 Hello everyone and welcome back to For The Minions, the weekly podcast, podcast all about the upcoming Paragon remakes and ethereal, just upcoming third person mobas in general. This week we don't have a whole lot of updates, but we finally get to bring back the topic of discussion and the topic for this evening, we're going to be talking about how these games are kind of showing their differences, like as these games have progressed and we've gotten to play them, you could definitely see that they're going very different routes with their Paragon remakes. And so that is going to be it for this evening. We'll go through the updates before we do that, but I'm your host, the man who's joining me as always as my friend and co host, Jelly Knees. How you doing, Jelly? I am fantastic. Mangos. I've just been reminded about your bobblehead introduction where you lean forward and lean back as you speak. And now I'm dying internally because it's the fun. I was wondering what you were giggling about. That's why because you like lean forward and lean back. Oh, I absolutely love it. But with us for the third time, fourth time, I don't know, one of those second time. No, it's been more than twice. Well, third time, third time, you're right. Yeah, that's right. I knew it. Get out of here. You know, you're off. No more third time. I never said I could tell. But it's bearded Wolverine. Welcome back bearded. Happy to have you, man. Yes, happy to be here. Happy to be here. I'm just thinking now I'm wondering if Mangos' camera went low enough if we'd also see him talk to hands when he's doing his head bob, you know, no, I don't want anybody to see my penis. So I don't have my camera that low. The camera's not that high, Def. It's a camera, not a telescope. Brilliant. Oh, shit. Good times. Oh, I love having bearded one. Now, we do the show is open. You anybody can come and guest host with us. You don't have to have a glorious beard like our last two guest hosts now. But I don't have it. I know you've you've been you've been asking and I'm going to get you in probably next week, so I'm going to have to link that up after we're done recording tonight, actually. So let's move right into the updates. And again, not a lot of them, not a lot new coming out. Let's start off with predecessor. Probably had the biggest news. They released a concept. I don't know if that's 3D modeled or just a concept of their new Omeda specific hero. This is something we've talked about quite a bit. And if these companies want to keep going with this paragon formula, they've got to come up with their own heroes. And it looks like Omeda Studios has done so bearded. What do you think of the vampire hunter hunters? Yes. Yeah. Codename Huntress. I think it's very interesting. It really. I don't know. I want to see how she plays because I know what a crossbow is like and how to load a crossbow. It's a lot harder to do that that it is to just grab a arrow out of your your quiver, you know, like Sparrow does. So like it's a lot more speed with that. So I'm interested to see how she's going to play and how it's going to look in the game. Obviously, there's it's not reality so we can know they can make that animation speed up or whatever. But I'm interested to see how it works. I liked their little the tweet they made about asking how you want her. I wasn't maybe ultimate, but what a ability you want her to have. And I recommended her to have to shoot an arrow that had a bomb on it. And then she take her pistol and she'd shoot the bomb and it would be like an explosive. You know, I think that'd be pretty cool. So it would be neat. Yeah. Jelly, what did you think of a vampire hunter? I mean, because you and I talked about this a little bit in DMs, too, but I think she's pretty generic, honestly. I think for a original Meta Studios hero, I would have way preferred to see them go a little more off the res with it and do something that isn't just Sparrow with crossbows, right? Not just generic female with crossbows. I wish we got more diversity out of that. I wish we got for lack of a fat hooker. I wish like not Richter, right? But but something right out there out out of the realm of normal to really push this a little bit more. And I know there's a comparison you're going to make, Mangus, so I'll let you make it. But yeah, I just wish I feel like she's fairly generic. But I mean, there's direct comparisons people had with Van Helsing in like terms of the crossbow design. And then it's also just generic female character with crossbows. So it's Sparrow with crossbows. And you and I talked about Mangus before is that her background of being a vampire hunter and with everyone kind of assuming Countess is that vampire-esque type character basically means she's got the same potential lore as Tara because Tara's whole stick was just going to say that. Yep. And that seems. Countess killed her dad. Countess killed Tara's dad. So Tara was going after her for revenge. And so we've got the vampire hunter and then the person that's not technically a vampire hunter, but hunting a vampire. It happens. You've seen movies. Yes. Yeah. But I was like to think of it, I was Hotel Transylvania and the one girl that's trying to catch, you know, the vampire for her, you know, her family's bloodline that kept on getting taken out by vampires or always trying to get the vampire. That's kind of what I think of now. So like, there's the huntress out of it. But you said Fat Hooker. I just wonder, Mangus, if they introduce a Fat Hooker, would you actually play as your ex-girlfriend? I mean, she was the only my girlfriend for a night. So I didn't really get that attached to her, I guess. But I mean, she left me a lasting gift. Mangus bumps. We've gone over to my discord. We're going off the rails, boys. OK, when I looked at this, I mean, it just thought Valor from Here's the Storm. She looks exactly like Valor from Here's the Storm to the point that like people like often ask me if about the legality of them using the Paragon Assets and the legality of all these games coexisting on the PlayStation Network. I think what they need to be worried about is Blizzard to with their asses, because she looks exactly like Valor. Like exactly. No, we discussed this. She's got Valor's got Pauldrons and this character has Feather. Oh, yeah. OK. Come on. Valor has two crossbows. This one has a crossbow and a pistol. Yeah. OK. Gosh, Mangus. Yeah. No, like same pose and everything. Like it's it's a little it's a little nutty. It's almost like one of their investors really liked Here's the Storm and wanted to see Valor in a third person MOBA. So they're like, oh, fuck it. Let's do it. Oh, no, I think it's cool. I mean, I think she'll definitely be an ADC. I think she looks really good. I love Valor. Like I don't have a problem with Valor making it appear as impellant in Paragon, right? Like in Valor is based on the demon hunter from Diablo three, which was my absolute favorite class in Diablo three. So I don't have a problem with it necessarily. I just wish that, like you said, they had gone a little bit more off the reservation with it, kind of like Soliv did with Adele, where she's I guess that's really not off the reservation for them for them because they just love putting cute girls into their game. But at least she has like a shield and a chainsword sort of thing, which is not something. I mean, that that has a lot of odd implications where she could be like a mid range kind of like Ian, like, like that really keeps you guessing this. You look at it, it's like, OK, that's an ADC. Like there's no fucking way that's a support or anything other than yeah, I mean, even even then, I don't think that she could even be an assassin like just like looking at her. Like if nothing about her says a assassin, you know, arrange a sassar like that. It literally just looks like an ADC. Yeah, I think I think you bring up a brilliant comparison man goose of Adele to this codename huntress is that Adele. Yeah, Adele made you want to play the character. Adele felt like, oh, a shield and a whip, a chainsword, would it? Right. Like what about that is like that's really intriguing. What can I learn more about that? How do I win? When can I play her win of this? To me, when I saw the predecessor one, I was like, oh, OK, cool. Like they're making a character. Yeah, like it was just it felt. Yeah, but I feel different in that regard because I'm an ADC, I'm an ADC main. So I see her and I'm like, oh, OK, I I what is the crossbow? A secondary weapon. Is it the primary weapon and the pistol is the secondary? Or is she going to be like Twin Blast? And she's just going to sit there and alternate between the two. You know, like how is I don't know what what it's going to be like. It seems like the crossbow is the main weapon, just by the way the pictures have come across, you know, that's what it looks like. But I just like, how is it going to work? Like what what is the pistol? You know, is the pistol going to be like Murdoch's, you know, you know, shotgun he pulls out, just hits him with it. I guess my question for you bearded on that because you bring up something interesting is are you excited because she's an ADC? Are you excited because of the character? I'm going to say both because I don't I don't know anything about Heroes of the Storm when it comes to all these characters. So she is new to me. So I'm interested to see what the kid's going to be. Now, when I see the kid, that's what I'm going to really tell you. If that's going to be the cell for right now, like just seeing all right, new new ADC, completely new, never played before. I'm excited, no matter what they really look like. But the kit is really what's going to sell me. If I look at that kit and like, OK, well, that ability, I don't even really want to use this ability. I'm excited for that one, maybe not so much. Like, for example, overprime scud, like his E, I can't stand his E. Like you can literally just take the E away. And I'm like, OK, I can't ever use it. I don't want to use it. I know a lot of people, you'll take advantage of it and it works, but it literally puts me in a bad position when I do it. Like, so like stuff like that. So I read the kit and like, OK, I'm excited for all this. Grodner, like I look at his kid. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I want to play everything with him. I want to like what like all of this seems exciting. That's if the kit can get me excited like that. I could really be that could really sell the character. Yeah, right on. And then they there was like a reddit post that a sock absent to me. And then bearded, you said it to me as well. It was like a lead hero list of predecessors heroes. So it's going to be something that. Generally, let me send that to you. I don't think I said that to you. It's in that it's in there. I'm our message there. OK. It's just above the the outline that you posted just above it. It's that link above. Interesting. I know how they got this. Yeah, I found it. Oh, do you find it as well? Yeah. Yeah. They say I've been using for fault. This is that same thing. OK, OK. They said they had a mind it. And I was like, I'm pretty sure jelly could have found the same thing if you really wanted to. That's literally who I thought of when I saw the data mine. Because the reddit post says, hey, I asked for this or whatever. I wasn't getting any response. So I went and data mine and got this information. So when I saw the data mine, I'm like, oh, I was like, jelly probably knows how to get to this point. So my question with that, though. Is there's one folder that says prototype? Is that the little like legit word prototype? Like this is could be anything. No, that's the little stickman. That's the little stickman. No, 100 percent. That's what it is. It's like an epic asset. It's like an epic base model asset. Got you. OK. So that's why that's what I was asking. Is that like, what is this? Or is that like a codename prototype and it's going to be somebody else? You know, that's what I was wondering. Like, I don't know. I'm like, that's the only because other than that, everything else kind of fits and it doesn't really tell you much. Yeah. Kind of gives you an idea who is in the process of being made, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're ready, you know, right, just because there's a folder doesn't mean that they're like, hey, we can they can open up early access and have all 21 characters. You know, that doesn't mean that. So I mean, the thing for fault, what I've noticed for fault, at least, I can't speak for Fred, because I haven't looked into it too much myself is the folder exists typically when they start working on the character. If you go deeper in, you won't find any of the assets or you'll find maybe very bare minimum assets. And then later on, you'll start seeing more and more get added in. And then by the time the announcement goes out for fault, usually most of the assets seem to be in there. So I would assume it's very similar, probably for predecessor that they've got them in there because it's all shipped as one package. And then they just limit how much is actually visible. Right. OK. As far as when we look at this list, the ones that we haven't seen playable in predecessor are Countess, Decker, let's see, Grimm.exe, Huntress is actually in here. Let's see, who else? I think that's it. Yeah, everybody else has been playable. Yeah. Yeah, there wasn't much to it. They said I wasn't wondering a little bit. I wonder a little bit how much of that is also just their assets being used in game. For instance, Moonboots is just Decker right click. So is that actually the Decker folder for the character Decker? Or is that just her right click VFX that they're then pulling on to that item whenever it's used? Oh, no, this really seems like a list of heroes to me, though, instead of. I completely agree with you, but knowing the assets are all knowing how Epic gives out the assets, they're all stored under specific folders. Right. On the subset of Decker, on the subset of Countess. Yeah, could be that they're pulling it from that. Yeah, because I get what you're saying, because if you have the Moonboots, right, and being the Decker right click, you know, you already pulled that asset in for the Moonboots, then there's already going to be that Decker folder there. You know, just so you could use the right click, you know, that's inside that folder, you know, so it would already be pre-populated. So that could be something. But that would still, you still got Countess and you still got Grim.exe sitting there, you know. And I can't think of any ability. Did you imagine that big fridge just jumping with Moonboots? Yeah, it'll be like his Paragon trailer all over again. Him jumping would be hilarious. As far as the reddit post itself goes, like a lot of people had some a lot of opinions about it. And the guy's talking about the the the opinion that I agreed with the most out of all the the the comments that I saw on that thread with some guy being like, why did you want an API the API for a game that's not even out? That's what I'm like, why is this guy so. So I actually can can talk about that a little bit. OK, go back when Fault first dropped, Convay and I were actually working together to create like Twitch extensions for Fault. And we're working to create some things that could help broaden the viewer experience for Fault. And so what we needed integration with their API, OK, and so by trying to build that out, we reached out to the Fault devs and never heard back. And so it fizzled out and so and then since we've moved on to other projects. But so that that is something that if the community is trying to build some kind of Twitch extension or a Discord extension or anything like that, they do need to integrate with that API to do so most effectively. They can create their own, but that means they have to go manually change all the information instead of just tying directly into the developer version of it. OK, right. It's the same thing that like with you had FHN when their website was up and you have Fault Metrics with their website being up. They're all using the API from Fault. So it'd be that same situation. And from the looks of the replies, the RGSA actually responded and said that like, you know, Agora.gg was a big part of his his channel when he was he was a major content creator for Paragon. And they definitely want to do something like that. But it sounds like Omega is going to kind of take the reins on that from just from the way I read his comment. I think I don't know how I feel about that. I think that if they're going to do something like that, they should also allow the community to do it as well and just let the community decide which they like best. I think that the way I read it is I agree with you that they're going to do their own a lot like Fault with the PlayFault.com. You can go there and see a lot of that stuff, right? But I also read it as like he they're not going to release that information until they're ready. So they don't feel like they're ready for a Agora.gg for predecessor at this point. And that's really the way I read that. That comes down, though, to what parts of your API you build out, right? Giving the community access to stat tracking items, euros, that kind of stuff. Means that people like Convay and I can go out and build Twitch extensions for you, which do nothing but help your game, right? That is that your viewership is good. That means more people want to stream it. That means more people want to play it. That like it it just translates well for them to have their community take charge on this. I mean, I built before I joined the ethereal team. I built out a full website that was a builder for the ethereal item system, right? That does nothing but benefit their community by existing. And it had nothing to do with them other than their API existed, right? It wasn't they did no work on it. They did nothing like that. Maybe I asked them a question, but past that, that's all it was. So I really, really hope they don't just take sole control of this because that a puts more work on them. And B means that it's going to be very limited in what they actually allow the community to see. And there is a danger, right? In information getting leaked via that API or false early API, you could discover the characters that were going to come out before they were even announced because you just went in the API and saw the list that said, oh, look, Decker is coming out next with Glim, right? And so that was information that's available. But that's just when you update your API and knowing that people have that access. I really, really I am with Mangoose. This feels like they're trying to say that they're going to do it themselves first and then when they feel comfortable, they'll release it. I really think they should just get it out there because it does nothing but benefit them. I'm really glad you're here, Jelly, because I have no fucking idea what an API even is to tell you the goddamn truth. I just know what I'm trying to do with tracking shit for the game. I have no clue what it means either. A database where all the information is stored of your heroes, your items, your stats for items and heroes, anything that exists, game times, how much gold, what each game status is, how long games are going. Depends how you build it out, right? But so for the false one that Convay and I were working on was going to allow you to basically give your viewers a scoreboard whenever they want, they can see both allied and enemy teams see how long the game's been going and then they could submit build suggestions to you as a as the streamer that you could then see what they're suggesting you have to build just to interact with your stream a little more. That was all done via their API. And we then couldn't get connected with them to get it fully fleshed out. But that was the idea. And so having that kind of stuff for predecessor or for ethereal or for false or overprime is huge additions that just benefit them in the end. Hmm. Yeah, this is really cool, actually. So like API sounds like all parts included. But other than that, I don't know what it is. But I agree with with Jelly though. It literally is nothing but beneficial for them. And even if they there is a somebody who is putting a, you know, making something with the API and a negative light, they can always say that, hey, that's a third party. They got nothing to do with it. They have the ability to say that, you know, like right now with fault metrics, like there is no like that is no connection. That is a third party doing their own thing. Whatever you see from there, it could be beneficial. You can use it to your advantage, but that's that's not associated with us. And they can they have that ability to say that it doesn't mean anything. So I don't see how it doesn't how they don't go ahead and do something like that. Yeah. And I would find it hard to believe that it doesn't exist already. Like this post makes it sound like they haven't even worked on that end. And I find that hard to believe because for their own data keeping in order to give us things like there were 11 million minutes played of the last playtest, they have to have an API collecting that information. So it has to exist in some form. It's just giving the community that access to it. I do want to bring up another part of this post that I think rubs me the wrong way. Is but please keep in mind that we're still a relatively small company with limited resources. Yeah, that's maybe like that is they that to me is like a such a cop out response to to someone that's trying to help build something out for your game of like we're really small. We don't have that much. What they brought in like 20 million dollars now. Yeah, I would be pissed if I was this guy and I got that response. And it's not even coming from Neburi, right, who I would expect a much more PC response from being that he's not the guy in charge, right. But having RGSAs directly have that response just rubs me the wrong way. Right. No, I can see that like that's, you know, like, yeah, 20 million, you know, you know, according to was a Forbes magazine and some of that, like that's it almost is like for the the actual small companies that are out there, like, wait a minute, if you're small, what are you calling us, you know, like, wait a minute, like, don't don't be using our excuse. That's that's that's for us to play, you know, like that's yeah, I can definitely see that to be clear. I think it's a cop out response across the board, whether you're a small company with limited resources or 20 million dollars, I don't care. I think if I if somebody was trying to contact me about something for a cereal and I came back with sorry, we're a small company with limited resources, that to me is just a bad thing to say to somebody, just own it and say, we're sorry, we didn't reach back out to you and give you a response and just be done with it there and then go into your we want to release it to community when we're ready, that kind of stuff, because that's the important part, the putting it down and downplaying that you the person didn't deserve a response so much because you're a small company with limited resources just makes me mad, honestly. I can tell, Jelly, I can tell. Oh, shit. I don't know. I think that I think we got way more into predecessor than I than I thought I thought we were tonight. Let's go ahead and move on to overprime. Their closed beta is finished. We don't have the numbers yet. I'm sure they'll put those numbers out pretty soon, but they've been fairly quiet. You know, they've got their survey that you could fill out and all that stuff. But, yeah, we're just going to wait for the numbers right now. I know FTM works to probably drop them as we're 100 percent, 100 percent, you know, they're probably out right now. But anyway, this one reason I wanted bearded on tonight because Jelly and I, we really enjoyed overprime bearded. I know you liked it, but you didn't think it was nearly as fun as their last CBT. So it's kind of wanted to get your thoughts on their closed beta test this time around. I don't know. I'm almost, I've said that and I've been thinking about it more as I go. I I don't know if they got more newer players in or or if it was just or the players that were playing the last closed beta test, they they realized that the brawler is the way to go. I go, I went into overprime wanting to play Moba. And when I got in there and even I'm solo queuing, nobody is going for objectives. It literally is. Let's just get these kills and not even worry about it. We're not even getting minion kills. We're literally just trying to get the kills like, you know, killing the enemy heroes. That's all we're doing, which is fun, especially as an ADC main. Like I let's get hero kills. I'm all about it. We can do this. But I also want to play the Moba, too. You know, prime spirit, you know, prime spirit, that the stacking buff is great. I want to keep doing that. Like this is going to be beneficial in the long run, especially, you know, like getting prime and, you know, having prime pushed on middle. It's a cool animation, you know, like I want to do this. And and nobody was doing it. Like it didn't make sense to anybody. Like I'm like, what are like, I don't know. It just I got the point. I'm like this, I literally wasn't having the first two nights I played. I'm like, I remember the last close beta test. I wanted to continue playing and then I'm like, I got to go to bed. I can't stay up all night. I got to go to bed this time. I'm like, yeah, I I'm going to go to bed because I need to go to bed. I'm not like wanting to play another one. It was definitely different. That seems to be a common opinion. I've heard a lot from a lot of people saying that they didn't enjoy this beta test nearly as much as they enjoyed the first beta test. I personally had a great time both times, but they did break the game mid mid close beta test with that prime guardian shit. But yeah, yeah, I think good. The hard thing is like man, because I do think we're in the minority here, definitely, especially if I just look at their steam chart stats, they were on the decline the entire time. They they started out very high, like great for them. I think that's super awesome. But every single day, their peak numbers were going down and their concurrent players were going down throughout the course of the entire thing. Now, some of that is expected, for sure, because you're not going to keep 15,000 players from your minute one over the course of the entire thing. Right. Exactly. No problem there. But going to, I mean, by the last day, they their average was 2,500 players concurrent. Right. That's that's more than that's more than half. I mean, that's more than a quarter or three quarters. I mean, of your player base that is not playing on the last day of your test, which should be, again, another spike for them because it's going away. People should people should be saying, all right, this is the last day. I'm going to go and play a couple more games and then it'll go out by camera. And that didn't happen. And so I'm very curious what the reasoning behind that is. And if they can see maybe potentially where the disconnect is in their API, where they can find some of that information and and potentially hopefully fix whatever the issue was that was causing people to stop playing the game. Well, I mean, we've talked about. How it's a honeymoon honeymoon phase when you have just the close beta weekend. And we definitely saw that like like people complained about the toxicity of the fault community. The toxicity was in full display for overprime this time around because that honeymoon phase ended. People were playing for extended periods of time and people were getting fucking tilted and salty. And we saw it over and over again. Well, at least I did. Yeah. No, it is there. I was only that impressed me in the first test, actually, was the lack of toxicity. And then in this test, it was full force. Yeah, they were they were cracking down on it. They were doing a great job of cracking down on both the toxicity and the hacking that was going on in the game, which, again, I don't know why people hacked the dog shit out of overprime. But I didn't see a single person hack a ethereal predecessor or fault. I haven't seen any hacks in any of those games yet, but. I think it's because of the location of the company. Like it's it's the Western based companies are the ones that aren't getting hacked. It's the Eastern based companies that were the Eastern based company that was getting hacked the most. You know, you have, you know, a lot of nerds that just like I'm into this, you know, and they they hacked it, you know, they did what they wanted to do. And I don't know. And it was definitely different. But like talking about the honeymoon phase, I didn't have that in this one. I didn't have like it's not like the first three days I played, like, oh, I'm having so much fun that I just like fell off. It was like right in the beginning. I noticed like this just isn't the same. I didn't know I don't know what the difference was because like playing predecessor, right? Play I did my I did the stress test for a predecessor and I played that one and I played the second one and I had a blast with both of them. The first one obviously had its issues. You know, I got to do the content creator event for it. So I got to play even more than a lot of people did, but you know, when they had their, you know, they're actually stressed out the servers, right? And but I still played even I think I played like three games during that when a lot of people couldn't even get a game in. So I still played and I had a blast. And then I played the second stress test and I had a blast. Overprime, something was just kind of keeping me away from it. And I noticed that like later on, as long as I had like three or more people with me that I was gaming with, I could just have fun with my friends, even though the game just isn't that much that fun for me overall. Mm hmm. Yeah, I think you kind of summed it up from the beginning. You went in wanting to play a MOBA and overprime. While it is a MOBA is certainly not a Paragon remake. It is. It's it's its own thing, which I really enjoy. But I can see why you did not be here. And I can see why you did not like this style of game because you want something more Paragon like. Yeah, no, I definitely do. And I think that's also why I was another reason why I was able to have fun later on through through the 11 days as I was able to change my mindset. I was able to be OK, I'm not going in here playing a MOBA. I'm going in here playing with my friends, just kind of doing a hero brawler, you know, and when I would get enough friends, we could focus objectives, which could then also kind of turn it into more of a MOBA style instead of being a brawler. You know, all right, we know how we are. We can go get prime spirit now because we know what we're doing. Um, but if I went in like I had that match that you watched on my YouTube channel, that was a solo queue. Like it like we weren't really getting, you know, it not until I'm a high enough, you know, level revenue, I can go get prime spirit by myself. All right, let me go do this, you know, just to kind of help the team out because those games, that's another thing. It's like Over Prime is meant to be this fast paced game, you know, and it's supposed to end in 20 to 30 minutes. I'm having games that are lasting 50 minutes to, you know, 50 to 70 minutes because like people aren't getting objectives to help, you know, get that power boost and, you know, get that spike from prime, you know, running down middle and taking out the mid inhibitor and all this stuff. People aren't doing that. And it's like, oh, come on. Like it's a MOBA. I get you guys want to be a brawler, but it's also a MOBA. Like you got to do both. Yeah, there was a reason to go around and get kills. But the reason to get the kills was to set yourself up to take those objectives, to take the prime spirit or to take the dunk. But people seem to forget the follow on to getting those kills. I think the thing that surprises me the most about what you just said, bearded, is that you have friends. It's true. It's true. I they probably look at it like, no, we're just acquaintances. I just, you know, automatically put on that. I consider you a co-worker. Yeah. I mean, that fucking guy, you know, I get it. Something you and I talked about before we ever played overprime in the first fated test was, and I mean, it was on the forefront of a lot of people's minds, is overprime could just be monolith. And it could be the things people hated about monolith. Right. And maybe that's also part of it, is that for a lot of people, a lot of Paragon fans, they're going into this and they're just seeing monolith again and they're going, well, why am I playing this anymore? The legacy map monolith play style. Yeah. Exactly. You could. A lot of people hate it, but you could do it. And I will be OK with it because I was OK with it in the beginning. But like what the way overprime is and being the brawler that it is, you could do the three card setup. It would definitely work and not not hinder that game to the point of being, you know, taking away the MOBA aspect of that it is. It would definitely work in that situation. Yeah. And it's it's I think it's a better version of monolith because I hated monolith, but I enjoy overprime. But I do see a lot of the similarities that I could see people getting caught up on, specifically the brawler aspects, right? Of of that monolith turned into a brawler and a MOBA second. And that's not what people want it. And so it's I definitely think that that could be a huge part of what we're seeing, is that that initial spike was a lot of the Paragon people going, like, yes, finally time to get our hands on this and then they go, oh, it's monolith 2.0. OK, bye. Like, and just take off. I also think I think the three card system would work really well on overprime because that's about how many items they have. Right. Yeah. I kid, I kid. Let's close out overprime. Let's save that for the topic of discussion because I think that's going to factor in quite a bit before that. I mean, we could probably briefly touch on the tournament and what Oh, yeah, I mean, has them as I didn't pay attention to the tournament. They had some casters on there that were just straight trash. Yeah. Garbo Garbo Garbo. The absolute worst. Oh, man, I just hope so. One caster couldn't even say the right names, kept on using Paragon names. He told the other caster to do the name calling because you couldn't say it right. Couldn't say the team names. No, I now know why you always see casters with like a pen and paper. Like, I'm going to have to actually have that on hand next time we do cast it so I can write down Zestrator Esports. Oh, he said it correctly. Look at me. Yeah, look at me. Look at me. Right as I say that, too. Perfect. Thanks. But I do hope that Soleev learns gets data from that tournament and learns and balances top down because that tournament showed what the fuck was wrong with overprime. So I think it's really interesting. Zestrator definitely showed the problems with the game, right? They they abused every single aspect of those problems through and through the entire tournament. But the one EU match mangoes that we saw before their quarterfinals, right, right, that one, they didn't abuse that at all. And that game went 35 minutes, 40 minutes. And that was a game where I feel like the MOBA aspects took priority that both teams were playing it like a MOBA. They would go get a pick, pick an objective, go push a lane, go get a pick, pick an objective, right? They were really playing it in that way, and I think showed that it is possible. It is just not the ideal way to win in the current form of the game. It was by far, I think, the most enjoyable game to watch out of all those games. I would agree. Like just watching Zestrator brush prime and then dunk it was not that exciting. And I don't think that's what Soleev wants for overprime. But yeah, that the EU semifinal hell of a match. That was really fun to watch. And it highlights that overprime is fun to watch. Like if nothing else, it's a fun game to watch because there's always action going on somewhere on the map. Yeah, which we talked about before, that's one of the benefits of overwatch is that the action starts at minute one and overprime is the same exact way. And so that's, I think, a really good sign for them. And then Zestrator just really showed all the bad signs as well. But what did you what did you think about the tournament and the outcome and all that kind of stuff? I didn't. I was busy that day. So I literally went back and watched a little bit on mangos's YouTube when it was released out. So I only see a little bit. I, you know, listened to you guys ask it. And actually, I made the joke earlier, but you guys did a great job from what I was paying attention to it, you know, casting it. Other than that, like it's actually hard for me just to go back and watch somebody else play games. Me as a streamer, here I am. You I hope I get people to come watch me play games. But like it's hard for me to go back and watch that in that regard, you know, especially when it's I got I don't have it's like I had a friend and I did have some friends in it, but like not towards the end there. Like they weren't like in the championship. So it's like I was like rooting on for somebody and want to see how they did. Right. So I didn't really pay that much attention to it. But I'm happy that these games are getting the third party, you know, involvement for these tournaments and stuff with that. You know, faults had a few here and there. So it's nice to see that because it's just going to help grow the community themselves. So I'm all about it. Right on. Yeah. Anything else about the tournament before we move on? No fault. We got nothing for we got no updates for fault. They've been really silent. They've been silent all through the. Overprime closed beta and they're still silent. I was kind of expecting something out of them now. They tend to update on Fridays, though. So maybe by the time this comes out, there'll be something out for fault. Yeah. Yeah. They when they go silent like this, usually something big is happening. So hopefully we got something good coming up. I have seen, you know, just because I like to lurk in gen chats a lot. I have seen one of their devs, Armadillon, come in and say that they're pretty close with a pretty big optimization patch. So I know, I know for sure, optimization is going to be on this next patch. What else comes with it? I don't know, but like that's the one thing they're like looking you know, to get that taken care of. They want they pretty much want optimization to be where like basically no frame jobs. Everything runs smoothly and then they're going to be pushing free to play is the way I'm understanding it. Well, then we also have no that they're working on some kind of new map as well, which they've been saying for a long time. And I'd be very curious to see when that's going to come. I would imagine that has to come before free to play and then. I that would I think that has to come before for release. I wouldn't say that's going to be for free to play. I think they can drop free to play before they drop the map. OK, in my head, I've always completed the two with each other free to play being their full release. So no. But I can see that after they go free to play before full release, they drop the new map. Yeah, they have said that when they go full release, it will be free to play. But they never said that free to play. And he is full release, right? Right. Yeah, I do know. I can tell you that when they they plan on going free to play before for release, that is that is the plan as of right now. So that when they go free to play, it is not a full it's still going to be in beta. But that's the way it's looking as is. OK. Yeah, well, hopefully the overprime close beta will bring some players in the fault and fill out that roster a little bit and get some more people in there, because fault's a lot more fun when you've got when you don't have the same people kicking your ass over and over again. It is it is. And I that's I actually was in Gentian. I was saying it and I have a couple of people agree with me. I'll be able to completely disagree with me and just understandable. I mean, I'm always right, but you can disagree if you want. So I was saying that they need to take advantage of overprime and and the people that have that itch to continue playing, you know, so let's give us another free to play weekend, you know, or free to play week. I don't care what you give me, you know, but don't drop a patch. Literally, just make it free to make an announcement. Hey, we're going to do a free to play week from this day to this day and make it free to play and just allow people to come in and play it. You know, it's it's in early access. Like we they know that they went off of they're coming off of overprime and the issues overprime was having overprime wasn't perfect. Overprime was, you know, was laggy, was buggy. You know, I was having seizure, you know, affects on my street for the longest time until the last few days I played. I'm like, oh, you got to do this, this, this, you didn't know make these changes. I'm like, shit, you know, I'm like, all right. But yeah, so overprime is not a perfect game. There's no reason like it's not going to you're not going to people aren't just going to drop like, nope, I want nothing to do with fault because it's not as good as overprime. I think to me fault ran smoother than overprime. So which they should because they've been out, you know, pushing, you know, these patches more often. So right. Yeah, I definitely think going into at the end of that overprime test, Paul should have said made some announcement of a free to play weekend. Yeah. Right. Something something for people that the second overprime ends, they can go, well, when can I play this next? Well, you can't. We don't know. But next weekend is false open open test. Yeah. Right. And I think that's absolutely beneficial for them, especially with the way the game is right now. But I guess if they're working on a giant optimization patch, they're probably waiting for that. Yeah. But I can't see the track record has been good of patch and then free to play. So our free weekend. Well, you look at the last one, it was patch 14. They dropped that, right? And then a week later, they go, they do the free weekend and they weren't able to get everything fixed before that free weekend. And by that time, it was too late. And that's what. And that's why I keep on saying, do the free. Don't even drop anything. Like if anything, if you want to do something to make things better because like right now, fangmao is over tuned. So if you want to make a balance patch and like let's fix fangmao, you know, just do some balance changes that that's not really going to that shouldn't, I don't know for sure, but that shouldn't introduce bugs. You know, it shouldn't. Also, all of a sudden it could. But I think just adjusting some numbers will be OK. You know, that's all I'm saying. Like let's let's adjust Tim got let's adjust fangmao and then let's do a free to play weekend or week. Or what do you want to do? I don't care. What are your guys' thoughts on if you with that free to play weekend or week, because a lot of people are saying weeks and I'm OK with doing a free to play week, if that's what you want to do. I think during that time, during the free to play period, all heroes should be free to play. Yeah, absolutely free to play. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was getting told by other people that, oh, no, that takes the grind factor away. I'm like, no, because after free to play weekend, guess what you got to do? You now have to grind that character is now locked. You now have to grind to unlock that character. Yep. I think it's a great idea. Let her let everybody play with everybody. Yeah, yeah, you know, it's like growing up. My mom, you know, tied the piece of bacon to a string, you know, and put them up and yanked it out like, you know, we had to share with everybody. You know, I can't eat it all myself. So did that really? I think you know, no. I think I absolutely agree that they should be free to play if you're going to do a free to play weekend. Yeah, I think the thing they need to be careful with is that after said free to play weekend, those that grind for those characters is going to feel even worse than it already does because those players are going to be like, oh, I have to play 75 games to go unlock a character, right? Like, I don't know what it is, but just to be exact, right? But the grind is already there. And so going from free to then having to earn them, if they decided to buy the game after the free weekend would then feel slightly worse. So they probably could counter that to if you play X amount of time during the free weekend, you get like, you'll get XP you get XP boost or something that you can use or something. You're like, all right, so everybody who played X amount of hours during the free play weekend, now he gets an XP boost that they can use and that'll give them XP. So then they when they do the grinding, the XP or whatever matter, boost or whatever you want to say, you know? Give me a hero mark. You've got the system. Yeah, just every game you play, you get a hero mark and just go from there. No, no. So like all of the OGs in fault right now are wanting to slap you across the face because they all have 300 hero marks that they can't use anything with and they don't want hero marks, at least the next P boost they could use for the mastery system or something. You know, like I'm talking about purely for the free to play players. Anyone who already owns the game, whatever, but purely for the free to play players hero mark. That's the thing is that you still have to benefit. You still have to give something for the OGs that have been around the whole time. You know, you're I get it. I'm OK with that. Declan new guys for a whole week. That's what they get out of it. It is true, you know, but a lot of people don't see that. Like they literally only see the tree. They don't see the forest, you know, and that's the problem. You know, so because of that, you kind of have to give that. That's I'm saying that maybe the XP boost will help that out because now everybody's getting that that ability, you know, the hero mark is pretty much the similar same thing as the hero mark, but you're just able to level up to get that stuff faster. So you guys have anything else for fault? Are you ready to move on? Oh, good. I will say something, but I forgot what it was. I thought it was something clever while we were talking, which is strange matter is fault's biggest competition. I think I think it's fairly true. Yeah, yeah, I can't say it's inaccurate. So let's move on to ethereal. We got nothing for ethereal, but it's not the inside guy. He's got stuff for us. He's got nothing. All right, tell me it is a little rare that we have somebody on the show that has played all of these games, including ethereal. Like you'll have, we do have a spread bearded is one of the very few that has experience with every single one of these games. I have, I have, I'm, that's what the discussion topic is going to be great because I can't wait to actually discuss the differences with all of these. So there's not much that much different from ethereal to the Paragon remake. No, nothing, nothing at all. I mean, it's the same game. Put them side by side, couldn't tell the difference. All right. So speaking of the discussion topic, you guys ready to move on? Yeah. And talk about it. So yeah, I thought this was the time that Jelly would jump into the ethereal's API and bring a bunch of stuff for us. I mean, what I can say is there's a reason that Convay is on the UG team now. Oh, is it? Keep people out of it. Convay is on the API now. And there's a reason that Convay and I worked on that project and now Convay is on this team. I'm just, I'm just for conveying that message to us and congratulate them. No problem, no problem. It's Convay. Yeah, okay. So the identity of these companies, obviously we already alluded to it, ethereal is so way, way different from these Paragon remakes. So I mean, they just right up front have their very own identity. We'll talk about ethereal's identity, but then I think it's a little more interesting. The Paragon remakes, they're all using the same assets, but now that we've been able to play all three of them, they have three very different identities, and which is something I don't think people expected. People kept saying, why don't these, why don't they combine to make one game? I think now we see that they have very, very different visions of what they think a Paragon successor should be. And if they tried to combine, there would be too much infighting to get anything done really. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. The kind of comparison that I've just thought of in my head just now is, for just to put it very, very plainly, I guess for the three Paragon successors, is that FALSE is a MOBA using Paragon assets. Predecessor is trying to be the most like Paragon, so they're Paragon assets that is trying to be a MOBA. And OverPrime is just out there throwing shit to the wind and seeing what sticks, right? Like just absolutely going out there. They are a MOBA technically, but I mean, it's very loosely at the moment. Right. They're all kind of filling different niches using the same assets. At what point does OverPrime not, at what point does OverPrime not a MOBA? Like what would have to happen for them to be like, you know what, this is just a brawler. This is more just overwatch with three lanes. Overwatch is a MOBA. I don't know. No, it didn't fall into the MOBA category. Yeah, it does. And so that's, they're really realistically nothing. Right. Okay. So what classification do you want to call the difference? Because there's a difference between Overwatch and League of Legends, right? Besides top down and obviously third person, or let's say Overwatch and Spike, right? There's a difference between those two. We know this, right? We can sit there and tell you. So what is that, what, how would you say that? You don't just say, hey, this is a MOBA because they're both MOBAs. So what is the difference between the two? I think OverSolive has already made that distinction by calling it a TPS action MOBA. A third person shooter, action MOBA. They don't just say that it's a MOBA or a strategic MOBA or anything like that. They let you know upfront that it's all about action, more than a strategically. It is, and I don't disagree with you, but there's no objectives in Overwatch. The objective is the brawler aspect, or I guess the objective is to escort the payload type thing. But that's not really, you're not, I don't know, it's not MOBA to me. It is MOBA by the definition of what MOBA is, but when you think pure MOBA, League of Legends, Dota, Paragon, Smite, when you're thinking MOBA, that's what you think of and that's not what Overwatch is or Paladins is. So, and it's like Overwatch, OverPrime is like taking Paragon Assets and making Overwatch. In a sense. So what would you call, I guess, Bearded, what would you call Heroes of the Storm? I mean, that one's, that's it. I would call that the top down of OverPrime. What I would call it. It literally is, I mean, there isn't any of those like crazy objectives. You're literally just pushing. I think it really depends on your perspective because if you're a Dota player, you're not gonna. I never played that one. Yeah, if you're a Dota player, you're not gonna consider League of Legends or any or Smite or Paragon to be a MOBA because it doesn't have nearly as many mechanics as Dota. So I think it's a little unfair to say that OverPrime is not a MOBA because it doesn't. Because it's more of a brawler. Because it's more of a brawler, right? A gigantic people considered a MOBA, that one didn't even have minions. Like. Yeah, that one, I've only seen a few of your videos on that, so I don't even know what that game is to be completely honest with you. So I can't comment on that one either. And I never played Dota. I saw, I was probably wrong bringing Dota into that when I was, you know, bringing up that comparison. I just wish there was a distinction, like a legitimate distinction between the Overwatch MOBA and the Smite MOBA. Like, there's, those aren't the same thing. They're a completely different game when it comes down to that. But by technicality, it is a MOBA by what the definition of what a MOBA is. Yeah, and I think, like you're saying, it comes down to a lack of definition. We don't have, these genres, the MOBA genre has never been subgenre, right? And so we don't have a really clear way of saying, of even telling people on the outside looking in what kind of MOBA this is, right? If I went to someone who's only ever played League of Legends and I said, you should try Overwatch, it's also a MOBA, they're gonna be confused as hell when they go in there the first time. And so that's, I definitely think we need to find some subgenre that this classifies under, that all of them classify under. And maybe it's Battle MOBA or Arena MOBA versus Strategic MOBA or whatever it is, right? Add the qualifier word before it. But I agree that there is no good definition for what these are right now. But again, I don't think that every game within a certain genre needs to be exactly like every game in that genre, you know what I mean? No, it doesn't. I completely agree with you, it doesn't. Because, I mean, the League of Legends in spite are not identical. Right. The top down itself makes it completely change. That itself, you know, but like, but League of Legends to Overwatch, those are completely different when you're looking at MOBAs. I don't consider Overwatch to be a MOBA personally. I mean, I understand that multiple online, multiplayer or not, Battle Arena applies to a lot of different games. I've always considered Overwatch to be more of a first person shooter, but. Which I would say, yeah, if I was gonna give it a genre, I would say FPS first. Yeah. But technically, like Battle Royale's are MOBAs because MOBA as a definition is so broad in general that it encompasses like 85% of games that are released today. But the Battle Royale has a distinction to it. You literally, I mean, yes, you're right, it is a MOBA and that's my point is that falls into a MOBA. Like, is it because is Overwatch a brawler MOBA and League of Legends is a three lane MOBA? You know, there's not no brawler to it, but you get your three lanes that you're focused on or whatever, is that the, there's no distinction for it and that's a problem for us trying to explain to the other people that are trying to come in and play a new game. You know, like, oh, it's a MOBA. You know, I mean, myself, I'm trying to explain to people that the games that I'm playing, oh, you're a streamer, what games do you play? Well, you know nothing about them because they're all new games that nobody's ever heard of them yet, but it's like they're MOBAs. And they go, what's that? But well, you know what League of Legends is. Like, yeah, we are, you know. I literally have to pull from other games and explain to them what these are. And that's kind of my point of what I'm saying with this discussion is how do you explain over-prime to somebody that's played Smite? You know, because it's not that. It's not, like, it's different in this regard. It literally is, like, you said it best, Mangus, when you said that it's not a Paragon remake. Literally is its own thing now. Like, because anybody else who knows this, and that's another funny thing is I've watched so many people now that this closed beta's went through, so many people know of predecessor and over-prime. They don't know of fault still. Yeah, yeah. And it's the one that's been the most active to be, you know, the ability to be played for the longest amount of time and people don't know what fault is. I watched a guy yesterday. I pulled up some of the cam upon my YouTube suggestions. It was a guy playing over-prime and the whole time he's comparing it to Pred as I'm watching it. And no, you know, nothing about, but I've read the comments and somebody at one of our, yeah, that's, he's a part of all three discords. I've seen this person comment. If you, if you prefer the slow version, because he said he was biggest thing is he didn't like over-prime because it was too fast. He's like, if you prefer the slow person, slow version, you should try fault. And then it was like, but like, nobody else's comment. But I'm like, I'm like, interesting. I was like, I was going to say the same thing. I'm like, nobody knows about fault. Like I was like, oh, no comment. All right, somebody's commented, we're good. But like, there's really no way to explain the differences between these and unless you're a for the millions fan. And you know these and we can sit there and have discussion with you. But like, for me to have this discussion outside of this setting, there's no way to describe that to somebody. Absolutely. And I don't think there will be until all three of these games further flesh out their identities. Right now they're kind of in the infancy of establishing those identities and what they want to be, where they want to be and what niche of the market they want to fill. And so I think we're kind of in this lull right now because of that. Even though they're starting to show all of those things, right, they're just becoming teenagers or they're starting to have an identity in all of their projects. So it's establishing further from there so we can have better distinction of what they are and what they're going to be. If I were to say that predecessor is the middle ground of the other two, what would you guys think of that? I would disagree. Yeah, I don't think it is. I think I guess middle ground in what way? Middle ground is in like, isn't the fact that like overprime because of the fact that you don't really have the strategic side of it. There is strategy to it, but it's more brawler and you still had like the minion execute. It kind of made things easy for you. All your abilities are just right there. You don't have to unlock any other, besides your ultimate. Everything's kind of really handed to you in overprime, right? In fault, you literally have to earn everything. Like you have to learn how to last hit, everything, like it's nothing is handed to you in fault. In predecessor, everything was made, the jungling was easy. I can't do jungle no matter what game I play, but predecessor, I'm a pretty fucking good jungler. Like, holy shit, like I got this. You know, let's go. You know, the minion execute, everything, it literally feels like if you took fault in overprime and you kind of combined the two, you kind of get a predecessor. I guess from an accessibility standpoint, I would agree with you, that I think predecessor is the mid-ground. Overprime is definitely the most accessible, and then fault is definitely the least accessible of the three. But I think in terms of play style, fault falls more in the middle of the two than predecessor does. Because predecessor definitively is the slowest of the three across the board. Overprime, there's no doubt, is the fastest. And fault kind of falls into the middle ground. So from a pure gameplay perspective, I think fault posed the line in between better than either of them, and they're pushing to those extremes. I think that's part of what I was meaning by they're finding their identities. Is Pred's kind of leaning more towards that slow, methodical gameplay, fault's kind of in the center You can have the slow, methodical gameplay. You can also have some fights going on pretty often, right? You kind of have that. Then Overprime is pushing purely toward the fight aspects, at least in their most recent test. So I think it's definitely, but I agree with you, from an accessibility standpoint, Pred probably falls in the center. I just think that Overprime is so different that there is no middle ground between the three. I think you have fault and Pred doing their versions of Paragon and then Overprime. Throwing Overprime. Overprime is its own game just uses the Paragon assets and just happens to have mobile qualities. Yeah, I mean, I can see that. I can see that Overprime is so different that there really is no need to put them in the comparison of the three because in that sense the only comparison is the fact that they're using Paragon assets. So I agree with you in that regard. So it's almost like having this conversation. It's almost like I feel forced to allow them in. Like, oh yeah, come on. I know you'll be a part of the conversation too, but when you're looking at it and the game that I'm looking for, the MOBA that I wanna play, it's between fault and predecessor. When Overprime comes out and it's fully out, I'm still gonna play it. I'm gonna have fun with it, but the MOBA that I wanna play, that style of game that I wanna play is between fault and predecessor. That's what I, so those two are the very similar ones when it comes to it. It just depends on how easy, how accessible you were saying or how fast-paced you want that game to be is how that's gonna, we have to wait to see what identity we've been talking about that these two choose when it comes to that. I think false identity for me is it's, they're shooting for a spiritual successor to Paragon, but a more complex successor than Paragon ever was. They're kind of taking it back a little bit to, I don't know, late legacy, early monolith style gameplay, whereas predecessor is going for just a direct Paragon successor, maybe from kind of mid-monolith. There's a much lower barrier of entry for predecessor than there is for fault. There's much more focus on just recreating the Paragon experience with predecessor. And if people are looking for just a direct, they want to play Paragon as they remembered it, I think predecessor is the way to go. If they think, if they want just a more, if they left Paragon and then went to like the League of Legends or Dota or something and they're looking for something a little more complex than Paragon ever was, then fault is probably their choice. If they just want to fucking jump in and have fun, then you got overprime. And then if you want to play fucking 3D MOBA chess, you play goddamn ethereal. I guess in my head, I've always viewed fault as trying to be the League of Legends of 3D MOBAs, right? They have a lot of very similar systems. They have a lot of very similar design choices to League of Legends, right? Where I can't say the same thing about predecessor and I can't say the same thing about overprime. And I don't think it's a bad thing that if that's the niche they want to fill, more power to them. And like you said, predecessor is trying to be the most, the most one to one of Paragon and then overprimes out doing their own thing. And then, and if I was gonna keep this analogy going, I think ethereal is trying to be the Dota 2 of the 3D MOBA space. Yes, 100%. I think you just nailed it on the head. Yeah, no, I agree with that from the little bit of I had been told about Dota here, not just here tonight, but also through the time. I agree with that for sure. Is it a problem though, that predecessor is trying to do that much of a one to one of Paragon? I mean, I don't wanna be the negative guy, but like Paragon failed. Exactly. And that's the thing I've always told people about it is despite the hands Epic and Tencent had in it, Paragon failed for a reason. And that was outside of them, right? And that's something that keeps coming to the back of my mind when I think about predecessor being the most one to one. Is at what point does that become a problem? Right? It's all fine and good that we're all here now going like, man, Paragon was the best game back in the day. I stopped playing Paragon, right? 100% I did. I basically quit the game by the time that it had died. I went back to it when it was announced that it died because of it was dying, but not because I wanted to play the game again, right? And that I think is a very crucial thing that predecessor has to be on the lookout for is what point do they become the thing that died for a different reason? Well, that's one of the reasons I believed so much in Omega from the beginning and just I've really put a lot of focus in the predecessor from like a long time ago because I thought that they could take the Paragon formula and avoid the mistakes that Epic made with Paragon and keep moving forward. With that being said, as things have progressed and I've played like the latest stress test and whatnot and seeing that they have gained so much money from investors, like they need money to sustain the game, but it worries me so much that they have so much money from investors because that's why there were just such poor decisions that went into Paragon was because Tencent owned so much of Epic games and were pressuring Epic to make money, more money with Paragon than they were. And then I look at predecessor and I see them doing things like the execute mechanic and the stupidly easy jungle and just... It's those that fail to learn from history or doomed to repeat it. Yeah. And so far they are on track to repeat the same process that failed Paragon. Like they're going down the road, like right now they're at the brink of like Monolith where I really enjoyed Monolith because I really enjoyed predecessor. I enjoyed playing that stress test, but they're at the point of Monolith where I really enjoyed it, but started to go downhill and they're taking those steps to go downhill and they can very well reverse it and start and reign that back in. And I have faith that they will do that. But I think that is, for now, that is their identity is that they're the one-for-one Paragon successor if you enjoyed Monolith Paragon. Right. There's nothing wrong with that. No. And a lot of people give SMS a hard time for being the one-for-one 3D league, you know? And I don't see an issue with that. League hit the scene and blew up. If it's not broke, don't fix it. I was gonna say the exact same thing if it ain't broke. I don't understand the issue with it. Like I guess if you don't like league then fine I guess, but I'm okay with getting a 3D version of league. You know, like let's go. I don't have a problem with it. I don't know. I never had an issue with that. Anybody saying that League of Legends is a failure is just lying. So emulating the successes of a successful company is not a bad thing, especially when you're doing it in your own way. It's not like they're recreating league. They're doing a 3D MOBA-esque version of a lot of leagues same systems. And I don't think that's a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. It's almost people finding a reason to be upset. Right? So you're just doing league in Paragon. Okay? And like... Yeah. I mean that being said the next hero for fault is misfortune, but I mean it is what it is. Fault I really enjoy fault, but like we've said they try to be that legal, they try to be that more complex version of Paragon. I think sometimes they try too hard for that, especially when they first started, When they first started, my most common thing that I would tell people about FAUT, about FAUT was that it was a Twitch dick measuring contest, not a fucking video game. And that's kind of what, and that has kind of carried on a little bit. Like, they've come back around, they've brought it back around. But like, that was kind of the total sort of attitude you got from the game itself. And you see that in characters like Feng Mao, you were talking about Feng Mao being overpowered. Any hero that like, people that are like real fast reflexes, like Twitch reflex, like Genji type players can play, are always overpowered as fuck in FAUT. And they look at that as like top-down balancing sort of thing. And just, and no, it's just broken. FAUT's starting to run into the roster, the area of the roster where all the characters are like that. Yeah. And that, so that potentially could scale really, really poorly going forward. I think you should just more gush without too many problems. I'm pretty impressed by that to tell you the truth. I don't know, I, the Twitchiness, I think Twitchiness just kind of adds that more skill to the game. And it can be, it can cause for that gap between the player base. You know, like if you can, if you're just that good at the game, you can do, you can excel with this character. And if you're not thinking of the game, you're not gonna excel with this character, which I had that in Paragon. I remember playing Paragon and having that issue of like, I can't, I don't even know how people are playing as this. Like, I could literally go up against this character and just get destroyed. I play as a character and all of a sudden, I literally can't get a kill. Like, how are people doing so well here? So I'm okay with that. I just think Feng Mao right now, his situation, his ability to reset on his Q, his teleport, whatever that is, the automatic reset on that is too much. And I think the fact that his ultimate, the reset doesn't cost any mana when he gets that. That's an issue. Like, I think you need to have some kind of negative effect for you to be able to use that ability again. And so every time, I'm not saying it has to be full amount, like every time it's gonna be a hundred mana, a hundred mana, a hundred mana, you know, whatever, maybe it's only a half of it or something, but it's something he's gotta have, he's gotta lose something somewhere to use his ultimate multiple times, you know? I can't sit here as Murdoch and just keep on, all right, you gotta kill on that snipe, reset, all right, light up, you know? I'm just gonna keep sniping people because I gotta kill on it. It doesn't get a reset like that. And it's like, you just keep going. Like, you gotta have something. You gotta have a negative to it as well when you can just keep on spamming it. You know what it is. And I just thought of this while you were talking. I think Strange Matter's problem is they overestimate their own ability to introduce complexity while underestimating the player base's ability to pick up on that complexity. Like they designed Feng Mao to have power according to being a hard to play hero. It's not that fucking hard to dive into a tower, get a kill, and then you get a reset on your dash and dive back out. Like that sounds like a ooh, playmaker skill. It's fucking not. It's not that hard to get a reset on his execute and then get another one. Gideon's passive is the same way. I remember, I can't really talk about that, but even Gideon's passive where like you hit and then if you hit another ability, it resets your basic cooldowns. Like that sounds like, oh, it's gonna be super hard to hit a rock and then a straight rock and then another rock. It's fucking not. Like anybody could not can do it. Yeah. No, and that's, I mean, there was that time they were like literally trying to, you go back and read some of these, read some of the patch notes. And Gideon's R, or sorry, his E or whatever it was, the Q, RMB, his RMB was, it was the hit box on it was shrunk by 50% or whatever. But you didn't know what that, what it was in the first time. It was like, well, what's 50%? And then I was like, all right, it was slightly large and or whatever. You know, I'm like, well, what does slightly mean? Like I don't like, so we went from 50% lower than what it was. What, 60%? I was like, what were these words? But they were trying to really find that because they lowered it too much to where it was almost, it was like too hard to actually land all those, to keep his passive actually hitting. So then they made, they were literally balancing it. But I was okay with that because that's literally what a MOBA is. So you're going to get these balancing patches because you need to, either you need to balance the hero because the hero is either under tuned or over tuned, or you just need to balance the meta because we've had too much of a brawler tank meta. So we need to get on, give the ADC some loves and tent SMS. Oh no, I just think that they, they try their very, they have a history of trying to create high risk, high reward heroes and they get the reward right. They do not get the risk right. Right. And that's what, I think that's what they want the identity, the identity of fall to be high risk, high reward. If you can play really well and you know the game really well, then you're going to succeed at this game. And I think they're going in that direction and they're heading in the right direction for that, but I don't think they're quite there yet. Whereas over prime, completely different. Just get in here. Over prime is low risk, high reward. Get in here and have fun. Everybody's overpowered. So fucking go for it. Like that's what, that's over prime sort of motto. And I like that they're going that way. Everybody's over primed. Everybody's over primed. This fucking guy. And then a theory old like, like we keep talking, we've just kind of hinted at a theory old throughout this. Literally like predecessor fault are the mid of all of this, right? They're like, all right, here's our mobile. This is kind of, yeah. Then you have over prime. That's like, just like, all right, we're just going to like down here. And then a theory is like, all right, we're going to make this even harder, but also still have all mobile aspects and harder. Yeah. You say harder. Like I said, don't it too of the mobile space, right? Like, I'm just scared to do all of this. You're adding your self minion execution where you can execute your own minions at the same time. Oh, are they adding that in? That's another two. Oh, God. Oh, I was like, oh. No, no, no, God. But I think it's funny that over prime is like, let's get a tower out of here. We don't need all these towers. And then the theory was like, three fucking towers, then an inhibitor, then the core. And the core is a living thing that attacks you. Like, okay. Okay, guys, settle the fuck down a little bit. Yeah, but at least our towers are still easier to take than over primes. All right, they are. They really are. This is true. This is true. I hate that fact with over prime that you can't build up your minion wave. No. And have it. No, that to me is one of the largest reasons why it is a brawler right now and not a full-fledged MOBA. Because past 10, 15 minutes, minions mean absolutely nothing. They're cannon fodder. And that's a problem. Yep, yep. But you can do that in ethereal. You can do that in predecessor. You can do that in fault. You can build that minion wave up and set that lane and rotate and stuff. I think that's the biggest thing I wanna see from over prime coming out of this last test is I wanna know the fact that somebody went and watched their minions for an hour and a half like I did in their test and be like, this is not working. What do we need to change to fix this? Because I was one of the people that when we were doing that for ethereal, I was one of the people that sat there and watched our minions just fight it down a lane and said, okay, why doesn't this work? Why don't they build? What do we need to change accordingly to fix this problem? In their patch, a kill and an assist was at 40% XP. If you got a kill, that's what it was when you first started this closed beta test, right? And they dropped it down. I think it's a 25% or something, all right? I think 40% is fine if you get those minion waves to set. It gives you that risk reward. You can either, if you set your lane and you go over and you get a kill, you gotta benefit because you did what you were supposed to do. But if you're not setting your lane and you run over and try to get that kill, your tower is now being affected by it because that wave is now crashing into your tower. If they can get those minions to where they can do that, that 40% is fine. It'll still give you that brawler feel that you want. That you get more benefit from getting hero kills. That's fine, but you also still have to manage your lane as well. And I think that'll help out big in that. Yeah, I mean, I think their patch, their patch was definitely geared at trying to make games end faster, right? Other than the XP nerf when you got kills and assists, basically everything else in that patch was geared towards making games end faster. And I think they just missed the mark because minions don't push lanes, right? I think that almost that entire patch was unnecessary if minions built up. One thing I do want to give them a shout out for though, like they did, like the prime just kind of like, you know, destroyed that. But looking at that patch, the nerf to shade slash revenant was perfect. Yep, 100%. Because I think, I do, I know mangoes completely disagrees, but I think I do believe that he was overtuned or overpowered, you know? But they did enough to him to where he still felt good. And I was still able to do damage with him. Like this is, this was good. I, it was a good nerf to him. Yeah, I completely agree. When I read the shade changes, it did not feel like an overcorrection. It felt like just the right amount to bring him in line with everybody else. Because I watched pre-patch shades, three-shot people, and that's all it took. Just three basics, no abilities, didn't matter. Whereas this brought him down to a place where he actually had to be skillful with his abilities and his castings and all that stuff. I think that was great. I think Bora needed way more of a nerf than she got, but I'm not a whole other topic. I think Grux probably needed an nerf, actually, or Uruk. One of my concerns with overprime, though, from that patch, is Narbash started out beyond overtuned. Oh, God, yeah. The fact, so day one, Convay is a support player. So he looked at all of Narbash's stats and everything and was sending screenshots of the scalings and all of that stuff. His thunk, his right-click cooldown, the, it's not thunk in that game. I can't remember what it's called. But his right-click cooldown was the same at all five levels. So you basically had no reason to upgrade your stun other than just damage, which is not what he wants to do. He just wants the stun to go out there. All right, so then- You focus everything else. Yeah, then that leaves you his march and his heal. His heal was already bonkers at level one. So there was no real reason to level it up. And then his march also now gave a tax speed in addition to move speed. So you basically max that thing up in your duo lane. You've got stuns on the same cooldown in the entire game. You've got a heal that does an insane amount. And then you've got fast, super fast attack speed and super fast movement speed. That is absolutely bonkers for that character. Yeah. He gave you a tax speed too. Yeah, his Q gave you a tax speed. Is that normal for Narbash? Nope. I was like, wait, is that normal? I'm like, I don't remember this being a thing. Yeah, when I got that screenshot, I looked at it and I was like, excuse me? They're giving him what? Yeah, I do remember looking at their patch notes and thinking, this is exactly what I would have changed for a lot of the heroes. I think the only thing they overdid it, like they nerfed Kalari or Kayla. They nerfed her ultimate way too hard. I disagree. Really? I 100% disagree. All of her nerfs in that patch were 100% warranted. OK. Yeah, I think Kalari. I think if you get to. If you get to lock me down, she locks you down. You're dead. You're done. There is nothing you could do as an ADC. This is not Kalari from Paragon. This is Kayla. And Kayla is not an assassin. And that's the big misconception with her pre-patch nerf and pre-CBT. The last CBT, she was a pure assassin, and that was not her identity in overprime. So they nerfed her going into this one, and then she was still that way a little bit, so they nerfed her again. And I think that made perfect sense. Because in this, she is a basic acrochus character that can lock people down with some CC. So I just thought. I think that's going to take time for people to, that change that it took me a little bit to understand. When I load up overprime, I'm not loading up the MOBA that I think I'm loading up. So that change, and I think that's going to be the same thing with Kalari slash Kayla, is you, if you're picking this character, this is not the character you think you're taking. You're taking something different. And that was the difference. It's like, you think of an assassin. Assassins should not have that much CC in their kit. And she had a lot of CC. And that, the blade itself that she throws at you, and then her ultimate on top of you, like as an ADC, you're done. Like there is no counter to that. You're not walking away. Your teammate's stunning her. That's the counter. But you just didn't see that in overprime. I think if people would have adjusted to it a little bit, like I thought Kalari was incredibly easy to shut down with goddamn near anybody. Yeah, but man, cause you never played against me. That's true. I mean, we almost got into one game. Yeah. And then beauty didn't select except, and I'm pissed. I purposely did it on purpose. I was like, I haven't said it. I haven't said it. I was like, this might have been them. I was like, you know, it is. Oh, it was. I did not want to. I already saw how you guys were running it. I'm like, nothing. That was going to be no fun instantly. I'm like, nope, not doing it. I want to give you the business jelly. I'm telling you. Sure, you want to make sure. Yeah. And that would have been the one killer team would have got eight minutes later that we would have forfeited because we all know our rando like five or six times. I'm sure. Oh, no. I don't know. Probably the fun game. I enjoyed it. It was fun. I did. I don't want it to make it sound like I didn't enjoy it. I went into it with the idea of playing the MOBAs that I've been watching and paying attention. I watched for the minions to play these MOBAs. Mm-hmm. And out of all of the minions, out of all of the, but I'm for the minions, this is the one that doesn't have that feel. So when you go into play the game and you were expecting that and it's not that, it just was like, okay, this isn't what I'm here for. After I made that mindset change, I enjoyed it a lot more after that. And speaking of people not getting what they want, can you imagine all the people that picked FaZe to go support and try to link to their ADC? Talk about broken. Oh my gosh, right? Her ultimate did way too much damage. Her ultimate does way too much damage. The fact that like literally any Richter fan is like hating FaZe right now because like I know the skill to land a Richter hook. There is no skill with FaZe to do. Just lock on, grab that person. Like, it's just guaranteed I'm pulling you no matter what you had in the, come on. Oh shit. And just for you guys all to know, Mangus does have a cat on his lap. He's not actually doing something else right now. No, I don't have a cat on my lap, I don't know what you're talking about. Mangus, we all know it's not that big, okay? You're stroking far too long. You're right. It's not that big. He's passed out. I just didn't even move when you visited him. He's like, nope, I'm done. He's fucking Dunskies right now. He's spent the last two hours ripping and tearing around the house. I saw that. Yeah. I don't know, I think that, we've gone for quite a long time here. You guys are about ready to grab it up. Yeah, fucking bearded fault. Every goddamn time. Yeah. Every fucking time. We give a window shit. I don't know, right? It's been bearded the whole time. There's always one common denominator. Which one is it this time? Sorry. No, I just love the ability to be like, me beforehand, I didn't know enough about these games to even have it. I could sit here and I would be like that quiet guy, like I don't know what you're just talking about. But it's knowing the game now and knowing, and being better at the game, not that I'm like amazing at it, but like being better at the game, I can have more conversation with it. And then just, you guys, I get to sit here and just shoot the shit with you guys nonstop. Yeah, we could definitely keep going, but I'm all out of beer actually, so we need to cut it soon. All right. Well, let's start wrapping it up. Just any final statements on the topic, Jelly? I think we kind of covered the bases really. Yeah. Made it? Yeah, no, I mean, all four of them are completely different games, but all four of them are all really fun. In their own way, yeah. Yeah, I would agree. And yeah, 100%. I really got nothing to add to that. Let's move on to plugs, bearded, anything you want to plug? Yeah, I'm trying to get a lot better with my YouTube. Bearded Wolverine, you can find me there. So if you don't mind going over there and hitting a subscribe on there, get me up to 100, so then Mangus can actually add me with a bunch of things. So we're getting 78 subscribers right now. So like we're 22 away and they can get off that full URL, be on my own name and stuff like that. So working on that, I got another overprime video I'm gonna be posting here shortly, I don't know exactly. Work is so hard for me to actually be consistent with it. I try my best. Right on. But then my Twitch stream, also Beard Wolverine. I try to do that every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday we do the partner panel for fault. So. You will see me there as well. Even during the Monday, Tuesday gameplay, I'm off in there. Yes, yes you are. Jellanese? Nothing for me to plug this week, Mangus. What about you? Working on a video comparing Gideon between all three games, overprime and predecessor and fault and a video that would have released yesterday I did with Convay, or not Convay, Viking Jedi, I'm mixing up the friends that I'm stealing from you, Jellie. Yeah, I know, seriously. I did a video with Viking Jedi about my thoughts on what overprime needs to improve. That was a pretty interesting video if you guys wanna check that out. But that is gonna wrap it up for this week. Thanks for coming out to the premiere if you're here live. Thanks for watching the video. If you're just watching the video on my channel. But for now, this is the Four of the Minions crew signing off. You guys have a good one. Peace. All right. I'm ready to get this fucking cat off my lap. He's like a little goddamn heater. Space heater, yep. Man, goose. Special shout out to channel members, I, Blood Hunter, Jellie Knees, Meow, Mix for Men, Stunt, Raven, and Blastoise King.