 Hello everyone and welcome back to it or the ether or the podcast all about the upcoming third-person MOBA ethereal clash of souls I am your host the man goose Me always is my friend and co-host jelly knees. How you doing jelly? I love that. I looked down right as your eyes got wide perfect. I mean like it was great I'm doing fantastic other than my voice still sounding terrible. I'm great. So I think your voice sounds good I thought you got a bit of a Daniel Hodg thing going on with your voice all week Perfect, then I'm just gonna stay like this forever. I'm never getting better So there was a little attract the ladies all I'm in Man, I bet he does attract the ladies I had to leave talking in a restaurant. I can only talk to them on the phone. I can be like, hey, how's it going? That's it And if I get better then I can never talk to them again because I can't have them. No The only while I'm sick thing. Yeah, yeah 100% just walk around trying to get people to sneeze in your face Taking my head in the freezer trying to stay sick. Yeah, absolutely So ug had a pretty big announcement this week jelly. What was that all about? So ug officially announced that we are bringing on significantly more testers than we have currently Um in the internal testing up till now we've had about 20 people In pretty consistently going through in varying states Uh, but we want to ramp up testing. We want to get more people in Get feedback on stuff. So we put it out to the community at large, right? Because that's what the community is there for We're an early we're an indie developer With a title that's never been done before Right, we're gonna need extensive testing. We're gonna need extensive feedback So we want to do that and on to the community with that So we put out an announcement asking for testers fill out a questionnaire Kind of all those good things and then are already going through the list setting up interviews as well So we're moving along trying to get this on the road Right on so uh just to put it out there for everybody. How can people go about trying to be a tester for ethereal? Yeah, so go to our discord page. Look in the announcements. There's a link there That takes you to our website. It's got a google form embedded on it Fill out the google form. Make sure you read everything. I'll say that again. Make sure you read everything um and Fill it out to the best of your ability as much detail as you can provide That's better for us because that gives us a better perspective of who you are as a tester Then if we like your your little application, we'll reach out to you schedule an interview after the interview We'll let you know Either if we want you to be in the testing group or maybe not right now We might bring you into the future or what the next step is and then we'll go from there and get you into testing Right on uh, so that's that's really awesome. I know a lot of people have been Chomping at the bit to play this game and this will give them an opportunity to do so But it's not for everybody testing is not for everybody and that's what we're going to kind of discuss today We're going to talk about what we would like to see For testers in ethereal and by the way if you don't have the ethereal discord and you're watching the video I'll have it linked in the video description below or jelly whoever's whoever this is whoever's channel This is going on this week. I don't even know But uh, yeah, you can check that out and then um Yeah, so that's that's what we're going to talk about This week and I I mainly think that you guys need to be looking for a like a large variety Of different types of testers. I think that's the main thing you guys need to be looking for I mean not just willingness to to You know bug tests and all that but people that are like really really good at games and like Are demonstrably so but also people that are just kind of casual and just want to play the game Like when they have free time like that's the kind of testers. I think the the sort of spectrum we need. What do you think jelly? Yeah, I completely agree with you. It's one of those because the game Is as big as it is in terms of like the complexity Right having an extra ability having the class ability having the different classes in general having three separated lanes Right, you're gonna want or we want as much perspective as possible on all of those So from a high level point from a low level point from a brand new player We want to understand where the pitfalls are in every step of the way, right? So we can go about fixing those or changing them to make them feel better more accessible, etc Just hearing different voices Exactly and getting better feedback that way. Yeah one thing when you You brought this topic up that that we were going to be talking about this week And one thing that my mind always goes to when you talk about Like kinds of testers and stuff is when people start talking about top-down balancing There I have a lot of problems with that I do think that you do need to balance top down like You need to balance from the highest skill level down like the game needs to be balanced for that high skill level because Most people While they may not play a lot. They get it Like if you design a really complicated character There's people out there casual players They'll get it. They'll understand how to play it. They may not Be a top player because they don't play that character enough to know everything But they'll still get what you're talking about. So I think top-down balancing is the way to go However, I think people get stuck in that top-down balancing and not and they don't realize that The vast majority of the player base are going to be casual players. So you still do need to get The the casual players input and you do need to still have some heroes that people could just pick up and play Absolutely. So that's I mean, that's a big thing we've talked about before man goose is the pre alpha 7 being Pretty much all accessible characters to everybody Right, there's elements of them that for a really high skill player skill level player They can really love like talos or noxus by comparison Right, but then there's also Malaya who is really as simple as holding left click most of the time and running at people, right? so it's The characters themselves are going to have some of that in the pre alpha, but we also wanted them to Have that that feeling where you could pick it up and play And the skill ceiling is very high So that everybody can feel like Even with malaya, right? Yes, you hold left click and run it down But do you press your shield before you dash in or do you dash first and press your shield? Like there there's little nuances you can get when the time the ultimate correctly and stuff like that Yeah, exactly and I think something I've been a part of discussions internally Is trying to keep that skill ceiling as high as possible also Bringing up the skill base So that everybody feels like they're doing the cool things Yeah, right it's it's not so it's it's definitely a balancing act you have to find and that's having more testers is definitely going to help us do so Because there's never we're never going to see everything Right the one of the greatest things is That talos gameplay video coming out and people saying like these are the things we have the biggest issues with Great, let's fix those first. Like that's that's an easy thing It's not so that we didn't recognize those were in issues, but we didn't realize how prevalent the community thought about them so just getting more Names and voices in the mix is going to be super beneficial for the game and hopefully the people that you're getting are going to be very open-minded and um willing to um Always one thing I always say you can't always do this But you should always try to have a solution whenever you present a problem I would like to see those people coming up with their own solutions to problems that they see like This is wrong, but I think this is how you can fix it Maybe that's not the way ug will fix the problem, but I think People getting into that mindset will be very helpful to ug down the road That's what kind of people hope you get Absolutely, and there there's definitely an extent. There's a balancing act in there as well Right because with the amount of testers we're hoping to bring on It's going to be hard for the handful of ug members to have In-depth conversations with every person right about some of that stuff So we love hearing solutions because we'll look at it and be like is that something Hey, we want for the game like is that a road we want to take for the game And then if it is is that the fix we want to implement or do we want to go a different route? Um, it's hard sometimes because we want to extend those conversations with the people but time is Time right it's never fleeting So sometimes we see those solutions and it's hard because they feel like they gone ignored I promise you guys we look at solutions All the time if somebody's like could you fix it this way? I guarantee you we have a conversation about it of like is that something we want to do? Will it fix the problem? et cetera et cetera But having solutions is a great thing because there have been times where somebody poses a solution and we go That's perfect. We don't we like that no big deal Implement it the next day good to go Right and it takes some of the work off of us As well because we don't have to try and think of a solution In that process as well. We can focus on some of the other ones that are issues Um, I think Again with the whole spectrum of different types of players I think you also need a spectrum of testers like you need the people that are going to try to play the game at the highest level and try and Build the best they can but you also need that guy that's and you know You're going to have plenty of them that are like what happens if I dash backwards into this tree while While using this ability Well, let me try dash backwards into the same tree while using this ability And they're just going to do that the whole time and that's that's going to be great for you guys to figure out a lot of Stuff because I'm sure there's stuff out there that like God, I forget the guy's name pusey Pusey whenever I was He was um playing revan blade with me when he was testing out that dude to find the craziest ways to get on top of Stuff he was finding Invisible islands in the middle of nothing Like who finds that stuff like how did who dashes? To that particular point on the map and finds that there's like a centimeter of Surface area that you can stand and then shoot people from you know, you're going to need people like that Absolutely, I mean there's What there's been a couple instances in testing already Where we're doing something and I had when I chased a guy down And he jumped off a fire lane on the far side. He's not landing anywhere. He's just gonna die Like oh no problem right go to turn back, but I never get the like confirmed death Thing on the banner and I sat there for a moment And so I go over I look over the edge and he found a teeny tiny spot that he can jump off and land perfectly and survive And he was playing malaya so he then he tried to dash back up and I was like You find this what what is this like he knew it was there too like he knew it was there It was so calculated like he just full speed jumped off the edge Oh, man, but it was absolutely then the next test. We're like that's fixed. Don't do it. Nope. You can't do that anymore. Thank you I want to see it like um Over problem with their pac-man rules with their portal. I want to see if you jump off fire lane you land on ice lane Like but if you jump off ice lane you land on fire lane. Oh my gosh, dude. It's insane sometimes Oh Yeah, the other thing we're doing in addition to like a wide variety of Testers themselves in terms of like play style and skill level Is this is also an opportunity for us to test different computer specifications Oh, yes, and where where the thresholds of the game are at currently Right now because it's so early in development and has not been fully optimized by any means Um, but so we're trying to see where the thresholds are how we can improve those thresholds The majority of our testers right now have Nvidia GPUs So AMD GPUs could have completely different results That we're not expecting or not aware of at the moment So that's another thing we're taking into account with adding all these testers is Does their computer specifications also meet something we need to test at the same time? I didn't even think of that But yeah, that's a hundred percent Yeah, if you guys get that on that that'd be great. So yeah, if you guys are out there and you've been thinking about testing You're thinking that your computer isn't up to snuff If it's half decent then, you know, give it a try and then they'll get data back Maybe you'll be able to play the game. Maybe you won't but at least you will have helped out And it's one of those things that it's we're probably going to have a ever expanding list of testers to some extent Right, so we may And i'm just pulling a random GPU out of my butt here But let's say the cutoff is that a we have a gtx 770 As the lowest gpu once we can optimize better and once we know that that is running smoothly Maybe if you have a 570 we then expand testing Down to you to then bring you into that and see how it feels and how it tests and all of those things Right, right. It's something that we can ever expand into different areas as we see fit That's kind of how our questionnaire was designed as well is to give us the perspectives of What are we looking for right now for testers? And then we can also look at things and be like, okay, this is a good group for when we expand to this thing This is a good group. We can bring in at that time and and go from there. Yeah Uh, what about times do you have like specific times that you'd be able to do the test and Are you looking specifically for in a or are you guys looking to test you? Eventually we want to expand to other regions right now. We're only in the us And that's for legal reasons that because of the nda's and everything involved We need to operate inside the us and everyone has to be over 18 But going forward we want to expand to other regions And then the times as well are going to depend right now We've kind of got set times for testing But as things change that may develop into we'll have two separate testing times Or people earlier in the day versus people later in the day and all of those kind of things as well Okay. Yeah, that'd be good. That'd be really good. Good to see Yeah, I imagine with a lot more testers and then Y'all gonna be busy though Absolutely Absolutely, we're gonna be Exactly and that's what we're hoping for we've kind of hit a point where The game is in such a place that we can start branching out to these testers and having more of these opportunities available Because we're ever approaching that that further release and the further Community at large playing the game So as many opinions as we can get before then And feedback and balancing and all that the better that release is going to be Yeah A lot of testing now too before Mm-hmm And something else we really want to do Is expand our testing to multiple games at once Because it's all well and good to run the game in run one game with 12 people And have it run flawlessly But when you're running eight games 10 games 15 games all at the same time That is also going to be slightly different And seeing how that interaction happens and in the client how it all works and all of those things Are definitely add up Do some early testing with mmr as far as like finding matches and stuff like that Maybe not like elo or anything, but like mmr and elo like matchmaking is a little different than just elo But just matchmaking so that you can find a game if you guys get that Down pat that would be a huge step in the right direction Um, I can say actually that we've already been doing some testing. We've pulled some of our Oh, you're cutting out on me we have fully functional matchmaking That we can get 12 people into a lobby character select and load into a game We've done that recently that happened a couple weeks ago. Um, we've got custom games. We've run I think it was eight games at once All off the client we've run like we're slowly making strides and toward that end Of all of these different milestones for a new game to come out a new multiplayer game, especially nice That was a big moment for us internally running multiple games. It was like we did it like this is a thing That's happening right now Super cool. Super cool. That is awesome. I need to get back into testing. I have a test that in Quite a while. Yeah, we miss you man goose I always forget about it Wow, man, who's forgets about us you guys pretty here first I'm always busy doing things stuff and things. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He just doesn't want to lose to me guys It's okay. I understand. I do get tired of losing to jelly. I will admit to that All the testers are tired of it though, so I got told I got told I'm not allowed to play malaya anymore. I'm too good. Oh, yeah Yeah bad days Oh, well is what it is. No, it's fine But once we have the testers in there, I'm so excited to have To be able to jump between games at how are things going here? What like what anything going on? What's the deal because with more testers We're going to start having the ug team back out a little bit more Yeah, and really have the testers be involved as a whole right and so We've got lead testers that are going to kind of help facilitate for new people People that know the game really well inside and out that can help explain Then we've got the ug team kind of above that as well That can Help facilitate crashes and bugs and things like that as well right on Sounds like you guys got a good system setup. Yeah, I'm sure you have a system of bug reporting and everything already set up and Good to go. This is exciting stuff. This is exciting stuff. The community is finally going to get A lot more of the community is finally going to get their hands on ethereal Yep, and it's going to be it only scales up from here, right? We don't we don't do this testing and then suddenly be like, okay and disappear, right It's it only we're we're scaling up for a reason. We're getting to these milestones We're getting to these thresholds where that these are the next steps for us to go through and get a lot of this done Cool beans, man, and special stuff is coming in the future. Who knows I can't say for sure but Stuff is happening eventually Oh, what happened? Um, I don't know if you can even answer this. What happened with the um, the mocap suit. Did you guys ever get that? Uh, as far as I know, it's still in shipments Um, I haven't heard much past that. It's not my we've got a mocap department that's handling that But so I will look into that and then have an answer for you next week that we can go over as well Yeah, I'm really excited to see some better animations in the game I think that'll really set it apart Something something you mentioned earlier, too Doing cool. Shit. I was thinking about that the other day too I've been doing a lot of hiking and when I'm hiking I think about shit a lot I was thinking about what makes games fun and I think just being able to do cool shit Is what makes games fun for me like That's kind of like why I don't like Like call of duty and like fortnight and stuff like that There's not a lot of opportunity for me at least to do cool. Shit like with richter I can snatch a gideon out of the air while he's doing his ultimate. That's fucking cool. That's cool as shit And like especially if I planned it like I'm I'm going to save my hook until that gideon does this and then snatch him out of there There's so much potential to do cool shit in ethereal And I can't wait till all these testers get in there and do all kinds of cool shit because they're going to have so much fun Like even if the animations aren't there You're still going to be able to do cool shit with the with the heroes And I think that's the ultimate measure of how popular a game is going to be absolutely I completely agree with you and the cool thing is that with only seven characters you already have that feeling Right. It's not like even though we're saying that these are really accessible characters Even though we're saying that these are the characters that everybody can kind of pick up and play You still have that feeling already So then when you expand that out to some of the people that we have planned when we get our own fat hooker As you've said in the past fingers, right the the it only goes up from there, right? It only exponentially increases as we can do cooler and cooler things with new heroes and all of that right on I mean the other day in testing we had And we've we've been testing Several times a week for several months now, right? Do you feel like even especially with only seven characters you've kind of you've probably have seen it all To to an extent the other day something happened with uh anoxys was playing Got her passive off and killed five people with just her pass And it and all of us were like that was the coolest thing I've seen anoxys do thus far no question Because she just landed everything perfectly went down and then her passive just did the last hit on five people It was incredible awesome Right and it was the noxus felt cool. We all felt cool watching it Even the people that died were like mad respect because I deserved that one like That's a cool moment when even the people that died can recognize that like you did work there. That's a cool thing And that that's what gets me excited. I have done that with noxus not to five people But I got one person like that. I think it was you actually I think it was me And it felt fucking cool. I was like, yeah, that's what everybody was talking about like You know if your passives up then just go all in and if even if they kill you you can still take Him out the passive and just being able to do that like playing that out in your head and then actually Executed in the game so much fun Yeah, and it's one of those My association the flip side of that right doing cool stuff is really fun and exciting for players But also knowing when someone else can do cool stuff to you Is also terrifying in like a fun way. Yeah lack of a better way to put it Noxus passive being the prime example, right? I'm fighting anoxys and I ask my team is her passive up We don't know so I'm going in blind going like I hope to god that something is not about to go wrong here Right, I see that first explosion come off and I'm booking it trying to get out of there before I die Like it just adds so much excitement to the game overall Even in those tense moments where you might die because you've made a greedy player or something, right? Well, I think cos now stands for cool shit instead of clash of souls Or cool stuff if you want to be PG about it. Yeah, man. Come on. God. God All right. I think that's about all I had for this week. Do you add anything else? I think that's it for me as well. Just I'm excited to get testers in Um, we're interviewing all throughout this next week. I've already got like 30 interviews set or something ridiculous Nice, so it's where a lot of us are going to be real busy talking to people getting feels for all how all that kind of stuff So we're excited overall. We're excited to get everybody into the game And you know exciting announcements coming soon. So all that good stuff, man, right on You having anything to plug Uh, three real clash of souls and if you have the announcements channel in in the eco's discord muted You should probably unmute it That's all I'm gonna say from there Right on uh, so be on the lookout guys, apparently I got nothing to plug this week. So I think that's gonna close it out But yeah, if you if you're interested in being a tester if you're willing to put in the time if you're willing to Put in a little bit of writing to actually Express what these bugs are and do a little bit of recording to maybe record photos of what happened with the bug And just be able to try and reproduce if you're willing to put some work into ethereal Then I hope you will join us as we test ethereal clash of souls And man goos Shout out to channel members foolish blood hunter jelly knees and pharyn