All-Star Team! Start!
Chapter 1: The All-God Roster! Launch!
[This text contains a high concentration of memes. Brothers who understand are encouraged to communicate more in the comments to lower the reading barrier for brothers who usually pay less attention to matches and esports circle events. I won't make too many explanations in the text to pad word count, thanks a lot~~~]
As S15 ended, Faker took another title with calm ease.
To League of Legends, a god was ultimately a god and never changed.
But to the LPL, this was practically a disaster, a disaster sufficient to cause the entire LPL to perish.
In the TJ Sports conference room, the general manager sat high in the main seat, his face gloomy and his expression hesitant.
"Whoever has a way, just speak up! Every year we play like this, where will the hype come from next year! Is our LPL still going to run next year or not! If not, pull the funding and use it to give raises to the players in the neighboring gold-medal region!"
Everyone spoke enthusiastically, pooling their wisdom and engaging in fierce discussion for two and a half hours before finally summarizing a few methods.
1. Buy out Faker.
Reason: the LCK lost their god, the LPL welcomed its own god. According to relativity, the enemy is weakened while I am strengthened, which equals directly winning the championship.
Someone below muttered softly, "Isn't the god of the LCK Teacher Chovy? Faker is the god of Worlds~," but no one cared.
Problem: Faker can't be bought, it's not a question of how much money you spend.
2. Continue investing in the LPL team with the most championship potential—BLG, who returned after exiting in the S16 top sixteen.
Reason: Faker and Chovy are still somewhat afraid of Knight, my brother Bin can refresh his "greatest top laner in history" status every day, and he is invincible and powerful. We only need to kick out Elk, who performed the worst last season, bring Xun back, and it's still a Galacticos roster!
Problem: S16 might truly be the last year of the LPL, and gambling the final year on the KTV brothers will probably result in the consequence of remaining pure and untainted?
3. Continue generating hype, the S15 all-god roster wasn't godlike enough! Since it's called an all-god roster, you have to pull in the people with the highest hype!
Reason: viewers care about championships, but fans are willing to pay for their idols. Moreover, as long as high-hype players appear, haters, stans, and trolls are all in place, the hype builds up, and the singles increase, the effect is extremely obvious.
Then generate hype. It doesn't matter if you can't beat people, as long as you can make money, none of it is a problem.
Who has high hype?
If there's a dog choose the dog, if no dog find a pig, if no pig look for TheShy, if no TheShy check out JackeyLove, if no JackeyLove look for Rookie, if no Rookie then look at Ning and Baolan...
"Then IG, you guys assemble an all-god roster next year." The TJ Sports general manager discussed this with the IG boss and manager.
"Uh... TheShy and Rookie are both easy to talk to, we are already in contact with Uzi, but Clearlove probably can't play anymore now... As for Ning, if he's put in the same team as Uzi, I'm afraid they'll start fighting." The IG manager said submissively.
"Eh? Can they really start fighting? Then we won't consider Clearlove, it'll just be Ning! Regardless of whether they have any competitiveness, could it be any worse than now? Anyway, people have already said you guys are just here for traffic, and you can't even handle traffic?"
"That works too... Then for the support position..."
"Why not bring JackeyLove in to play support? Didn't the two of them frequently duo queue back in the day? JackeyLove was also a 100% win-rate support back then!"
"That won't do..."
"Why won't it do?"
"Juggernaut tightly binds his remaining life to Top Esports..."
"Are you starting to sing now, then find Ming back, the Dog-Consort thing probably wasn't just talk."
"I think we should find a rookie for the support position..."
"Oh? Why?"
"To take the blame. This team doesn't have much competitiveness, when they lose someone always has to take the blame and get cursed at, otherwise where will the fans' emotions find an outlet?"
"Eh... You kid really have a knack for driving traffic! Do you have a recommended candidate?"
"Heh heh, I happen to have a guy here. This kid is from the RNG secondary league, and his contract has always been locked down. Now that RNG is disbanded, don't you think we can sign this kid?"
"What advantages does he have?"
"Good mentality! And he's cheap!"
"Oh? What else?"
"His skill is also exceptionally good!"
"What's his Korean server rank? Bring his rank history and let me see."
"Uh... He messed with Faker's mentality during Korean server ranked, got reported and banned, and is currently playing on Summoner's Rift."
"..."
"This is his rank history." The manager opened the rank history and flatteringly handed over the computer.
""The Wharf Explodes and Chickens Jump and Dogs Leap"... This ID... Why do I read it a bit... and it flows quite smoothly..., I understand 'wharf', I also get 'chicken', but why does 'dog' appear here?"
The manager awkwardly scratched his head and said with some embarrassment:
"There's no help for it. The moment we made contact with Uzi, the news leaked out. But this kid's skills, macro awareness, and everything else are fine; he just loves making trouble too much and frequently takes joy in messing with people's mentalities, which is why he was kept on ice all this time and never had the chance to play."
"No... Just from this name I know this guy is a genius, and what we need is this kind of show-generating genius. It's him!"
"Alrighty! I'll go negotiate right now!"
In the dim basement, Lin Heng, who was slurping instant noodles, suddenly felt a chill down his spine and sneezed.
"What the hell, who's bad-mouthing me behind my back again."
Looking at the half-slurped instant noodles in his hand, Lin Heng felt deep bitterness in his heart and complained:
"That damn system was all your fault! You wouldn't let me just play the game properly. You had to make me mess with my teammates' and opponents' mental states to get stronger. The good news: I got stronger! The bad news: I got myself fired!"
Streaming didn't make any money these days, and boosting accounts would ruin his career. He was suffering.
"Ugh~ The transfer window's almost over, too. Is my career about to end as well~? I did this to myself~"
Just as Lin Heng was feeling sorry for himself, the phone lying beside him suddenly rang.
"Hello~ State your business, or leave the court~"
"..."
"Hello, is this Lin Heng?"
"Yeah. Who's this?"
"I'm the owner of IG. I wanted to ask about your plans for next year. Would you be interested in coming to IG for a tryout as a support?"
Lin Heng had been slouching in his gaming chair, but he suddenly sat up straight. A job had come knocking.
"Oh!~ You should've said so earlier, Brother Zhang! Come on, I'm an amazing support. You came to the right guy~"
"It's hard to explain over the phone. Where are you? I'll send you the address. Come for a tryout tomorrow."
"Sure, send it over. And remember to reimburse me 50 yuan for the ride~"
"..."
After hanging up, Lin Heng helplessly smacked his own mouth.
"Dammit, I'm so used to memeing, I just can't help myself!"
A job had come knocking. If he wanted to have food on the table next year, he had to seize this opportunity.
He'd been playing League of Legends since he was ten. Now, ten years had passed, and he still dreamed of lifting the Summoner's Cup.
So even though he knew full well how famous the Royal Never Give Up club was, he had still chosen to join its second team at seventeen, just to break into the professional scene.
But despite having the skill, a few teammates had such poor mental fortitude that they couldn't take his antics, leaving him with barely any matches to play over the past few years.
This year, Royal Never Give Up announced it was completely withdrawing from the League of Legends scene, and he became a free agent once more.
He'd planned to make a new account on the Korean server next year and climb into the top few spots, hoping someone would come looking for him.
Gold would always shine, Lin Heng told himself, brainwashing himself.
He opened the system panel. Its bright red interface appeared before his eyes.
Host: Lin Heng Mechanics: 90 Game Sense: 90 Teamfighting: 90 Mental Fortitude: 100 Awareness: 90 Champion Pool: 100
Looking at the stats before him, Lin Heng nodded with satisfaction. Even though the damn system's missions had cost him his Korean server account,
looking at this panel, Lin Heng felt it had all been worth it!
LPL~ I'm coming~