from the country after all. Were they to brag about foreign teams if not about FV? That would definitely not be appropriate.
Pei Qian could only comfort himself. “It’s alright. You guys do your best. Try your best to make FV Team suffer…”
The competition quickly entered the BP page.
On FV team’s side, Coach Old Zhou was holding a small notebook, his expression relaxed and indifferent. The players were also chatting and laughing, looking like they were not under any pressure.
The mentality before the competition was very important. It was important to be serious but if they were too tense, it might cause the players to be restrained and perform badly.
What’s more, FV team had already made ample preparations in terms of tactics. The members were also in high spirits, so of course they were filled with confidence.
On the other hand, his opponent was also brimming with confidence.
That was especially so for the other team’s coach. He stood behind the team members with a small notebook in his hand, looking like he was in high spirits and devising strategies.
The coach looked to be in his early thirties. His beard was neatly trimmed, and he was dressed in a suit and leather shoes. He looked very reliable.
Pei Qian heaved a sigh of relief. They were already in the semifinals; there were indeed no weak teams.
The top eight matches had been played a week ago. The other party must have repeatedly studied the competition recordings and found a way to deal with FV Team.
Everything was normal in the Banning segment. The opponent had eliminated the hero that FV Team performed well in the top eight. It was FV Team’s turn to choose first.
Then, FV Team chose a hero with zero appearance in the international competition.
The camera panned to the other coach. The confident coach’s expression changed from confidence to suspicion and confusion.
He looked at the game screen in disbelief and almost thought that he had seen wrongly.
Then, he began to communicate with his team members.
Even though he spoke in English and the contents of the exchange were not released, the audience could roughly imagine what he was saying.
“Can you defeat this hero?”
“What skills does it possess?”
“This should be targeted at popular heroes, which is it targeted at…”
The coach was confused. He did not understand why FV wanted to snatch this hero. What’s more, he had never fought with this hero in the mock competition!
The opposing team obviously did not manage to figure it out as the time for selecting heroes passed. In the end, they chose two versions of the powerful heroes that they thought were the best and were most familiar with in terms of tactics.
However, this seemed to be exactly what FV Team wanted. Old Zhou got his team members to lock down two more heroes, specifically targeting the tactics that the opponents were good at without any hesitation!
This One Second Lock produced a strong psychological deterrent effect.
One side considered it over and over again, and only locked the hero when the time was up. The other side did not hesitate to lock the hero in seconds, the winner was obvious.
Pei Qian sighed melancholically, deeply worried about the other team’s fate.
Chapter 819 - FV’s Tactical Reserve
Three hours later.
“Let us congratulate FV team for the crushing victory of 3: 0 and successfully entering the finals!”
“In a situation where the domestic teams are unanimously pessimistic, FV Team has relied on their extraordinary performance and bottomless tactical reserves to surprise us time and time again. I believe that they will be able to perform as well as they did today on the finals stage next week…”
“Please take a break and don’t leave. FV team members will be interviewed later.”
The two commentators who were broadcasting in the country were very excited. After they finished explaining FV Team’s final 3-0 score, they felt that one of the commentators was almost out of breath. They could not help but want to give him an oxygen tank.
However, this was understandable because FV team played too well!
The pressure from the snowball was too suffocating!
Previously, many people were still worried that FV team was able to achieve 3-0 in the top eight because their opponents were too lousy.
The team in the top eight was also a Western team. While they had won in the group stages, BO3 and BO5 were two different games. Many people suspected that their opponents in the group stages might have been too weak?
However, after the semifinals, no one discussed the strength of the opponents anymore. That was because there would definitely not be any weak teams in the semifinals!
This time, FV’s opponent had also been baptized in the top eight competitions. Even though the opponents entered the top four with a 3: 1, no one doubted their strength.
On the other hand, FV team had ended the battle with a clean 3: 0. They had not lost a single small battle until the finals. This was enough to prove that their strong dominance had begun to show!
There were already people discussing FV Team’s “champion look”.
Pei Qian looked at the bullet screen filled with comments like a party. He looked at the unprecedentedly high popularity of the live-stream, which was at least two or three times more than the group stages. His feelings were very complicated.
Logically speaking, every e-sports enthusiast should be celebrating the fact that domestic teams in the e-sports field had won against foreign teams and entered the finals.
As an E-Sports enthusiast who unconditionally supported domestic teams, Pei Qian should also have had such a mentality.
However, Pei Qian could not feel happy at the thought that he had shares in FV Team.
FV team was in danger now. Pei Qian could foresee that even if FV team lost the finals, as long as they did not lose too badly, they could still become IOI’s number one team in the country after returning to China!
Most people thought that the runner-up was the biggest loser in eSports but there were prerequisites and context to this.
The key was still the audience’s expectations. If the audience felt that there was hope for winning the championship and ended up with a runner-up, they would definitely curse. However, if the audience felt that it was difficult to qualify for the group stages and finally won a runner-up, that would far exceed their expectations!
It was mainly because the other two teams were good green leaves that they were eliminated in the group stages. That greatly lowered the expectations of the audience and gave FV team a wider stage.
After the exciting scenes of the competition, the screen switched to the interview booth. The official host and translator of Finger Games was ready. The target of this interview was FV Team’s captain, Pan Ying.
There were interviews after winning the quarterfinals. However, the host of Finger Games and the members who were interviewed were obviously not well-prepared, especially the host. She might not have expected FV to win.
Thus, the interviews were all very conventional questions. They did not have much effect on the program and did not have much impact.
The host had obviously come prepared this time.
After a simple introduction and greeting the audience, the interview officially began.
Host: “We saw that in the two competitions, you have defeated your opponents cleanly with a score of 3: 0. May I ask if you are surprised by this ending? After all, your opponents are also very strong teams. What are your own estimates before the competition begun?”
Pan Ying was still the same as before. He was silent and did not look too excited. After listening to the translation seriously, he said into the microphone, “It’s not surprising. The estimate was 3: 0.”
The host
was a little surprised. “Are you that confident? As far as I know, there are usually two styles to the battle team’s tactics: one is the pre-prepared type, which is to study a few systems and consider all unexpected situations in the competition in advance, so that the competition will always develop according to their own tactics; the other is the improvised type, the coach will care more about the player’s state, choose the best heroes for the celebrity players, and make some changes on the spot. May I ask which FV team is more inclined to?”
Pan Ying said, “99% of the time it would be the first situation.”
Host: “That means everything that happened in these two competitions was actually part of your plan, right?”
Pan Ying nodded. “Yes.”
The host was even more surprised. “Has the team coach never acted according to the team’s condition and lineup?”
Pan Ying thought for a moment and said, “Coincidentally, the other party’s performance was all within our team’s expectations, so there’s no need to improvise.”
The host continued to ask, “FV team has used 22 different heroes in these six small competitions. Is this part of the plan?”
Pan Ying nodded. “Yes.”
Host: “Is this all of FV Team’s tactics? Or are there still many tactics that have not been used? Will you consider using new tactics in the finals?”
Pan Ying: “Let’s see how it goes.”
The emcee smiled awkwardly. Pan Ying was like an interview black hole. He would answer in short responses so the interview was rather strenuous.
However, she was an official host after all and she had to continue to be professional. Finally, the interview was almost done. The host said, “One last question. Choose someone who has always supported you. Tell him something.”
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