 Hello everyone and welcome back to Enter the Ether, the podcast all about the, I can't even say upcoming, the third person MOBA, a very old clash of souls, very ambitious game. I'm your host the Mangus, joining me as always is my friend co-host and just all around swell guy, Jelly Knees. Thanks Mangus. How you doing man? Doing great. I really enjoyed the community corner you guys put on the first, even though I was late. Yeah, Mangus. I saw you, I saw you come in, right as we started the Q&A section, you're like, I'm here. Mangus, you literally missed most of it. I missed all the things, I missed the everything. It's okay, I can re-watch it. No, you're not there, you're square and that means it's not okay. Oh shit, I will already re-watch it, do I have to go to a three year old jail now? Yes, absolutely. Nobody reads my announcements, nobody watches my community corners man, what am I gonna do? Man, I had forgotten all about it, I was knee deep in Super Auto Pets I believe. Perfect, you're excused this time, this time. Thank you, thank you. So a lot, a lot was announced during that community corner, including another, are you guys calling this a stress test or is it just a free weekend? We're just calling it an open weekend, I think stress test is gonna be used several times because that's what we've done already, but we kind of have done that and that is definitely part of the open weekend, but it's more of a just an open weekend than anything. So no restrictions, no keys, just if you want to come play Aetherial January 21st through the 22nd. Yeah, so it'll be the 21st, 22nd and 23rd. Oh okay, right on, so we get three days of Aetherial this time, very nice. Yeah, Mangus can't complain anymore saying he wants more Aetherial. Oh, I will complain, I will. So yeah, great opportunity, if you guys have been looking to play this game, I know a lot of people had to work the last weekend, hopefully they don't have to work this weekend. I know we announced it in the first person in chat, literally the first one that spoke after we said something about it goes, I have exams that weekend, it was like great, thank you. The cephalon, something, yeah, poor guy, poor girl, whatever they are, yeah, I feel bad for them. Oh well, at least they can't have exams all three days. I agree, you know what, just bail out of school, play Aetherial instead, there you go, problem solved. So that was probably the biggest announcement that came out of the community corner is open weekend. But you guys also talked about an upcoming myth in their kit, I was about to say the hero. And yeah, it's Axial, Malia's brother, another reaper class, the assassins of Aetherial sort of. And he's just going to be an assassin, like he's not going to mess around with that at all. He's going to be the first true hardcore assassin in the game. And it's going to be really cool to see how that shakes up everything then they're in as well. Right. We're going to go through his abilities and talk about him here, but the one that I want to just immediately talk about his right mouse button, which is your risk reward ability. So what this does, it converts all of your damage to magical damage that deals percent health damage, but you can't cast during this. Now, is this just a straight up? It says that you can you can change this over after six seconds, right? So yeah, so you're going to press the button, the ability, it'll have a duration of some kind. We said 10 seconds is what we're looking at right now, but that'll be balanceable. Of course, it'll have the 10 second duration. And for the first five of that, you will be locked in. Once you press the button, you're locked in, you can't do anything. Then after that initial five, you can cancel it early if you want to go back to your abilities or you can wait out the rest of that five seconds and get the full use of those empowered basic attacks that are now magical power instead of physical power. Okay. Right on. Switch like no more abilities, but you're going to hit a lot harder for a while, you know? Yeah. So it is and it's not at the same time. That's it. I mean, 10 seconds is a pretty long time for an ability to last. That's true. And but locking you in for that first five is that is the downside of if you didn't use your abilities, you then can't. That includes your ultimate too. That's not just basic abilities. When you're pressed this, you're effectively silenced, but you can still basic attack. And so that's the really, the big caveat to it. And one of the abilities you're going to want to use, and we're kind of, I'm kind of working backwards through these, but on his R, which is not his ultimate, his R is just usually a movement ability in ethereal. And this one is also in a movement ability, but it also makes you go invisible and invisible assassin. It's like we just talked about on the end of the ether invisibility mangoes. Oh man. So yeah, you do, you go invisible and you, but you dash forward first. So it is still a dash, but after which you gain that visibility and you deal bonus, bonus magic damage on the next basic ability, basic attack or ability in a concrete. So can the ability crit too? If the ability can crit normally, then yes, but the basic is the main one that's there. So yeah, this is his movement ability. Like you said, it's also going to be how he's able to get around unseen more often than not. And it resets when he gets a kill as well. So this is really trying to emphasize that go in burst down damage. And then if you succeed, giving you an option to get out. If you fail, you're kind of a sitting duck for a couple of seconds there. Yeah, I really like that portion of it. It's kind of like in fault. You've got, I think it's called bloodlust saber or something like that. But it just gives you a short dash, but it resets whenever you get a kill. So it's just nice to have a blink that resets on kill. So you can you can really pull off some crazy shit, like jumping in on top of somebody, taking them out and then, you know, continuing forward to for the entire team or like escaping a tower or something like that. So a few questions. I'm sure people already asked and I'm sure you guys have already given the answers, but I'm going to do it anyway. When you're invisible, if you get hit while you're invisible, does that bring you out of invisibility or is it just you attacking and and in using abilities that cancels your ability? For right now, that is the idea is that when you're hit while you're invisible is that it will likely reveal you in some way, whether that be temporarily or you're just permanent, that that is knocking you out of invisibility, we haven't quite decided. But so it but that's something that we feel has to be looked at constantly once he's first implemented in the game, because he is our first invisibility in the game, it's going to be very crucial that we get it right because it could very easily become Kalari and Fault when she first came out. Yeah, in that she heard visibility was oppressive because she was the only character that could do it, partly because people didn't ward, but that's but being the only character that could do it and having not enough downsides to it for Kalari herself then made it more oppressive to the enemy. And that's something we have to constantly look at and iterate on depending on how it's feeling and working and all that good stuff. And just in other games that I've played that have that mechanic where if you hit somebody that's invisible, it reveals them. It's just very rewarding to be able to predict where you think they are throw like an ability or a basic attack out that way and then reveal them. That that's very rewarding on your end. It might suck for Axial, but Axial and what? How do you say it, Jaleen? Axial. So it's not for an exile, but you did it before once you called it. And I can't unhear it. And now every time I see his name, this is what I think about is you call them sexial once and that in my brain. But if you take the S off of that, Axial, there you go. I've also called him Abman McSixpack. That'll stick or not. We're just going to give everybody nicknames. Nobody's going to be who they are anymore. We've already got C foam Jesus. So I mean, Malaya is eye candy for those who prefer women. And her brother is eye candy for those who prefer men. Absolutely. What a beautiful family there. Yeah, seriously, we're going to look at their parents. They're going to be the most gorgeous people too. It's going to be like, what the heck is this nonsense? I guarantee they're not. It's usually like the really ugly parents that produce like beautiful kids. You know, perfect. Let's get a let's put like make that like part of the lure. They got ugly as parents. Their parents were the ugly ducklings of their tribe. And then Axial and Malaya were born. That's why they were outcast. They came from a tribe of ugly people. There you go. So they were considered ugly. But I love it. I love it. We'll switch up the ugly duckling, ugly duckling syndrome. And just do it that way. All right, so let's I'm not going to get into his ultimate yet. So let's let's move to another one here, though. His passive. Well, as for true sight, it wants you dealt enough damage to somebody. Yeah. Is this like a damaged threshold in a certain period of time? Or yeah, it'll probably be just as an example. This isn't going to be the exact numbers. If you deal 500 damage in three seconds, you gain true sight on them, right? And so it's just X number by X time and then true sight for a duration. Right. And as Schifter was saying, that makes Axial sexy, a counter to himself. In a world where mirror matchups exist, absolutely. If they have if you're an Axial and you can burst down theirs and then tries to use shadow slip, you then have true sight of him. And he's revealed to you and your team, which is going to be huge. And also combos well with Dante, because a lot of people can get out of that vision radius with if if Axial has true sight on them, they're not going to be able to. So if he deals a significant amount of damage and they get away, Dante can follow up with the with the base cannon. Yeah, absolutely down. And that's one of the hardest parts is people can get away but then not having vision on that makes it impossible for Dante to hit. He's got to take a guess at where they are. Yeah. Whereas this, like you said, it's the perfect way to combo that up together. Cool stuff. And then let's see his Q. This just seems like a forward facing point point of cast AOE. Yes, he stabs right out and then scissors his blades out or something like that. Yep, that's exactly it. So he'll stab straight forward if he hits somebody in that, that's great. And then he'll do a slash outwards and anyone then it's like a cone in front of him. That'll get hit or not a cone, like a semi half circle in front of him, that anyone in that half circle gets damaged. So if they get hit with the initial stab, they're technically taking two instances of damage from that one ability. Right on. And then his E, which I think is really interesting and really cool. He flourishes his blades in front of him and parries all incoming basic attack damage and builds a shield for all for all the damage that he parries. So this is usually an emote for people as you start. They start spinning their swords. It's an actual ability for sex use that he can. Perry, and I mean, this is going to have like, I love all the outplay capabilities of ethereal, and this is going to have so much outplay involved in it. Like, especially I can imagine a Dante hitting his right click and boosting all those shots. There you go. And then, yeah, just no damage and you get a giant ass shield. So the the important thing for that is that at the current moment, it is designated to only parry melee basic attacks. Oh, really? Yes. That's something that we're going to have to look at because that could be that could be useless or it could be super good, right? And it'd be plenty. So that's the current iteration of that ability. But I would love for it to block range projectiles as well. Just make it a basic attack counter versus. I think it should be abilities are effective. I think it should. I agree with you. I think I would love to see that change, but it's going to be depending on the rest of his kit. You may not need that much to be that strong. So it's going to be it's a point of balance for sure. And this does deal damage if you catch somebody in the area. Yeah. I believe so. I don't know with 100 percent certainty, but I do believe so. Yeah, that's that's what you said during the community corner. If that's what was said, then yes. Yeah, I think this is just so cool. This is going to be. Yeah, OK, I'm looking at the image now. Flurries his swords in front of him dealing physical damage for a few seconds. Happy Jesus. Yes, I am a happy Jesus. And you from Jesus. Speaking of Acheron. Oh, no, I'm just kidding. So his ultimate ability. And this is kind of ties into what we were just talking about before the minions was implementing. Archtypes correctly. And I like what you've done with his ultimate. So you can he can. So if you don't know anything about Axial, he's got like a demon or something inside of him. He's kind of two people and his ultimate two is one. He throws shade out, which is like the evil or side of him. And the shade, if it hits somebody, it enters their body and they get stunned. And then you can teleport to shade and deal damage to them. And if it kills, if they're below a certain threshold, it executes them and it resets the cooldown of two is one. So I think this is done really well in that you actually skifter was talking about this during the community corner. You actually have to expose yourself to the damage in order to make this happen. You have to hit a skill shot in order to make this happen. So this isn't going to be an easy thing to pull off. And with Grog Mark coming with his range, C.C. You know, it's going to be very obvious where he's going to be teleported to. You might be able to just shut him down right then and there. Yeah, absolutely. And that's a good a team that's watching for Excel to come in. If they see that shade hit one of their allies, then they just have to basically hold their C.C. And just wait, like, do it. I dare you to go in on that, please. Like, yeah, every Excel player is going to be the stereotypical, like my mind's telling me no. You're going to want to do it. You're going to want to want to press that button so bad. Especially if it's hard to hit and you actually hit it, like you can't just waste that. You can't just waste that shade out there, stunning people. But at least they can't. They can't be the one that sons you if you hit them with shade because they're going to be stunned themselves. So I think this is done really, really well. It is going to be super fun to play. Like, I think you the nail in the head saying like his outplay potential and like the moves he can make against people is huge. And it's seeing good Exiles and bad Exiles. You're going to know the difference. Like you're going to be able to see very clearly, which is which. Yeah, I can definitely see him throwing shade out on somebody, but then attacking someone else. And while everybody's focused on that shade target, thinking he's going to teleport over there, he's just. Killing somebody over here, you know, and he just never teleports. Yeah. And depending on the duration, you could also do you throw shade out on someone. Shadow slip to somebody else towards somebody else. Drop your burst damage. Then when their whole team turns to jump on you on that other person, then you activate shade and pop over to the new guy. Pop your right click and then just melee basic. This guy is like it's the potential for combos is huge. Yeah, he's going to be cool. He's going to be very cool to play. And he's going to climb shit because he's a reaper. So you got to watch the shade coming from on top of rocks and stuff. Oh, that's going to be cool. Dude, the the potential of an in this character that can climb rocks like that is really interesting by itself. And and that's part of the huge balance that's going to have to be done on it is there's going to be there's going to be some unforeseen interaction. I guarantee it. Yeah. I mean, there was already playing against somebody who was on Malaya and they were just running along the rocks, trolling our team and like jumping from rock to rock and nobody could hit them. And it was like, God dang it. Yeah, if they're invisible to forget about it. No, because it'll feel better because you can't see them doing it. Jumping rocks or rock above you. That's true. They're not rubbing it in my face as much that I can't can't do anything to them. Yeah, I'm really excited about this hero or myth. I'm really excited about sex. You'll didn't think I would be. But yeah, every time you guys release a kid, it's always like, Holy shit, like they you guys said that they were going to get a lot more involved and unique. And they sure as hell are. They sure as hell are. Because I mean, we'd say that the the the initial seven are kind of basic, but they're not they're really not that basic when it comes down to them. There's there's some basic style abilities, but there's always like a unique twist there. Yeah, they're fairly simple to pick up. I think is the basicness of them. Yeah. Is that once you understand how like once you use the ability once or twice, you go, OK, that's how it works. And it's easy to go from there, right? Whereas something like someone like XL has way more combos on top of that, that it's not just as easy as using the ability once and understanding. There's a lot of nuance that you're going to have to understand for each of his abilities and using them effectively. Right. Yeah, it's going to be cool. Um, I think that's about all I had for a sexy older, unless you had anything else. I think that's it. I'm just really excited to get him in the game as soon as possible and get him into everybody's hands. Yeah. Unless they're against me, in which case, you're not allowed to pick XL. I need you to pick anybody else. So what happens if he throws shade at Malaya and she pops a bubble because that's not really CC. Yeah, it wouldn't be considered CC. So she she likely the normal effect would likely happen. Oh, hmm. That's crazy. That'd be a thing. I like I said, there's going to be so many interactions like that where it's going to be interesting to see how it works. It's like if Grognark throws a rock at him as he's mid-dash, what's going to happen there? What takes priority? What like all these things being able to figure out what they all do and all that good stuff. Yeah. I'll tell you what I want to see. Here's what I want to see. I want to see him throw his shade into somebody. Then Iran grabs and throws him off the edge and then he tries to teleport them to. And you just get a shield flying him off. It's going to happen. You know it is. Yep. That or he's going to nail it as soon as they back and he'll end up in their fountain. Yep. You see you see Kalari do that all the time. Yes. Oh, man. Good times. And something else you guys talked about. And it was weird because I felt like you were reading my mind as I was watching it. The stuff that you guys were saying, you're talking about the results of the of the poll you guys did at the end. You had like a was a 94 percent approval. Or like did people have fun? Yeah. Yeah. Which if that was on steam, that would be overwhelmingly positive as steam reviews. So I was really happy to to see that because I know I know a lot of people had a lot of fun, but there were some people that just it wasn't for them. Like they just couldn't get the hang of it and and they just moved along. So I'm really happy to see that so many people actually did enjoy it. And the and then. But only 57 percent feel that the game is ready for release. And this is kind of where you guys were reading my mind. As soon as I saw that, I was thinking, well, 94 percent had fun, but not everybody's, but still not everybody thinks it's ready for release. That means they know there's problems with it, but they still had fun with it, which I think is a huge, huge positive, even more than the 94 percent approval. Like the people having fun with the game. I think that's an even bigger deal that people understand that the game isn't even near it's in state goal of being, you know, perfection yet, but they still think it's really fun to play. And that's a good sign. Absolutely. And that's and I said it on the live stream as well, is it's really cool for us as well to have people be honest about that, that it's not just a I thought the game was fun. So yeah, it's ready to go. Yeah. Right. Like it's actually that they're they're analyzing even deeper and saying, like, no, it's got its issues. I don't feel like it's ready for that next phase yet. But like you said, despite all of that still having fun, which is huge. That's that is for us seeing that is a really, really good thing. And it's encouraging for us to. Right. Yeah, I'm actually surprised that there was 50 percent felt that the game is ready for or 57 percent felt that the game is ready for release. I think that kind of surprised me. I think if we were talking 15, 20 years ago, a game in this state would be ready for release. But any more, you've got to you can't release a game with so many bugs and stuff. Hmm. I want to spell break released in a pretty incomplete state, but that was a paid early access sort of thing. I don't know. It's hard to tell, man. I think with the as long as the game's fun, it'll be fine, I think. And that's it's a constant balancing act, right? Of figuring out what the because perfect is the enemy of good. Right. So if you spend all your time trying to make the game perfect, it'll never come out. Right. And to an extent, we've already seen that. With the last. Yeah, with the last four years is has definitely been the concept of perfect as the enemy of good, right? And it caused further delays and further issues and all these things that had to be changed. And so getting the game into people's hands, even in a in a just good or fun state, right, is super important because it gives everybody the concept of where things are at. It's not just no, it's no longer taking the devs word for it. Of like, you know what? It's not ready yet, right? Like because that to an extent always feels bad when a dev tells you the game's not ready, that you've been wanting to play for so long. That's that's hard to hear. Yeah. But this is people were able to go in, have fun, but also still agree that it's not ready yet. So that's a cool, a cool metric to see from our community. That that that was the response. And I think this next. Open weekend, as we're calling it, will give you even better feedback. So I think a lot of people, the stress test. You know, people were there was a lot of people in the fence about a theory that didn't know whether they wanted to like it or not. And then after the stress test, after, you know, people were streaming it during the test, people in releasing videos after the test. It's peaked a lot of people's interest back in a theory like they were like, oh, holy shit, this game actually is a thing that it's it's like, oh, I forgot all about this game was supposed to in like, holy shit, they actually you actually can fly. You actually can break parts of the environment. You like people are kind of getting back on board with the theory. And another open weekend like this will get. I think you'll probably have a lot more people this time around than the last, even though you already had a substantial amount, the last stress test. Yeah. And that's that's the hope where it is to get as many people as possible in there, touching the game, getting a feel for how it works and being able to leave the feedback then thereafter, because we'll do another survey after this open weekend in a similar instance to we did this one. Awesome. Yeah, I can't wait for it. Can't wait for it. I want more people to play. Oh, I know what I know. Question slash suggestion I had about sexual. Can you guys. License the rights to I wear my sunglasses at night for his for his thing. There we go. Yes, I'll get right on that. May I just think it would be perfect for him? I don't know why he doesn't wear sunglasses. You just got to have them on his head. We'll we'll get our summer bash XEL skin and you'll have the sunglasses on his head. Yes. Oh, that's perfect. I love it. Oh. A summer fun, sexual is definitely going to happen, because he just he already looks like he's going to be wearing board shorts. 100 percent. Yeah, and literally that's what you need to do. Board shorts and then give him like maybe even give him the suntan lines on his cheeks and a pair of sunglasses on his head. And he's he's done. There you go. Boom. There you go. Easiest skin creation ever. Oh, people would love it. Give him some pole needles instead of swords. Yes. Yes, please. I would love that. Oh, shit. Well, Dan, I think that's about all I had to cover for this week. A lot of fun stuff, though. I think, I mean, if you want to go over the other two questions that we went on that had graphs for, do you want to just leave those? I mean, you guys already covered it in the community corner. If you if you want to cover it here, we can we certainly can. That's up to you. Doesn't bother me, man. All right. So, I mean, I'll have that link. And wait, is this going on my channel this week? OK, all right, I'll have it linked in the description below the the community link to the community corner so you guys can watch it for yourself. They had a pretty extensive Q&A. So there's a lot of you might have some find out some interesting information via that if you if you want to take a look. But I think that's going to be it for this week. Jelly, you got anything to plug? Just my Twitch stream per usual twitch.tv slash jelly knees. We do a marvelous Monday at eight o'clock mountain time every Monday night. And yeah, it's always a good time. What about you, man, you just got to remember, I got to send an alarm or something because I forgot last time. This guy, dude, I know the worst stunt. Hit me up. He's like, where are you? Where are you at? All right, man. Yeah. Oh, happy new year, by the way. Yeah, happy new year, everyone. Yeah, we kind of forgot. Whoops. Anyway, that's that's going to be awesome. I hope everybody comes out and that's going to wrap it up. But I hope you I hope everybody comes out on the was the 22nd, 21st, 1st, 2nd and 23rd. Yeah. And finally, join us as we enter the ether. Again, into the ether again.