 Hello everyone and welcome back to For The Minions, the kind of weekly podcast all about upcoming 3rd person mobas. This week we're going to talk about the predecessor stress test, of course some new marketing strategies coming out of fault, over prime announced an 11 day test we don't know when, and then we'll just talk about ethereal a little bit as well. I'm your host, TheMangus, joining me as always is my friend and co-host Jellynees. How you doing Jelly? I am fantastic, Mangus, after getting you to slip up the intro for two whole seconds. But with us this week we've got Infamous, welcome Infamous, who will give us the lowdown of how you got started in Paragon, your favorite hero, favorite lane, all that good stuff. I mean, technically I played the original Paragon for about 40 minutes. This was like, I didn't, like I was young, I'm 19 so I was young when I played OG Paragon and I didn't know what a MOBA was at the time, so I thought it was just the 3rd person shooter. I played it and when I have no idea what's going on, I was one of those players and I liked the robot dude and then I went, I don't know what's happening. So I fell out of that, I got into Paragon, like I've been interested in Paragon ever since I heard that there was a rival project because I find that type of stuff cool. And I wanted to play Fault, I wanted to get into them for a while, I didn't have a PC. I got one a few months ago, I picked up Fault for myself and a friend so we could play and I've been having a ton of fun ever since. Lane-wise, I mainly play like mid-off and a bit of jungle, like I don't play, like I don't just main one lane. 3rd characters is probably, probably Richter, Richter, a crunch is fun, very, very fun. Mangers, you and I have similar taste in characters. I really like Gideon, I love how his passive works in Fault, just being rewarded for hitting your abilities in quick succession with a 3rd follow up is so much damage in the mid to late game, so much damage when you get to throw 2 rocks at people instead of 1. Yeah, that's my, sorry, yeah. No, you're fine. So you said that you bought Fault for yourself and a friend and I have a very important question for you, are you two still friends? Because I gotta say, after Mangus and I play any of these games together, Mangus doesn't speak to me for days, so. We have a fair bit of low experience outside of Fault, so we both, we've flamed enough, we've flamed each other enough to be able to get over it by the end of the match, normally. You have to play the caveat of 90% of the time. Yeah, everybody has those games, so. Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, yeah, obviously still hang out a lot, but yeah, that's my, kind of how I got into Smite, and it's my, sorry, Paragon, well, one of those things, one of those games, you know. I started with Smite, realized it's a shitty Mova right now. I love Smite, it's not in a good spot, no, like they're getting doxxed, they're getting doxxed right now, so their servers are non-existent. Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah, there's been a few Smite content creators who played the Stress Dust, the predecessor of Stress Dust. Yeah, it's all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're getting great numbers, too, yeah. Yeah, if only they'd look at fault, because God knows they need the numbers. Yeah. Well, let's let's go ahead and get into the updates. We're talking about, of course, the biggest news was the predecessor Stress Test. This one was actually successful. Their last one, they, you know, went down fairly quickly. This one, I kind of had to adjust the way I thought of this, because it was just a Stress Test and not an Alpha Test. At first, I was kind of pissed that they were missing quite a few features, but I get it. They just wanted to stress the servers and they were successful in doing so and letting people just experience the base game. And I had a great time with it. Edmunds, did you get a chance to play? I did. I got like seven, eight games in over the course. Yeah, it was also really nice to like have really low paying for West Coast servers. So yeah, I had some good time with it. Yeah. Would you take a bread? I think I think it was fun, right? You and I, Manga said many, many, many games that we got in there and just went in there and dominated these games. So I mean, of course, it's always a good time when you're just trashing kids, right? I am like 50 50 with you on the like Stress Test. So they get a little bit of a pass on implementing features. Part of it, though, is that in the eight months since their last stress test, the changes were not there. Right. And so not even an implementation of features necessarily, but just things that existed eight months ago still existed in this test. The main the main difference being the servers worked and there were a couple extra characters past that. There were very, very few changes in the eight months that we've seen. My main concern is something that has plagued predecessors since the very beginning, since their very first March 19th or March 2019 alpha test is client side server prediction. It felt off in this test and felt off back way back then. It's something that has just plagued them. And I don't know why they can't quite get it right. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, if you face steel in the off lane and you thought I stunned him, how was he able to discharge right through me? It's because both things would happen. There were several instances where one of two things should happen. Like I rooted a several and he dashed. What should happen is either he dashed out of my route and he gets away or he doesn't dash and my route hits and he's rooted. What happened is the subject lands, he dashes, and then he's rooted on the other side. So both things happened. And that's just poor server prediction, I think. I mean, I saw several times that there was a Richter pull or a thunk thrown by a Narbash. And yeah, similar things happen where it's this weird, like a double effect of what's going on. And it just feels odd and feels bad. Right. I didn't experience that much myself when I played, but I mainly played like mid lane and a bit of off. OK, I didn't know something like steel and how it's because I want to try how. So I didn't know something that's myself. How it was a lot of fun. Yeah. He was also brutal, like his ult with the bonus auto attack range and the oh, my God, it's like and the damage reduction on his missiles like nothing. You could still just snipe people and they could do nothing up to you. It's crazy, which is the worst feeling when I'm playing like Chimera and I see how it's her go up. I'm like, well, it's been fun. Hopefully I drive the next six seconds because if not, I can. The amount of phase that just looked at me and throw my needles at you. Yeah, that's a word. You have rockets work for me. Yeah, but you knew how to poke people down. Richter pulling how it's out of their ultimate was always a fun sight when you whenever, whenever it actually happened. Yeah, you didn't see it happen too very often. There was a clip. I think it was Windu. I think it was Windu that I saw of Kalari double jumping up to how it's her and ulting through him to kill him in his ultimate. That's all. Oh, good. I think I've seen that clip. That looks really cool. That as a howitzer would feel so bad. Oh, yeah, I am curious, Mingus, because you like you. Richter is your favorite character, right? From from which Richter feels better to you? Fault or predecessor from what you've experienced? Predecessor Richter, I think, feels incredibly I'm using way too many words here. It felt better. Predecessor Richter felt better than false Richter. However, I think false Richter makes a better jungler and off-laner. Like he really fell off if you tried that in his passive. His passive is what carries him in in in fault. Yes, exactly. And that passive just like him getting a shield was kind of cool, but it does not compare to his passive in in fault. So he was definitely more of a support pick than he ever in predecessor, than he even was a Paragon, I think. Yeah, it feels like Fault likes flex picking a lot more with characters. Right. Like it feels like characters are designed to be like you can like Richter is a good example. You can play him in three roles. Crunch can be played in two into roles. Maybe support is a hyper aggressive with his like two second CC on his empowered knockup. So like a lot of characters can be played in multiple like more gash can be played mid and so in mid and off is well with predecessor, it felt like most characters were kind of locked into their main role with like maybe steel is the exception. But at least that I noticed. And yeah, no, I completely agree with you. I think this leads kind of into an interesting topic that I want to talk about is how did you guys feel? I guess we'll start with you, infamous. How did you feel about the balance of predecessor's weekend stress test weekend here? Given that this wasn't even a gameplay test, balance like genuinely I didn't think much of it. Howitzer felt crazy powerful, but I was playing people who like I'm like, I mean, I played fault enough to be fairly good. And I've played mobs in general enough to have that type of games, just game sense naturally. So it's hard to say, but it felt all right. It didn't feel crazy, but howitzer at least felt little, little overtuned with how much he could poke and how much damage he pumped out. Other than that, it's not so much balance. Just some questions I've about design. Like, like, why does steals bash deal 8% max health damage? Why does Rick's hook do the same thing? So why is that's not how you design? Yeah, if you look at their heroes across the board and their items across the board, whoever's on that design team that's doing the balance has a fetish about max health. Yeah, there are so many things that deal max health damage. It's ridiculous. I was so confused, especially with Rick. Why is that on his hook? Oh, my God, like if anything, make the fault or something or the or his one. So there's it's not just a cross like a cross fight. Just already pulls and stuns. There's a there's a fetish of like, it's due damage. What kind of damage should it do? Max health, do max health. Please God, Max health like ridiculous. And I think that goes into something you and I talked about during the weekend, man, Goose, is that early game, the time to kill is fairly long, right? And it's probably just slightly too long, in my opinion. But then late game, it turns into instantaneous deletion no matter who you are, what character you're playing. If you have anything past four items, congratulations, you can one 100 to zero anybody in the game because you can. And I think that ties into part of that max health obsession that we see or high ratios across the board for a lot of these characters with having percent max health damage on a basic ability, especially, especially for like a steel off lane, it punishes you for building health. It is like that's interesting on a character that's designed around that, not steel. You just personally never had a game where I felt like anybody was too tanky for me to fight. Yeah, I know being rampage. But that was more because of who rampage is more than it was an itemization thing. Yeah, I agree with that. T.T.K. I saw people saying that T.T.K. Oh, sorry. Oh, no, good. I saw people saying that the T.T.K. in fault was faster in the late game. It's like, no. No, best example is Gideon in his old gets a shield and his alt ticks like four times for maybe a third of your health if you're squishy, maybe half if he's building full like fucking damage. In predecessor, I was one shot by a Gideon alt many times. It's like that is not that like Gideon can one shot you. I was one shotting entire teams as howitzer because I could just spam rockets and slows and then alt them and get like the double triple easy tanks never felt like they could. OK, yeah, no, you're right. That balance felt weird. Not that you're mentioning it. You know, like, yeah, tanks did not feel tanky. I felt the most on Severog. I I got to Max Stacks on Severog and well beyond that. And it felt like I was getting squishier rather than more powerful with Severog, which you should not feel that way. And it's to a Max Stacks Severog. It's this obsession with Max Health, even Chimera. Chimera's E was changed that it consumes your stacks and gives you a percentage of Max Health in return for your stacks. Why? Like that is just so unnecessary on a character that already heals a ridiculous amount to give him an ability that gives him Max Health healing. Is what I think that that doesn't make any sense. And why whatever this obsession with Max Health is has to go out because it's like you said, may use Max Max Stacks Severogs should not feel squishier at the end of the game. Then they should feel powerful, right? Like it's that doesn't make any sense. Like not good. Good. I feel like part of the issue is also just like item balance. It feels like it specifically with like item cost compared to like value ratio is like you want defense items to be cheaper and give good amount of stats so you can give those tanks a bit less gold so they can't just buy damage and win the game. But when you have tank items that's too expensive and give like 40 protections because all mobas use the same formula to to get damage mitigations if I'm not mistaken. It's like if it gives you 40 protections, that's not that's nothing. If it's the same cost as something that gives like 80 power, 90 power for a mage, that's just nothing. Yeah, the offset of damage mitigation to just flat damage isn't there. That's why we saw rampages who were just inherently tanky because of his kids build full damage and just destroy people. I mean, I was going, I had games and granted Fengyao is a little squishier in predecessor, but I had games where I'm going 20 and zero on Fengyao. And then late game I run up to a rampage and he dominates me. Like I don't break a quarter of his health and he 100 to zeroes me. That's ridiculous. And I'm full, full build and he's got three items because he's just way too tanky and way too much damage. It was hard for me, I think, to gauge where their balance was because of playing like fault and overprime and like because we play all of these games as they come out as much as we can. We're like on a whole different level now than the average Paragon player that hasn't played Paragon for four years. And then they step into this predecessor stress test, especially with fault, because fault has such a tiny, tiny fucking player base that it's just everybody that plays fault has been playing it for years and they're real fucking good at it. It's either that or it's somebody's smurf that's still real fucking good at fault. So whenever I play fault, I feel so weak and I feel like I'm not very good. And then I step in the predecessor and like you could take the weakest fault player, stick them in the predecessor and they will just it will into that stress test weekend. I won't say predecessor, but at least into that the stress test weekends and they will absolutely wreak havoc. Like the only times like a lot of the times when I was like, Holy shit, this team is actually good. I would look at the names and be like, I recognize that name for fault. You know, like that's why they're actually being competitive right now. Other than that, like it was stumps all weekend long. So it was like, I thought howitzer was weak until I played howitzer. And I was like, he's not weak at all. He's fucking strong as hell. Yeah. So I can't I can't pull the figures, but because it somehow they're doing something weird that after their stress test, you can't find the figures for what their stress test was. But from checking on Sunday morning, they had a at a peak of 7000 players concurrent. Nice. And then they were hovering around 5500 to 6000, the majority of the weekend consistently. That's actually like that's impressive. So yeah, it's super good for them. 100 percent. Yeah, whatever they're doing with marketing is working because it is by far the most popular of the para zombie projects, at least in North America. I think Over Prime might have them in Asia, but yeah, in North America, Europe, predecessor is just so wildly popular amongst the community. And it's for a good reason. Like the game was so smooth, it looked fantastic, it sounded great. It played really well. Just there was a predecessor had a lot to offer. But like you said, Jelly, again, there wasn't that much change over time. They still had a few issues. There was stuff that it kind of shed light on some of the positives of fault, too. Like something that was a problem and fault a long time ago was you get hung up so easy on friendly hit boxes and it's something they addressed and fixed. That's not been fixed, but it's like trying to get around to Richter. You had to like walk all the way around him because you would just get stuck on his arms and shit. And that just there's a lot that predecessor still has quite a long ways to go, I think, before they'll be ready for a full release. It it it feels like with predecessor. Like compared to fault, fault feels like they had to get it right or they'd come back to it later with predecessor. It feels like they've had the time to polish every little thing, but they've just spent too much time refining something that was already by far good enough. Like Richter is a good example, like the detail like his chains actually having physics when he walks on like in fault. Or just like the extra particle effects or detail or sound effects. Everything's polished so well on him and then you play steel and he doesn't have sound effects when you're last hitting minions. Literally no sound. It just it definitely shows that difference. And where they need to improve. Yeah, I also want to highlight whoever's doing their visual effects, whoever sprucing up the old Paragon effects is doing a fantastic job because a lot of those effects look really, really good. Yeah, they do. Like Richter's lightning that comes off of him when he's in his E, I think looks incredible. It's crisp, but it's not too distracting at the same time. It's yeah, there's a lot of those little details like that that I loved being able to see throughout the weekend. Little things too. Like I said in my fav video that you can't plant flowers along the map anymore with their basic attacks. You can. Like as like I pasted that video and Rubo was like, what I added that is specifically because you reminded me of that. I went back and looked and sure as shit, whatever I hit a wall or something, there'll be a little flower. Oh, nice detail. Yeah, there's a lot of passion for them. Sorry. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think for me, the biggest thing that I want them to change as much as I want cast settings in there because I can't stand having to left click to cast an ability. Yeah, right. That that will remain very high on my list, but their UI needs help. Their UI is so dated and takes up so much of your screen that it hurts. And mainly talking about the shop and the scoreboard, there is no reason both of those things are taking up the entirety of your screen. It just and it just feels overwhelming to get hit with your full screen of information. Right. It's just I mean, you look at literally any of the other Paragon projects or a theory even and they they've all gone away from that design because it's too in your face. It's too obtrusive. It takes up too much room and I really think predecessor. It's been something at least the scoreboard has been something I know has been complained about since their first more open test. Right. And so that come on, we got we got to do something about this. Like it's impressive when a game like ethereal because I played the last test you guys did. It's impressive when something like ethereal that is like twice as complex and has twice as much stuff going on on your screen in the game at a moment at any moment has a cleaner HUD that gives you all the information you need in like half the screen space. And like it takes like half like the amount of real estate that the predecessor's HUD takes up in many years is. Yeah. Yeah. That was it made me it was claustrophobic like wire items so big. It felt so like I'm suffocating with just how much there was there. It was it was like it was like, OK, I just want to look at all your items. Why are the three items you want me to buy? Literally, lacking out the rest of my screen, you're yelling at me to buy the upgrade. Let let me figure out the rest of my bill before I decide that. It's yeah, it's one of those things. It's hard, right? Being able to to design a UI that is both minimal but informative is the impossible task, right? So you have to find places to make concessions. But at the same time, we can do better than that. Yeah. Yeah. Again, I I I'm on the side of I give them also I wasn't familiar with the earlier tests. So this is my first experience with predecessor. So I will be more lenient. Just for myself. But this was again, like this was a server test. They just launched it and said, we don't know if our servers are good. You test them so we know if they fail again, go. That's so that like them having a crappy UI when the game's not even remotely available for more than a few days, every few months, it's like. You need to fix it, but I get it. There is an amount that I will admit to this 100 percent. That's oh, look at my camera right as I'm talking. Oh, yeah. Thanks for that. Oh, that's going to make the recording weird. Hey, you're welcome, man. Is that it's one of those things of because predecessor has the following they have. They are people give them a lot more slack than they give things like faults, ethereal overprime. Right, that when ethereal released their first gameplay video, now granted, the gameplay was not the highest here on the planet. But the amount of comments we got about our UI being too cluttered and all those things blew my mind. And then I see very similar in cluttered of UI for predecessor and people, nobody's talking about it. It's like, what? No, no, I'm sorry. Like, I'm going to be the guy if I have to be the guy, right? Like, I think I know why that, obviously, I think you'd know better. But here's my assumption as to why that mentality is people want like people want Paragon. People don't just want like a good 3D moment for in a lot of ways. They want Paragon. Paragon is what they remember. They have like all the good memories and they don't remember travel mode and they don't remember to duo and solo being the same lane on both sides, which I think, man, you said you like you actually like that. I loved it. Yeah. But most people are like, that's not how you do lanes or just like the card shop getting bad or any of that. People don't remember that they remember the good memory. So when they look at predecessor, they go, this is what we want. This is we know it's going to take time, but we don't care. We want this. Give us this. Like, even when it comes to the marketing, like when you talk about their marketing being good, they haven't marketed that much. It's mainly been a lot of very positive, hyped word of mouth that has spread and gotten people thinking, no, this is great. No, this is going to be great. There are issues now, but who cares? This is going to be great. And it's I think a large part of it, too, is it's easier to go against the grain when there's only 400 people talking about the game. Yeah, versus 40,000 people talking about the game. Right. You being the odd man out out of 39,000 other people feels a lot more difficult and a lot more daunting. And when you're one of 400 people and you're saying like, oh, fault needs this. Right. It's a lot easier to to feel like your opinion means more or it's a lot easier to go against the grain in that way when there's less pressure from the other side to come against you. I mean, and it's evidence just looking at the communities whenever you talk about one or the other. Yeah, right. The when you talk about faults, the predecessor and overprime communities come out of the woodwork to be like, oh, fault's terrible. Get out of here. The trash game, right? And if you tried to do that against predecessor, that same community would beat you with your words and absolutely come back to smack you with it. So it's a very different thing. Yeah. Then your manager is saying that he thinks fault is the best one. That was from the last the best one to play at this exact moment. That's I think that's what you said on your last podcast. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think I'm you saying that. But yeah, I mean, it's it's it's tough, especially as a content creator to say anything negative about predecessor because it does have such a huge positive following. And so following of people that have trusted other content creators that have just blindly said that fault sucks or that overprime sucks without actually trying those games. I try my very best to be as non biased as possible and give each and every one the greatest opportunity I can. And I don't hold back when to because it helps them improve. Like, I think predecessor was great, but there were problems and people need to point those problems out or they're going to continue to exist. Yeah, yeah, I agree. So I guess I have one last point I want to talk about with you guys about Fred the test weekend is despite man goose. I mean, the majority of our games turned into stomps, usually in our favor. But but that was when we were together. But even games I played by myself were almost always someone got super, super fed or multiple people got super, super fed. But those stomps didn't translate into wins. Yeah, unless the people surrendered. Most of the time. Yeah, it was a little difficult times for 45 minutes, even despite two members having 20 plus kills and the other team being all less than 10. See, I thought they had a pretty good. I thought they had pretty good pacing. Like I had most of my games were like 25 to 40 minutes. But in stumps, that's weird. That's the thing. Yeah, that is weird for a stomp. If you're if you're stomping, right, you should stomp all the way through. But the closing out of the game, similar to overprime, honestly, the closing out of the game was fairly difficult. The pacing felt. It felt like the inverse of what FALT has. FALT has a very slow early game for like 15 or so minutes. FALT can feel very slow and then it ramps up and then it's kind of fast late game. It's still kind of slow. But the predecessor felt like the pacing early is better. Like it feel you're doing more, at least again, I've mainly played mid because you have buffs to do. Your waves come a little bit quicker. It feels like at least you're actually like trading with your your lane opponent more and jungles more of a presence. But then late game, it just gets to like the mage one shot, the ADC three shotting you, the tanks do nothing. So good luck having any peel or strong frontline. Yes, the jungle. If they're a bruiser, they're just going to massacre you. If they're if they're Kalari, then they do nothing because it's Kalari. Poor Kalari. Sandeys. All right, dude. But yeah, I mean, it's it wasn't as bad as overprime. I don't think because overprime games went consistently over 60 minutes. Yeah, they definitely had a problem that overprime with but closing it out felt ridiculously hard, even when it was a stomp. When it's an even game, whatever, I'm way more lenient to even games, right? But even when it was a stomp, it was really hard to close it out. And I think it because when we talked about at the beginning, because of that time to kill, getting so, so fast at the end of the towards the end of the game, really the 35 minute mark, then being a stomp means nothing. Even though you're not even at full build yet, right? It's not like everyone's slowly getting to the same point. It just hits a point where everybody turns on at four items and the time to kill just drops like a brick. Power spikes are crazy. Even being 20 kills up on somebody, you still get annihilated in two seconds, no matter what. Drongo certainly felt like that. It felt like you could just get your ass kicked the whole game by Drongo and still win the game at the end. But just all of a sudden you would have three items and just bam, you're you're off to the races. And I had the same experience with the Fae fighting against the Fae that when she hit three or four items, she dropped an ultimate and I died. That was it. Like there was no question about it, no matter how fat I was, no matter anything, if she hit her ultimate, I was just dead. Well, I think the Fae was a little over two, but. Mid lane was a bit overground. I think mid fault. I think mid laners, their power spikes were crazy. Jungles couldn't stop them. Tanks couldn't endure them. It's just like. Also, I think one of the issues with put with actually closing out games, you just didn't do damage. Like your minions died too quick to towers. You didn't do enough damage to them. And they were minions took so long where a wave even just took some damage from a like a caster using aways or whatever. You just couldn't if you were missing even one damaged player, you just couldn't push a tower. You couldn't push the core. You just go do objectives if they're up, if not farm. Yeah, conversely, every once in a while, you would just have a massive wave in your lane for like, like nobody touched that lane from either team like for a while. But suddenly you have like 50 fucking minions coming at your tower like, where did this? How did this happen? Yeah, it felt like it was the you either had the weakest wave or the world's biggest wave. There was no in between. Yeah, we had that game mangoes where you set up the lane and it turned into like five or six minion waves stacked up together. Yeah, just just from one. Wild growth or untamed growth from from the fey. I use one on team growth to set the lane to kill the range minions and from that it turned into. A fucking tsunami of minions. Yeah. And when they when the lanes aren't that long, like they are, but they're not. That's how many waves are coming through in the time it takes to get to a tier three tower or the inhibitors. I forgot about that. But we like we're really like a team fight in mid and like we've kind of like both both members, both teams lost a bunch of people. And then I was like, you were like, hey, wait, look at right. Like that just plunged through their inhibitor straight to the core, like, holy shit. Yeah, dude, it was crazy. And that's nuts. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. That's about all I had for a predecessor. You guys have any final thoughts on bread on the stress test? That's it for now. Oh, I do have two things. Well, why did they have like the like they had their like menu music playing the entire game? And it just made them think like the game just felt really empty when you have this like quiet, like ambient music playing constantly. Maybe I was just made me I should maybe I should turn my music off. But it just it made the game feel really empty and like nothing was happening, because even in these big fights, it's just this quiet, calm, forced music playing. And it just it felt odd and it felt you said last week it felt like the game felt kind of like soft. I think so. You described it. Yeah, it felt it just again, other than Richter, because he was very satisfying to play, just it just like it didn't feel like much and the abilities had much impact. It didn't feel like there was it was very responsive. It just felt, you know, like just soft. It's a good way to put it squishy. Yeah, like it didn't feel crisp. It didn't it didn't have that satisfying like Christmas you kind of want with the impact. But other than that, yeah, I guess those are my thoughts on on predecessor. It was good needs work. I think as my final thought, that's kind of the same thing I like. Oh, is your point last week, mangoes of it not feeling crisp, it kind of having the opposite effect of what overprimes over Christmas had. Right. And this was just kind of just on the other side and feels squishy. For lack of a better way to put it, right? But I think anyone that played the game knows what we're talking about, knows that that that squishy feeling that you kind of get when you're playing it. I think that's a great way, a great thing to kind of call back to. Right. Well, let's move away from predecessor. Let's talk about overprime now because they announced an 11 day. Test coming soon. We don't know when a lot of people are speculating that it's going to be May 28th because or May 26th or 28th. I forget which just from how they like to put little codes in their videos and like they had like seven countries, twenty eight languages and like be like, oh, seven, twenty eight May, twenty eight. You know, so I don't know if that's true or not. But it sounds like something I do, right? So maybe that's what it's going to be. I don't know. I I've got a little bit of insider information on on that on this upcoming test, but I do not know the date at all, but it is going to be for 11 days. And I'm really looking forward to that. And I really want to see how it holds up for 11 days, because that's been something I've been talking about for a while now is we get to play these games and it's like the honeymoon phase never wears off because it's over in a weekend. I want to see how people react overprime after they played it for like a week or so, you know? And if they still love it and enjoy it, that awesome. But I think we'll probably see a few people, you know, finding some chance in that armor that they didn't think of before. But this is going to be a really good test. I'm very much looking forward to it, because I as as as much as you could talk about overprime being this and that and having too many, you know, being too arcadey or whatever, it was fucking fun. Like, I don't even give a shit about any of that rest of that stuff. Overprime was fucking fun. And I am really looking forward to playing it again. So, Jelly, what's your thoughts on overprime 11 days? I do. I am so excited. It's ridiculous. Like it's, I mean, Mangoes, you and I talked about a lot like overprime. Yeah, maybe, right. But like predecessor in faults, right? And then we played overprime. And for me, at least I almost I still have that itch. So I'm like, I want to play overprime, man. Like I want to get back in there and play overprime, which is blows my mind every time I think about it. And even playing predecessor this weekend, there were a couple of moments where I was like, you know, this just isn't overprime. Like I just kind of want to play overprime. And so 11 day test, I'm so down. I'm ridiculously open for that. And the other thing is 11 days is long enough that they may push out a patch halfway through and test out their patch pushing capabilities. Right. And that's that because that's that's long enough to get through the honeymoon phase, establish what is actually good or needs balance tweaking and then push out a patch and then still have another couple of days after the fact to see what the repercussions of that are. And I think that is a really cool thing to look at as well. What do you think? Get from us. You look forward to it. Yeah, I am. I haven't had a chance to try out overprime yet, so I don't have too much to say on the game itself. But like, yeah, I'm super excited. I'm super excited to try it. It looks a lot of fun from the gameplay I've seen from like you and other creators. It looks really interesting. The only thing I think is like you mentioned like people fighting the chains in the armor. I like I just worry because the game is so fast paced from like you're fighting a lot more. It is a lot faster paced. I feel like people just might get burnt out over time. Like when you're constantly fighting, like that's kind of the thing with a lot of MOBAs. It's that slow pacing that builds up to a bigger fights. It's like when you're constantly fighting and fighting and fighting, you can get bored of it. So, you know, we'll see. But yeah, I'm super excited. Like 11 days is a long time to try out a game and get familiar with it that I'm really excited to see that that's going to be a lot of fun. And just see that what they've done with different characters, cats, like it's cool to see how all the different companies have interpreted characters and like shifted their identity. Like, yeah, like steel and fault, steel and Richter and fault compared to predecessors, like inverted with their with how they play in a lot of ways. It's cool to see. I want to see what their take was in overprime and see how they've changed things. Yeah, change that with Scott in particular. Let's play more Caleb, man. I can't wait. But this is something I was watching. I'm JPI streamed the other night and one of his viewers brought up talking about which one would be the most fun to watch out of all the Paris zombies. And I think it overprime would be the most fun for somebody that had never played Paragon, didn't know anything about MOBAs. Overprime would by far be the most fun to just sit down and watch if you're just watching a new game. And that says a lot. That says a lot. It looks like a shooter. It looks like a shooter first. Well, when fault kind of feels in between and predecessors firmly, this is a MOBA, even when you're playing it easy, like you can tell. And it's like. Overprime just looks good. And overprime, they spent so much time on immersive feedback to with the hit stop animations and their sound effects and everything. Like, oh, man, when you hit somebody with steel in overprime or Scott in overprime, like it feels like you just whacked somebody. But like like you were saying, and in Fred, he didn't have sound effects for his basic attacks. So when you hit a minion, it would like that. Like, did I hit it? Or like, I don't know if I hit it or not. Feel like, you know, you fucking hit a minion with Scott. Oh, yeah. Oh, and many of us even have a sound effect when they died. So I mean, to bring up to bring up another game in comparison is the Overwatch League blew up huge on Twitch. And honestly, ESPN as well, when Overwatch first came out and the pro league first started, part of that is because from minute one, you have fights breaking out. Oh, yeah. Right. And it's it's engaging from the first minute. It's not like any MOBAs where the first 10 minutes is really like, well, you know, we're going to see it over here and watch these two people poke at each other for 10 minutes. And then, oh, look over there, they're poking at each other for five minutes, right? And that's not what it is. Over time, there's a gank after that Overwatch feel in that from minute one, you can get into engagements because you have all your abilities unlocked. And you can you can start that action so, so fast. And I think that's a huge benefit for them. Yeah, like, yeah, I agree with that completely. Like, I'm not a good example that I can use is and this is definitely showing where I come from. Like, I'm not big into most like physical contact sports. I'm not that into them, except for hockey and soccer, to a lesser extent. I really like hockey because it's not stop and go. It's not like something happened and then we take a five minute break. The games went for 30 seconds and now another three like in hockey. I you'll see like play for upwards of five minutes on like unbroken, just straight like back and forth. You can see the strategy. You can see the action that's going on. It's just having that constant flow of action is really important for just keeping people's interest, retaining them. Do you also enjoy maple syrup and poutine? I literally made pancakes for me and my grandfather this morning before I went to work. I literally made me. I literally made pancakes this morning before. Oh, you like hockey? Oh, yeah, we really like that. Hockey. No, I get what you're saying, though. Like, hockey is a very dynamic sport. It's very fun to watch, even though I don't like sports. I'll stop and watch a hockey game for a little bit, you know. It's nice to watch the big guys with the knife shoes. Yeah, I don't know. Over prime, it's it's got its appeal and it definitely has its appeal in the Asian community. So I think it's definitely going to survive alongside fall or Fred, you know, whichever one comes out on top. Like people, I particularly underestimated over prime. And yeah, they they're knocking it out of the park. I can't wait to play again. I don't blame people for underestimating it. When you hear it's like a MOBA, but we trim down all the farming stuff. And it's just writing there. I can think of two MOBAs off the top of my head that said those exact things. And they're dead now. We're almost dead. I can think of two different big MOBAs and now they're dead. They try to market like that. It's just people like when you hear those words, you associate it with the failed, the many failed projects. You don't think about what it could be. But seeing the product that they have, just seeing it, it's like, no, I believe that this could be a big competitor. And like that, like it's a real thing that is very much a threat for the other companies. Yeah, the other thing we have for over prime day in their work of progress, they had like the look like the top of a picture of Severog. And it said the beginning of the story. I'm not sure what that's about. It might be their Netflix series that they're supposed to be doing with over prime. I mean, their cinematic trailer was about Severog and killing the tree, whatever it was, right? So I imagine it would make sense that the beginning of the story starts with that and with him or with. What is his name? Revenant? No, no, not Severog. What's all for your own actual name? It wasn't Akamon. I mean, that was rampant, Joe. The Moria sounds run Joe. It's close. It's something among those lines. And they had Beatrice and Shade in there. Yeah, please tell me Beatrice is Faye. No, please, that's countess. You're kidding. That Oh, the Faye is Tiana. Yeah, Tiana. Oh, wow. They really do name characters, don't they? Yeah, yeah, they do. That sure is the name you got there. Beatrice Bloodsucker. That's about all I had for her, probably she got anything else. Nope. I just wish that their name, like, I get that they can't use the same names because Epic, I guess they still own the IP to the characters. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. The Moria, I was right. But like, maybe in the future, they will. But I hope that they name they change the names of something a little more thematically. Like, I get they can't keep column steel, but why not like Ferris or something? Because, you know, like Faro higher. Yeah, like, like names like or names that feel more like name count is something that feels more vampirey. With, like, just, I don't know. Beatrice Beatrice. I named the Faye Beatrice instead and make her be skinned the default. Yeah, their roster sounds like a roll call at an old folks home. It's doesn't that Cindy Scott Kaila Beatrice. Yeah, what do you think? They call Bellica something stupid to you. I don't know the Laura. Oh, this is all right. This is all right. She's pretty good. That's also they're just such they're very generic names. They're like nothing. They're all very generic. They don't like when you hear the like with Lee, you hear your names like Kail or like, like, even if that's one of the more basic ones, like that sticks out, like that's recognizable. That's iconic. Or like with a theory like Dante, that like the name Dante, you immediately know who they're talking about. You're Scott. And all I think of is a lawyer that is named Scott Steele. And I need that. I want to Scott lawyer skin now. Here we go. Yes, Scott Steele. And if it's G.L.D. carries a briefcase. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. This is the thing. I've already thought this all the way through. I think I have a chip somewhere. And when he bashes you just like paint like legal documents fly out when he ults, it's a gavel sound. Oh, it'd be great if he turned into a giant gavel and just yells, order in the court or something. Objection. All right, we claim the FDM 10 percent. Yeah, we need 10 percent of the skin. Oh, and then they can tweak the skin if they did like a crossover. Just have a bunch of ace attorney. Scott Steele skin. That would be awesome. Ace attorney, Scott. That'd be great. Yeah. Well, let's move away from overprime. Let's talk about fault. They just had a tweet asking the community what features they wanted added in. Not a lot going on for fault this week. I will say something that Ryan Redd cooked up that I've been participating in. They've been trying to get games with fault partners and developers and stuff and have everybody record at the same time in case something cool happens. And then they're going to, even if it's on the enemy team, like if somebody on the enemy team does something cool, then they're going to, they want to post that. They did their first post today, which was me getting killed by a gadget mind. But the funny part of it is as I'm running away, Armadillon blinks over the edge on Fing Mal directly into me and we both get destroyed by the gadget mind. The worst when someone has a gadget mind and they walk into you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was trying my best not to walk into anybody, but he blanked into me with Fing Mal. There's nothing I can do about that. No, that's your fault, Andrews. You're not being known. You're not being known. I'm just going to play in the jungle. Rupa thumb. But yeah, that's about it for for fault. Let's just just general general thoughts on fault. Since if you do play fault, what do you think about fault compared to everything else? And given faults, the only one that's released in early access or whatever they're calling it, it's like you should be harsher, especially because they're charging money. But I enjoy how it feels. I really I think it definitely feels like it needs a once over for for a one point over lease for polish. But I think it feels quite good to play. I think the pacing is a little slow in the early game. I kind of wish that like I wish like starter items had better stats. I think is what kind of feels iffy to me is your first buy items feel weak. But I think it feels good. I definitely there are issues I have with it. Like the jungle feels small. The jungle feels very small to me. And because like there are three camps on each side for each team, it just feels like it's so nothing compared to like what predecessor had, especially compared to what ethereal has had. Ethereal, their jungle jungles, many pearls feels very good to play. I very much enjoyed it. Definitely, they could use some animation work, I think. In in in both sorry, in both games, but also in fault. Like like here's one I haven't heard anyone mention. Every time you basic attack, you reset to before you start the animation for your next attack, you reset to your default standing position and it makes chaining basics feel like I think in higher attack speed that no, it does happen in higher attack speed to and it just feel makes basics feel not very fluid and makes them kind of stiff, like especially or like. I like how the game feels. I think I think it's good, but it definitely, you know, it needs work. I think to echo that point of the like the animation work or just the feel of the game for fault, the thing that always is odd to me and has been since the beginning of fault is it feels like you're in third person. And to quantify that, looking at like overprime, when you're playing overprime, despite being in third person, the impact feels like you're there involved first person right right there in the action, the action and fault feels separated from that. Just like your distance, maybe it's not it's not even a camera distancing. I think it's just the feel of of how things are set up and fall right now. I can agree about that. Yeah. But yeah, it feels third person, whereas instead of like overprime is in third person, but feels first person. Also, I just want to say this, I was going to say this earlier when we're talking about predecessor, I didn't get the chance, but this is for all the games. Maybe this is just because, like, because I come from Smite and in Smite, this is like a big, useful UI option. The mini maps like every game is tiny. The mini maps are especially in predecessors tiny. I really wish I could adjust the position of my map and where and the size of it on my screen. I really like because it's really important. You need that information and being able to like reduce its opacity and layer. So it's a quite big object on your screen. So you can get that information without having like look away from what you're doing. It's very I would really like that. Yeah, despite Smite's flaws, their UI customization is the best of any game I've ever seen on PC. Not on console. I'll give it that guy. So I'll give it PC specifically. Yeah, but yeah, the UI customization is awesome. And I hope that that even if just to a lesser extent does come to the other games, because that's one, it makes you feel more attached because you've personalized it to exactly what you want. Do you have a little bit of extra attachments? Also, just making sure you feel comfortable playing the game. Big issue again with processor, wasn't comfortable suffocating UI. It's just it'd be nice even if some people like that. Sure, like like legacy UI compared to modern or new, whatever. It'd be nice to have that customizability. Mm hmm. Absolutely. I think as far as fault goes, I think this processor stress test will be driving more people into fault. Oddly enough, the that predecessor doing something will help their competitor. But my fear is that people that will come from the processor stress test come into fault and then face what we face on a daily basis when we play fault with it, which is insanely good players that will not that will take zero mercy on a new guy. Yeah, yeah, that's I feel like, yeah, that that's a big risk. Although it is most when I had newer players on my team, everyone was pretty like, oh, you're new. Yeah, OK, just be careful. We'll we'll like jungles will gank you more often. Supports will rotate mid laners will take care of you more. It's like it feels like the community is OK with like newer players. It's not like you're at least going to get flamed. Yeah, I don't know. Some people will. Some people won't just. Yeah. But when you have a 30 players on on low hours, which was the case last night. Yeah, I feel like that people should know, like maybe you should be nice to the new people. Yeah. Yeah. Faults community as part of the reason fault isn't succeeding right now. No, I'm very unfortunate. Yeah, I really hope this would be a really great time for Strange Matter to reach out to other like content creators of similar games, like like Smite. Smite players are itching for a game that isn't literally broken right now. So and given we've had some creators already play predecessor, they're familiar with this new and different and scary MOBA. It would make sense if they reached out and like, hey, you want to do something we can sponsor you for a small amount or whatever, like it'd be cool. We'd love to have you because, again, content creators can't even play the game and the communities are angry. It feels like it'd be a smart idea. I don't think they would even need to sponsor. They'd just be like, hey, we'll give you this game for free if you want to play. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that should be a good idea. Like here's the code. Here's like the codes to get all the characters or characters like Fred. Well, we've got a game that's kind of like that, too. Well, it'd be smart because even just getting one of them like because I follow Smite content creators, even just getting one of the people who actually play games normally and aren't just like you actually get. Yeah, like just getting one of them. That'd be enough. That'd be a huge spike in player base, at least would double the player base for a while. Mm hmm. That's not saying much, but it would. Only know two Smite creators, Duke Sloth. Is that his name, Duke Sloth? Yes. And Mithy Moo. Mithy is. I think Mithy Moo played predecessor, too. I'm I'm not sure if Mithy has the thing with. Oh, sorry, one second. I need to grab something. Yeah, the thing with Duke is he hasn't uploaded a single Smite video in almost a year. Oh, really? He went he has had the worst luck. He's been trying to go over to different games and branch out branch away from just Smite for like two years. And he the last game he really had some success with was New World. New World is dead. And he fully stopped uploading Smite content because it was hurting his algorithm. It was hurting the algorithm for him. So he was like, yeah. So it was like, this really screws with your attention and makes my channel less recommended. So I'm just going to stop Smite for a little while. It's been a year. So he is a Smite content creator, hasn't really uploaded much. Uh, Mithy is like like the I upload every few days, every few weeks with like hyper edited content. But another one that did was Rexy. Rexy is a competitive, competitive quote unquote Smite player. He doesn't play the 5v5 mode. He plays 1v1 duel because Smite has many different game modes that you can play. But he's he has a pretty he has a very dedicated audience. I know that. So him playing predecessor will help will help with their attention. Right on. And yeah. That's all I have to say about fault. Unless you guys anything else, we can move on to the theory. No. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, I had something to say for like that tweet that they put out, like asking what players wanted. But oh, yeah, yeah. Go for it. Like the two main things I want was one is just like the jungle is small. I wish that there were more camps and I wish the jungle was more interesting to path through again with predecessor. Very enjoyable jungle to path through a lot of different routes that you could take and different like ways to gank and enter lanes. But also just I I I don't like the way that junk the jungles are laid out in a lot of these games. Like I like to correct me. Ethereals are jungles are mirrored or like properly mirrored. Correct on Void Lane. So yes, I'm just trying to remember on Void Lane. It's asymmetrical. So corner to corner matches on ice and fire. It's a direct mirror of each other. OK, I just I prefer maybe this is just because I come from Smite. I'd wish I do wish that they were mirrored proper. Like Red buff is always on the side of duo or like the side of off lane blue is always on the side of duo stuff like that. Because it just it makes passing inconsistent. And it's like if you're start if if you're the off lane or trying to having to start with your jungle, you are just going to be behind of it. You are going to hit level two second. You will be behind in lane if you're if you're later knows what they're doing. It just feels like you got that you can get punished or get rewarded just because you got you won the coin toss. Yeah, I mean that in in a lot of these games, if you're starting on the duo favored side, and for instance, let's say fault, right? Most junglers are red buff and the game even tells you to start red buff when you're picking the jungle route. If you are on the lucky side to have duo as your safe, your lane that can help leash for you versus the other side that has the solo lane, it makes a difference. And it's more secure in counter jungling as well. Because it's a lot more you know if they're starting off lane side, they're slower start. So then you can make it across to their blue side and maybe take a camp or two before they can transition across the lane. Yeah, we're on the inverse. If duo let's say they're playing in an aggressive comp and duo, they can just if they get to get go to lane immediately, they can just push lane and pressure you out. They get early levels. You get ganked game lost in the first before the game started. Yeah, it's just I'm not a fan of that design. It feels it to me, it feels really bad. I just want to fix the fucking bugs that are in the game. Yeah, yeah. Like the invisible wall coming into red buff side. Oh, yeah, that's stuff like that. Yeah, they can fix that stuff. That'd be I. Now, let's move on to a theory. Theory didn't have anything, any news in any announcements or anything. But I do want to talk about ethereal and get the word out about that game because it is an interesting concept that a lot of people been seeing it even more often. People talking about how Paragon is dead and people shouldn't be even trying to remake Paragon. They're looking to move on to something else. Well, if you are like that, you feel that Paragon should just be laid to rest. But you aren't over a third person. But wasn't then you should check out ethereal. So, yeah, I'm to ethereal, right? Yeah, let me let me coax these people in as best I can. If you played the last ethereal test, what did you what did you think of ethereal? This is going to be interesting coming from a smite player, too. As we got because correct me if I'm wrong, ethereal was at least I remember you had said in mangos like ethereal wasn't a project based off of like a new Paragon. It was already speaking development before Paragon or for the assets release and everything shut down. Right. It was more if anything, looking at at least what you said, well, like looking at what smite did wrong and wanted to do better. That's what I had heard at least. Um, I mean, that's that's pretty on point. ethereal started a couple of months before Paragon officially was shutting down and the assets were released. And granted, we've got had we've used a handful of Paragon assets since then. But those have been all may as well placeholder. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, may as well if it's there and you're still in early development and you use what you can to get a working prototype. Yeah. Um, I had a ton of fun. I mainly played Talos in the jungle because his auto cancels are ridiculous. Yes, they live as fast. They definitely were the the post fire delay felt quite long on his one specifically. I know that's like a really, really small detail. But for so many auto cancels, that's something to note. But the game felt a lot of fun. I really enjoyed my time with it. Um, the UI was surprisingly good with the caveat of when it worked because the first game I ever and this is me absolutely going to talk on you for being mad about that. Because no, I was fucked at UI. It literally I couldn't see what my abilities did. My first ever game, two games I literally didn't know because I was unfamiliar because I hadn't read on your site much on the ethereal site beforehand, literally didn't know what my kid did. That was a problem. And well, good news is the UI is being reworked. Oh, it's a Christ. I had a lot of fun with I have a worry. I worry about I have a few worries of the game. Like they're so like every character has what six, seven? Because you have a class ability, your like risk reward ability, your main abilities, familiars, plus normal items and buffs and like laning is normal. It's just there's a lot going on. It feels like I almost got turned off because when I didn't know it was going on, it's just like, wow, I don't. I'm not I have no clue what's going on. I didn't even know I had a class ability on Talos for the first few games because I just couldn't read it. But also there's just there's so much. It feels like there's so much there. It's cool. But it feels like it's almost unnecessarily so much going on. Like also what they're like having a sick player is a cool evolution, especially because it's truly utilizing the 3D environment to its fullest. And that's awesome. But it just it feels like there's so much going on. There's a literal entire extra layer. There's entire extra extra dimension to playing. That is just it could be very overwhelming. I've sometimes been playing like moments for years and I found it was like, I don't really get what's going on. But I have a lot of fun. Also, animations, obviously, very early games, not even close to release. So I'm not going to dogging it much. I feel like people were a little too much, like. Then again, you you are asking for it when you have official character spotlights and you're showing off animations like that. It's you people shouldn't harp on you that hard for it. But don't show it off like this is the best you have when it's obviously you have a lot of talent and a lot of knowledge in what you're doing. And that I get why to show people who want to see. But at the same time, you open yourself up to criticism at that point. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think for the button presses, right, there's I've heard it's thrown around several times is that because all of a theory of items, every single item in a theory is passive. There are no active items directly in the game. So any good item is all passive based and which gets rid of depending on what game you're playing, three to six button presses. And with that, we kind of make up for it in the other buttons that you do have to press. But the distinction, I think, for us is even with those fewer button presses technically, you're making more required button presses versus item actives in other mobas can be just optional. Right? You're not you still get an effect even if you don't use the the active part of the item. Whereas in ethereal, if you're not using your class ability, you're putting yourself behind, right? And so there is a difference there, despite there being similar actual button presses. It's a skill gap. Skill gap is in a it's like in like in fault. Like, yes, there are active items. I don't think I've built the only active item I can remember consistently ever building in fault is which one is the one I give you mixed protections and an over shield on activate the battle plate. Yeah, battle plate, because that's like because that's functions like the exact same as a active item in smite or relic, whatever the call. But I knew that. But other than that, like with having built in like like extra button presses is kind of how you put it to make up for those lack of active items with active items. It's also pacing like you're getting them partway through a game. So after you familiarize yourself with a kit and kind of how it's playing, then you can augment that with an active one with ethereal. You have just extra things to read when you're already reading three abilities, an ultimate, big, ultimate passive, your other ability, your other, other ability and just taking everything in. It feels like that maybe could maybe not even be pared down. But I don't think class abilities feel redundant, at least to me. It feels like those could be mixed in somewhere else or implemented in a maybe more dynamic way that doesn't feel kind of homogenous for a class. And part of the part of the UI change that we're doing right now is to make a lot of those things more distinct on the UI. Then as a new player, you can look at the UI and go like, oh, this thing, I pressed this button does the thing, right? And so it's finding ways to to make it more distinct and more prevalent to players as they get in the game for the first time. Yeah, I'm really excited. But what's with that character? It's the other Sky Slayer you showed off that isn't in the game yet other than to zero zero. I'm really excited for I've always really liked the like like like an angel aesthetic. I'm really I really want to know what that kid is because when you give an angel a gun, that's always fun. He's he he needs a skin with a shotgun because you need an angel with a shotgun or just or just give him a shotgun because that's always better. Yeah, I mean, more bullets, more fun, right? Exactly. I will say, a theory out of all of them definitely fills the roughest, like the newest, like it's definitely the earliest in development, even though it's been around for a long time, they had to create all their assets from scratch. So they're a little behind the the parasomies, at least. But also with the theory, you could do the most fun shit in a theory. Yes, compared to the every other game. There's so much cool shit. You can do an ethereal like that makes it so much fun. And like we were talking about. Yeah, there's a lot of button presses and a lot of stuff that you have to learn. But part of that is some of the fun for me because you see people or you hear people like when you're when you're playing with them, come to the realization like they're like, wait, so this guy, I could pick him up and grab him and throw him. Like, yeah, they're like, wait, wait, there's edges on the map. Can I throw them over the map? Like, yes, you can. They're like, yes. Watching people put those pieces together, yeah, right, is one of the greatest things, right? Like, and yeah, the throwing people off of the map or like or flying around, flying from lane to lane or jumping from lane to lane or whatever it is. Yeah, seeing those like light bulb moments, super cool. Here's the best way. I think the best way I can describe my experience was most MOBAs are very controlled experiences for balance and for very specific outplay. I feel it feels like if you ask a question, the answer should normally, if you're asking a question, any sane man should ask and some not so sane men. The answer should be yes, you probably can. And I feel like I feel like as time will go on, if ethereal, hopefully as ethereal lasts in ages and grows, some of those edge cases might be adjusted or tweaked for just being able to grab a tank at full health and say, go away and let them die off a cliff, fall off a cliff and die. Maybe, maybe that's like, maybe tanks shouldn't be grabbed as long or whatever. It's like, maybe those edge cases might be touched and reined in a little, but just the core design of the game seems to be, it's a sandbox as much as it is a MOBA. It feels like, it really feels like you built a MOBA in a sandbox as with the goal of making this a sandboxy experience and it feels amazing. Like I don't care much for games that are super rough. I like, fault feels like it's a rough game that got it right. predecessor feels like it's a polished game that didn't know how to make it feel satisfying. No comment on overprime and ethereal feels like, it just feels like it has so much potential and it is doing everything right. It just needs some more time in the oven. And everyone knows that because it, like everyone should know this game, this isn't what it's going to look like when it's done. This is like, these are early animations like, didn't you guys just completely redo the map? Like a brand new map. And I was actually going to bring up Talos specifically. Yes, if you look at Talos from 2018 when the studio started and was, he was first designed versus the new Talos that we just released last week. He looked really cool. They're night and day differences, right? And so, and the new Talos is much more to a, for lack of a better way to put it like full release type of studio that at least that I would expect as a player. Right? Where I would be like, that's a new character. That looks sick. What does he do? Who is he? Where his original Talos didn't look bad but he wasn't that same level of detail and design and all of those things. It looks like he has personality. His design has personality to it. Old Talos looked like dude with fur and axe. This one looks, he looks, you very much leaned into that like primal, I was prehistoric like hunter aesthetic. It feels like, again, with Smite, they have a skin line that looks, a skin design style that looks exactly like what Talos is. And that is absolutely a compliment because Smite has amazing skins. That is, yeah, Smite is like wild how good their skins are. And like that looks just like, what I would expect from a premium skin I would want to buy that design looks really cool. I am curious, was that purely like a remodel or did any like animations get touched up or was this like just a redesign? It's a complete visual rework for the most part. I wouldn't say not everything got reworked but the things that needed to be reworked. So some animations, visual effects, some of that kind of stuff, they all got updated alongside his new model. Yeah, I'm really excited. The game looks awesome. I'm really, especially like, you shut off Frost, right? Your quadruped. That looks really like, I wanna know what that kit does. I really wanna, especially, yeah, I know. I'm really curious how, because there are things, you're restricted in some ways with a quadruped that you'd have to get around one way or another, but it enables a different fantasy of what, and a different player experience. Also the hip, okay, I need to know how are you handling the hip box with quadruped? I'm not, I can't say anything. So. Because that's gonna be a pain if that's a small, I assume it won't be, because that would be insufferable to just miss a shot because it went over him because you're aiming at eye level. I hope it, I hope it's not, there's some way, but I'm super excited, but I'm really excited. I love the name, by the way. I love the name. It's an ice wolf. What do we call it? Well, it's like frost. Say that again. Frost, oh, got it. Should name it Jerry. You know what I realized about ethereal? It's like a, it's a moment that was created by saying yes to a 12 year old. Like, well, can I fly? Yeah. Can I climb that rock? Sure. Can I punch it and blow it up? Yeah. What if these lights were broken like up in the air? Okay. I want, but at the same time, the 12 year old has wonderful ideas. Like, what if he's an edgy guy, but he has a bow, but he's like a computer virus. Yeah. That's what ethereal is. It's saying yes to a 12 year old. Design team is all cringing, being like, I'm not, I'm not a 12 year old. I would love to, I would love to be a design team. Now, like they, some of those kits are awesome. And it's obvious you guys are just getting started. Cause right now, I know. Cause like you have the groundwork and the foundation of what it plays like. I can't wait to see when you, like you guys really experimenting with fundamentals. Cause like you look at some characters leagues released. Like there are memes about how over design some of them are, but they are very unique, very interesting, very like one of a kind. Smite has a few of those types of characters too. I'm really excited to see the releases when people will say, why would you ever design this? This is horrendous. I can't wait. I can't wait cause those are going to be awesome. Cause everyone's going to hate them. Cause they aren't going to know how to fit them. Uh huh. Yeah. So excited. That's going to be so fun. All right guys, let's start wrapping it up. I'm going to skip the discussion topic this week cause we have been going for well over an hour and I like to try and keep these at about an hour. So we'll just end it with the, with the ethereal discussion. I think we, we talked about a lot of, a lot of really important stuff tonight. And, you know, even if you disagree with some of the stuff we said, you know, put it down in the comments, but don't be combative about it. You know, if you disagree, let me know why you disagreed with anything anybody said and we'll discuss it and have a good conversation about it. But that's going to about wrap it up for this week. Let's go to plugs. And if you guys think you want to plug you got like a YouTube or a Twitch or anything. You just, you just hang it out. Just hang it out at the moment. Might, might in the future, but not now. Right on dude. Jelly anything to pull it? Uh, I don't think so this week. I'm going to start getting streams up again pretty quick here. I'm finally settling for moving. So awesome. All those good things. But yeah, I don't think nothing for this week. What about you, Mangus? I got nothing to plug. Uh, let's go ahead. Just any final thoughts you guys want to say to the community infamous give fault a chance because it on our, it is genuinely one, you can actually play it to please play it because it needs players, but no, like it feels great. It does feel good. It feels different than Paragon, but don't let like, don't just think it's not Paragon. So it's bad. It feels great. It's UI is, in my opinion, the best out of any of the games right now. Like it feels good. There's still like development. They're still releasing new characters, new heroes. Their balance is pretty good. But like outliers have been dealt with pretty quick. Like check it out. Yeah. Oh, and ethereal is awesome. Don't think it's a scam. It's an awesome game. It's so fun. Cause I know people thought it was a scam. That's so fun. Yeah. You got anything you want to say? No final thoughts other than I do have something to plug suddenly. Go watch Mangus' short about him dying in the enemy's jungle when he tried to go and invade and failed miserably. And his teammates left because they said they were leaving and Mangus didn't follow. Yeah. Go watch that short. Cause I've watched it like 50 times at this point and I keep laughing every time. How many times jelly in all of these games have I saved you when you dumb the dumbest shit? So many times. Consistently below 50 health and Mangus saves the day every single time. The one time I need it. Oh, I'm nowhere to be found. I have no qualms about that one. Yeah. You said it pretty early. I got no beta. I'm out. But you didn't listen. This is my point. There's nothing I can do. I said it before you started recording. I'll say it again. Mangus, that was your fault because you trusted your team. You do not do that. Agreed. This is a MOVA. Now I should always be able to count on you, but you should never count on me. Jungle diff support diff. That is the facts of one year. Exactly what it is. Oh, shit. Well, all right, guys. Appreciate everybody coming out. If you're watching the premiere, appreciate you hanging in there. If you're watching this as a video, appreciate you watching. But for now, this is the four of the minions crew signing off you guys. Have a good one. And you can't wave in from us. No. I'll wave more. Mangus.