Chapter 89 – Home Advantage
In the middle of everyone’s cheers, the match officially started.
In the pro scene, an overwhelming victor was extremely rare. It was impossible to show off such ridiculous gaps in strength such as between an experienced veteran and a noob. A few powerful, dominating players and their god-level characters could create a certain amount of suppression to ordinary pro players and their characters, but Su Mucheng and her Dancing Rain weren’t at this level.
However, in comparison, Gao Jie and his Stellar Sword were a bit inferior. But this sort of strength shown on paper wasn’t enough to say whether he would win or lose. In this one on one match, it wouldn’t be a surprise if either of them won. Their performance on stage could either increase or make up for the gap between their strengths on paper.
When all was said and done, in the end, this was a player-oriented competition. God-level characters also needed a player to utilize its strength. No matter how tyrannical a player was, there would always be a time when the player would go into a slump and lose. What’s more, it was currently a period of rising stars. The title of unequalled had already been sealed long ago.
“Beauty Su, I’ll be starting now!” A message from the Stellar Sword jumped out in the chat box next to the match scene.
That’s right, in the Glory competitions, although the two opponents couldn’t use their voice to communicate, they could type out words to send out a message. In the playing field, there was only this single public chat channel. The messages sent here wouldn’t be blocked and would be directly broadcasted for everyone to see.
Truthfully, in some matches, the trash talk between the two players were even more memorable than the actual battle. In the pro scene, there was no lack of players who were experts at trash talking to irritate their opponents. After the message was sent out, the opponent would definitely see it. There was no way to block or close the chat box.
Of course, whether a player wanted to use this sort of method all relied on the player’s preferences. In all of these years, all kinds of players with different styles appeared.
There were players that would talk whenever there was a chance to.
There were players that would seize any opportunity to calmly insult their opponents.
There were players that wouldn’t say anything from start to finish.
There were even a few dirty players that would fill the screen insulting their opponent’s genitals…..
And ultimately, that sort of dirty talk wasn’t blocked either. However, those players would be penalized by the Alliance. Moreover, with so many people watching, dirty and violent words would obviously damage the player’s image. As a result, most of these happened when they made a mistake and accidentally said them. Specialists in talking dirty hadn’t appeared in a long time.
Gao Jie’s opening remark implicitly made fun of her being a girl. Happy Internet Cafe’s numerous fans immediately went into an outrage and roared at him. However, Su Mucheng only typed out a smiley face and said “Okay!”
Gao Jie had no other verbal attacks other than his opening remark, so he immediately took out his sword and began to attack. Stellar Sword was a Blade Master. Su Mucheng was a Launcher. One was a long-ranged class and the other a close-combat class. Gao Jie relied on his familiarity with the map to wind around, hiding his body as he moved, and quietly closed in on Dancing Rain.
Why was Gao Jie familiar with the map? This was because in the regular season, the Glory League adopted a double round-robin system, splitting into a home and away game. The home ground’s biggest advantage was that they had the privilege of choosing the map.
Glory had numerous battle maps and added new ones every year. Knowing which map they would use naturally meant the players could do research and practice beforehand. They might also play in the same map in their away game, but they obviously wouldn’t have the focused practice like when they did in their home games. It was definitely possible that the home team and the visiting team prepared for the same map, but such an occurrence hadn’t yet happened. And as the number of maps in Glory increased, the probability of this happening also decreased.
If the map chosen was the same as what their opponents had once chosen as their home map, then that was their own mistake and couldn’t be blamed on others.
The current map that was used in this one on one match was a white snow covered town. Stellar Sword’s character wore a full body of white-colored equipment. Even the opponent’s Silver weapon “White Lightsaber” implied that it emitted white light. The reason for using this map was too obvious.
At this moment, Stellar Sword was taking the long route to close in on Dancing Rain. The current broadcast was on Stellar Sword’s first person perspective, letting everyone experience his current circumstances. Then, it switched to a bird’s eye view of the entire map. From this view, they could see that Dancing Rain wasn’t stupidly staying in her original position, not moving and turning around everywhere.
The point of view quickly switched to Dancing Rain.
The match broadcast had many different points of views. They didn’t only have the player’s first-person view. Right now, it was a third-person view letting everyone see that Dancing Rain was circling around a small area scouting around.
From this, it could be seen that whether the match was exciting or not was decided by the performance of the two players. However, this broadcast also showed to everyone that an outstanding cameraman was needed for this too. If the camera angle stayed on a bird’s eye view from start to finish, then no matter how exciting the match was, the broadcast would turn it into trash.
This time, the cameraman was clearly quite good. By switching between these three camera angles, plus the casting by the commentator and the guest, the intentions of both players became obvious.
Gao Jie was controlling Stellar Sword along a roundabout route to close in, preparing to catch Dancing Rain off guard.
But the experienced Su Mucheng clearly anticipated this. After observing the surrounding terrain, she controlled Su Mucheng to jump to a good sniping spot. This spot occupied the high grounds. If Stellar Sword wanted to get near, then he would have to expose him to Dancing Rain’s heavy fire.
Happy Internet Cafe immediately started booing and laughing. Their laughing was naturally aimed at Gao Jie. He had originally wanted to mount a sneak attack, but now he would fall to Dancing Rain instead.
But Ye Xiu knew that there was no way it would be so simple. If Gao Jie really would fall from this ambush, then he would have wasted his home ground advantage.
Just as expected, Ye Xiu predicted correctly. After Gao Jie’s Stellar Sword closed in, he didn’t rashly rush forward. Instead, he took another detour and slipped his head out from a small alley to look around.
“This guy sneaking about really is so wretched. Just hurry up and die already.” Chen Guo impatiently said.
Ye Xiu shook his head: “His current position is a blind spot. Su Mucheng’s movements were within his calculations.
“Gao Jie’s current position is a blind spot! No matter what sniping spot Su Mucheng chooses, none of them would have been able to see his position. It looks like all of Su Mucheng’s movements are within his calculations!” In the broadcast, Li Yibo’s voice also said this at just the right time. It was identical to what Ye Xiu said.
“It looks like 301’s research on this map was very thorough.” The commentator laughed.
“Naturally.” Li Yibo said.
“How does Gao Jie know which sniping spot Su Mucheng is hiding at?” Chen Guo was startled when she said this because the commentator also asked the same question.
“Footprints.” Ye Xiu and Li Yibo answered. Their answers were the same.