 Hello everyone, welcome back to For The Minions, the weekly show where we talk about some of the, what can hopefully be the successors to Paragon, if not direct sequels or prequels themselves. I'm your host, TheMangooz, joining me as always is the lovely Mandy Mal. How you doing, Mandy? Doing pretty good. Thanks for asking. I'm doing great and we have a wonderful returning guest host once again, Karina Nebula. How are you? I'm doing great. And I'm so happy to be back. I love this show, I love the community, and I'm ready to talk some more about these games. Awesome! We're happy to have you back up. Karina came very prepared last time with a lot of topics and that's why I brought him back so quick again because he had even more topics, so it's nice that he always comes prepared. However, I do kind of feel like a shit sandwich here, I got these two beautiful pieces of bread beside me, and I'm just this old turd in the middle. No, not true, not true. Aw, thanks for making me feel better, guys. That beard. That beard, though. It's so majestic. That is a good word for it, majestic. It is. Magistical, if I do say so. Alright, let's step right into it. Let's get right into the news and updates. Let's start off with Metabuff and Core. Big news this week, not good news. Sylphon left the company. He did a little YouTube video about it. It seemed like it was on amicable terms. It seemed like he got mad and quit and just said that he had contributed everything that he could contribute and it was time to move on. Do you guys check that out? Do you see the video, Karina and Nebula, or what was your thoughts on that? Yeah, I watched it yesterday. I think that's when he put the video out. But my main, what I took away with it is that it's just sort of sad. It's just sort of sad because he was sad. And I really like Sylphon. I like his content. But I think it's pretty much just the title for the video. It's time to move on for him. And a lot of other people in the Paragon, who have played Paragon, there's just a point where you have to move on. But, you know, there's other companies making projects. So we'll see. Many thoughts? I agree. Yeah, I watched the video. I was definitely sad, surprised, sad for CORE for them to lose him. But I left him a comment saying this. I just wish him the best of luck in whatever he, you know, goes on to next because he definitely deserves it. He's a good, good dude. He has a special knack for numbers and crunching the numbers. And I'm sure he will find his place and, you know, where he can do that and be of the most where he feels like he's benefiting somebody. So, you know, that really, that really kind of stinks. But I think Karina, you said it well. There comes a point where it is time to just move on. And I think he left it kind of nice in his video where he said, will Paragon in whatever way, shape, or form come back into his life? He doesn't know. He's not completely like shunning these remakes. He's not saying he's not going to play them or be involved with them or whatever. So I think it'll be interesting to see if maybe, if one of these games takes off, what will he then, if he's still doing the whole YouTube thing, will he be covering them in the same way he used to? It's just really interesting to see where he's going to go next. Yeah. Ever since the announcement for the close that the alpha wasn't going to come out one time, it just seems like the hits just keep rolling in for made above. I mean, they were, they were riding high for so long. And now there's just bam, bam, bam, just bad news after bad news after bad news. And the updates that we have gotten from them weren't great like that sub rock video was not the, wasn't the greatest thing I'd seen. And just people's confidence in made above as a company has gotten lower and lower and lower and then self and leaves. And then that's just, I think they're, they're not, they're not going to stop. They're not going to stop making the game. Like the game is going to keep going forward. But I think that at this point they need to take the approach that visionary did with phoenix rising and just completely go, go under, like just say, you know what, we're not going to announce anything until we have something extremely tangible for you guys until then we're going silent. We're going dark and we're just going to work on our game and hopefully we can bring you something because at this point I don't think that they could say anything that people are going to believe and that people, that it's going to give anybody confidence. So I think they just need to, they need to show up, close up on their own for a while. I think. I agree in a sense of they need to go the route that visionary went and be transparent with people and just let everybody know, like, look, this, this is what's happening. This is what our plan is. And this is what we're doing moving forward. I think that helps a lot. But I also want to remind people that this is game development. There are ups and downs. There are constant hip-up hiccups. There are, you know, roadblocks and things like that. And most of the time you don't hear about them. So don't, you know, think this is it. It, you know, like they're going down. They're going out. You just never know. Like look at visionary. They're still, they're still plugging along. So just kind of, I don't know, keep, keep rooting for them. That's a good point. We normally don't hear about this kind of stuff happening with a game because we normally don't hear that much about the development of a game. Right. Good point, baby. Good point. You're welcome. I want to address something real quick too. I see a lot of comments. Like, oh, we're never going to see Paragon. Like people are just completely losing faith in Metabuff and be like, oh, we're never going to see Paragon. We're never going to see a remake ever again. It's never going to happen. Just because even if Metabuff just completely dropped out of the picture, we still have Omega and predecessor. I don't understand a lot of these comments of we're never going to get a Paragon. I was like, but Metastudia has released an alpha. Like people played it. It wasn't perfect, but it was there. So that always kind of, sorry, Karina. Were you going to say something? No, you go ahead. I'm thinking about what I'm going to say. Okay. Yeah, definitely don't let me cut you off. I am always baffled by how little faith people have in Omega when it's like they're literally the only ones that have shown us a playable game. I'm not saying it was perfect, but isn't that the point of an alpha is to find these bugs? And, you know, and I think it even was bugger than they expected it to be, but there again is the point of this, this testing. That's why there is alphas stages one, two, three, four, umpteen, you know, whatever you have to do. So it's always so funny to me that people seem to count Omega out when it's like, why they, they have provided us with an actual playable game. They're plugging along at a very realistic, um, you know, uh, pace, you know, they're not setting these ridiculous goals. I'm not saying anybody set ridiculous goals, but they are very down to earth and very realistic when it comes to the development of their game. So I think people need to put a little bit more stock into predecessor. And that's not to say that they won't have hiccups. Like I said, that's just, that's game development. It happens. It's not just about the analysis being delayed right, right at the tail end before. And that, that's a big, you know, and that was Sony. Sony was like, hold up. Let's, let's, uh, delay this for a little bit. So you just never know. Yeah. How, what I was just thinking about was, um, I, I watched, um, Bridic. Talk about it too. And he also put a video out sort of addressing hype and like how, you know, he is a creator and a lot of other content theater sort of can help create this hype but hype is a personal thing it's your responsibility to be like on a certain level of hype don't get too high it could just crash and burn you know so I think I don't know I just think the hype I'm not about I don't do hype I just wait and see what happens and you know I mean this happened so it's not the end of the it's not the end of the meta buff but it's the end of silphons involved well put well put very well put well speaking of a meta let's move on into the updates that we had for a meta studios and predecessor so they did their internal testing just you know with their with their small team and their their moderators and all that and they did like a 5v5 all five all mid lane that at a ram and it said it went really well the the the main issues with their alpha was the the the server latency and the the input lag and all that and they said it just went really well and the combat combat felt really smooth a lot smoother than it did in their alpha however they did say that there were some unexpected bugs that occurred so they don't want to release footage of the internal testing which I think is advisable that's what I told him last time whenever they did the alpha I think they should have done it under an NDA but um that's heartening to hear that they've solved that input lag because that was definitely the biggest problem and hopefully they can get those bugs knocked out pretty quick and so they can move along to towers minions and cards so good stuff from from a meta studios Mandy what do you what do you got what do you got to say about that I am just excited I you know it's not really a big secret that omeda predecessor they're they're the main ones that I like I have put my faith in them like I said like I was just saying it's they just seem to have most realistic approach I feel like they're going to really have success so I'm very excited I love love love the team they're so incredible they work so hard and I'm just really excited I'm excited that they're using that the gas system now and they're just kind of getting everything to flow well together now that they're using that new system and I'm really excited I just I'm just excited I can't see anything else I'm just so excited I just love them so much and you just can't hide it and I just can't hide it mr Karina nebula what do you got to say um I'm excited I'm not but I'm excited right um I hope like you mentioned the whole blocky character thing the blocky character model I hope they fix well they fixed the input lag I remember seeing Smoky put an announcement saying how the combat was really working well it's very refined so I think that's a good sign yeah I certainly hope so because I want to I want to get back in there and play some more mm-hmm sounds like a sounds like rubah brought a lot to the table oh yeah I don't doubt it at all let's uh let's move on right now to uh therial um I hinted at it last week that I had a video of some exclusive stuff coming for those and I did the video it was about their items they released some of the card the art for their items as well as a little bit of information about their item system they had the uh the reinforced scheme um the crimson dragon sword um I'm kind of going off memory right now I forgot to put all this stuff in the notes the rusty butthole or whatever you called it yeah the rusty ring Mandy why are you being so crass I'm quoting your video the staff of preservation um the staff of Anubis which I actually did not cover in my video they uh they told me I could do five and I got to pick the five so and then the um some kind of gloves I forget what kind of gloves they were but somebody suggested that they uh they call them gauntlets instead I'm sure I've got the picture up above my head right now but yeah somebody suggested they called gauntlet called gauntlets and they said they're probably going to make that change so they like that themselves so already making changes to their items is the base of community feedback so that's that's kind of fun um do you guys get a chance to look at those those items and all that I watched the video and it was really cool um like gosh that's such those items like amazing like that freaking fire sword like I want to just I want to use that I want to slice something like that but um excited definitely excited and all the art out of that team is wonderful yeah yeah I was really impressed but they uh they put so much attention to detail into the items for the game so just like I said in the video it just that's they just keep giving me more and more confidence with everything to do it's not it's not just the art it's been the the sound design and just everything they do has been just insane so hopefully the gameplay is also really well uh really refined with a lot of attention to detail I expect that it will be they have shown me nothing to make me think that it won't be at this point yeah go ahead man when you talk about uh getting like hyped for something this is one I'm trying not to get like too overly hyped about but it's a really hard not to because I mean think of how great these pieces are individually like their sound design is fucking phenomenal that those items are so crazy beautiful like imagine all of that coming together like it's really hard for me to imagine how stellar this game is is setting itself up to be at least in my eyes like like Karina said that's kind of a hype is a personal thing um but definitely in my eyes I'm getting really hyped for this game but like you said the more I see the more I'm like dang like that's it's gonna be it's gonna be hot um they don't but by the way I'm completely hyped for it I dragged the Kool-Aid long ago along along with the uh the actual pictures the items they released a little bit a little bit of information they didn't give us any stats but they said like swords if you equip a sword it's always going to have some physical power on it as well as you know some other stats and effects and if you have a staff it's always going to have some magical power associated with it so I don't think that's too different from what other mobas do usually you pick up a sword you know it's going to be for attack damage you know so it makes sense it it seems the easiest to you know that just kind of goes hand in hand physical with a sword magical with staff like I think that's that'll be easy for people to comprehend you know I always felt that was kind of funny you like you have six swords equipped where the fuck are they why am I still punching people yeah and phoenix rising we had nothing out of them this week uh just want to remind you guys by the way let me talk about let let me preach on it for a second phoenix rising those guys piss me off and let me tell you why let me tell you why they piss me off every time I talk to them they are so fucking happy and upbeat and I'm like what's going on what are they doing they've got to be doing something good because they're always so fucking happy about it they're like like you gotta be up there it's no man hey how you doing it's great to talk to you this week fuck you tell me what you're doing I know I just pictured them in like little lab coats just tinker it away and like just oh my gosh just a happy little mad scientist over there cooking up something great maybe we'll see that uh that that one lane 3v3 that they uh that they were talking about expoing at some point in time and then in the future I'll say the near future they they they got a little more work cut out for them than these other games they uh they you know just like a three-year-old they had to start from the ground up and design their own heroes and make their own abilities and animations and such so a pill battle for phoenix for visionary and phoenix rising but if you want to learn more about any of these games I'll have their socials linked down in the uh video description below but uh let's move on to the uh the poll results what I've been doing with the poll is uh I'm doing kind of like a tournament bracket of the most impactful ultimate and I had to speed it along so I did two polls this week the first first one and this all goes in alphabetic order it was uh grux howitzer and Iggy's flame belch and Iggy's blaze because Iggy kind of had two different ultimates throughout the lifecycle of paragon and Kalari and Kalari won um big time she had 40 percent of the vote uh grux had 18 howitzer 20 flame belch 5 and blaze 18 um this kind of surprised me a little bit but when I thought about it really Kalari having that global ultimate was extremely impactful on the entire game like she could be pushing the shit out of the off lane um somebody would have to go try to deal with her and she just zirps across the other end of the map takes out the carry and all of a sudden you've got a 5v3 with one person over in the off lane and one person dead pushing down one lane so yeah I think I think that's probably I think that's fair I think Kalari's ultimate was that impactful um what are you guys got to say about that any Karina you want to go ahead yeah I definitely agree I voted I voted for Kalari um I yeah most impactful hands down I also well something I really like about Kalari it's a little unrelated to the poll but her animations the spinning something like spinning and hitting like that's something I've been waiting for for one of these games just to be able to see that and all the flipping around yeah yeah I had a hard time deciding between Howie and Kalari um I actually ended up not voting because I was like I'll come back to this later and then I just never did but yeah so it's cool to see that those were the two with the highest even though it's quite a big difference between the two um I you know my first instinct was was Howie but then I was like I don't know his could be kind of easy not easy to escape but escape a bull whereas Kalari's was not um so you know I I had a hard time deciding but I I agree with the results did the uh for the next one we had Kaimera, Kwong, Lieutenant Bellica, Morguesh and Murdoch this one was really close Kaimera 10, Kwong at 28, Bellica at 11, Morguesh at 27, Murdoch at 24 so Kwong just barely edged out Morguesh and I think rightfully so um again this came down to really global ultimates um you can I mean Murdoch was pretty far up there too and his his ultimate was fairly better so it just shows you how much emphasis people put on the global ultimates I mean Kwong's sword you can't underestimate the his ability to throw it down in lane go back get some items and then maybe not even hit anybody with his ultimate but just zip right back to lane and be back to doing what he was doing and Morguesh same thing there were nowhere to run nowhere to hide when you're up against the Morguesh and she's got you marked so um and this is an alphabetical order I the next one is going to be quite the battle it's like the next one's got like Narbash and Muriel and I forget who else it's kind of like a lot of really good ultimates and now the next one's gonna be stacked yeah that's gonna be hard so uh that's gonna be it for the poll results um I wasn't able to get with um with Ruba for tech time um and I wasn't able to do my own tech time so we're just gonna replace tech time this week with the highlight reel and I hope you guys enjoy this first clip is from my boy Saacap he's coming in pushing into this lane playing the big dick rick sarith is up on the platform there they're trying to push into this tower sarith jumps up in the air all high and mighty but big dick rick with a big chain pulls her straight out as she falls and hits her with the ultimate they end up taking sarith out that was an amazing pull this next clip is from Kwambam it's a legacy clip where he's playing the old twin blast I didn't play a lot of twin blast on legacy mainly because he had the one affinity but Kwambam is going to prove how effective he could be with just that one affinity now we got another twin blast trying to defend this tower how is he's going to make it rain twin blast is going to try and get out but is it some hot twin blast on twin blast action Kwambam doesn't drop a single shot nails all of them right in the face takes him down but now house is in a bit of trouble gets ulted on by fing mal he's trying to get away Kwambam is throwing down the auto attacks bounces away but grucks is not going to let that slide but he gives his life for that tries the shield auto attacks which never works out slows down the thing mal pops him down and now it's just Muriel who had ulted in to help now she's in a bit of trouble taking shots one after another just the accuracy there guys the accuracy he didn't miss a single shot another legacy clip coming to you guys from james ganko playing decker look at this wave of orange health bars coming in on their on their left side inhibitor she's going to try to prevent it grucks is taking tower shots and decker picks up an easy kill on him throws down the slow and cages everybody in sparrow is taking tower shots she can't get away because of the cage she gets killed the other decker is going to be the next one to get killed she was also caged in gadget is like i'm out of here i'm done but giddy is going to try his best to take down this inhibitor but he gets taken out as well now there's only one person left that's the gadget who decided to book it but she didn't book it hard enough decker's inner travel mode hunting her down they're going to shoot it out nope decker's going to just wing that up stasis bomb right in gadgets face picks up a pizza kill on decker that is why decker was the queen of legacy that was a lot of fun so let's get back into the topic for discussion and the topic for discussion this week comes to us from karina nebula and it should all the epic skins be free in the future games and this kind of ties into uh games as a service but uh that's kind of a different topic but uh yeah karina nebula why don't you go and kick off the uh the topic for discussion this week so um this topic sort of started when i was talking to it uh my friends and we were thinking like should all of these assets that epic release uh on the market are in the marketplace anyone can download them anyone can mess with them should they be included with the purchase of any of these games and in my opinion there's plenty of opinions out there maybe a founder's pack maybe you know slowly release them and you have to buy them but in my opinion i think that all the skins and all all the characters with the exception of one which i'll get to um should be included in the game mainly being that the paragon community has taken this this whole shits form of unfortunate circumstances and we've taken a beating and i think that would be a great win once one of these games comes out with a full version you can play any character you want you can have any skin that was previously made for the game it's yours but you know any new content any new skins weapons skins new characters anything like that is a hundred percent profitable for that company so i think there's a lot there you know that you you can just change up one of the skins that it has been released a little bit change the colors that's a whole new skin so that's just my opinion um the one character that i see as the first character that can be released and can be profitable even though epic released it for free is boris because boris never made it into paragon nobody got to play boris uh oh if you want to play boris you got to give that company some money like that makes sense to me um but i'm i'm excited for boris because that means it's like i don't i mean this time frame might not be right but that's like two or three years from now when all the other characters are out and finally we get boris they'll get the carry the russian accent cybernetic bear the fourth experiment from dr maxima so it'd be it'd be really that would be a great win for us that's just my opinion mendy what do you think i agree i definitely agree i think it would be cool um i go back and forth between whether i think some of it should be like unlockable through progress um versus versus payment but also a quick thought that i just had that i want you guys to discuss um what about like because we've seen how long it takes to produce a game when you have the assets granted some of the most of the assets were not complete um but you know they they had the foundation with the assets the only thing that where i would think it might be troublesome for a company to be profitable that way is it if it takes a long time for them to produce a new character or i mean the skins would probably be a little easier um especially if you're just doing like recolors and stuff like that i personally would not pay for a recolor but that's because i'm cheap um i even thought that the recolors in the in paragon i was not that impressed with the recolored skins like when when it was a totally different skin that was cool but when it was just a recolor i was like meh whatever it's just a different color um so that's where i'm like what how long would it take them to make a profit if it takes them a long time to create and develop and implement a new character um so i don't know what do you guys think about that do you think it wouldn't take that long and they could they're still making profits from the sale of the game but if they go the free to play route with you know um uh where you pay for skins and cosmetics and things like that then it might run into some issues so that's just just a quick thought that i had and i figured i'd want to hear what you guys think it's uh it's definitely interesting it like like i was saying it kind of ties into games games as a service where right like you if you bought that skin then you bought that skin and you should have access to it which epic kind of did give you access to that skin forever now i mean you you paid for that skin you may have paid a separate entity but you you did pay for that skin at some point in time and i think you are somewhat entitled to it but it would be a but some of the things that factor in there though is that epic did refund everybody's money for the for for those skins and um so and there's no way for like omeda studios or made above to know which skins you bought in paragon but um and they're releasing them all for free that uh i think kind of agree with mandy there um they need some way to monetize the game and because none none of them i think currently have plans to to for you to pay for the game it's it's everybody has kind of a uh not not pay to win what am i saying free to play free to play model in mind and um i think those skins are a quick and easy way for them to monetize their games so i don't know i i i really see both sides of this that's why i thought this was such an interesting conversation because i think we're entitled to the to all the characters and skins at one hand but uh at the other hand i want them to be able to succeed and uh they're going to need to be able to make money to do that so yeah that's very true and the you know the mandy mentioned how long is it going to take for them to implement this new stuff that you know say they did make all the skins free you know they they got to have something to make money on in the meantime and they're making this stuff so yeah i i definitely see you're going to side of it i just i wonder what will happen yeah i wonder what will happen i wonder if we're all going to be paying for free skins that are on the market or if they're gonna say you know have them back guys you can yeah it's such a it's such a catch 22 almost because i definitely see the side of like give us something for the pain and anguish you know what do they what do they call it when you sue somebody for pain and suffering or whatever like just just give us something for our trouble but like gu said we want them to succeed and if that means even my cheap ass would pay for some skins or something just to help them succeed so as far as the the paragon remakes have gone the only thing we've seen skin wise is from bent has been from predecessor um they made that they and also he really did was replaced severog's hammer with a scythe which was cool but you know that was kind of a small change i think they could make some money off that because i think most people believe that he should have had a scythe to begin with but that i'm certainly among those people i think he should have had a scythe i mean the hammer was cool but he should have had a scythe he looks like death come on yeah true true uh then like a ethereal they've already had um some released some concepts for skins for their game so they they've already planned to do skins for their game and of course you know those weren't made available by anybody those that's their own creation so they should definitely be able to charge for that they've also got some other some other things planned they kind of this one like they'll leak stuff to me sometimes and tell me that i'm not allowed to talk about it this one they didn't even mean to leak to me you know i certainly can't talk about it as far as monetization goes just i'll let you know that they got it covered they got it when i found this out i wanted to throw my wallet at him right then and there but uh hopefully that we'll find out about that soon we'll be able to talk about it publicly but um yeah then they have had their their skin concepts uh some they they showed some concepts for malaya and some concepts for nickolai so they're uh they're thinking to the future with that already um yeah it's that that is that is just such a it's just an interesting thing to think about like because it would suck if you paid for a skin for fing mal and then you're playing fing mal and yeah he's in a new game and you love that skin and you'd have to pay for it again that kind of sucks but yeah yep it's definitely like i said it's like a catch 22 double edged sword yeah all those all those um analogies whatever you want to call them so i can i can like see them i can see these companies like if like i always say this if they do make them free i can see them making weapon skins and i can see them making new skins oh yeah it's just i don't know i just feel like the stuff that epic made free i just feel like they shouldn't be allowed to profit because it's free guys yeah no that makes a lot of sense makes them i don't know that makes a lot of sense you definitely have a good point there getting back to boris um we know the names of some of his abilities what do you think what do you guys think he's gonna be able to do i mean i think he was definitely meant as the be as a jungler because his attacks if you look at him or all melee i hope he can bite yeah i'm looking through his animations i didn't see anything that looked like he could bite people though looks like he could like he had weird canisters on his back and uh he had some ability called forage which i don't know what that means it is ultimate look like he it almost looked like a steel ultimate like he jumps up in the air and then dives so i wonder if forage is something to do like maybe he gets a bonus to his um to his farm or something i don't know that'd be cool foraging for a thing i don't know i'm trying to i'm trying to connect the dots he's mainly jungle jungle character maybe it's like everything every fill he gets in a jungle or in the enemy jungle he gets oh i'm not sure oh that would be cool like yeah yeah if you if you're risky enough to go to the enemy jungle then maybe you get a boom to your yeah that's cool i guess they can really just give them whatever they want they got free reign with boris they just they got the animations they can do whatever they want with the animations i vote for shit in the woods he leaves the shit in the woods and people can come along it's like a mine oh my god that would be amazing okay i'm on board but the animation like whenever somebody steps in it the animation has to be them like checking their boots like what that would be awesome all right is anybody uh anybody got anything else that wanted to add to the topic uh just on the topic of boris i would like a polar bear skin if any of these companies are gonna put boris in there just make them a polar bear and i'll buy it like that is that simple make a new skin and i'll buy it i put that in the uh the honest hero overview i did for boris where i just made up ability for him was at the end was the arctic assault skin it was just a polar bear absolutely that has to be a thing different kinds of bears i like it so uh that's going to close out the topic for discussion for this week brings us to plugs karina nebula you got anything you want to plug yeah um last time i plugged my twitch uh karina underscore nebula i've just been streaming some cfp and i'll add um my twitter my twitter handle is master key spelled with three y's and an underscore nice if you want to follow me on twitter i i post it on stuff all memes whatever message me i don't care master key remember that master key underscore yeah same old stuff for me i've just been uh just been twitching been over there on the twitch twitching um and i guess as far as something new i got a discord um which maybe i can get you to link if you guys want to come hang out in the discord i have to say i have a super cool community and they're very welcoming and very fun and if you guys want to be a part of that come on in it is a lot of fun hit your discord more than my discord and uh i got nothing nothing for this week so i think that is going to close out the show for this week thank you all for coming out and thanks for uh discussing everything with us i'm sure that there was a lively discussion about uh if you should have to pay for the skins going on in the comments unfortunately you know this isn't live this is pre-recorded but uh yeah the premiere we should get some good conversation going i'm sure we did so uh yep thank you all for coming out and this is the four of the minions crew setting off you guys have a good one man