 Hello everyone and welcome back to 4 of the minions of weekly show all about the upcoming 3rd person mobas out there that us para refugees actually care about. What we're going to do this week, we're going to be talking about all the news and updates for the various games that we track and then we're going to head into talking about the poll results for the popularity poll that I do every week. And then our topic for discussion is going to be what happens when there's competition, when they actually have to compete against each other. So I think that'll be a pretty interesting topic, but if you do want to come and host with us, we do have guest hosts, just hit me up in the comments or on discord, whatever. Hit jelly up if you want to, just if you want to come host, come host, that's fine with us. And there'll be time stamps in a pinned comment below if you want to just jump around to whatever game that you prefer. All right. So now let's get to the introductions. I am the man goose joining me as always as my friend and co-host for both enter the ether and for the minions jelly knees. What's up man goose? I thought for sure with the intro, you were going to say welcome to enter the ether and we were going to have to start this whole thing over again. I don't know why I just had that moment. I was like, oh, he's going to mess it up. Almost do it every single time. I have no doubt with the almost identical intros. It makes sense to me, but I'm doing great with us though. We have Devils spawn. Welcome Devils spawn. Kind of give us a rundown of your experience with Paragon. What got you into it the whole nine yards? So I was in the very first, one of the very first, like the first alpha of Paragon way back when we had the legacy map. I was always a ADC main. My favorite was Murdoch personally, but then I switched to Twin Blast and everything. Twin Blast actually became my overall main, but then I went into Monolith and everything and when Monolith was super big, I actually was in one of the small tournaments that they had for it. I was on one of the hardwired teams, so that was really fun to do. That's actually where my Discord picture comes from. We all had this picture in different colors, and we all nicknamed ourselves like Greek gods because it's the Titan. This is the picture of the Titan holding up the world, which I'm forgetting his name. Yeah, so then once version 42 hit, I was like, you know what? I'm done with Paragon for now, so I'm going to go play, and then I just lost it, started playing League. Heroes of the Storm until Heroes of the Storm really died out, so yeah. You're like me at soccer for dying games. I feel like all ADC mains at one point were like, yeah, I mained Murdoch, right? There's no consistency like that with Sparrow, Twin Blast, or any of the then further on releases, so all ADCs are like, yeah, at one point I mained Murdoch, like it just is a thing. So in Legacy, I always mained Murdoch, but then when we switched to Monolith, Twin Blast was really strong, and then when they came out with the rogue skin for Sparrow, that was my favorite skin line. So that was actually the other four of the minions that I was with Mangus, we were talking about skins, and the rogue made me switch to Sparrow, made me like just main her straight for like a month, it was great. Dude, those rogue skins, one of my favorite skin lines probably. For being as simple as they were, they were really clean and aesthetic across the board. Exactly. Well, speaking of skins, let's get into the news and updates, because we have some exclusive skins from Overprime, and we're going to start with Overprime this week, because a lot of stuff coming out of Overprime, and they gave me exclusive content, so they get bumped to the front of the line. Let that be a lesson to the rest of the companies, give me some exclusive comment, you get to go first. Exactly. I'll hook you up, I'll hook you up, Aetherial next week coming first. Right. I hope they come first. No, aside from, we'll get to those images here in a minute, but the big news coming out of them was their steam, their own steam. Like they have a steam page, you can't buy it, of course you can't play it, but you can put it on your wish list, and then this competition where if you record yourself putting Overprime on your wish list and post it as a YouTube short and tag them, it would, you get $10, just automatically you get $10 of in-game currency, and then like I think the top 20 most like ones are going to get something special that we don't even know about. We don't know what it is. So I thought this was a genius marketing move. Apparently, it's something that happens in the Eastern market a lot. But I'd never heard of doing this. Jelly, what did you think of this? When you, when I first saw your video, I was like, why is he making this weird short about the Overprime wish list? Like, what are we doing? Then you explained it and I went like, that's brilliant. Like that's a whole concept I had never considered before. Suggest instantaneously get your name out there and give for basically no cost. Right? Yes, technically there's production costs that goes into making the skins that people are going to buy with that currency. But for giving away $10 of that premium currency costs you nothing. And you get instant exposure from all the people that do it. Brilliant move. Absolutely brilliant layers to double spawn. What did you think of it? So same thing with Jelly. I was like, why is Brandoose posting a 30 second video? Like, what is happening? And then now that you explained it here, it's brilliant. And also, like, now they could release a lot of, because I'm pretty sure Overprime had the biggest roster, if I remember correctly. At one point in time they did, yeah. But if you think about it, if they give the $10 worth, a lot of people can buy the champions they really like right out of the get go and play those ones that they like too, because they'll have that premium currency as well. And they arguably have the biggest, from what we've seen, the biggest skin selection of non-paragon skins, or at least they will very shortly here because they're, we've already seen so many of their skin concepts or renderings or all that, that even if they were to do something like Fault does, where you can earn the Paragon skins for free, their skins would then be able to be purchasable, but with this $10 currency. That's really cool. And it's not only their own skins, too. They've got their own hero Adele that you could see on the website. She's got the chainsword and the, in the shield or what have you. You can't really see it on the website. You just see that she's got a kind of a twin pigtail look to her. Kind of a bit of a Harley Quinn sort of look. She's just Yin and Tara combined. I'm convinced. A little bit, a little bit. Yin and Tara with some Harley Quinn aesthetics. Yep. I like it. Throwing Shinbe's coloring to Yin and Tara. And then we've got it all for them together. Quite the mash up there. Figure it out. Are we going to throw like rampage in there or something? Just to throw everyone off. Just just his, his tank top skin. Yeah. Perfect. But OK, speaking of skins, this is the exclusive stuff they sent us. They sent us a skin for Countess and a skin for Narbash. Now, the Countess skin looks a lot like the Red Hex skin that she used to have. But I looked at the Red Hex skin, I looked at this skin. This skin has a lot more different gradients and shades to it. It's a fairly basic skin. It's definitely not like a tier three skin, but it's also definitely a skin they made themselves. It's not. They did all the work on this. It's not one of the unreleased skin from from from Paragon. So what do you guys think of the Countess skin? Devils, I'll let you go first. I really like the colors. It's definitely like more of a like, for instance, the the silvery silver, like it looks like an armored Countess, which is really cool. Like an armored assassin, which I really like the basically the whole aesthetic they're going for. And then the blades, the blades look really cool with the whole orange and red aesthetic there. Yeah, I completely agree. I think the skin for a which probably going to be like a tier one level skin is super good. The gradient on it is really nice. It changes her base model enough that it feels different from just base Countess in almost entirely. I just think it looks great across the board. Yeah. And then the other one they gave us was for Narbash. This one was had a lot more differences, I think, because he's got like this sort of Aztec tribal feel for him. He's got these like tribal tattoos all over him. He's got white hair. It's like a I think there's a few little differences to his drums and stuff. Being a support main, I love it. I absolutely love this skin. I think it's awesome. It's kind of like the Mayan skin for steel, but for Narbash. Jelly, what did you think of the Narbash skin? That's actually a great association. I didn't make is like the Mayan skin, but I love this skin, too. It's like if I was going to pick a tier one for Narbash, this would be up there because I love he's a different shade of green. I love the tattoos that he's got around him. His drums have like the sun on them. I think it's a really cool skin across the board. Double spawn your thoughts. Um, so the last time I was on this, actually, the doomsday skin is actually one of my least favorite skins for steel. Um, but yeah, even though that was one of the Paragon's first like legendary skins. Yeah, but for Narbash, I actually really like this aesthetic. I really like the the green with like the blue offset. It actually looks really good. And then the tattoos, like I like this one, but I wasn't feeling the my the doomsday skin from steel, but this one looks really cool. So something I'm noticing actually between the two images is this isn't even just like a static backdrop. They've actually picked two different locations theoretically on their map that they're using these skins and doing custom lighting on both because the lighting is different. The backdrop is different. They're actually they're putting more effort into these than just throwing them on a generic backdrop and calling it a day. I definitely think it's on their map, too. I do, too. Yeah, for sure. But yeah, really cool stuff. I'm glad to see overprime pump and all this stuff. As far as like themes go, like you were talking about like the rogues, the rogue skins, like the roguelari and the rogue sparrow. The only theme I've really seen from them is kind of the steampunk thing that they had. Yeah, steampunk howitzer and they had a steam another steampunk skin. I think it was maybe for Murdoch, I'm not sure. I have to look back. I think steampunk is an easy avenue to go. That is for skin. Pretty much universally liked across the world. That's a skin line that you can put out that almost everyone is going to have some interest in a universally that some people will, of course, dislike the skin, but that's just the nature of skin. As long as it's done well. Yeah. But if you're doing a skin line, I feel like that's a safe one to start with. And then it also like has so many different avenues that they can go like steampunk means a lot of different things, not just like mechanics or so. A lot of top hats from what I understand. Yeah, I know steampunk. I love it. Perfect. It's going to throw a top hat on everything. So let's move on now to ethereal jelly knees's baby and double spawns baby a little bit too, from what I understand. So jelly knees, you did this is a post from you in their discord that frequently asked questions for the stress test. I think that's a great idea to post this because I know people have been asking me all kinds of questions about the stress and when's it going to come out? When do I get the email? Well, it can all be answered if you just go to their discord and read what the jelly knees has for you. Jelly, you want to talk to us anyway? You want to talk to me? I think people read this. I read this one. Wow, mangoes actually read a post for me. Look at that feeling good today. Then you leveled up. You know, seriously, man, I'm I'm established now. Let's put it on my resume. Your mangoes post. Thank you. All right. Oh, yeah, thank you. I think it was huge. It's funny that you say that you were getting a bunch of questions because honestly, I somehow was the one not getting questions about it. Most people would ask like somebody else and then it would come to me via that intermediary person. I've made every post for the last month. Why are people not messaging me or adding me? Whatever, I'll take it. But FAQ went out. So the stress test starts at 9 a.m. Pacific time on Saturday and will either run till it breaks or run until 9 p.m. on Sunday. So it's going to be a whichever comes first. We're hoping that the one that comes first is it runs up to 9 p.m. on Sunday, because that would be great to give essentially two full days of play to everybody that that can get in. And we're just going to go from there and see how it goes. We put system specs out there. The system specs are rather low. They're slightly higher than what Paragon required, but just by a hair. And we're working every day to optimize it to get it down to at least those specs, if not even lower, if at all possible. But system specs are on there. Play times are on there. How to get access is on there. All those good things. And if you're watching this right now, that's tomorrow. So because this comes out Friday. Now, Devils one, you you hosted E.T. Or is it for the Indians? I did it. I did it. You hosted for the Indians a long time ago. And you were really interested in a theory specifically back then. What do you think of it now? So with the theory back then, I was like super hyped for it. I loved that it was a different IP, different game. I loved that, you know, the lanes were stacked on top of each other. That's what I like. I was like, whoa, wait, this is going to hold up. Um, but now that, like, they're they're still that super verticality stuff. But now that, like, for instance, from one lane, as I was seeing someone from the play, you can see both like islands in the sky, if that makes sense. Um, I'm actually really excited. Like, I saw the gameplay of Iran, I believe it was. The yeah, I was really I've loved all of the gameplay for it. I'm really excited to play as the, you know, the carry main for Paragon. I'm really excited to play Dante. And then I'm also really excited just to play in general. The item store seems really cool. The six items and then your boots is also really like, for instance, League of Legends is the main one I play, only has six items and your boots is one of those items. Um, so I'm just really super excited to finally, like, I really hope I get in the stress test because that'll be it'll suck if I don't. And also, I just want to try and break the game because that's the whole goal of the thing. Because I was the goal, like 100 percent if you can do it. Right. But I hope you can't. Yeah, I'm probably not going to. But like, for instance, a predecessor stress test, we broke it within like a day. Um, and I would love to give them, like, all of that info and all of that, like, knowledge of the stress test. So I'm ready to play. Awesome. Jelly, I cut you off earlier and I apologize. You seem like you were about to say something before I started talking to the devil's boy. You know, just that man goose is bad at ethereal. Jelly needs the best normal stuff. OK, so if I if I play, I have to beat jelly is what you're saying. I feel like I'm going to get mobbed so hard in my games. It's going to be ridiculous. Yeah, you are. We're going to have bad news. Also, you're not going to be doing stress. You could be on that elusive, Malaya, more than likely. I have to be because I can't play anybody else and get mobbed. Oh, so what you're saying is I have to watch the sky to kill jelly. Maybe you need to watch cliffs and stuff. Malaya can't fly, but she can. Oh, totally mixing up the characters. Yeah, that's what you're thinking of. It's a leader. Yeah. I'm totally in the comments. I'm like, that's Leah. What do you talk? All right, let's move on. Speaking of predecessor and their stress test, they've partnered up with Excel by it's a back end support service, like like a third party back end service. And, you know, I said it before, I don't think that their servers were actually stressed during that stress test. Just something went on with their MMR, their people just weren't getting put in matches because people that did get in the matches, there was no rubber banding. This, you know, it didn't crash. They just they played out their games and had fun, but then they just weren't able to get into any more matches and anybody else that tried to queue in weren't able to get in the matches. So it was definitely something to do with their back end and not their servers, which apparently they learned from it because they're spending a little bit of money on fire on hiring a third party service, which I think is a great idea on their part. Devil spawn sounds like you you try to get it on that. Did you get some games in a predecessor during the stress test? For the second stress test, I think I got a total of two games, like two actual games, but then there was a lot of like where I would get in the game and they would drop or I would or I'd get in the game and people would be like, I want my rule. I'm like, OK, whatever. And then they would just drop because of that, because people just want to play their favorite Paragon people. I always was like a filler whenever I would just like try and play the game. But I got two games in and overall I enjoyed it. So, yeah, that's a great game. I'm really happy they learned their lesson and hired these because, I mean, you don't have to hire a company to do your back end. But and it and it's I'm not saying necessarily that you have to be part of a big company in order to know how to do back end. But you definitely know that they know what they're doing. So it's a pretty safe bet to partner up with Excel bite. It definitely also shows that like they're willing to get help. They're not just like our team knows how to do everything. They're willing to like good point. Reach out to others to get that help that they maybe aren't specialized in. Yeah, absolutely. It's one of those things where clearly their back end didn't hold up. And so what at what point do you look at it and say like, let's find somebody who's done this before four big projects and use them to help make sure that our back end is solid because our game is solid. And it's just the facilitator to get into that that part that they know is good that we agree is all it feels really good and is fun to play and all those things. And Excel bite, they're not like they're they're a fairly new company. But they were founded by industry veterans. It's not like they're a new company that with a bunch of rookies that like they know they know what they're doing. So I mean, for back end support, it's going to cover like matchmaking. It's going to cover the cross platform thing. The creation of accounts. Maybe these these guys might make their launcher for them. I don't know, but it covers a whole spectrum of things. And it's also going to give them access to analytics, which I think is pretty important. Like you have like you have the community's perception of a hero. And then you have the actual win rate of the hero. Yeah, like I think. Countess or Kalari, I think was a great example in Paragon. Hugely oppressive hero to play against. And it felt like you were just getting dominated by her. But you can have a Kalari go 36 and 0 and still lose the match because they're just doing Kalari things the entire time, instead of pushing a tower. So you look at those kind of metrics and say, Kalari is at 50 percent win rate. She's fine. You don't really need to do anything to her. Yeah. And that's Kalari for the longest time was in that state where she was feast or famine and was in that that win rate. But when she was feast, you felt like she was dominating and needed nerfs. When she was famine, you realized that she was actually balanced and decided to just be bad that game, whatever it was. So those analytics are huge. That's something that I know with Ethereal, we've been talking about for the stress test is making sure that our back end is set up to get those analytics so that we can see all the information that comes through and gauge that way as well in addition to what we've been doing in testing and all of those other things. So it's it's absolutely a huge resource to have set up and ready for you. Right. Also, like you mentioned, like Kalari and everything, a lot of the champions for instance, another one of the moments that I keep mentioning like League of Legends, there's some champions in there that you definitely know when you have a really like the analytics might not show this the community knows where you know when you have a good one versus a bad one. And definitely the analytics might show, oh, this character has a 51 percent win rate. Let's look at how we would adjust that. And the community perception might be completely different. So analytics are definitely very important there. I think the thing for me about this this announcement that Fred is partner with Excelbyte is that that stress test took place on July 30th and we're just hearing about this in November. Yeah, that's a long time. That's a long time to go with no real update to your community. To then four months later announced, by the way, we partner with people that are going to handle it for us. Like what what that's kind of just a weird. Yeah, like we should have gotten more information than just four months later, we did something about it. Yeah, I also agree there and it feels like it's right with the predecessor. If they would have announced, hey, we're partnering with this back end and we're looking into doing another stress test, if they would have like presented it that way, different presentation. I think it would have my perception of it would have probably been different with the whole thing. I think it's kind of the way they operate now. They used to be very like overly transparent with the community. Then after their first alpha kind of took a shit back in 2018, I think it was. They just they just went dark and that's the way they've been handling things. They, you know, when they got something big, they'll put it out. But for the most part, they just they keep their heads down, nug it out and keep working. And then you can it works for them like whenever you get to play predecessor, it's so it's just such a great experience that I don't I don't mind this. I don't mind them doing things the way they're doing right now. I don't I don't think they particularly need to be transparent. They've already kind of established that they're not going to be the way that they used to be. So 100 percent. I think it just is one of those odd feelings. It's not necessarily bad. It's just one of those like this just feels off. Like it feels like we're missing a piece of something. Yeah. And similar, similar to with their response to the stress test going poorly, their response was just kind of like, yep, it went bad. And that was it. And so it was just kind of like there's you're missing like there's something missing. It's not that I want more information. It feels like you're withholding information. And I think there's a difference there that it's it's not a want. It's a like there's more that needs to be shared than just that. And I think the fact that the stress, the way people have talked about that stress test has held as long as it has is part of that as well. And that not giving slightly more information means that nobody has any kind of response to saying, well, there's their stress test was bad. And what note? What can anybody say to that? Yep, it was like that's they didn't do anything to do damage control from that front. Yeah. It was just like the last time I played predecessor, I couldn't play predecessor. That's all we have to say. Yeah. So it's just a little it's a little like I said, it's it feels like information is being withheld more so than it's wanting more information. I get that. I feel that a little bit, a little bit. Speaking of just gobs and loads of information, let's move on to fault who had absolutely nothing this week. No. Good, still no patch 14. They didn't announce anything. There was I didn't see anything in their little Twitter feed or any of that. I got nothing for fault. Sorry, guys. I guess we can talk about a little bit. I think and we've mentioned this a hundred times at this point, mangoes. Putting out nothing, putting out nothing is such a bad idea, right? Like that they even if they're not going to do patch 14 thing, patch 14 itself, they've been putting out like, here's a map tease, here's this tease, here's something else, here's something else. And then this week, they just do nothing. Like that just doesn't make any that's so counterproductive to what they've been doing that it just seems off. Yeah, it kills the hype that you like you had with the teasers. Like just be like, hey, be on the lookout for next tomorrow's reveal or whatever. Like just the hint of information is always really cool. That they hyped it too early. I feel with patch 14, I feel like we were going up a roller coaster when they when they first started that 14 and everybody's like getting ready, getting ready for the drop and then the roller coaster broke down at the top and now you're sitting here like, are we going to we're going to do the thing where we put our hands up and drop down and our stomach flip? No, we're not going to do that. We're in the loop upside down when it stops. We're not even we're not even at the top of the ramp. We're just holding on for dear life upside down, going like, OK. Any any time now. Mangers, I would love if you flipped me upside down right now. OK, you got it. You got it, buddy. But it feels like they not only did they hype it up, then they were like, yeah, it's coming. It's going to be this great thing. And then nothing. And then they said like, oh, no post this week, no post this week. Then they started doing teasers and now we got nothing. And it's just like, what? Where are we going? Like, decide your direction. There's no consistency in what's going on. If you're going to do teasers, do teasers. If you're going to say no weekly post until patch 14, don't do weekly post to patch 14. Just pick one. Like, stop yanking everybody back and forth with what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. You can flip me right side up again. This now now. Oh, we can't know. So double spot. Just your overall impressions of fault since we got you here. So overall, so I played. I think this was right after. I was having the Paragon edge because this was right after the first alpha of predecessor. So I wanted to play more and faults, like, for instance, graphics, so the looks of a game is really important to me when the game is really new and fault just didn't cut it. I played like two games. There was no icons for items. There was no steel looked really bad, like supports my sub role, like in third person, and I was like, this is awful. I don't want to play this. So I played two games and have a touch since it's. I think it's a story for a lot of people. They got a bad taste in their mouth at the beginning and just didn't come back to it. It's unfortunate for strange matter, but that's it. It happens. Mm hmm. So it is scored though. So I still get like, hey, here's a here's a release. OK, I'm just hoping for something cool. It's going to close it out for the news and updates, speaking to the popularity of these games, the popularity poll. We've got a got a slight shift in it. Predecessor down to 54. I mean, they're still dominating with over half of the half the chart theory up to 22 fault up to 12 and over prime staying strong at 12. I think I think the over prime is probably going to start taking off as we go. A theory as well after the stress test. Pred, if they don't release something soon, they're just going to keep slipping down and fault. Nobody's going to give a fuck about unless they release patch 14 sometime in the near future. I think depending on the stress test next week, we might see ethereal take like if predecessor doesn't release anything, ethereal will see a real big jump. And that's that's the interesting thing in me with me mangoes in these polls in the couple of weeks that we've been doing this show again is predecessor has been steadily declining and everything else has been steadily increasing. Right. And I think that shows evidently in the communities as well, right? Like that you're seeing ethereal pick up, you're seeing over prime pick up, you're seeing even fault with the patch 14 weirdness still kind of improving over time and pred slowly but surely losing numbers. Even after they announced the partnering with a back end, they still lost numbers, right? So it's that an announcement is not enough anymore for them. It's it's there's actual results that have to be seen for their community to be backing with them over something else. But again, they still have. Oh, for sure. The largest share of the community. Like most people are are are more hype for pred than anything else. Right. But I think it would take a lot for them to slip slip below that. But we'll we'll see. We'll see only five percent. Well, four percent. But yeah, five percent to go to 49. Yeah. Yeah. I know math. Yeah. Mangoes knows the math. By the way, making this fucking pie chart is like the hardest thing I've ever done in Photoshop. You know how hard it is to make this thing? It's not that hard anymore now that I figured it out. But if you're a Photoshop guy, go try to make a pie chart right now. You're trying to make that pie chart. See how it works out for you. And we're going to link you to like makeapiechart.com. And it's just going to do that. But it doesn't look good. That's the way I used to do it. Your man goose. What are you just doing in Excel? All right. So let's let's go to close it out for the popularity poll. This is going to be a pretty interesting discussion, I think. We're going to talk about what's going to happen when they actually have to compete against each other. Because the question, a question I get asked a lot is people ask me, is it is it worth it to by fault right now? Or should I just wait for a predecessor? Is it or should I just wait for overprime or whatever? I'm so uncomfortable telling people what to do with their money to begin with. But like what I would say is that I spent twenty dollars. I've played the game for over four hundred hours. I think over four hundred hours of entertainment is well worth twenty dollars. But I don't know if you drop the twenty dollars now. If overprime is going to come out next month, and then you're going to be playing that or if predecessor come out, you can be playing that. I have no idea how much time you're going to be spending in fault. And so it's almost with these pair, these successors specifically, it's almost that concept of like trying to convince your friend to buy a video game. They finally buy it and then you switch video games, right? Like that concept on a much grander scale. Oh, I don't want to do that. You're essentially the same game coming out in similar timings. So great. You pick up fault. Like you said, overprime comes out, predecessor drops, and then suddenly everyone shifts over and now you're the one guy playing fault. Congrats. Like it's such a hard dilemma to have to deal with for sure. A double spawn. Do you think that they're all going to have a paid early access because they've all said that they want to be free to play upon full release, but they've all but a theory has set up front that they're going to be a paid early access. They were cut and dry about that from the beginning, which I appreciate because you just, you know, we've known forever that a theory or you've got to pay to get out of the game. But we've known we're going to have to pay for it. I think I honestly think yes, that early access is going to be a paid version because there has to be some kind of money because all of these four teams, except fault, because it's been out for a while. They all have been working without money, except, you know, Fred, because they got that epic thing. But they all are working for free, in a sense. And they want to recoup that money that, you know, lost, said. So I think it will. I did some the only one that I think will go free to play first or without charging people is overprime. Possibly, because they have already been the free to play model this whole time that they haven't had to pay to access their game before. So the community that they have developed in that right, it'll feel terrible to have them suddenly have to pay for it that have put in hundreds of hours into that game already. And at the same time, they are, I would argue, in a more complete state than any of the others at the same by the same token. There's steam release says releasing soon or something along the lines under the release date. It doesn't say early access soon and steam or whatever the differentiation is steam has that differentiation of entering early access soon versus a full release soon. And theirs doesn't say that theirs doesn't have that distinction. So I could definitely see them going free to play from the jump, especially because they have so many of those skins already ready to go. And because they did that thing where you get $10 of in game currency, they're trying to get you to spend money on the in game store. If they were going to do paid access, they wouldn't need to do that because you're going to spend money to get in any way. And the backing of net marble, so it's not as big of a risk for them to go free to play out the get go. What are you going to say, double spawn? You say their roster because they have such a big roster, it will draw, say, for instance, if predecessor doesn't have a Calari, the Calari in the game yet, for example, the Calari mains that want to play Calari will go over to say either overprime or fault. Same thing with like Wukong, some Wukong means or whatever. So on their website, including their proprietary character, they have 13 characters, 13. OK. I thought they had one, but. Though they definitely have more because they've been playable in the past. Oh, OK. Listed on their website. They only have 13. Ah, that makes sense. OK. Yeah, I think the. I agree with Joey, the free to play model is probably going to be them. If they if they come out free to play, they're going to blow fault out of the water. Oh, yeah, like what I led this in with. If somebody asked me, is fault worth it or should I wait for overprime? If overprime is free, then I would be insane not to tell them, you know, try overprime first. And then if you don't, if you don't like it, then maybe spend your money on fault, you know, right? But that we're going to be so different, though, that there's probably going to be a lot of people that don't like it because it's going to be a much faster game than even late version. Paragon was so I mean, that's the risk that are taken. But if it's free and people can just play their their favorite hero, then they're probably just going to gravitate towards overprime. But I mean, we don't know if it's going to be free. We have no idea. Yeah, right. That's really going to be the interesting thing to see is theoretically overprime is going to come out before predecessor. So we're going to see overprime and fault in the space at the same time. So then, yes, the recommendation, if overprime is free to play, try that. If you don't like it, try fault. Then if predecessor comes out and if predecessor is at the same barrier to entry as fault is at twenty dollars, I don't see many people saying to try fault overpread if you're going in order of games to try based on thought, right? Just based on feel production value the whole nine yards. I don't think anyone looks at fault and predecessor and says fault over predecessor. I think there's probably some, but not many. And the popularity poll shows that with the way the popularity poll, those numbers have been showing me. I think predecessor could have a paid early access and still outperform overprime. Mm hmm. Absolutely. Even again, we're assuming overprime to be free to play it. But if overprime is paid, predecessor paid, fault paid. And they're all out at the same time. Which one are you going to pay for? Correct. You know, one hundred percent. And that's I think the interesting thing, and I wish we could get metrics on this man goose, is seeing what overprime's numbers are in the East in comparison to per per predecessor and fault. Because I would I would bet that in the East overprime has got a much, much, much bigger following. Partly because of the net marble backing, partly because of the team behind it in general. But I but the type of game we've already talked about this as well is fits better in the East based on the other games that we see popular in the East that are not as popular here. So they predecessor, predecessor and fault could really be the Western audience game and overprime could be the Eastern audience game. And they could exist separately in that way, though they still technically are competitors with each other. Right. And then a theory has its own is like its own completely different thing. So and that's the hard thing is a theory will kind of exist outside of the group. It'll be a competitor in the sense of that they're 3D mobas in the 3D moba space. But it is not a competitor in that they're using the same assets as two other games. And one is going to inevitably feel better, play better for more people than the other. Well, also, if you think about it, when Paragon was out, Smite was always a competitor with it, even though Smite didn't have a vertical act, the verticality of anything. So, like, yeah. I don't. It's the thing like a theory is very different. So they've got that going for them. I think overprime kind of has that going for them, too, because they're going to be a lot different. Like, fault and predecessor both say that they want to, you know, pay homage to Paragon but improve upon it. What is different with fault than Paragon? What's different with predecessor than Paragon items? Yeah. It's not that much different. No, it's like balance changes. Like, they got the passives and all the characters are the same. The premise is the same with predecessor. The map is basically the same. You've got a mix of legacy and monolith essentially. It's they're fighting for the same audience in that regard because they are so similar to their pun intended predecessor that it's hard for them to navigate away from that anymore. And I think that's the real competition. That's the ones that I see one of them killing the other one off. That's the real competition is between fault and predecessor. Overprime, like you said, Paragon capture an eastern audience. Paragon capture a new audience because it's very different from what Paragon was. Ethereal, very, you know, it's its own thing. They're they're pulling from legal legends and Smite and Dota and all kinds of other games, not just the Paragon fan base, but fault and predecessor are pulling strictly from hardcore Paragon fans. And I don't think they're different enough from each other that one can live that both can live. One of them is going to die. One of them is going to just the player base is going to fall off and die. Yeah, I think they got they got to approach things differently because they they both both companies will say, oh, we don't care what they're doing. We're just making our own game. You fucks you got to care. Yeah. You got to care. I mean, I can tell you guys that I'm sure this is no secret. Ethereal has conversations every time an announcement goes out from any of these other three companies and Smite included in that if talking about like, OK, if if this was the space, right, it kind of is getting that feeling going of if we're trying to compete with them in this space, what does this do for us? What does this do against us? What is how does this compare to us? And like you said, we're not even a Paragon successor, right? That that is only amplified further when you're using the same assets, using the same characters, the same abilities, the same overall concept. Yeah, they they need to. I hate to say this from an ethical moral point of view, but they need to get a little more cut through with each other. I also think like. Yeah, so I think whichever one dies, it would be dumb. Like, for instance, whichever one dies, it would be dumb of the other one not to try and pick up those people. Like, for instance, say predecessor were to die. It would be an amazing move for fall to be like, hey, we're picking up this developer from predecessor. Come play our game for just for example. Yeah, it'll depend on what the death reason is. Yeah, if it's a player base thing, they may not need to because they already have the player base, right? So it's not a matter of picking up the 15 people from the other side. I think the biggest thing is fault really has to do something with this patch 14 because this if big patches, the space between big patches is anything, any indicator for fault 13 and 14 are what six months apart at this point? Six months from when 14 drops, I would assume predecessors in early access of some kind and over time it would certainly be in the same boat, right? So they can't wait six months to do major updates if that's what they have to do. They have to be this has to be the thing that puts them on the map moving forward and garners their player base. Otherwise, I think they're in big, big trouble. Yeah, their player base is their money. They're they're completely self-funded. They're not they're not backed by anyone like like predecessor is. But again, so that works against predecessor a little bit, too, because they have to satisfy their investors. They've got to pay all that money back really, not really pay it back. But, you know, they need to they need to actually generate more revenue, I think, than fault does in order to keep to keep moving on because fault is already established how they're going to move forward and pay their and pay their employees and and and sustain the game. You know, predecessors, we don't really know what's going on there because they do you have that two million dollars of backing. But they those backers are going to want more than that back. They want more than what they put into it back, eventually, over time. They don't not say that when it releases, they want all their money back. But, you know, it's an investment over time. They want they're going to want that back. And if predecessor isn't doing well, they're not going to they're not going to be giving them any more money if they're not if they don't see that there's going to be a return on their investment. And do you guys think that there's any chance that patch 14 for fault pushes it free to play? I don't think so. They already have the access of like, hey, pay 20 bucks, get our game. I don't think so. Not unless overprime releases, they're free to play. That might push fault to do it. Well, and that's what I'm thinking is that with overprime on the horizon and Fred close behind them, fault has to do something. That's interesting. Maybe that's why we have seen. Exactly. Is it's been delayed for lack of a better way to put it because we haven't gotten it yet. They're clearly they're going to have AI. They're going to have theoretically a new map. They're going to have a new hero. They're going to have the mastery system. They're going to have all of these things that are indicative of a of a full game or two full release game that they theoretically could push a free to play button at the same time. But they're waiting to see what overprime does. Exactly. You tinfoil hat wearing son of a bitch. You done it. I wanted to ask. Do we know predecessor's business model? Like what they're going to do when they release theoretically skins, theoretically. OK, so basically the same thing as Lee got full release is supposed to be free to play. But like we said, I don't know about early access. I can't imagine that they're going to go free to play for early access. I don't think so. I mean, like we like we said a million times, Paragon itself was not free to play early access. You had to buy like a basically $20 to $100. I think was the range. Yeah, it was 20 to 100. And then, yeah. I got 20 from everything we've seen from Tiger Stripe on the social medias, specifically their subreddit, which is the one I follow mostly. It sounded like it was most likely going to be a paid early access of some kind. So but they had also sounded like they were going to release in November. So it's one of those things. That we it could maybe they're waiting for overprime to tip their hat before. Because they could, right? They already pushed this week in their discord that it's not likely to be this year. Or so if they wait for overprime to drop in December, they have some time. If you think about it, they also could be because Ethereal announced their stress test. They could be waiting to not try and compete with Ethereal, per se, for their stress test, letting everyone like test out Ethereal. Realize like, hey, they're breaking their game, come play ours. They could be doing that and just like waiting for someone to make the next move. I don't think so. Purely off the basis, but they're one of their first stress predecessors, first stress test was the same day that FALT released. Oh, yeah. Pred, Pred pulled people and then the second Pred ended, then FALT had their moment. Right. But the Pred definitely has the I mean, we see it in the poll. If Pred wanted to steal the limelight from Ethereal or any of these other games, they schedule something on the same day and say, what now? Do something about it. They're for lack of a better way to put it. They're the 800 pound gorilla in the room. We all have to respect them. They don't have to respect us, right? I mean, I'll tell you right now, of course, but if Pred decided that we announced our stress test and Fred was like, we're doing a stress test that day, too. We guarantee you would have had a conversation. Maybe we don't do our stress test that day. Maybe we just lay it a week. Yeah, because that's just a death sentence. That's asking that you're pushing the 800 pound gorilla and you don't need to just respect there, give them their space, do it in your own time. Yeah, if 14 if 14 launched and predecessor had a stress test the same day, you better god damn believe I would be playing that predecessor, Fred. Oh, yeah. However, if Pred had a stress test and Ethereal had a stress test at the same time, I'd be playing Ethereal. I'd be playing Ethereal. I want to play a personally, I want to play a unique IP. I want to play something new and Fred gives me that old nostalgia and Ethereal gives me that I don't know what I'm walking into. Well, I don't know what I'm like. I have to learn how to play, for instance, Dante or Leah. Or any of the other champions that you have. Yeah, I envision myself in the future playing Ethereal. Either Fault or Pred, one of the two, not both. And maybe overprime for some quick matches when I just want to I just want to chill out and not really think about it too much. I agree. I would agree with you too, man. Goose in that same regard. Go ahead, devil. Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. But I agree with their like, for instance, right now, when I'm trying to actually like rank up or play ranked, I'm playing league. Like I'm playing league. But when I'm just playing casually, I'll go play team fight tech or I'll go play here to the store or whatever. I want that new like itch that I need, because third person was definitely the way I wanted to go. Yeah, man. Well, we are coming up on an hour. So let's let's start closing things out. That was fun. Did you have anything else you wanted to say on the topic? Um, just on the topic, like for me personally, competition breeds success. So I think it will push all of the games to be better personally. See, that's my last remarks. Jelly, I completely agree with that concept as well. That competition is healthy for all of these games. It'll show who can succeed, who can't, who can keep up, who can't all of those things. And if any of these games are watching for the minions and want to send us exclusive content, do so. I like that. Jelly, you worked that in quite well. No problem. That's what I'm here for. I just think they need to stop with the whole. I don't care what the other games doing attitude. They need to if they want their game to survive, they need to compete. They need to be competitive. That's a lot of them. Yeah, not talk. I mean, don't talk shit to the other companies, of course, but yeah, I get you. All right. So that's that's going to start closing things out. Let's move on to plugs. Devil spawn. Do you have anything to plug? You got a Twitch channel or anything? I don't need I don't even remember. First, no, I don't have a Twitch channel or anything. I'm just here. You know, I mentioned Spangus. Man, who's fit me in and just like he says, you don't need a webcam to be on the show. Just like I don't have one. It's a great experience. What, that's not your face? No, it's not my face. But it's a great experience. And I just I probably message man use again to be out here. You know, it's future shows. And I'd be glad to have you. Jelly knees to kind of echo a little bit off that real quick. If you're nervous about sending me a message or myself a message, just do it, right? Like I was that guy two years ago where I was like, I don't know. I'm going to send me a message and hope he responds, right? Like and then now look where I am. So, I mean, whether I regret that or not, is a whole different story. But that's a whole that's like it's a different thing. But son of a message, we'd love to have you guys on the show. Absolutely. As you can see, we razz each other all the time. But for plugs, I have a Twitch channel. I'm doing Marvellous Monday at what did I do at this last week, eight mountain time, seven mountain time. I do Marvellous Monday, follow my YouTube and my Twitch. All right, right on. Oh, by the way, you said the ethereal stress test. What time? 9 a.m. Pacific on Saturday to 9 p.m. Pacific on Sunday. OK. Assuming it doesn't break for us. We're another question for you, Jelly. Do you are you going to be live after the stress test to talk about it? Or are you going to do that in a Q and A? Immediately after. But what we're going to do is we'll have a live community corner of the Friday following. And I'm sure we'll talk a lot about the stress test and what we learned and all those things right on. Look forward to it. I got nothing to plug. I just appreciate everybody coming out to watch the show for everybody that's in the comments right now. I'm glad you glad you joined us and thanks for hanging out and talking to us. We'll see you guys next time. That's not that weird. You always enter out for a weird. Oh, yeah, I'm terrible at outros. I'm going to put all this in, too. This is all in the after. Put me upside down again. Yeah, we're all just weird. It's OK. And then goose shout out to channel members, foolish blood hunter, jelly knees, me all mixed for men stunt and ferret.