 Hello everyone and welcome back to Four of the Minions, the weekly show where we talk about the upcoming Paragon projects as well as Aetherial. This week we're going to be talking about Predacessor's migration to Unreal Engine 5. We'll cover Over Prime adding taunt to the game, which is kind of cool. Hey, thanks CloroxTV, I just got a new member. And then we'll also discuss Aetherial's lore art that they recently released and defaulted on finally doing the mastery race for Biggie and Scorch. I am your host, the Mangus, joining me as always as my friend and co-host, Jelly Knees. How you doing, Jelly? I am good, Mangus. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to talk about all this stuff. And yeah, it should be a good time. And with us as always is the empty spot that's waiting for Viking to join the call because he had to do something quickly. He'll be back soon. Yeah, he'll be here very, very shortly. I was kind of hoping he would pop in like right as I said that. And so I could be like, and Bright is always like that. I right now would have been great. That would have been great. Um, I will say this week, I tucked my shirt into lessen the chances that you'll see my ass crack when I invariably get up to make myself a drink. Let's say lesson. Well, what do you think we're here for? Exactly. Definitely not my ass crack. So the big news, I think this week, probably the biggest news this week is coming out of predecessor. So we're going to start with predecessor. And I need to get better at switching these little screens around and shit. There we go. Predecessor. So predecessor migrated to will announce that they are migrating to unreal engine five. And we talked about this a little bit. We kind of invaded the fault partner panel this this weekend. And so we talked about it on there. I think this is a much bigger deal than a vast majority of their other announcements that have come out like this is a bigger deal than a new hero or new kids or anything like that. This is this is big. This is going to be really big for them. Hopefully, Ruba will be in chat at some point in time. And we can ask him a little bit about it because he's a he's the tech guy, you know. But I think the biggest improvement that we're going to see is probably optimization. What do you think, Joey? I think that's going to be a huge one, right? Is that you're going to see that we talked about, like you said, on the partner panel, but we're going to see higher highs and then more compatibility with low low end PCs, right? So we're going to see all of these newer players coming into the game that maybe couldn't play before on laptops or on way lower end PCs. But you're also going to have the really high Fidelity at the top of side as well. And there he is. Wham. What's up, guys? Welcome. Welcome. We're talking about Fred upgrading to UE five. Oh, I don't know anything about that. So just carry on. Yep. Great. But so it's it's going to be super exciting to see where they go from here in terms of that optimization and those new things that UE five offers them as well, right? Like UE five, I know from like a visual effects perspective, UE five adds so many like quality of life features for visual effects that that's a huge upgrade in and of itself. It adds a lot of base systems that you before didn't have just core to the native engine. They had to do via plugins or third party things, right? So there's a lot of this stuff that's super cool to see that they have a potential to add now because of that UE five upgrade. Yeah, one of the things I think the thing that's probably the coolest is it's going to be across the board. Like if you already have a very high end computer, it's just going to look better. If you had a low end computer, it's going to be optimized in such a way that you'll be able to increase your settings and have it look better from what I understand, from what I've been watching from the other UE five stuff is that like I would. I'll compare it to streaming. It's like being able to stream in 4K, but with the bandwidth that you used to use for like 720, like you can just being able to just put so much more information out there with while taking up so little of your computer's energy and resources, so which it's pretty awesome. Jenna, you just popped in. What's up? Yeah, well, thank you. Sorry for being a little bit late. I had to pick up the one that's wandering around back there in the kitchen. Oh, I could put name tags up now. Oh, yeah, name tags so we know who we are. No, actually, so I'm glad you asked that because I think I forgot to ask that in when we were doing partner panel. It's I was curious and you be obviously since you guys don't grow beards, you know things about UE five. A lot of times, a lot of times we've talked about like, you know, the PC versions of these games, you know, obviously being a higher end and in requiring a lot of, you know, processing power to be able to play. And when we look at like, sit things like Smite or Dota or League of Legends, those games can be run, you know, on like toasters and that's in that broad appeal. So and I thought that UE five actually mean I knew they did a lot of optimization, but I didn't think it was going to solve that problem that that a lot of game companies ran into and that they struggle to sometimes keep older machines or less powerful machines relevant. But you guys are saying that that's not the case, that they'll be able to, you know, run some of these games still with that are on UE five with a toaster like computer just improves optimization across the board. So there's higher highs but allows for lower ends to meet the bare minimum specs now. Interesting. It's all it's all encompassing for console. It's slightly different because console usually has one, maybe two different graphical settings, depending on what you're searching for. But it's going to be a wide wide array of people now able to play the game because of this change, right? Yeah, the bottom of the bar got higher. The bottom of the bar also got higher. Got it. Got it. OK. Hey, that's that's really neat. No, I think it expands both directions. Yeah, the floor and the ceiling. I was trying to say that the lowering computers are going to perform even better now is what I'm saying. OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. Now we're all there. Yeah, that's really exciting for predecessor, for sure. I mean, I think that any of these games should be looking to make those moves eventually anyway, because obviously it's the wave of the of the future at this point, right? All the games are going to be moving forward. So it will be really exciting to see what that looks like, because it already looks good. Like it run. I mean, I didn't play it. You guys talk about it a lot with predecessor, how smooth the game felt to play. So I'm guessing that adding in a UE five engine is going to make that even better if that's a possibility. That's the thing I was going to say is that has been one of their like the things that have put them above the other games. Like one of the categories that they've been above both fault and overprime so far is optimization. And a lot of that comes down to fringe. Fringe has been with them since the very beginning. This is another just really cool thing about a meta. When we were somebody mentioned core earlier, when we were tracking core, core was doing a lot of they would use somebody for their talents for a while when they would find somebody better, they would replace them. Yeah, I had a lot of angry messages about discord from people that had been spurned by a meta buff. But yeah, but with a meta studio, it seems that Smokey just gathered a great team from the beginning because French took huge strides towards optimizing predecessor from the very beginning. He was doing things like instead of, you know, having three rocks in one place, he would combine that asset and the one asset. So you didn't have hidden polygons trying to render that you would never see anyway. Right. So right there. We're already taking massive strides towards great optimization. And this is just going to I can't wait to see what fringe could do with this. And I know we talked about it a little bit again. I'm speaking from the ununknowledgeable lack of lacking in knowledge. No knowledge. I don't know how to say it. Knowledge lists. You dumb dumb. Yeah, dumb, but pretty, you know? Listen, you don't have to be smart if you're pretty. So does that make it easier to and I know we talked about this on partner panel, but just in case people weren't there that are currently here in chat, like, does that make it easier for the devs to also like make things like happen faster when they're doing updates to like the map or whatever? Like, you know, like does it make that whole transition a lot smoother from like patching and adding in things into the game? That might be more of a question for Jelly since you obviously play around with it a lot. I think it depends on what aspect you're asking about for in terms of like just new like map assets, right? If they wanted to change the map overnight, right? It definitely makes it easier. I wouldn't say it gets them all the way to like a completion status a ton faster, but with something like Nanites, which is the big one of the big features in UE5, right? Where it changes the amount of triangles based on distance that a object has. And it's it's way more complicated than that. But that's the very simple way of explaining it. That makes it a lot easier to just drag and drop assets and still keep a huge chunk of your performance just off the back. So it definitely brings them up to a faster speed because that's one thing you don't have to worry about is the asset itself. Oh, the engine's going to take care of that. You just worry about combining assets or placing them correctly or all of those things and going from there, which is a huge, huge benefit. So I never want this to be like a whole like UE5 conversation necessarily, but I know it's a pretty big deal. So does that also help with and Mingus, I know you could probably chime in on this too, but does that help with like like running events or, you know, or even doing like the visual effects updates? Like we were talking a lot about like how some of these, you know, champions are going to need to be changed or updated to a more modern style to keep up with the times as far as MOBAs have progressed, right? To you probably can't keep things exactly how they were during Paragon days. Does UE5 help assist with that or is it just a net zero? It doesn't really matter. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if any of the updates to UE5 are going to help with that at all. Well, I should say I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that with UE5 are going to come even more and more programs that help the developer out as they're creating things. I know one thing for absolutely certain that I've seen is that it's going to be much, much easier to import assets from other from other creative tools into you, into the Unreal Engine now. So if you got somebody that's really good with using Blender, then they can create a character or a piece of art or a minion or just landscape, whatever in Blender, and it could be imported quite easily into Unreal Engine now. So that should help them with a little more original content. I'd love to see from them. Absolutely. And that I think it's more of a instead of it makes it necessarily easier for them, it gives them a wider toolbox. Right. So if one of the new tools can help them do something that they couldn't do before. Mm hmm. Huge. That's that's fantastic. But without knowing exactly how their internals work and like the Blueprint system that they're using and all that kind of stuff, there's no way to dictate with certainty. And then one last question if you guys want to move on after this, but it's something I was thinking about after partner panel is that I think a lot of the success in these games is going to be, you know, engaging community. And do you think going to like a UE5 helps with like setting up, you know, events like, I don't know, like a Christmas event and changing the map a little bit to, you know, have Christmas trees or, you know, like stuff along those lines, it kind of gets the community a little bit more involved around. Does UE5 help with that? Does it not matter? Because like when I think of like League of Legends, right? Whenever they have like a new cool launch, they'll like update the music that's playing, they'll update some of the things that are appearing on the map and it's kind of fun to be part of that, right? Like in some are better done than others and some are more exciting, but it really just depends on the fan base and what they're looking for. Does does UE5 help in this regard? Like, does this give predecessor like a leg up in some aspects that they're going to UE5 early to be able to do more of those community driven things? Or again, is it kind of doesn't matter? I don't know about community driven things to tell you the truth. I just it's just like like Jelly Sand. It just gives them a bigger toolbox to work with. OK. Cool. That's all I had. It sounds like SAO is getting very close. That that brings up a good, a good topic. If predecessor was a full dive MMO that are a full dive game that you had to go into and you died, if you actually died, what hero would you be? If you if you had to live inside the game and if you died in the game, you died in Grey Stone. Grey Stone, 100 percent. Or or just baby. Yeah, does several account in the sense that he's kind of like a Wraith and he's already dead, so like does he really die? I don't know, but I would pick Kalaria just had in a corner of the entire match. Wukong, just use your clouds, walk above people. Face-eyed boob is a tempting thing, for sure. I agree, minimum. Yeah. Face-eyed boob is strong. Oh, there is Face-eyed boob in the in the little background thing. Yeah, I did a thing at the time where I enlarged all the heroes, ass and titties and set it to the song, ass and titties. This guy. Of course, of course. Of course, I did. So what else do we have from the old predecessor? Well, along with this migration to UE5, they didn't interview with RGSAs about the entire dev process. I don't know if you guys caught that interview. Specifically, Unreal Engine did an interview with RGSAs. Right. So which I think that's a big, a big thing. I also think it's funny that. Epic kind of created Paragon in order to sell the Unreal Engine. And now they're using a Paragon remake to sell it. Sell Unreal Engine? Yeah, brilliant. Oh, the wheel just keeps turning. But yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff in it. They were just talking about their funding. It was basically just a quick history recap of everything that's happened. One thing, one thing. The only thing I really took issue with in the entire thing was they were talking about how the Epic Mega Grant gave them a more secure foundation. I thought they already had a very good foundation prior to that. I think they're underselling themselves when they say that. I think they already had a great foundation before that Epic Mega Grant. I mean, I also think it's part of you're getting interviewed by Epic Games. What are you going to say with your biggest benefit? Probably the Epic Games sponsored grant. Oh, and you guys gave us a bunch of money. That helped. Yeah. I mean, do you want to give us some more? That'd be cute. Yeah, exactly. Right. Like a big surprise. I see. I took it more of like a flex, I think, on on the other two. And maybe it's because I don't know. But I did the other two get any kind of grants from. You get to apply. So we don't know if they've even applied. Oh, OK. So I mean, to me, it just sounded like a little bit of a flex. Like, hey, we got this and it's from Epic and it's, you know, we got their assets were remaking a game that, you know, I don't know. That's at least the tone that I took from it. Now, maybe I'm putting a reading too much into it. But I also, it felt like one of those interviews, it's not really an interview again. And that was kind of awkward for me, where it was just like you. It wasn't like an actual conversation, right? I felt like it was like, here's the questions I'm asking you. And or here's the stuff I want to talk about. Fit questions into the things that I want to talk about. You know, it felt a little it's the second time they've done it. And it's fine. Like it is what it is. I just think it's a weird format. Like just if you just want to talk about your stuff, just talk about what your stuff or do a real interview and make it a video and make at least like it fun and engaging in that regard. But like, I don't know, this written out interview was kind of like jelly said, I don't think this is for this was for the bit. I mean, it was partially for the benefit of predecessor, right? I think it was mainly for the benefit of Epic and the Unreal Engine. This was not done to promote predecessor. It was done to promote the efficacy of Unreal Engine. You think so? I mean, do you think the only thing that predecessors giving here in terms of knowledge is that they're going to UE5 for their community? Every single piece of everything else was well known, well known information. So this was not for their community by any means. This was 100 percent for Unreal Engine, because that's where I thought first before predecessor put it out on Twitter, before any of that actually got a was on Reddit and saw any Unreal Engine subreddit. One posted, oh, the new article is out for Unreal Engine. And it was about predecessor, completely unrelated. It was the funniest thing. But it was like, wow, that's not OK. I just I guess maybe I'm being again a bit of a skeptic here. It's like, I just feel like if I'm Epic and I'm Unreal Engine, I don't need to promote it through predecessor. Like, I mean, everybody's going to want Unreal 5 anyway. Like it's it's, you know, it's the top. Engine, I think at this point, right? Like, I don't know, it just seems like it's like it feels like Apple going to like a mom and pop shop and promoting their Apple product. Like, it's like, I don't you know, maybe I'm being too much of a skeptic. I don't know. It didn't I didn't get that same impression that you guys got for it, that it was more for Epic than it was for predecessor. But that's just me. I'm dumb, right? So as I said in in chat, it was kind of mutual, like it was a mutual. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. But I don't think it's bad for predecessor. Yeah, if anybody thinks it was 100 percent for predecessor. Yeah, I don't think that's the case. I think it was it was a lot towards helping Epic out as well. And again, how fucking ironic is that shit? I think the biggest thing is that this is one of the few games that is a more triple A feel that is using Unreal Engine 5 that are going to be coming out in any time. Any kind of recent or recent or whatever, any kind of foreseeable future. Thank you. Right, though, we we got a bunch of other games on the horizon that say they're using UE5, but that's another year out. This is one of the first few games that's actually going to be released on UE5, theoretically, whenever they drop EA sometime this year. So I guess then what if there was something in again, if I'm off base, let me know, but is there a possibility that Paragon using again some of the money and all that stuff that they've recently acquired and are using this as a marketing tool and went to Unreal or went to Epic and been like, hey, can we're looking to move to this? Can we use this as a as a cross promotional opportunity and and garnered that for themselves to because to me, that makes more sense that it would come from predecessor wanting to use, you know, the news of them going to Unreal 5, having Unreal 5 be the ones interviewing them and them talking about it and all that stuff. I think is is only really I think it's a big beneficial to predecessor. It gets them again out there and I think is a really clever marketing tool. If that's how they use it, otherwise they just lucked into it and it worked out for them either way. But like it wouldn't surprise me if they went after it. I mean, I imagine with team Steve Superville on the team that Steve Superville put them in contact with somebody or mentioned to somebody in Epic, oh, this project I'm an advisor on is moving to UE5 and then the cogs started turning. Sure. I think that's great. Like that that seems to me it was predecessor pushed more like driven to get this to happen at all. And it comes down to Epic saying yes at the end of the day. Yeah, I mean, I just think it's cool. Yeah, no, I think it's great, especially if predecessor was proactive in it, because that's something that we've been talking a lot about with these games is like how proactive are they going to be to really expand and make a name for themselves outside of just the, you know, the Paragon people who are waiting for a new pair of zombie to play. So I think it's great. It's exciting either way and again raises the tide, which is always fun. We'll see if the other guys can rise up. Another thing that kind of highlighted was they were talking about gas a lot. The gameplay ability system that is an Unreal Engine 4 and that helped predecessor quite a bit because they weren't using gas in their very first alpha test and it sucked like it was like it felt like every felt like everybody had about five hundred milliseconds of lag in that test is because they weren't using gas and they are using it now and they brought that up quite a few times. I think that was sort of to allude to that UE5 will bring them even more tools and features like that that will help with the development. Yeah, yeah. I mean, actually, so Jay actually brings up a thing that I saw in the thing and forgot in the article and forgot about was that they mentioned that they will have 20 heroes on early access release straight up. At least they will have at least 20 heroes on early access release. How many did they have during the last play test? Not 20. Well, I know, I figured that. Do you remember Mingus by chance? Oh, all right. Don't ask me. I was going to use things. I was just going to use it as a comparison in like, you know, in the in the time frame that they were able to have like the test and then leading into adding a bunch of, you know, new champions and stuff like that. I was just going to be it was more of like a comparing contrast for the other pair of zombies that we're going to talk about. I'm just curious. I mean, OK, good. There's something interesting happening and it would not surprise me to hear its intentional. I've noticed a lot of small content creators are posting videos of predecessor gameplay consistently, even up till now. And that's not the I mean, the game hasn't been playable in months. So they either recorded a million games over the last test and then have just been perfectly spreading them out. Or I and I do wonder if they're having some people record internally and that because they're small YouTube channels, right? There's no one. It's no mangoes, right? No, British, right? But it's small in comparison to a hundred. No, you're not, right? But that's there's a lot of these videos going out and it's from different people every single time. So I'm curious if they're having people record games in like internal testing and putting them out as old gameplay or giving them games to put out as old gameplay that helps boost these these small creators get the name of predecessor out there in the world for more search engine opportunities. Like it's it's really interesting to see, like I said, I see a new one at least once a week of like how it's a game play or Kalari game play. It's like, where is this coming from? Like I was a bit of a test in a long time. I can imagine being a small content creator with all this bread footage saved up and I'm getting towards the end of it and I'm starting to ration the videos like water. There's some help perfectly getting recommended to me. After the fact, I don't know. It's weird. No, that's cool, though. I mean, that definitely for young content creators when these games are coming out, that's that's your time to shine. That's your time to grab a little piece of the the community pie and run with it. If you can try to build your channel that way. That's the best time to try and do it. Dude, I just saw on live the Decker laser. It looks so good, man. Or not Decker, but yeah, no, it is Decker. Yeah, the laser, her new E or whatever. So good. A lot of you played the heck in the beta, but I'm totally releasing it because it preserves type. That there it is. There's my answer. OK. Man of class had a message that I was reading and it got redacted. I don't know if that's. I hope my channel isn't redacting people. Maybe I was some kind or or he he deleted himself if he didn't want to continue the question. Sophisticated care to ask. And I think we already know the answer to this, but is Fred free to play or going to be free to play? Yeah, it's supposed to be free to play for release. I don't know about the early access, but pretty. We don't have they've said that there are even their early access is going to be free to play, but I can't guarantee that. It seems like it's gone back and forth about early access. They've never said anything super definitively about it, but they kind of lean different ways, depending on when you're asking him. And we don't we still don't know. No, no worries, man of class. I'm just making sure that my stuff didn't like delete your comment or something. And we still don't know what their monetization is going to be like, right? They haven't released anything. Not at all that. Yeah, that's still a bit of a concern, I suppose. But the only thing the only thing we've seen from them is Jailer Murdoch and that subskin, right? That's it. And that was two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, almost. Yeah, I bet they have a bunch in their pocket, though. I would hope so. If they're developing custom model characters, theoretically, they should have been developing skins this whole time as well. I think they have been. I think they have been something else coming out of predecessor. They did. It was just a just showing off some steel gameplay, which was cool to see. I mean, there's nothing special, but good to see some steel mixing it up, throwing down. My only complaint would be they did it as a YouTube short. I wish they would have released just the actual full high resolution imagery of it. That's what it's good to see. Because like you look at it on Twitter and you get like a bigger picture, but it's low quality. Yeah. So if I don't know what the count of heroes was in the last test and I would look at it, but it would take me a minute to find it. But if the UI T's work in progress thing they put out after the last test is anything, there's still eight more characters that we've yet to see that are on that UI. That haven't been announced or shown in any way, shape, or form or seven, I think. Moragesh, Kuang, Grim, Greystone, Boris, Aurora, Crunch, was Sparrow in the last test. I don't think she was Sparrow. I wouldn't know. Yeah, she was in it. Was she? OK. This is from the beginning. Are ones that are on the UI screen but have not been implemented that we know of yet so they could easily be added in there as well. So there's some talk about buying people's unreleased gameplay footage. And I mean, I'm sure there is some out there, you know, but I don't know if it's going to help your channel. Like, if you know, if you've got like a mangoes gameplay, like, really, are you benefiting from that? I don't know. You know, how many skill shots do you want your audience to see missing? You know, I just. This guy, this guy, this guy was. That was that was a poor thing. Predecessor yet. Nope. I remember when they first did their couple, their first couple of betas and shit that had countless on their opening screen like everybody was like, well, why she'll open the screen if she's not in the game. Right. I think that's something that's been mentioned before, right? Like that she's in some of the promo material or scene before, but not actually playable. That makes sense. Right. There's there's probably going to be that across the board that that they have. We know they're all coming, right? I don't think that any of these games are going to hold back any of the epic assets, right? They're going to they're going to eventually get them all out there. I would imagine even the ones that people don't want. Right. I think that's about close it out for Predecessor unless you guys got something else. Nothing comes to mind. All right, let's get exciting, exciting stuff. That's it. Move on into overprime. Overprime. OK, so the most interesting thing I found with overprime this week was on their Trello skill effect developments taunt. We've never seen a taunt in Paragon. And there's one particular hero I can think that maybe would use this taunt. Can you guys think who it is? Give you a second here. Hunt. I'm thinking it would have to be a jungler. Oh, do you know what? OK, I'm going to throw my idea. It's probably Twin Blast, you know, because he's just like an arrogant. He's like an arrogant piece of shit, you know, so he could probably say something that would be. No, I mean, obviously, I don't think that's the actual one that they would pick, but it would be really funny if that that's I think it's probably a dealt. Oh, I think it's their new their brand new hero because if you have a shield, you can taunt. That's just what I've learned from video games. That's that's a fair assessment. See, I thought that I thought that the taunt might be something more like a in game, like emote type thing, like where you can taunt. And that's what they were talking about is the skill effect. So it being an actual skill and doing something where it like forces an enemy to like attack you or something like that, that would be actually pretty cool. Or I think just a PvE thing, then that would be boring. I think it's probably the idea of an actual skill because those are those taunts like you were just talking about are called emotes in Paragon. And so far, none of the other games have branched out of that. That's I guess none of the other games fault hasn't branched out of that naming convention for those things. So maybe. But I think it definitely is more of a skill. I think Adele fits for it as a new character, right? They don't change the kits of existing characters. There are the core mechanics of existing characters. I think Tara could be another one. Tara having a taunt would be fantastic. Being the kind of giant tank that she is, she could easily have a taunt just to absorb that damage and take some heat off of her team. I don't think anybody else really could have a taunt. I mean, they could, but it's them super, super well. But I mean, I'm in either way. Yeah, I just like the ability. It specifically says skill effect development. So it makes me strongly believe that it's going to be an actual skill in game. And I'm very excited to see another form of CC added into the. Yeah, Paragon equation with over 100 percent. Yeah, I mean, any soft CC, I think, especially the third person mobile is more valuable than a straight hard CC ability. So and to me, it adds a little bit of flavor of fun, right? Like I think having like charms and fears and sleeps and all those kinds of things. I think even though they all essentially kind of do the same thing as far as like their overall CC, the way that you implement them is to me is a lot more fun. Like that's I think that's the key to it is it adds a little bit more maybe immersion into it as well. Like, you know, the effects that you get, like a sleep. If you take damage, you're supposed to wake up, which is so it's a little bit different. So yeah, I think a taunt would be cool. And especially if it's on their new champion, because that's probably the easiest one to do it, right? Is the one that's their own and giving it an ability that can do whatever they want us to do. Absolutely. AI cloud, I am going to copy that question and save it for the end. Because I do want to address that. But I'm but right now we're talking to overprime. So I'm going to put that in the sheet under questions. Right there. Boom. And. Yeah, I just as it was mentioned, taunt is used a lot in which we call it smite. There's taunts and smite Athena, I think. If I remember correctly, he has a taunt where she pulls people in. Maybe I'm thinking of the wrong god, you know, didn't play smite all that much. Yeah, I mean, taunts and charms are effectively the same thing. Yeah, usually charms are just used by magic characters and taunts are used by melee characters. But it could be any either way. Right. And you guys have Marina in ethereal that uses a charm slash. Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent works really quite well. Yeah, a lot of times that I get I hear that song go off and I die because of it is too many. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty effective. I don't know. We know nothing about Adele. I really think it's going to be Adele that gets the taunt. But all we know is that she has some sort of chain sword and a shield and cute Harley Quinn big tails, but on active item, that would be kind of cool. Well, it'd be cool. You get five people taking a taunt active item. You just taunt the whole enemy team. Every every offlaner and mid laner should take it, if that was the case, because you would basically help negate so many tower dives or people because that was the thing like in League of Legends, right? If you had like a taunt taunting somebody under tower, you know, because it forces them to attack you. It's it's massive. Like you get so much extra DPS from your turrets to help you cut down the secure kills and stuff like that. Like so I think that would as an item would probably be too strong. However, I'm always the fan of just like fun items. Like I just I don't want this is the thing. And we talked about this on Partner Panel and I know this is a little bit off topic. But it's like I just love when an item feels so unique and like you might not build it all the time. But when you have that game, you're like, Oh, I can build this and fucking get away with it. And that's just I don't know, man, it's so cool. Like that was how I felt about and overprime that lightning item that you it's like a full attack speed, but you get like the 30 percent chance to chain lightning between people. And I just thought it was a cool, unique item. You don't build it all the time because it's not efficient all the time. There's other items that probably do a better job, but you can build it in some scenarios where it works out really well for you. And I just think it's always fun. Not a taunt, probably too strong. But I do like the idea of a unique item choices that would make things fun. Other stuff for overprime this week, they reposted the Wraith video. I guess that was a mistake. And then they reposted it. They announced that article that we covered last week. So we're a step ahead of you. So leave were actually announcing stuff before you do. Then they had a the shorts that they've been doing where they've been doing the various skins. This time they did the phase. I call it the cyberpunk skin where she has like a spray cans hosted on her hip and like a lot of cool shit going on. Super good. Yeah, love that skin so much. It's so I mean, this goes back to someone was saying before like this could be the new base skins, right? We had Colt and he's one of his cool skins. We had phase in one of her cool skins, but we've had others in their base skin. We've had some in recolors. We've had like it's it's so all over the place. It could be anything at this point. Yeah, I still think it's them just showing off to be honest. I think it's like I think it's them showing off. I think they're playing a paying homage to Paragon and how they showed off the champions when they were coming out, which I still think is it doesn't hurt anybody, right? I know bearded took exception to it when we were on partner panel. He thought it was annoying and boring and it made him upset. I guess when it popped up on his Twitter feed, I don't know why that's such a strong reaction from him, but I think it's cool. I think they're neat. At least it looks fun. Like, you know, especially this one, because yeah, big ups. Some other stuff in their work in progress. They had just a Murdoch skin that was just one of the epic skins. I don't know why they posted that just for funsies, I guess. And then the other thing from their Trello that was kind of interesting was custom game systems improvement. So I mean, we've known for a while that they're going to have, you know, different game modes and custom games and stuff. So I think that's more creating our own custom game. Like Viking and I went into a custom game constantly during the last test to test things out, right? That all what they can do for that is they add, depending on if you want to toggle features on and off, right? Is the ability to get items or get gold to buy items, turn camps on and off, move around the map a little bit better, whatever it is. So you can actually limit test a lot more effectively rather than having to play a 45 minute game just to test the one thing you wanted to do and then go back out somewhere else. I think it goes back to them and their practice tool environment, right? Like if you feel like, because that was the thing that I think you and I struggled with during the test was like, you could go into the practice tool, get all the gold and try out all that. But you weren't sure if it was going to have this because it seemed like it wasn't a one for one, right? Like we were like, oh, wait, I'm doing all this. But then when I get in game, it doesn't quite feel the same way. So there's got to be some kind of disconnect. So I agree. I hope that the custom games have a little bit more customization allowed for it, like adding in, you know, being able to assign an AI bot or something like that. So you can practice laning or, you know, if you go the way of League of Legends, who I think does the best as far as the practice tool is concerned, you can speed things up. You can pause, you know, damage. You can set up, you know, you can do basically whatever you want on their map. And I think having now that might be a bit ambitious for some of these games, but getting towards that or moving towards that direction, I think is a positive. So I hope that's what that means is as they're continuing to update. Also for, you know, the potential tournaments and stuff like that that people might want to throw together, improving customs to be able to make that happen more fluidly would be super neat. Yeah, 100 percent. Especially a lot of cool stuff that they could do for sure to expand on all that and have a lot of cool things in their custom game mode, for sure. I think that's it for Over Prime this week. It was a pretty light news week for Over Prime. They still, again, consistently releasing at least some stuff like the phase thing. But I think that is about it, unless you guys got anything else. No, I mean, I think maybe Jelly is with me. I was holding out hope that we might hear something today because they kind of consistently put something out on Thursdays. And then either usually on Friday, they put out another big something they didn't this week. So I was like, OK, well, maybe it'll come on Saturday. And then somebody tagged me actually in the Over Prime Discord this afternoon for they were just throwing memes or whatever. But I thought it was an announcement. So I was like, super excited. I'm like, dude, get it right over the thing. And I was like, oh, it's not an announcement. So yeah, I got a I got a little blue ball there. But, you know, it is whoever tagged Viking. He's coming after you. I don't know. I was happy to get tagged. I'm I'm happy. And he wouldn't even think to me when they look at stuff like, I don't know. That's like a weird, like a pseudo celebrity thing to get like tagged in something because somebody else is weird. But I'm happy. Thank you for even giving a shit that I'm present on your screens. So. All right. You guys want to you guys want to do fault now? Sure. Let's do some fault. Let's do some fault. So that means we're ending. We're ending on ethereal. Wild. We're going to end on ethereal. All right. So fault this week. They announced pretty late that they're going to be doing an Iggy and Scorch mastery race. This will start on September 19th. And you might be thinking to yourself, how the fuck they go to a mastery race weeks after they've released the hero. Well, they are going to track internally the amount of XP that it would have required to gain gold. And then whoever gets that first gets a gold Iggy and Scorch avatar and then everybody that at least makes it gets a silver Iggy and Scorch avatar. And I think it's a pretty cool thing that they're doing. Along with this, they also apologized for having such a poor Iggy and Scorch release. And they talked about how they they learned from this and they'll move forward and do better next time. So you guys go ahead and talk about that. I'm going to make myself another little drink. This guy, dude, I have to I have to comment real quick and then you go for it. Because Jill Haylin, he he he got me on the quote. I'm happy when people think of me when they look at stuff. And I just thank you for catching that. I probably worded that terribly. And yeah, that's so thank you. That was really funny of me when they were like, hey, do you know what? That's I stand by the quote. It's just funny that I didn't think about how that could be interpreted when I said it. So whatever it takes, whatever it takes. So go ahead, jump into it. I mean, I think the big thing is that Iggy and Scorch coming later than normal, it sucks that it's not happening or didn't happen with the release of the character. They're trying to make up for it. I think that's good for them. Absolutely. I think it's good that they're doing it. I think they probably got enough backlash from their community that it was one of those things of like, do we have a choice not to do this? Right. Like it's it's they constantly have things that it's like, well, remember back when they didn't do this, when they didn't people. I've seen people still refer to Decker and Grim releasing two days after the month ended when they said that they were originally going to release whatever month that was December, January, whatever. And so it's good on them that they're fixing it. They boy that cried, we'll we'll learn from this and do better in the future. Abusive when I see it, right? Like it's one of those things. All right. I don't know what to say. Well, I was getting a drink, but you guys know a lot. You guys know my feelings on the whole announcement and how. Then they now feel like a cheating husband. Yeah. And I mean, I think both of those points are ones that I'm going to echo because it's like I'm happy that they said something about it. Right. We've been talking about it. And pressuring them to be more communicative and talk more about this stuff. Like, even if you fuck up, at least tell us, like, hey, man, you know what? We fucked this up and we're going to try and do better. But it's like also at the same time, it's like, OK, well, you're starting to sound like, you know, the abusive husband, boyfriend or whatever, where it's like, you know, or spouse or whatever that it's like, OK, well, you start to fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, how at what point did we just like start saying, you know what? Enough is enough. And I do feel like a lot of the community and I think it shows in the numbers are at that point where they're just like, you know, we've had enough, we don't need this from you anymore. And there's still a few tryhards that I think are going to stick it out regardless and, you know, hopefully that's enough in some aspects. But I think the Iggy release was botched from one up. They should have been there as part of the free to play announcement. You should have been there and they should have done some kind of like skin event to let people go full chicken. They should have had the mastery thing from the beginning. And to me, those are those are the low end of the spectrum of things they should have been doing. Like that should have been the that's to me, the expectation at this point in 2022 in gaming. Like those are all things that should have just lined up. Anything beyond that would have been the extras. And so at this point, it's not you're not even doing and you're struggling to do with the low bar stuff. And that's where I'm the most concerned. It's like what what is the realistic success of this company and this game? If you can't even do the lowest bar minimum stuff consistently and well to the point where you're having to make, you know, an apology for the lowest bar, like, I don't know, man, like it just I think there's like that. I don't know. Yeah, I think their sentiments are genuine, like, sure. And I'm happier that they did it this way with the apology than if they would have just fucking ignored it and rolled on. But again, like, give them credit where they deserve. They deserve credit for making this apology and for for stating that they will learn from this and we want it and hopefully they will. But that as we have just finished saying, it's also a recurring theme with them that they need to get a handle on. 100 percent. And like, I want to point out something that's I think really important from free to play release onward. And I talked about this on partner panel. Free to play release should have been their push to get old people that played fault back with the name change and free to play release. Right. Something to tell these players, like, and I said this on partner panel, if you haven't played fault recently, you haven't played fault, right? Like you need to you need to get back people back into the game. A fresh face, theoretically, should have been that moment to try and get those people back because now you're just re solidifying that this is just the same game under a new name, right? That they didn't really change too much. And that goes from their patches. They're free to play release happened on. What was that in 19th of July? Yeah, it's like mid July, I think sometime around there. So mid July, I think that's really when it was, right? We're now almost in mid September and we've had one big patch since then. And big patch, meaning that it was a hero release. And even that we've only had small bug vixes and small balance passes since balance passes and a completely unannounced hero release, it was just yeah, just a drop. Bam, he's there. Yeah. So in two months almost, we've had a patch, a patch that is actually considerable worth something, right? They need to be doing something more than that to keep their even the community that's playing the game interested in playing the game because it's that's so sporadic and that's so long to go without changing things. Other than a hero release. And I think we talked a little bit about this on partner panel. So hopefully it's not too much repetitive for the people who tuned in there. But like. I feel like when they said their apology, it should have came with a update for the future. Like the fact that they were just like this, this is something that we're apologizing for that's already happened. This is what we're going to be doing going forward or this is our new plan to approach this issue that we've had and whatever. They didn't do that. So it's so I'm kind of left wanting like, OK, so what is the plan to stop this type of stuff from happening or going forward? What what is going to continue to other than me being on a show like this? So if you're just a random fan of the game, what's going to keep me engaged in your game and feeling like you're, you know, part of our understanding where we want the game to go just as much as you're wanting to take the game? There's still no communication from that. And I think that's to me. And I said, again, I said this in part of it. I think that's the biggest issue that they have. They have not communicated any road plan to keep us as community less speculating and more understanding of where they're going. 100 percent. And in case they did not watch Partner Panel, because I do try to say this directly to SMS. Sure. And you guys in chat, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. But they need to add some kind of variety in their patches, mix things up a little bit to keep things exciting for players that are playing and change it to make it exciting for players that have stopped playing because they're frustrated that Feng Mao is super strong. Right. Change it up that mages are super strong. OK, I'm a mage player. Like, sure. Yeah, I'll go back into the game and play my super strong mages, right? Do do something, make aspects different once a month. Make shift the meta a little bit more than just a hero releasing shifts the meta because that hero is usually very strong. So let's everybody now shifts their meta around playing that hero in their lineup and then calls it a day. I do really like your idea, Jelly, of changing what stat the different aspects give you. 100 percent. Because I think that would mix everything up. That would make the standard builds go out the window and the people do new builds and just it would change the power level of different heroes. I think that would be a great way to just easily shake things up without making anything too overly powerful. Is this where I claim the patented 10 percent mangoes? This is where I claim the patented 10 percent. I think and Clorox is kind of touching on it right now in his comment that like, you know, you see Twin Blast and Gideon in every single game. And I think that's a big issue, too, is it's like, if I was a carry, I mean, even mages like the mid lane, you can argue that there's so there's a decent amount of variety that you can play there. But if I was a carry and you're basically stuck with three picks, I would be annoyed at this point two years in, you know what I mean? Like, it's just it's boring. Like, if unless you just really, really love those guys, like, and that's fair. There's probably those few people. But like, I think I would be annoyed if I own my only choices were those three champions every time I logged into play carry. Therefore, yeah, Grim. OK. Yeah, but still, it's been four for a long fucking time. Grim was the first character or one of the first released. Even Decker got released together since release. So he's it's been four carries, basically, since three months after the release of the game. I don't know when I tried to play him, you guys said he did better in another lane that he doesn't. It's good to carry or something like that. So I was like, oh, well, no, he's a good carry. You just people play him offline for the most part. Yeah. I don't know. That's just my take on it. It's like part of the boring meta is the fact that the champions that you have to choose from are boring. You only have so many to to realistic and and and be effective, I guess, is the other thing, right? The reason why getting in gets picked over almost any of the other mages is because he's effective. He's efficient at what he does. Like it's just hard to replace him because there's nobody else that can do it. I think Iggy is a decent replacement if you you like his style. But I don't know. It's the thing with a lot of these mid laner releases, right? Is Moragesh came out and then everybody just played Moragesh off lane, Gideon mid, Iggy's coming out. And a lot of people are just playing get Iggy off lane, Gideon mid. Like they're just they're not actually changing anything. It's just it's like, OK, well, the man off laners are now getting scrapped. And let's just play them off lane and call it a day. I think he's better in off lane. And to be honest, I just think he does a better job there. He has more opportunity to actually use his kit to a more efficient way than in mid lane. And then just becomes a farm fest, especially if you're going against a Gideon. Aside from the obvious PvE perks to playing Iggy, I think he's probably one of the better balanced heroes he is a little overtuned. But you're you're used to seeing heroes be just way, way overtuned when released by SMS. And I think Iggy was fairly balanced with the exception of being able to, of course, solo raptor whenever the fuck he wants. And solo or prime at like level 14. And that's a big problem. But overall, I think SMS did a pretty good job balancing. I agree. Definitely the most balanced so far. And he's fun to play. I mean, that's what we were talking a lot about on partner panel. Me and Jelly got to actually play some PvP games with him. And he's fun to play. He's funded like, you know, his kit has a little bit of like nuance to it. Like, you know, you feel like you can do multiple builds. You can go like an on hit build. You can go a little bit more like pure burst mage mode. You can do the tankier builds and like, you know, and just be unkillable while your turrets are up. It is fun in that regard. Like that's what I think it was was really cool about this release. And I actually have had more fun in this most recent iteration of fault than I've ever had since fault came out. Like it was it's just he's a fun champion. And they need to add more eggies into the game to keep that level of fun. And this, to me, and we talked about this last week, this was a success. This was us going like, hey, they finally put out like a relatively adjusted, more modern version of a Paragon, you know, asset that we're very familiar with. But it felt different enough and engaging enough that it was fun to play. So they need to do that and they do it like now. Like this this these next few weeks to months needs to include so much major stuff. And I mean, I'm still doubtful on whether or not they can actually do it. But I think that's the the game plan they should be following if they're in my opinion. That's all I have to say. You guys anything else for fault before we head over to a thorough? I don't think so. All right, well, let's move on into a thorough. A thorough. I'm only here for ethereal. I'm in before. All right, so for ethereal this week, they released the Vala Mountains lore art. And I think this highlights something that a lot of people don't seem to realize about ethereal. It is lore heavy. If you like a game with lore, there is a ton of lore for ethereal. Like they built a world. This is definitely some who you DM world building shit that they did with ethereal. So, Jelly, can you elaborate on this video of the the Vala Mountains? You don't want me to elaborate? What the heck? I mean, you elaborate. No, no, no, I want him to elaborate. Go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Step up. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. So me and the team, you know, have been really focused on wanting to make sure that, you know, that the core of the game is still no, I don't know, bro. Just to talk about it. So the big thing with this is, like Mingu said, there is a ton of lore already built out for the game. If you haven't been on our websites recently or even any time in the last year and a half, there is a whole lore section with like letters that characters have written to other characters or just events that are happening in the world that involves some of the characters or just events that are happening in places that nobody that you guys know is, right? That like, there's a whole bunch of stuff built out around this world that we want to share out, right? And so this video was partly sharing some of that lore out with everybody, but also to show some of that work in progress of like how we get from like just a core idea and implement on it and iterate on it until we get to that like final product of like you've got the guys walking along the bridge and there's a lot of little details in that image that cause a little bit of intrigue of like, OK, but what is the deal with this? Where, where, how does this work? What's the world about this? What characters are coming from here? All that kind of stuff, which I think is super cool. I got a question in chat about a theory. When is Ice Doggo Good Boy coming? When is Ice Doggo Good Boy coming? Ice Doggo Good Boy is coming. That's as much as I can share with you. That is a cool looking myth for us. Yeah, like quadrupedal like anything like we just didn't get them in Paragon. And we'd love to see them in a 3D MOBA. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so like just the art that I have saved, right? And I know there's more out in that the artists have or they're working on all that kind of stuff. Just the art I have saved. We have 40 different backdrops like this that like can lore attached with them to provide that greater context of the backdrop. And there there's a lot of cool little things, little details in all of these that are super rad. Official premium skin, yes. That's what I was going to say. Ice Doggo Good Boy. Yeah, I used to be a good boy. Confirmed it's happening, guys. Oh, and I know you're going to watch this. Ice Doggo Good Boy. Raziel brings up a good point. Rampage does run on all fours, but it's more of a gorilla run than like a wolf run. It's not a full fledged. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, quadrupedal. Yeah, I'll give you that. Rampage, quadrupedal. I mean, technically, Scorch is quadrupedal. Jungle frog, big boy. Jungle frog, big boy. That's Rampage. All right, official skin, right? That's going to happen. One of these games is going to make a jungle frog, big boy. We're going to have Ice Doggo Big Boy. Ice Doggo Good Boy. Sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, back to the subject of hand. Yeah, there is lore. I've read probably more of it than a vast majority of people. And just I love it. Like the letters are especially just really cool. It just makes the game feel lived in. A lot of people just don't give a shit about lore. But I think everybody does to an extent because otherwise you would just have. Mannequins fighting each other without any like DPS one, DPS two, like no names. Like a little bit of lore gives the game so much more personality. And I think a lot of fans appreciate that. Yeah, I completely agree. I mean, so a big thing, right, mangers that the lore in Paragon, while there wasn't a ton of it, it still existed. And it was kind of cool to see those interactions. And I'm definitely calling out Windu and Bearded with by saying this comment. But things like Shinbi and Kuang being brother and sister and the motivation to be a character in the game because of that relationship is really cool. And I think that's an awesome aspect that can be expanded on a lot in these games and hasn't been so far other than in a theory, of course. You got Exit Lawnmower, brother and sister. Absolutely. All right. I think that's it for ethereal unless you guys had it. You want to announce anything else? I mean, I'm not announcing anything else. I'm trying to dig up right now. Go guys, go ahead. Talk and mush yourselves and try to dig up because people keep bringing up hatch and some of the unreleased Paragon heroes. We actually did for the minions specifically about that. I'm trying to. Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, the character designs that Epic had in the works were super cool for Paragon and hatch was going to be a. Octopetal myth, right? Like it wasn't just going to be quadrupedal. They were just going to skip right over that and just be like, yeah, we don't need four legs. We're going to eight. Thank you. Super cool. I was super jazzed for hatch. Honestly, after seeing the concept for him and then it just didn't go through to anything, which is sad. I think I want to touch just a little bit on the lore stuff because I was I would probably have classified myself as somebody who didn't really care about lore a lot, but then games got really clever and adding lore into their and I started to appreciate a little bit more and it started for me with a lot of League of Legends stuff. Like there were little things that League would do with like some of their champions where it's like they connected and interacted in ways like it was small. And this was before they got bigger, but they kind of connected them anyway. Like, you know, you had some characters that were considered police officers and if they chased down another character that was a criminal, you would get a stack every time you killed that criminal and the stack added like one attack power or something like that. It was like very small, but it was something that would count and there was like a jungler's that did the same thing where they would, you know, count how many times they killed each other and it was because of their lore. And when it became a more expanded universe as the game got bigger and it became more like that, you know, adding in little tidbits and you're like, oh, they've been hinting about this and it became now where you have like a show like Arcane come out that is blowing open, you know, their lore and it was amazing and it was super engaging and fun. And as somebody who would have told you, oh, I don't really care about lore. Like I played a lot of World of Warcraft. I can tell you any reason why any of the stuff that was going on in World of Warcraft, I never paid attention to it because I just didn't care. It wasn't told to me in a way that I enjoyed. It wasn't a fun, engaging piece of lore. I was just knocking out quests. Like, okay, you have this big, you know, epic battle, but I'm killing 10 boars for hearts. Who gives a shit? You know? So I think having like that approach early on for ethereal and even, you know, some of these other games because I thought what was interesting an overprime in the play test. I hadn't seen the opening cinematic before, but they did that. That cinematic was all like, oh, what is it? They were like playing it like it was a bigger world than I initially had anticipated. And I was drawn in. So I think lore and telling those stories, if it's done well and in engaging ways, matters a lot to the health of a game because it, like Mingyu said, it brings you in. It makes you as the player more bought in on the characters and their motivation and their kits start to make more sense. And the reason for why they're there in the first place starts to make more sense. And it's like a lot more fun, I think, even though I'm usually a skeptic when it comes to that kind of stuff. I mean, they're ethereal, right? They kind of follow in the League of Legends approach to voice lines. League of Legends has almost all their characters. If they have a lore background with another character and you approach each other on the map, you may spout a line off randomly about like, yeah, you killed my mom. Right? And that it's a little detail that can go a long way. And if you listen to the voice lines that are out on ethereal's YouTube, there are voice lines like that for a lot of these characters. Talking about talking to another character about something that happened in their past or what's going on, why they're there, why they have to kill each other the whole line yard. I specifically remember some lines from Malaya where she's obviously has killed Exile, her brother. Yep. Yeah. And it's super cool. Like I said, it's a little thing that goes a long way for that immersion. Yeah. A classie did such a great job with those Malaya lines. They feel just pained. Oh, they do. You made me do this. Oh. Gets me. All right. Let's move on now to answering some of you guys' questions. Let me bring up the one that I, from AI cloud, and don't get angry when I read this because it's a valid question. Omega has been using game assets for over three years, receiving millions of investment and delivering pre-alpha and teaser. What if they close the game? Have you ever considered it could be a scam? Now, I know a lot of people are going to get offended by that and angry, but the truth of the matter is we have seen scams pop up, at least to pop up over these Paragon assets of people saying that they were going to recreate a Paragon type game, took money from the community, and then just left with it. We've also seen just within the gaming community, people start up these Kickstarter programs for games that they never intend to actually make and they just take the money and run with it. So I think this is a valid question. However, in no way do I think Omega is a scam, mainly because the investors that they've received money from, there's no way in hell that there's zero strings attached. They're going to have to produce something, or else there's probably going to be some legal issues to battle. But I think the main number one reason why I seriously, 100% do not think that a predecessor, at least, is a scam in any way, is Sergeant Smoky. If you guys have ever, ever interacted with, he's not the director anymore, I think he gave the reins over to RGSAs, but he's the one that came up with the entire concept of predecessor and got the ball rolling on it, is Smoky. And if you've ever talked to him at all, he is such a genuine, just a great dude, which I suppose I could be suckered in by that, but I really don't think so, just all right, I cannot see him doing a scam, whereas whenever I talk to, like, Aventel that did Project Agora, just talking to those people, I could tell they were fucking scummy. Yeah, oh, 100%. And that's, I agree with you. Up till now, predecessor has not taken any money from the community. Right, so from a community perspective, them being a scam is low on the list. Them having to scam investors is a whole separate bag of worms that if they do that, God bless them, because they're going to need help, because, like, I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to be on their shoes if that was the case. Also, I believe Sergeant Smoky is their chief technical officer. He's the STTO for Ometta. I think that was a smart decision on his part, because that's another thing, if you've ever talked to Smoky, you know he's got no head for business. And giving the reins of that kind of thing over to RGSAs who had experience with building and maintaining businesses. I think that was a smart move on Smoky's part for Ometta and predecessor. Yeah, if you guys don't know about Project Agora, it was just some dude he was streaming his progress. He was doing, like, janky ass shit that I could do in Unreal Engine saying that he was developing a Paragon project and then accepting donations from the community in order to create it. I personally called them out on it. They shut everything down, reopened it back up under a new name, and they had an entire website, but the only link that worked on the entire website was to their PayPal to pay the money. And then that got shut down pretty quickly as well. I mean, the other one is though they've decided they are pivoting to another project, Core absolutely scammed the Paragon community. You think so? I mean, they definitely lied to us in quite a few occasions, yeah. They lied, and they just before that alpha test they were supposed to have, that they've been pushed back indefinitely and then completely just moved on. They put out a merch store to buy their merch from and the Paragon community ate it up, right? It was one of those things. If you have Core merch, dude, I would love to see pictures of it because I think it's ridiculous that that's what they did. And I think about that all the time, of like, here's an example of what not to do, right? Don't bring up, don't suddenly release a merch store before your alpha where everyone super hyped, cancel your alpha and then completely cancel the project and then move on to something else. It's ridiculous. I did want to, like, it's in the same theme, but I think the pocket full of sus comment is kind of in that same argument. I know that when we heard about the announcement for, you know, pocket full of quarters and we started diving in and doing some more, those set off a lot of almost scam like red flags, right? Because while I don't think that SMS had intentions of scamming people, I do think that these, you know, studios that are, you know, relatively low budget or, you know, having to get money from other places or make partnerships with the front with other teams can get themselves into a position where, you know, the community thinks that they're trying to be scammed. Like, I mean, I know that there was a lot of backlash and I'm not sure are they still even part of the pocket full of quarters? Do we ever confirm or find that out? I don't know. I looked at pocket full of quarters yesterday, actually. On the pocket full of quarters website, they are listed as a supported game. Okay. But when I go into fault, I cannot link my pocket full of quarters account at all. There's not even a thing that can take me to the website to link it. There's nothing, before they had a box that you clicked, right, and you could link it and it would switch that it costs this many quarters. That box doesn't exist anymore. And I've looked probably a half dozen times and I cannot see that box at all, which makes me think that they didn't see an immediate investment on it and pulled it, despite it still being a thing on pocket full of quarters, because I'm sure they probably have a contract with POQ to stay listed for a certain amount of time. But I've not been able to find a way to link it again since the basic, just after the release. Okay. There is one guy that is starting, that did have a fault's tournament and one person entered it on pocket full of quarters as of yesterday. So I don't know who you two people are, but I would love to hear from you on your experience. Yeah. And I wasn't necessarily bringing that up to flame anybody in particular. I just was like, those types of things I feel like can sneak up on devs and not realize what they're getting themselves into, to an extent. Because I agree that I don't think that these, especially these three pair zombies, I don't think any of them are looking to scam their investors or the community in their investment. Like, of the three that I would have maybe made that claim against would have been SMS, but they've been out now for two years. And if they were going to do it, I feel like they would have done it in when they got their biggest payout, which would have been on initial launch. Like, that's probably when they made their most money was in that first two, three months. And so if they would have just been like, the game's not working. Oh well, sorry. Like they could have easily done that, but they stuck it out. And obviously tried to keep the game alive for the last two years, which is it was commendable because they probably made a decent amount of money when it first launched. And they could have just they had no there's nothing holding them back. Lots of games on Steam do that. They get huge. Like hood has been accused of that same aspect, right? Of like, and now they're making, trying to, but I don't think any of these guys are doing that personally. That's a good point. P. O. Q. didn't sponsor buckets or Indio as he's known now didn't sponsor his tournament. They were kind of solid on it. I wonder if that's more Indio didn't reach out to P. O. Q. or P. O. Q. didn't reach out to Indio. I don't know. I thought I heard that they were originally a sponsor and then nothing happened with it. Okay. Yeah, I would have to talk to Indio about that. Um, I actually want to talk about covetous lemons comment in there there wasn't a huge mess about someone posting an article saying steam is allowing a blockchain game fault to be on the market. Steam's rules on blockchain games are very specific and they don't just target games that use blockchain. So for instance, like fault, right? Fault is a partner is a partnered with somebody that uses the blockchain. They're not directly involved in the blockchain, which adds a layer of separation. But it's also only when the blockchain blockchain has a direct influence on the game that it's banned. They don't want blockchain games on the platform. If a game uses the blockchain separately then it is okay under certain guidelines, which I believe fault falls under. A big example of this would be Dead by Daylight. Dead by Daylight had NFTs for the Hellraiser release and the release despite having NFTs they are not used in game which means that they don't qualify as a blockchain game which means they get to stay on the platform. There is very specific guidelines that you have to follow to be able to do that and still have your game on the platform as well. Right on. Good answer, Jelly. Thank you for clearing that. Thank. That's something I've been wondering about. Another question we had from chat. As soon as you put this in here, Jedi from Juleilineo. Oh, that's another question. Three pairs of zombies. How is this going to affect the lore of the characters? Will lore be more or less important? Now I will say from what I know fault just really hasn't done much lore wise at all in the two years that they've been out and that seems like a very fault thing to do is to just completely ignore lore in favor of competitive gameplay. Predecessor, I know it's called Predecessor because it's supposed to precede the events that took place during Paragon so they're going to have their own unique leeway with lore to make lore that kind of ties into the old Paragon lore but would precede the old Paragon lore and it seems that Over Prime has gone as Over Prime does has just gone completely off the fuck out of the left field and just created their own brand new lore for everything. And honestly, I think that's cinematic it shows that exactly. That was nothing that existed Revenant, Countess, Severog none of that existed that animosity around a tree especially but it added a lot of intrigue that I'm like okay Severog wants to kill all life this is kind of magic tree of some kind where are we going with this and that there are people protecting and helping or trying to stop and also trying to help Severog accomplish that which is super cool. I mean when you guys told me like we're playing Over Prime and you need to download the thing and I was like so excited and when I booted it up and that was the first introduction to Over Prime was that cinematic I got so fucking hyped and I was bummed because you guys were still doing stuff so I didn't even get a chance to talk to you about it necessarily in the moment as it was taking place but I was just sitting there going like I think I even yelled at my wife I was like yeah come and look at this she doesn't care but I thought it was such a cool cinematic and I think Asmongold says this all the time like every game is just like one good cinematic away from being relevant and I felt like that was true or it's also like to get over any controversy like Blizzard will put out a new cinematic and nobody gives a fuck about Hong Kong anymore because there's a new cinematic for Warcraft but there's some truth to that a good cinematic and to be honest this is what I felt like with Fault. Fault had a moment with 1up and all those cool super neat unique cinematics that they did for the in-game but for the movie looked awesome like there was I know when me and Mingus were watching it they were like holy shit did you see what they just did that was so great so cinematics and adding in like that background for what these characters are up to I think is super cool and I do of course agree with Over Prime is definitely going their own way but I also am excited for it I didn't know about the predecessor thing so that was a cool little nugget of info I didn't know that they were supposed to be the proceeding all the events that took place in Paragon I wasn't even aware of the Paragon lore to be honest I didn't pay that close attention to it so very few people did honestly I think it'll be different when doing Bearded didn't know Shinbi and Kuang were brother and sister I didn't know that and it drove me nuts I was like what the heck yeah of course they were brother and sister I didn't know anything about that apparently there's some connection between Fei and Morgash too I didn't know that almost every character has a connection with one other character I don't know it's fine I believe you I think the only what I knew was Kai and Grux because they each have a skin of the other I think that was the only reason why I knew about that right yeah Kamera has a Grux Pelt skin right I think so that's the only way I knew now it will be confusing for fans I guess of the games depending on how different the lore is like because now they can do whatever they want right they don't have to follow the Paragon lore anymore whatever lore was established from Paragon these guys could theoretically do their own thing with and I think Over Prime will to their own but it'll be interesting I don't know that's all I have to say about that yeah another question you got huh yeah the other question I had I'm gonna post Dapper's channel here in a second because it was requested Julio, Cesar, De Silva will they change the characters in any way or shape on the final project I think we definitely would say a yes for fault and Over Prime I think and predecessor yeah I think all three have changed heroes in some way shape or form I think Over Prime has done the most drastic changes but we have seen some pretty big changes from the other ones as well I mean the one I still think of and love about fault that they changed even though he's kind of meh as a character is Grim becoming a stance switcher like that to me is one of the coolest aspects of Grim changing it that like he's got a more energy based version he's got a more attack speed based version he's got a range version like and there's nuance to each one super cool idea right and I think I would love to see more of those kind of ideas coming out of all these teams and all of those kind of things right I mean I love she's not Kalari but Kalari she's not like Kalari was in Paragon but Kalari in Over Prime is super fun despite having basically only one or two abilities that are the same as before right and so there's a lot of aspects that are super cool there what happened to grandma grucks grandma grucks if one of them adds a grandma grucks into the game I think if a predecessor is really going to be before Paragon grucks just needs to have a box grucks skin and it'll be fine because Paragon released with box grucks right and so we're shortly thereafter so clearly we got to get before times I want lower on box grucks okay no I want the grandma I would rather see grandma grucks than box grucks I would too honestly I guess I'm going to expand on this of the three and I think I know they answer this but like which of the of the three are you most confident will do lower well like releasing it like through like cinematics storylines like comics or any of those types of things I know I agree Over Prime has already kind of started to do that predecessor maybe has that in the works but do you guys think that that's something that those teams are are capable of putting together and like in a meaningful way right that's going to be engaging and fun Over Prime definitely ethereal 100% ethereal has already done it if we include ethereal into that little race but fault just doesn't seem to have any interest whatsoever doing any kind of lore so I don't think that they're going to really do I don't think they're ever going to really well I mean that's not true that we have lore excuse you mangoos how dare you say that about fault okay you're going to sit here on this stream in front of these viewers and tell me fault doesn't have lore when we've got a name for the raptor are you kidding me right now my bad dog this guy this guy dude cancel him guys get him out of here you're so stupid don't they have a name for their map too isn't like cradle of genesis or some shit like that no that's Over Prime now it's probably going to be a different name right or are they going to keep it the same I don't know that's so fun they have a name for the raptor dude this guy not a man of culture clearly oh boy but yeah I think I mean Over Prime is already definitely in on it I don't know if they're still going to do that they were going to do a Netflix graphic novel with the paragon heroes I don't know if that's still a go or not that was one of the reasons why they changed the names to begin with so that may be that may then reverting back to the original names may signal that they're not going to do that anymore does lore like have a broad appeal to one game being more viable than another or is it just kind of like a nice added premium I think it's just nice as much as I love lore I don't think it's a huge priority to a massive amount of people I don't think it makes or breaks a game but I think it helps I think there are definitely people out there that would be like cool lore is enough that they're in right whatever the thing is I'm not a ton of people by any stretch of the imagination but I think it helps but I don't think it's make or break by any means I just the reason why I asked that was because it's like when I think of you know some of these amazing cinematics and stuff like that and I know I talk about these guys a lot but like when I look at Riot and what they've done to kind of almost become like the new Blizzard you know and way that they you know have created a universe they've created like meaningful and engaging lore they've also they've done that like I think intelligently over time same as Blizzard did for the Warcraft universe I'm sure they've done it for like Starcraft but like even when Overwatch came out Overwatch was so engaging even though it was like a full PvP game there was such a demand for more information about all the characters because the characters felt awesome and engaging and that was like a big thing that Blizzard had done a really good job of like kind of keeping this teased thing and they now have done the same thing with Valorant from Riot and so like like I said I never really would have thought that lore mattered all that much but I think it's in the way that it's told can draw people to like I think there was something that Blizzard put out that with the cinematic for the expansion oh my gosh I'm totally blanking on it the Horde versus Alliance one the most recent one of the most recent ones I'm totally blanking on the name either way they did a massive cinematic and they had a moment where they're like for the Horde and for the Horde and it brought back like a huge influx of people who had left the game for like a massive time like they hadn't played the game for a while and this brought like it was like one of the biggest influxes of people back into the game in a long long time and and to me that was like that spoke to Battle for Azeroth thank you Stormhawk Battle for Azeroth so it was like a huge huge thing that brought a lot of people back and it's like it's lore and cinematic and I think that if either of these three games probably the latter two that are gonna come out are able to create that and then capture that bigger cinematic lore drive to bring people in based on music and events like events are another big one like I think that's that's what takes these games into the next action when we talk about like success measurements of whether or not they're going to be around in the next three to five years or whatever I think those types of things are going to be really important to an audience based on a bigger scale yeah dragon flight somebody somebody said it dragon flights the most recent one that's coming yeah okay which also had a really good cinematic and I think a lot of people got excited about but Battle for Azeroth brought people in who had been unsubbed from World Warcraft for a long time because of the cinematic into itself the way that that was like told and people got really like hyped up about it I think I know I did one of the big things about that cinematic that Over Prime did was that it was featured on IGN was it IGN oh was it that's cool was on IGN got like hundreds of thousands of views and shit so that definitely brought some brought some people into them the weird thing with that cinematic was it was posted with no release date or no come play no nothing it was just this like and Over Prime and people were like is this Paragon what is this I have no idea what I'm watching I used to play this game yeah the most the biggest comment I want to start talking about what Dapper and Covetous Lemon both said like back to back so Dapper said using Lord of Tees new releases is amazing and I completely agree and then Covetous Lemon in my opinion MOBAs succeed on lore because of the inevitable attachment to characters each player will have a good portion of said players will enjoy lore about their favorite character and and I think that matters and you might start to care about other characters if your favorite characters lore attaches you to them right like I think a lot of people use Arcane for example like you maybe didn't enjoy playing Vi you might have enjoyed playing Jinx or Caitlyn but when you get them all kind of tied together in their own story and then you get to see that in a animation that was as beautiful as Netflix put together for for Arcane you're like it was hard not to be bought in on all those characters like even people who weren't fans of League of Legends or knowing anything about this were brought in because of how you know this role that that connection was so I think Covetous nailed it on the head it definitely has the ability I think to make people like over the top fans like that's how you make like your hardcore over the top fan I think is when you have really substantial meaty lore to go along with and if it especially would not we're talking about like ethereal doing that if you're establishing that as like a priority from the get go it makes it so much more fun I think as a player that you're I don't know engaging in a world that already feels alive you know what I mean well there's there's aspects of content creation also that are really benefited by lore right for an example right now they just he said a new type of hero called the darkiness coming and everyone's pouring through the lore trying to be like okay here's the lore where this connection meets this connection where this thing is happening and that's the new character right I mean we don't even have to look as far as League of Legends look at my content for ethereal back in the day right a lot of that was lore driven like there's a lot of stuff in there that I'm like okay reading this story she Malaya talks about using her claws and extrapolating from there there's plenty of opportunity for for content from the lore that creates a community around it even if people aren't playing the game for the lore I think it helps long run to with skin sales to like once oh because once somebody it like Jen I brought up it it connects you a little deeper with the character and once you're connected with that character you're going to want everything to do with that character I heard asked earlier if anybody still listens to the old Paragon theme songs I wake up every goddamn morning listen to adrenaline and then go punch like 30 people in the face because I'm so yeah of course you do bankers ha ha ha ha da da da da right yes brilliant all right um I don't think that's you guys have anything major you want to you want to go over you want to you guys about ready to close it out I think I'm ready to close it out all right Jenna anything actually hang on before we do that I thought about this and I forgot about it there's also lore created for all three of these games and they don't even know about it on the Paragon subreddit for the guy and I've said this before creates a love story about FaZe and Chimera falling in love and it's the weirdest thing I've ever seen but if you've seen it you've seen it I promise you I'll have to link theory of why Paragon existed to you sometime it's pretty fucking out there I think I want to leave off on like you know once we started talking about lore chat started blowing up and I think that speaks a lot to it like people started having like talking about their favorite connection or their favorite champion and how it connected to another one across you know the especially the Paragon right but even in other games and so I think that while it was an unintended topic that we kind of ended up settling on here is our discussion topic for this I think that lore and the importance of it is showcased just in this chat right now with how many people immediately started typing and engaging with that as an idea so hopefully theory was already well on their way to establishing lore as an important part of the game development I'm most interested to see now with this question on whether or not any of these other games focus on it in a bigger way and push it and put out really cool cinematics have skin releases with a fun lore attachment like League of Legends does or you know even smite does a pretty good job of this type of stuff I think adding any of those things and has people more bought in on your process and your game and I'm excited to see it yeah absolutely also chat don't you worry I'm finding the links so I can post it for you so I can send it to Mangoos to post it for you yeah I never paid attention neither sophisticated care I didn't know that there was even Paragon lore to be honest so I'll be learning this lesson along with you guys quick blurbs quick blurbs that's gonna about wrap it up for this week folks special shout out to Clorox newest channel member appreciate it Clorox TV welcome and yeah this was a fun episode I'm glad we got to get into lore because I'm a bit of a lore nerd and I think I think the kind of nerd that would follow Paragon this fucking far after it died is the kind of nerd that would love lore probably I mean 100% here Mangoos I sent you the link I need you to post it for me alright so this is a question of greatness how many myths are gonna be in ethereal while he works on that how many myths as many as we can add there you go that answered to your question while he finishes that up I just want to give this the smallest plug we are going to on this channel here at Mangoos we're gonna be doing yeah we're gonna be doing anime conversation review type thing so if you haven't there was a the polls already done but you can probably still throw in a comment or if you have a choice of anime that you would like us to cover I think we've already settled on the two that we're gonna do for this next video but I mean I'm sure we would love to learn more about what you guys would like so if you're interested in anime in any way and want to hear the opinions of at least me and Mangoos and we have two other guests that I'll leave up to Mangoos to announce it but should be fun I'm excited for it I mean anytime to nerd out over anime because I'm not even the biggest nerd of anime like Mangoos has definitely taught me that I am not anywhere near the weeb that I thought I was so if you want to if you want to come on the journey if you want to come on to the journey of figuring out what a real weeb is like come and listen in on the new show and I'll let you do the rest of the promo but I'm really really excited about it oh yeah it's going to be myself Viking Jedi Owen and Dapper Dice and we're going to be talking for the next one we're going to be talking um Jujutsu Kaisen versus Demon Slayer which one is better definitely Demon Slayer by the way but uh we'll be talking about which one is better and why and then we'll also talk about the definition of shonen anime is like um it shonen is more of a demographic but whenever you say a shonen anime there's definitely a certain type of anime that pops into your head so we're going to discuss that a little bit I believe that will be Thursday at 8pm EST that we'll do the uh what I'm still going to be calling my life in another anime podcast I'm going to be calling it that for a while now and um yeah that's that's about it for me jelly anything to plug uh no golly read the lore on ethereal's website it's all there there's a ton of it it's kind of insane um and yeah that's I think that's about it for me man goose alright right on guys well thanks for coming out um I appreciate you watching the live stream if you're watching this as a video I appreciate you as well but then I was going to wrap it up for this week you guys have a good one don't forget to give thumbs ups and comments boys thumbs ups and comments love you guys