March 27th, morning.
As the fourth round of the tournament came to an end, the battle reports came out one after another.
The battle between Warring States and Trash Alliance was undoubtedly the focus of all the reports. As for the other seeded teams, they didn't get much attention because they managed to advance to the next round.
Of course, just like the previous rounds, when the new match-up list was announced at midnight the next day, everyone's attention was on the new match-up list.
…
There were a total of 1670 teams participating in the fifth round of the Tournament for the Best S3. For the first time since the start of the tournament, the number of teams participating in the tournament was even. In other words, there were no teams with a bye in this round. All the teams had to win to advance to the next round.
However, in this round, there weren't any 'focus battles'. The two strongest teams didn't encounter each other.
In fact, starting from this round, there weren't any clashes between the strongest teams in the five rounds. There weren't any upsets either.
These five rounds had turned into a carnival for the casual players.
Aside from the teams that were unfortunate enough to run into seeded teams, the battles between the gods of the game could be said to be brilliant and varied. Unlike the victories and defeats of the first-tier teams, the battles between normal players had a different flavor. For example, "low-level mistakes," "mistakes in coordination," "going with the wind into going against the wind," "strange tactics," "strange formations," "strange tactics against strange tactics," "strange formations against strange tactics," "strange formations against strange formations," "low-level mutual attacks against high-level mutual attacks," and other situations that could not be seen in professional matches were endless in the battles between casual players.
If the battles between the seeded teams were compared to the finals of the NBA, then this type of battle where 'all kinds of weird situations could happen' was like a 'mysterious battle' that you would see at a free street court on a weekend. On the stage of the finals, you would only see professional athletes, but on the street court, you could meet anyone. For example, there would be 'excuses', 'apology', 'awkward conversation', 'concave', 'fake cousin', 'player-coach', 'foul', 'don't pass', 'only shoot three-pointers despite being tall,' think you can do a slam dunk but can't ', and' mysterious old man 'that blew up the entire court. There would always be one type of person that you would meet, or it would be you.
But that was a bit off topic …
In short, this type of battle was also very interesting to watch.
…
If there was a book, it would be long; if there was no book, it would be short.
Although there weren't any important matches in these five rounds, the process of elimination still needed to be explained.
At the end of the fifth round, a total of 835 teams had advanced to the next round.
In the sixth round, because the number of teams had returned to an odd number, one team had a bye, and the remaining 834 teams were split into halves.
In the seventh round, 418 battle teams fought against each other. There were no byes.
In the eighth round, out of the 209 teams, one team had a bye, and the remaining 208 teams were eliminated by half.
In the ninth round, a total of 105 teams participated, and one team had a bye.
Just like that, by the tenth round of S3, there were a total of 53 teams left. Among them, teams made up of professional teams and casual players made up about 50% of the teams … and this was the situation that the Dream Company had hoped for when they set up the competition rules.
Even though the final champion of S3 had yet to be decided, from a business perspective, this competition's "no preliminaries, all random competition system" had already achieved unprecedented success.
Be it the player's participation rate, the popularity of related topics, or the direct or indirect income from both inside and outside the game … the data from every aspect was encouraging. So far, S3's user satisfaction and economic profit had surpassed S1 and S2's combined. The employees of the Dream Company could celebrate in advance.
Of course, the players did not care about that.
At this stage, the players' main concern was naturally which team would claim the top spot in S3.
…
On the 7th of April, on the day the tenth matchmaking list was announced, the Dream Company released an announcement on the official website without warning. "To celebrate the first anniversary of Thriller Paradise's open beta, from today onward, all RMB items in the online store will be on sale for seven days."
Everyone had seen promotions before, but this kind of 'surprise' promotion was rare. Before this, there were indeed players who were confused … Why didn't Thriller Paradise have a one year anniversary promotion? Could it be that the game company had forgotten about this?
In the end, the players were greeted with such a 'discount' drama. It was as if the game company was using a very perfunctory tone to tell the players, "There's nothing to celebrate on such a day, but since you still remember, I'll give you a discount for the time being."
The meaning was unclear …
…
At midnight on the 8th of April, the tenth round started.
Perhaps it was because there were no strong teams in the first five rounds, or perhaps it was because the number of teams was indeed too small.
In any case, due to some reasons based on probability that I did not understand, and I was too lazy to go into detail … in this tenth round, 'strong teams' came out like a geyser.
First, the Trash Alliance went up against Hyotei. Yes, the Hyotei Grooming Group led by Atobe-sama was now a rising studio. This time, they had easily eliminated three teams from second tier studios on their way to the next round. From their actual performance, Hyotei's power was not to be underestimated.
Secondly, there was the battle between Regulation and Star.
Even though Star, who had lost Brony, had lost a large part of their power, they were a studio whose mission was to cultivate star players and sell them to the public. It would be difficult to gather seven top players, but gathering seven top players with potential was not a problem. Combined with the luck factor of this competition, it was not surprising that they were able to make it to this round.
But … their luck had probably come to an end this round when they ran into Regulation.
Then, there was the battle between Jianghu and Wind and Cloud. As a studio that I did not mention in the previous chapters but was indeed a top studio, Wind and Cloud's appearance was destined to be short-lived. For the readers, it was obvious who would win this round, but for the novel's audience, this was still a very interesting match.
With regards to other teams from studios similar to Wind and Cloud, even though there were a few teams that ran into each other in this round, unfortunately … they did not have much interaction with the main characters of the book. Therefore, there was no need for me to list their names one by one.
Next, let us talk about Underworld Frontline …
Brother Jue's opponent in this round was Mountain River. In terms of overall strength, Underworld Frontline had a clear advantage … but after all, they were a top tier team, and they were not a team that could be easily defeated. They needed to be careful when dealing with them.
Furthermore, Autumn Wind and Matcha Cookie in the [Mountain River] team were also candidates who had been bet on. Hence, this would be a direct battle between the candidates.
In the end … in this round that was filled with all sorts of points to watch and complain about, there was one more thing worth mentioning — [Heaven's Gate] had a bye.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
