 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus, you are awesome and Strange Matter released the Patch 14 update for Fault. The patch includes a variety of updates that can hopefully attract more players to the game and fix Faults number one failing, a dwindling player base. If you want to try the patch out for yourself but you've been on the fence about paying for the game, Strange Matter will be having a free to play weekend starting on December 17th, after which the game's price will drop to $10. In my eyes, this patch is make or break for Strange Matter. Last year I've seen the average players with this game drop to around $96. The peak amount for November 2021 was $188. 188 people cannot sustain a game and the low player account problem feeds into a variety of other problems with smurfs, poor matchmaking, and the inability to find a match at certain times of day. Unfortunately, much of this is due to a poor early release that drove many players away. Hell, it drove me away, however their patch 13 update fixed many of the issues that they had and made the game a very enjoyable experience, but it didn't bring people back to the game. Now that the initial issues are fixed, patch 14 has the chance to bring the game back from the brink of obscurity. They've released a variety of improvements that can catch the attention of players and entice them to return to an improved game and they may actually enjoy it and hopefully they'll keep those players this time. The patch included the release of FaZe, a fan favorite hero from Paragon, updated map graphics with some slight tweaks to the map, AI mode to help onboard new players and give existing players a place to just chill out and enjoy the game, a progression system in the form of hero masteries, and a variety of other improvements and fixes. Faunt has been the only playable Paragon successor for a while now, but they're currently perched precariously on the side of a mountain. This patch could be the lifeline they need to begin their ascent to the top or it could be the thing that crumbles beneath their feet as the competitors toss them aside in their bid for the summit. Today I'm going to go through some of the major updates the patch 14 introduced to the game. Let's start with what seems to be the most popular addition, FaZe. FaZe was a favorite support of many a para-refugee and as such was a pretty good choice for bringing people back to the game. She's been introduced with mostly the same kit, however there are a few pretty big tweaks. Let's start with her most iconic ability, the Link. You can still link to your allies and give them a portion of your health and mana regen. You can reactivate the link to yoink them to safety, pull them forward to secure a kill, or spaz out when you get ganked and screw your carryover by pulling them into certain death. However, in Faunt you can also use the link aggressively, attaching it to an enemy and dealing damage. If they do nothing to break the link within 3 seconds they get stunned. She still has her blind effect which is just as annoying as it's always been. She can activate this to blind and damage enemies around her, around the ally she has linked, or the enemy she has linked. Her E is the good ol' energy lance, you channel a beam that deals incremental damage and slows enemies, the beam in Faunt does not root though, instead when you deal enough damage with the lance the enemy receives an extra slow effect. There's also no longer a small AOE around the impact point of the beam, but it can now travel through minions and walls. Her ultimate gives her and her linked target increased attack speed, movement speed, cooldown reduction, and mana regen, much like it functioned in Paragon. You can also activate this when linked to an enemy which will decrease their attack and movement speed while also dealing energy damage equal to your health and mana regen. Finally, as with all the heroes, Strange Matter has given FaZe a unique passive. Psychic Atomic gives FaZe a stack of health and mana regen whenever she activates an ability or lands a basic attack. These stacks last for 5 seconds and have a maximum of 10 stacks. I like the changes they've made to FaZe. Her kit is a bit more engaging with the ability to use her link offensively and offers more decision points throughout the game that will separate good FaZe players from people like me. The map has received a huge visual update along with a few changes to the geography, I will say right up front that not everyone enjoys these map changes. The map is far more aesthetically pleasing now, but it's also far more demanding of your PC. I'm personally in sore need of some upgrades. I just have an NVIDIA 1660 graphics card so I need to tweak the settings a bit in order to reach 60 frames per second. So while the map looks better, I can't really enjoy it to its fullest. That's fine though, I don't expect to be able to run every game I play on epic graphics settings and many people have been asking for something like this so they can take full advantage of their beefed up setups. With that out of the way, let's talk about the map changes. The visual updates you can see for yourself so I'll just focus on the changes through the geometry. A big one that I enjoy is the side lanes. The lanes used to swell upwards between the two tier 1 towers, but they changed that to a slight depression. They also added a few ramp and stair sections to the jungle so you can more easily navigate while still taking advantage of the verticality provided by certain heroes. The fog walls are color coded red or blue now for which side of the map you're on with the middle walls displaying as gray. Another huge change is the raptor pit. This side of the map now mirrors the ore prime side so there's only one main entrance in and out of the pit and duo lane has the fully commit to a raptor take. I like most of these map changes and the aesthetic updates are quite nice, I know many people are pretty upset over poor optimization but I personally don't expect the game to run as smooth for me as someone with a much better setup. What I do expect is once I put my settings in that my FPS will remain fairly steady and it doesn't right now, it dips quite a bit. They are supposed to be introducing an optimization patch fairly soon, hopefully before they have their free weekend. Maybe that'll smooth things out a little bit. Strange Matter added vs AI mode to the game and new players will have to reach level 5 by playing this mode in order to enter PvP matches. You can queue solo or as a group, the rest of the team and the enemies team will be filled in with bots. The AI isn't amazing or anything but it's fairly well done. The junglers actually clear camps and the bots will occasionally rotate and gank your lane. They seem to prioritize minions over heroes but as soon as you attack one they come at you pretty hardcore and they don't miss abilities. I'd like to see some difficulty scaling with the bots in the future but for now I think they're fine. The game mode serves its primary function of getting new players used to the game and it's a no pressure way to try out new builds. You can also complete quests in AI mode so if you hate a certain position and you don't want to play it in PvP for example if you're not comfortable with playing jungle but you have a quest to play jungle twice you can complete that in AI mode. AI mode also counts towards mastery progression which is kind of weird to me but like I would hate to see somebody get a mastery level Gideon in AI mode and then come into PvP thinking that they're hot shit because they have a master Gideon skin. They would just get dunked on. Speaking of the mastery system let's get into it. The new patch brings us hero base progression via the mastery system. This works much like it did in Paragon. All your heroes start at bronze with a base skin. Playing that hero will level them up with faster progression coming from better performance. There are 10 levels to each tier with the tiers being bronze, silver, gold, diamond and master. Reaching a new tier resets your level and unlocks a new skin and portrait border. The borders start fairly small and get bigger and fancier each time you get a level in your tier. This is a matter of opinion of course but I think they did a great job with these skins. Some of them look better than others but for the most part I really like all the mastery skins. Some of the diamond skins are kind of sick as well. I think Quang, Decker and Narbash look especially good with Sparrow and Morgesh being a little lackluster. While the mastery system doesn't affect gameplay I really like that they've added it in. It gives players a reason to come back to the game. You get so close to a new tier and you want to keep playing in order to get that new skin. Systems like these are crucial for player retention. It's also just nice to show off that you've achieved a certain level of proficiency with a hero. There were also a great many minor changes to the game. Several items were added in opening up the possibility of new builds. Some of those items seemed a little too overpowered looking at you sort of souls. But they have time to tweak that stuff. Several of their aspects were reworked making them more universal which also opens up different build paths. The UI received a few upgrades and you now have cutscenes when entering a match which are kind of cool. Some new sound and visual effects were added in. A few heroes got some changes to their kits with Raystone's new passive being very strong. I'll link the patch notes if you want to read through everything that was changed but it's too much for me to go through here. The patch notes don't cover it all though. It seems that some changes snuck in without any announcements. Health and mana regen in the fountain has been severely diminished meaning it takes a little longer to get back out in the lane and it's much easier for a dick team to spawn camp. The field of view seems different to me as well. This was especially noticeable in Richter when trying to land hooks. I had a very hard time judging distance at first. I'll settle into it I guess. The economy seems to have slowed down as well. I have zero proof of this but it just feels off. I'm having a hard time especially on supports. Just finishing items. This has been noticed by a few people now. Gold gain just doesn't... it just seems slower across the board. This patch in the free weekend could be exactly what Fault needs in order to gain back popularity among the para-refugee community as well as to draw in new players from other games. On the other hand, it could also be the nail in the coffin they built for themselves with the initial Early Access release. Time will only tell which one it's going to be. I've only played the new patch for a few days and there's been much that has been improved but I've also experienced disconnects, random frame drops and just a resurgence of old bugs. Strange matter already got ahead of the ball to correct some of the disconnects that were happening which is good news. I expected a few bugs here and there when the patch got into the hands of the masses and I was very happy to see how quickly they corrected them. But not everyone is as reasonable as I and the goal isn't to entice man-goos to stay and play. The goal is to attract the people that haven't been playing Fault. Players have already indicated that they came back for 14 then turned right back around and left after just a few hours. I really hope they can get things straight by the time we have this free weekend and the numbers start to rise for Fault and that those numbers stay steady. Fault is a lot like Paragon. Sure it has a few issues and bugs but at the end of the day it's fucking fun. People are expecting perfection out of these games, Paragon was not perfect. I want to see Strange Matter succeed and I'm happy to see them forging ahead with new updates. Will Patch 14 be enough to pull them out of the slump they've been experiencing? That is yet to be seen but I sure as hell hope so. Like the video if you enjoyed it sub for more 3rd person MOBA content but for now this is the man-goos signing off. You guys have a good one. Man-goo! Shout out to ChannelMivers, Foolish Bloodhunter, Jelly Knees, Meowmix for men's stunt and ferret.