Chapter 3: Data Analysis

Ye Shaoyang opened his computer and searched for the game Gods’ War in his browser.

The sheer volume of search results gave him a start.

It was an era of esports for all, where gaming had become a recreational activity for many during their leisure time. Over 60% of young people played video games; in the China Region alone, the active player base had already crossed the two hundred million mark.

The Gods’ War Professional League featured eight major competitive regions worldwide: North America, Europe, Korea, China, Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the Wildcard region.

As one of the largest competitive regions, the China Region maintained 18 fixed top-tier league teams with a demotion system at the end of every season. The number of minor league teams was beyond counting, and there were several thousand registered professional players in the professional association.

Among them, the most popular professional player was named Chi Shuo, the current captain of Team Tianhuan. Any casual daily Weibo post he made could easily rack up six-figure retweets and comments.

In this world, the popularity and compensation of esports players were no less than those of superstars, and their public recognition was exceptionally high. Bringing home a World Championship would mean being surrounded by stars and crowned in glory.

Currently, Gods’ War was in its Ninth Season.

Unlike the games Ye Shaoyang played before—which were split into Spring and Summer Splits—the Gods’ War tournament schedule ran pre-season and regular season matches in the first half of the year, held All-Stars and single/doubles side-events mid-year, and hosted the playoffs and World Championship in the second half.

The Ninth Season playoffs were set to officially begin on September 1. Today was already August 20, making it impossible to catch this season. But if he worked hard and seized the time, he should be able to join this brand-new battlefield as a professional player in next year’s Tenth Season!

Although he had played competitive esports for several years, switching games so suddenly naturally brought the challenge of adapting to a new environment. He needed to gain a thorough understanding of the new game’s rules, master several reliable main heroes, and review professional match VODs to ensure he wouldn’t drop the ball at critical moments.

Ye Shaoyang opened the game icon on his desktop.

Judging from the gorgeous splash animation during login, Gods’ War was a fantasy-themed game. The opening cinematic depicted angels attacking the demon race, with a mysterious dark shadow regenerating in the abyss among the demons. The current patch was titled “Abyssal Awakening,” and this mysterious shadow was likely the new character introduced in the current version.

The opening cinematic lasted for 30 seconds before transitioning to the game lobby.

The user interface was clean and concise. In the upper-left corner was the character profile. Ye Shaoyang’s account ID was also “Little White,” and his profile picture was the Ragdoll cat he kept. Below were functional menus for the Shop, Heroes, Friends, and Teams, while the center featured four main hubs: 【Ranked Ladder】, 【Arcade Mode】, 【Arena Hub】, and 【Training Camp】.

Ye Shaoyang clicked into the Ranked Ladder, and a prompt popped up before him: 【Welcome Player Little White to the Ranked Ladder. Gods’ War Season 9-3 has begun. Your placement match record is 0 wins and 3 losses. Current rank: Bronze I】

Ye Shaoyang casually clicked open the ranking explanation.

Based on player skill, the ladder ranks were divided into seven main tiers from lowest to highest: Bronze I, Silver II, Gold III, Platinum IV, Diamond V, Master VI, and Monarch VII. This was quite similar to LOL, which he used to play.

The difference was that above Tier 7 were two additional ranks: Glory VIII (an honorary title granted to National Professional League Champions) and Glory IX (an honorary title granted to World Champions).

In other words, a player could climb from Bronze to Monarch on their own, but Tier 8 and Tier 9 were both “Honorary Titles” awarded officially after winning championships in the professional league. No matter how strong a casual player was, they could not obtain them.

Naturally, ordinary players didn’t dare to dream of such professional-grade titles. Tier 8 National Champions and Tier 9 World Champions symbolized the highest level of skill in the professional league.

The 【Placement Matches】 in the game were standardized matches for new players. Based on win-loss performance, the system would reassign new players their initial rank. For example, if an expert created a smurf account and won all three placement games, they could be placed directly into Platinum IV and start climbing from there. Since his account had suffered three consecutive losses earlier, it had to start climbing slowly from the lowest tier, Bronze.

The match he played right after transmigrating earlier today had been a placement match. A professional player named “Fanxing” had created an alt account to play in the newcomer placement matches and happened to run into him.

Ye Shaoyang searched for “Fanxing’s” stream room and dropped a follow.

After reading through the general information, he stood up to pour a glass of water, settled Little White onto the adjacent sofa, and sat back at the desk. He clicked into the game’s 【Training Camp】 and started a bot match first.

Once the game interface loaded, the system voice sounded in his ear: 【Please select a hero for this match】.

His account currently owned only five heroes.

Ye Shaoyang looked at the descriptions and randomly selected a female mage character.

The rules for 5v5 tower-pushing games were all the same, and he was intimately familiar with the genre. However, the differences in map layout, hero skills, and stat tunings in this new game still required him to re-learn everything from scratch.

For instance, the distribution and health of jungle monsters, the spawn timing and kill rewards for each wave of minions, the positions and respawn timers for the Blue and Red Buffs, and the prices and build paths for every item in the shop were all different from the games he had played before and had to be re-memorized.

—For a professional player, memorizing these precise metrics was absolutely vital.

Ye Shaoyang casually created a spreadsheet on the computer, taking notes while making observations. A single bot match turned into nine AI bots bashing each other, while Ye Shaoyang—the sole human player—remained nowhere to be seen. The enemy bots, playing 5-versus-4, crushed his team’s bots, and the match ended quickly in a loss.

Ye Shaoyang started another match and continued recording data from the item shop.

This recording process lasted over an hour.

It was getting dark outside. Ye Shaoyang rubbed his sore neck, saved the spreadsheet, and then opened the official website to locate the “Game Database” to look up all the heroes.

Gods’ War had over a hundred heroes, and the dense array of hero avatars was dizzying to look at. As a professional mid-laner, Ye Shaoyang loved playing the mid lane the most, so he first checked the “Mid Lane Mage” category.

Twelve mage hero avatars appeared on the screen—

Doomsday Mage, Holy Spirit Mage, Solaria Mage, Lunaria Mage, Celestial Flying Mage, and Earth Mage—six male characters.

Frost Goddess, Flame Goddess, Storm Goddess, Thunder Goddess, Ocean Goddess, and Fate Goddess—six female characters.

With over a hundred heroes in total, there had to be more than just these twelve mid-lane heroes.

Ye Shaoyang went on to check the “Magic Damage” option, and a huge batch of heroes popped up—Succubus, Spirit Summoner, Mechanist, Curse Warlock, High Priest, Medium, and so on. Adding them all up, there were 25 heroes whose skill sets dealt magic damage. The newest hero released in the current patch, “Abyssal Sovereign,” was also a magic damage hero.

This proportion was quite reasonable.

To become an outstanding mid-laner, the first thing he needed to do was practice these 25 magic damage heroes until he was proficient, and master at least 8 or more tournament-viable heroes to broaden his hero pool.

Naturally, this was not a task that could be accomplished overnight.

Even back in his previous world where he had been named the league’s “Most Valuable Mid-Laner,” whenever a new patch released a new hero, he still needed repeated practice before daring to pick it on stage—let alone for a completely new game.

Ye Shaoyang created another spreadsheet on his computer and rapidly entered the hero information from the database—personally organizing data to review at any time was a habit of his, as it helped deepen his memory.

He spent the entire afternoon organizing data.

The first spreadsheet recorded various precise in-game values and equipment shop details, while the second spreadsheet logged the traits and skill parameters of over a hundred heroes before being saved to his phone. This way, whenever he encountered anything unclear in the future, he could open the spreadsheets and look it up directly, saving himself plenty of trouble.

Even students organized study materials when preparing for exams; if he wanted to walk the esports path once more, he had to bring a serious attitude.

By the time he finished organizing all the data, it was already 7:30 PM. Just as Ye Shaoyang was about to order takeout, his phone rang. The caller ID read “Qin Yue.” He quickly pressed answer: “Cousin, do you need something?”

Qin Yue’s voice was gentle: “You’re home, right? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

“Go ahead, Brother.”

“You have a spare guest room at your place, right?”

“Mm, yes.”

“My younger brother, Qin Rui, was accepted into Star City University this year and starts school in a few days. His campus is very close to your place. If it’s convenient, could he stay at your place temporarily for a while? My parents aren’t quite comfortable with him living in the dorms.”

“…” Ye Shaoyang paused for a moment before realizing: Cousin Qin Yue probably thought he was having psychological issues and felt uneasy leaving him home alone, which was why he was sending his brother over to keep him company. Furthermore, he hadn’t differentiated yet, so staying home by himself was indeed somewhat unsafe. Excuses like being close to the university or staying temporarily were just covers.

Ye Shaoyang happened to want to learn more about this world anyway. If his cousin moved in to live with him, he could ask him questions directly. Going to school during the day, his cousin wouldn’t interfere with his gaming either.

It killed two birds with one stone; there was no reason to refuse.

“No problem, let him move in,” Ye Shaoyang agreed straightforwardly.

“Alright then. I’ll drive Xiao Rui over in a bit. Please take good care of him from now on.”

“Of course,” Ye Shaoyang replied politely.

Qin Yue went silent for a few seconds before adding, “By the way, Xiao Rui just differentiated into an Omega a while ago. I gave him a high-potency suppressant, so his pheromone state is very stable right now. Plus, you two are blood relatives, so his pheromones won’t affect you. You can rest assured.”

“…Oh.” Ye Shaoyang scratched his head awkwardly.

Terms like differentiation and pheromones still sounded very foreign to him.

An Omega younger brother?

A guy with a gland behind his neck who could give birth to babies? Ye Shaoyang was intensely curious.

This was a perfect opportunity to learn some professional knowledge regarding Omegas from this younger brother. Right now, his physiological knowledge relied entirely on basic guides found on Baidu, and he still didn’t understand most of the weird terminology.

Although he felt that with his personality, he would most likely differentiate into a domineering Alpha…

Just in case, if there was a 50% chance of turning into an Omega, he should at least know how to handle it!