 Welcome back to For The Minions, the weekly podcast all about upcoming 3rd person mobas that we all care about. This week we have pretty big updates for Over Prime, Fault, and Ethereal, nothing really for predecessor, but we'll still talk about them. And again, if you want to come host the show, we do have regular guest hosts. This week, I don't have Jelly, Jelly had a bit of an emergency they had to take care of, but I do have my friend and co-host, Windu the Mace, how you doing Windu? What up? I'm chilling. I'm chilling. We were just talking about this, you know, off the recording. It's like every time I come on, something happens and it's just me and you. So, YOLO, what's up guys? Welcome. How's it going? Thank you for having me, Goose. I'm excited. Yeah, it's good. You came one for a big episode. It's probably kind of good that there's only two of us because there's a whole lot to talk about. And I like to try and keep this at about an hour. That's not me. We asked me though. Yeah, all right. I can talk about an hour by myself. Shoot. All right. Let's get it. Let's get it. Our tour list went for like three hours. All right. So, I think I'll probably start off, probably the biggest news I think came out of Overprime this week, which was kind of came out of nowhere. They didn't have anything for a while. All I had was like a Wukong, a new Wukong skin concept and their work in progress. I thought that's all we're going to have for Overprime and then bam, they released this video. And in the video, they talked about all kinds of stuff, but there was kind of like a secret code within it, like little dots flying around. And if you decoded it, it pretty much says that their closed beta test is going to be the 22nd of January. So what'd you think about that? Shout out to you. I didn't even catch that part. Oh, dude, not. When I saw it in the notes, I was like, was there something in there? What the fuck? Okay. Yeah. I will say, though, like we didn't necessarily go too quiet because they have been doing quite a bit on like social media as far as post and stuff, right? But as far as January 22nd for closed beta, I'm excited. I'm like, I just, I just want to get in there and play it, you know? I 100% thought the closed beta was going to be in December, so I don't know. See, I think I think that was just clever marketing on their part and the assumption on ours because they just always said on steam by December, right? And they technically made it to steam before December, but more of a, hey, add to which list sort of vibe, not actually playable on steam, but they were technically on steam. They had their page, like everything's already set up and whatnot. So marketing wise, they were clever because they never necessarily stated it was playable by December. I for damn sure am with you. I thought by December, I was going to be able to play. I was excited to say when I'm when the new year came and I'm not able to play. I'm like, oh, fuck, I felt like to a little bit, but I understand the technicality. Now, I know you kind of you kind of get probably more shit than me from over prime fans. Yeah, probably less than more than me. You're actually. Britta gets a lot of shit from OP fans. Man, I don't know, bro. Like I still wholeheartedly support over prime and like the devs know that and stuff, but I kind of got infamous at that at one point in the server. Like I'm pretty sure at this point, everybody knows who I am for good or bad reasons. You know what I mean? But I do want to point out that you were one of the OG, like overthrow over over prime people like you were playing that like way, way back in the day and only playing it. But you were helping people along through that download process. So a lot of the reason that over prime is here today is because of you and people like you that were supporting it from the beginning. And people just don't realize that. That's kind of I forgot to mention our topic of discussion this evening, which is going to be watching these companies grow from a from a creator's perspective. And yeah, when do that? That's how I first came across. You was was overthrow watching you play overthrow. And then then I kind of met up with you and talked with you and earned the predecessor pretty alpha. Yeah, actually the I'd probably say the little bit of recognition that I got started in overthrow. That's where started smoking from predecessor. That's where he found me. I was helping people join like I want to say when I got involved into overthrow back in the day, it went from like an average of 10 daily players like 50 60, which for overthrow is actually a good fucking amount, especially in those days and whatnot. But yeah, man, like a lot of people forget how long we've been supporting these games like people don't know that I've been there since day one with with overthrow over prime. Like I'm you know, I literally voice chatted Rockhamania several times, hopped in phone calls with him, played the game with him, homie loves to drink and loves eating pizza. Found that out. So I just shout out to him. I feel that a hundred percent. But but yeah, man, like people people don't realize how long like the individuals like us have been in this journey and watch these games grow and why we're so harsh on them because we want the best side of these games people don't understand. And we've seen the missteps in the past that have wiped out some of the companies, like Visionary is pretty much gone now. And Medabuff is still around, but they're not really using the Paragon assets anymore. We haven't heard anything from them in years. Brune, I mean, it Medabuff and Visionary are both amazing to learn from, like especially for these companies, right? Like all the hype that was generated, like the amount of hype that Medabuff brought out, bro. That shit was on real with that trailer and the music and stuff. Dude, that thing had like half of the Internet just like, yeah, I'm excited. And then Gray Box map and they actually had good traction. They just fell short and then fell off the map for X amount of reasons. We're starting out. We're starting to get way too much into the topic of discussion. Yes. Yes. Yes. Let's go. OK, so I think probably the most exciting thing I saw in that over prime video was they had their roadmap for 2022, which include early access, full release and console and console. That is huge news for so many people. Yeah, bro. Like can I just say I shout out to them for actually just having a roadmap? Yeah, like that, like for a lot of these companies, roadmaps are scary. That's a deadline that they got to meet. You know what I'm saying? And even if they extend it, move it back, et cetera, they're setting out that expectation. So I thoroughly enjoy the fact that they're ballsy enough to say, hey, community, these are our excuse me. These are our expectations. We're going to try and meet them. But we want you guys to know what our progress is. And for the fact that they're planning so much on 2022, I mean, they have the studio size to do it. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, like they they grew they grew like 50 plus, right? If I'm not mistaken, because they combined with the the Seven Deadly Sins mobile game studio like so they they got some manpower and they've been putting out constant content on top of their original hero that they've teased. They're they're going to be a force to be reckoned with. I just don't know if it's going to be everybody's taste, if that makes sense. Oh, yeah, most certainly it's a much sped up game play. Very different hero kits. They've reworked the kits a lot more than anybody else seemed to have. And they got different names. The heroes got different names. And you know what's a vibe I got from it? What's that? Like the vibe I got was Paragon and Pokemon Unite have a baby. OK, because Pokemon Unite is a two tower system. Very, very fast paced. Like they have mechanics in the game that after 15 minutes, it just helps you end the game by 20. Yeah, you get what I'm saying? And it's kind of smart because one of the biggest problems that has always played mobs like that is how to make the matches and fast enough to get consistent games going. Right. And if you only got two towers to worry about, I mean, you could probably 15 to 25 minutes max, get matches going. And it's like, damn, you lost. Let's get a new one. And it's not that long like you've been in a match for an hour and you're like, damn, I need a break after this shit. So it's it's not going to be for everybody. But they're standing out enough that I really, really think they're going to be a super strong contender. Right. And everything they've done in the, you know, leading up to this, they've they've put out a roadmap before and they hit all those goals. Like that roadmap ended them with them being on steam and they are on steam. And that's another thing that kind of they they had during the the video was they were talking about over problem listed on the steam's most popular upcoming games. I think that has quite a bit to do with their marketing strategy that they had everybody do those YouTube shorts and everything. Good on them and good on them for bragging about it, too. Hell, yeah. You know what's crazy? People don't understand how important it is for the launch of a game to be to have a good amount of wish list additions because done like the reason why they're on steam's most popular upcoming games is because people are adding them to the wish list. You got what I'm saying? And then being on that popular upcoming games adds even more to the wish list. And then upon launch, they have a good amount of people. I wouldn't be surprised if by now they're getting close to 100,000 or more of people that on release, it's going to just they're going to get that notification. You know, when you excuse me, when you log in to steam and you get those first five or 10, like, hey, right, recommendations for it today. If you have overprime on your wish list, the moment it goes live, you're going to get that recommendation. It's it's genius. Steam wish list is one of the biggest marketing tools for a game that's releasing and people just don't know about it. Yeah, and it feeds into as far as like because they they're owned by Netmarble now. That wish list lets Netmarble know that people are interested in this game and that they should continue funding Team Soul Leave. That's going to be very helpful for them. Yeah, that's like step one indicator, like just getting all the acquisition of data. And then, honestly, I'm telling you, man, like they're they're doing things right, especially in the marketing department. Like I've I've said it on Twitter a million times. I shouted them out like they're doing proper marketing. And it's not surprising considering they have such a massive team, probably with individuals with a shit ton of experience in marketing, right? Right. But they're they're doing everything right. They're playing their cards right. And if they continue to this point, they're on track to have an amazing fucking release. And from there, it's just going to be keep the momentum going. But they're they're on point. The only thing that's going to hold them back as far as the para refugee community is how much they've changed the game up. But that's not I don't think their goal is to please everybody that used to play Paragon. Their goal is to make this new game that's going to be fun for everybody, not just the people that played Paragon. And I think that's smarter than them. They shouldn't focus on trying to reel in a fractured portion of a fractured community. And you know what? Technically, by because they're using all the Paragon refugees for the steam wish list that we just talked about, gaining the higher numbers to get on that popular upcoming. Right. And then from there, they get exposed to the rest of steam. Being on that list is huge. So by them delaying it roughly another month, right? It's like three weeks, probably roughly. So by them delaying it a little bit and being on that list for like another month or so, they're going to get way more coverage than Paragon refugees. Because Paragon refugees at peak correct me if I'm wrong. But it was like 70,000 maybe at peak. I don't know the numbers right now. But yeah, I don't I don't either. But but they are they're on track to like if they if they continue this popularity game that they got right now, marking my words by the 22nd, the majority of players trying this game are not going to be Paragon. Refugees, right, especially if they continue their marketing the way that goes. And that's good because they're probably going to get a couple of bad steam reviews like, oh, this isn't Paragon dislike and stuff. You know, and then people will be like, who cares? I don't know what Paragon is. Right. Mostly like, what the fuck is Paragon? So I I think they're going to need the influx of majority non Paragon people. But even a few Paragon refugees are going to like their progress. Yeah. And I and I think that's the biggest thing they got going because of their dev team size, or even if their style is different, you can't deny the amount of progress that's been done. And that's one of the benefits of being with a big company like Netmarble. Of course, there's pros and cons, but that's one of the pros. Just being able to speed up that development time. It's massive. We've talked before the business before about how the companies can best use us, the community, and I think they're doing it the right way. You need to use the the para refugees as tender to start your fire, not as the logs that your fire is built upon. You know what I mean? Because if you're only a great camping reference, yeah, like shout out to you. That's a great fucking reference. I mean, you're only ever talking to tender. Your fire is not going to get big enough to to to heat anything up. So use us to start that fire, but then you're going to have to pile on so much more to make that fire big enough to be worth anything. Good on overpricing or doing that. I think that's what everybody is really kind of trying to do. But eventually. I just think that I think that's what it comes down to the best, I think. I think right now. Well, you got to think about it like this, too. Like and just going back to the stage of development that we just mentioned, they're in a comfortable stage of development that they can afford to start becoming trending. They can afford to start doing all these things because they're planning a beta here in the next month. You feel me? And that's a good amount of time. They got weeks to ramp up. They got weeks to plan. They got weeks to get content creators involved. It's just a good type frame. And the stuff that's going to be done by the 22nd, they're probably already that's that's it's already set. Yeah, like before even the New Year, probably by by the end of the year, it was probably their deadline. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. So. Their their stage of development alone. Impresses me. Whether it be my taste or not, the amount of work that they've been able to output, granted, bigger team, caveat for anybody listening, right, that might get mad. Just the amount of work that they've actually been able to output out there is amazing. And I applaud them for it, by all means. I think that's about all I had for overprime, except for that Wukong skin. I don't know if you wanted to. Did you did you see that Wukong skin at all? Or? Yeah, I saw it. I'll be real with you. Like it was cool. Yeah, like I dig skins like that, right? Like I didn't have an issue with it. I was more worried about the family. Damn, bro, they already got Wukong ready. Yeah, that's that. That's a thought that went through my mind. That was my thought. You're going to have Wukong on the 22nd. That's going to be rough. I don't think the last 22nd, but. Well, I'll tell you this. If they come out with a good version of Wukong, it doesn't even have to be amazing, but a good version of him that doesn't break the game. They'll already they'll set them, excuse me, they'll set themselves apart even more. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, let's let's move on now to let's go to fault. So fault, you know, they had their patch 14. It was it was a nice step forward, but the optimization was there. But this week they were released patch 14.3, which was just pretty much optimization in an upgraded engine. And they I guess they're like like you put into the comments they could be gearing up for Unreal Engine 5 in the future. Absolutely fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. But that gets me excited. I was literally just asking about that. Like within the last month in my discord, be like, hey, how hard would it be for these guys to actually transfer to Unreal Engine 5 and use all those benefits that are coming out next year? And for my dev buddies, they're like, yo, it's literally just open the project and Unreal Engine 5. Some shit might be wonky, but just go in there and fix the shit that's wonky. But the the biggest thing is this new engine that they're going to, which was what was the number? I think it was like 4.27 or something like that. I forget. Could be wrong. I didn't write it down. Yeah, but the thing is it's basically Unreal Engine's latest engine that they have for the masses publicly. And if you go to Epic's page, they will literally say right there, this engine is compatible with Unreal Engine 5. So optimizing everything on the current latest Unreal 4 engine is going to be an even easier transition to Unreal Engine 5. Now, what that means for us players, that's going to mean the performance increase that Unreal Engine 5 is going to bring as well as the visual fidelity increase, being able to give you that much more because it's only rendering what you're looking at. Right. Like just little just little shit like that, bro. Now, I'm not mistaken because. Yeah, go ahead. UE5 comes with integrated replay support. So maybe we can be getting replay function functionality sometimes in. Maybe isn't that an Unreal Engine 4? Like as a just like a little add-on already. It is, but I think it's much more robust with UE5. I got you. I think there's still a lot of things you have to stick with to make it work in the current version. That's just exciting, man. And the part that excites me is. We're even though we've seen progress out of strange matters in the past, right? I would say probably in the last three months, we've seen leaps as opposed to before. It took them like no disrespect, like half a year almost to make a leap. They take little steps at a time, but now they're like, yo, in a month, here's a leap in performance. In a month, here's a leap in visuals. Like it's just like they're they're actually putting out at a consistent pace. If they keep this up, they could easily be early access 2022. And this is on if they keep it up. No offense. Yeah. Romingos and his problems. I'm kidding. You know what? You said putting out in a consistent pace. I immediately thought like your mom, but I didn't say. Oh, I didn't say I got to say something. You're always at me. Like it's like you're at my jugglery with a knife just waiting. But I was like, well, I thought about it. And then as I said it, I'm like, oh, my God, I got to say something before he does. Just keep talking. Don't don't breathe. Get it out. Just say it. I realized it. When you go back and look at this, you'll see me snicker when you said that. And then I heard it. I heard it a little. I was like, wait, wait. I wasn't going to say it there. I wasn't going to say it. And then their holiday posts were just kind of nice. It sounds like you had some stuff that you wanted to say about it. Well, so let me ask you, when you say holiday posts, that was kind of nice. You talking about like back on the 20th? Because on the 20th. You put this on the outline. No, no, no, no, because on the 20th, so they posted basically saying thank you to everybody, right? Thank you for the free weekend. It was awesome. Welcome new players, etc. It was just a well done post, right? I was kind of bummed that we didn't see any other holiday posts. You know what I mean? Like we saw a post related to an event that they held. No happy holidays. No happy new year from fault to you. You get me? Like little things like that. It just goes a long way when you're trying to build the community, you know? Because the brightness for some doesn't only have to be that. I personally couldn't give two shits less about the holidays, so I didn't really care. But I can't see where it would. Some people would it promotes interaction on social media. You got me? Like at the end of the day, especially since they're looking for a marketing manager currently, they're currently hiring for one. They they still should be conscientious of these little things, right? They want to promote engagement. It's like happy holidays. Tag us with this hashtag. What was some of your favorite clips that you got this year? Something, you know, like just get the ball rolling and have a constant flow of people talking about fault. Not let's only talk about fault once a week when the post comes live, you know? Just little things. Yep. Yes. Did you did you? What do you think about the optimization? Because I was one of the individuals that just didn't suffer from optimization. I think it's absolutely amazing. I started to slowly upgrade my graphics again. So I was holding tight at 60 FPS and I'm like, all right, cool. Let's see if I can let me see if I can bump my foliage up a little bit. Still holding tight. Let me see if I can bump this up. Still holding tight. Finally, I was like, fuck it. Let's go all epic and see if it holds. And I'll be damned if it doesn't hold at 60 FPS. And a lot of people that I've been talking to that run like 120 FPS, they're. Running a steady 120 FPS at epic settings again, which is that's what I was getting in patch 13. And then it kind of fell off for 14. But now it's now it's back and it's beautiful. And I love it. This is a great patch. Yeah, it's. It's exciting to see. I was I was I was almost a little bit too harsh on him the first time because I expected that optimization patch to come a little bit sooner, right? By doing the optimization update and swapping over to a new form of Unreal Engine. Maybe that was the key. Maybe that alone gave them the increased optimization with an increased file size or something. Who knows, right? But big shout out to them. I think they're doing a lot of big moves. I just really think on the on the marketing side, they got to step it up. But that's why they're hiring, hiring a marketing. Hey, yeah, right? They've identified the problem and they're trying to solve it. Yeah, that's good. You ready to move on to a theory? Wee, wee. So wee, wee, wee. Again, big news out of a theory, they had their live community corner with Jelly and Schifter. So they're going to have another they're just calling it an open weekend this time from January 21st to the 23rd, as it'll be a Friday through Sunday. And it's open to just everybody. You don't have to have a key. You don't have to you don't have to pay. You just if you want to play during those times, then you just go to their website, which is all the all the websites are always linked in the description below. And you make an account and you play some ethereal. Unfortunately, this is the same time that these close beta tests for over prime is going on. But still people that are excited for ethereal. And I mean, I'm sure that people will be playing both. I'm I'm going to be playing both. But yeah, but this is great news. This is great news. I will say, a theory has got some bad juju with these days, bro. Like, I don't know if it's on purpose or what, but that's some bad juju, bro. Like every single event is like, oh, well, this company also has something the same day. Watch, Mark my words, they're going to release another event and it's going to be like, oh, new call duty beta that same weekend or something. Watch. Oh, I'll tell you what, though. Can we just talk about the last stress test? Now, I see that you wrote on here the like an approval rate and how people felt about it. Now, you you put on here that ninety four percent of people like thought that the stress test was was good. They thought it was fun. Yeah. And then fifty seven percent felt that the game is ready for release, which actually that's kind of shocking, because I honestly thought the majority were going to say, like, yo, I like it, but it needs work. So I was actually shocked that people were like, hey, I would play this game the way it is right now. Just let me play it. I think that has this is a lot to do with how much fun it is, because you're not really too focused on little semantics. Like, hey, where did my basic attack go or something? Like you're just in there having fun and you don't realize it. Now, how did you feel about finding matches during the stress test? I heard some people had problem finding matches. I had zero problem. Whether it was whether I was queuing with a group or queuing by myself, it was like five minutes and I would get a match. Now, the problem came from people not locking in everything that they were supposed to lock in and you would drop the match. So you get matched up, but then it was like if somebody would and then you had to re queue. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's a little bit ended up happening to me. I want to say I waited like 15 minutes and one more time with 15 minutes for a match, then finally got a lobby and I'm like, I bet lock in, lock in, lock in. And there are like five things to lock in. Yeah. So it is not like it's not as simple as just a character. Right. But yeah. And then it would just drop because somebody didn't lock in one of those five different things. Yeah. What do you do? Do you think they should separate that like your character? Did they already? Yeah, they patched it during the stress test so that as long as you lock in a hero, everything else will auto lock if you don't lock it. But you do auto fill like a hero. Yeah. That is it based on the hero that you pick? Or is it just like, hey, man, yellow, you get what you get? Yeah, that's pretty well. You should have paid attention. You get the first two options is people weren't you had to lock in a hero, a battle spell and a familiar spell. So you just get the first two. The first familiar, the first battle spell, if you don't lock something in. Full damage heard. Send it. Yeah. Send it. But yeah, I'm happy for him, man. I'm actually very, very happy of how successfully stress tests have gone, you know, even having issues, fixing it shortly, having another event, whatever. I really, really like the pace that they're willing to open up to people. Because that's kind of rare compared to these other games. See, I mean, we were not necessarily used to, hey, let's we're having open week, like three open weekends in three months. You feel me? Right. Basically, like, that's not that common. Now I'm curious, do you think they're going to keep that flow? Or do you think they're going to slow down and kind of play turtle? Like predecessor did, for example, or just be more open, like faulted and then just go for more live service while working on it? What do you think they're going to do? I don't know. It seems like they started to charge forward with the extra life event. And ever since then, they have just kept moving forward at just pretty much the same pace. They've kept pace. They've just they they're going really fast. I mean, they could release the game right now. There would be I don't think they should. But I mean, they could like it's playable in the servers hold up. I'm one of the people that said that no, it's not ready for release yet. There's some really simple things like just chat, like being able to communicate with your team. It wasn't in there for the stress test. And that definitely needs to be there before they release the game. And there's a lot of bugs and stuff that I think are fairly major that need to be worked out. Yeah, I agree with you. I like just wholeheartedly. I think in order to make the best impression, they have to be as prepared as possible. And as fluent as possible as sorry, as fluid as possible of a game because once you actually release, like people are harsh, bro. Like people will tear any game up for the smallest flaws. Blow it up out of proportion and that affects public image. Right. I I'm OK with even if not much has changed. If they just keep on doing weekend events, like, hey, the first weekend of every month is going to be a theory, all right. Like that might run into cost a little bit, but it might be the right move to just kind of keep constant flow going without necessarily fully releasing the product and keep getting consistent feedback at least once a month. Yeah. I don't think I'd be a horrible idea. Oh, yeah. I mean, that'd be cool. But I don't think they will do that. But I think it will just go into our early access fairly soon. Really? I get I give it like maybe two months. That's just my personal opinion. But I could I could see it because they do kind of seem to be ramping up at a steady pace. They don't they're not giving any impression of staying steady like they are right now or slowing down. It definitely looks like there are the forward progression. They might be right. We might be seeing it sooner rather than later. And this next update is they they haven't they're going to implement new crosshairs with more feedback from the crosshairs from like hit feedback or something. I think this was directly inspired from overprime with their crosshairs. I think this is something that I think ethereal does on the slide that were the people just aren't talking about. I think that they're actually looking at these other games and learning from them because they're they're hit. Indicators like when you get hit, it looks a lot like the hit indicators from overprime, which are fucking gorgeous. And so the ones in ethereal look really good, too. Now, overprime has these really nice reactive crosshairs. And now ethereal is getting these nice reactive crosshairs. It's not a bad idea. As long as they throw their own twist into it, like you feel me. Yeah, like it's very hard to come up with something new in proprietary in 2022, right? Like them looking and adapting. I just think they're being smart about it. And I think they benefit kind of like being a little bit behind as far as development terms goes, because they can see all these games. Try things, remove it, try it, remove it. It's like, hey, they're locally doing all the testing for us. Yeah, we can we can kind of see what people feel about it and be like, all right, this is what we're going to go with. See, I when you said reactive crosshairs with like more feedback and stuff, I thought that we're going to do more like fault has because fault whenever you're targeting somebody, the radical changes like the color indicator, right? And then depending on the character, sometimes the actual radical itself changes whenever you're within the attack range or not. So I just think it's a smart idea. And it looks like something that's super small to to implement. I don't think it's that hard. Yeah, I mean, you never know. But that's good to see it. Then they're just going to they're just going to be doing some balance changes and bug fixes, definitely needs some balance changes in that game. I don't think they should be focused too much on balance, more about bug fixes right now, because the game's not in a state where you were balance is the problem or anything. Yeah, they probably don't have to focus on balance until the game actually gets to a more public serious note. Does that make sense? Yeah. Like, I they probably need to add more heroes before they even consider balance, too, because they got some nutty heroes coming around the corner. And when you listen to those heroes, kids is like, he already sounds broken. Yeah, like, I haven't I haven't even seen him play. That sounds broken. So I they might struggle with balance to be having such ambitious characters as well, because their characters are very, very ambitious. All the abilities they can do, the flying, breaking barriers, if it's the right one, right? Like, it's incredibly complex. The balance is going to be the most tricky. So I agree with you. Just balance is slowly over time. Focus on the bug fixes. I know how to balance. Just don't let skifter and jelly play. Yeah, no, right. Confirmed. But I mean, another thing, too, since you can have ringouts, like since you can knock people off the map or throw them off the map, whatever, just giving somebody a simple knockback ability has so many more implications in a theory that it would for any like any other moment. Yeah. For show. I saw I saw the video of you just sneaking up on somebody on the what was it that is it called the totem? Was it like that outer we call it the chonker? I don't know what it's actually called. Yeah, like the Green Boy, right? So I saw you sneaking up and you're like, I don't think they see me. Oh, my God. And then you just knock out right over the edge. I was like, get the fuck out of here, bro. He literally pulled that off like the first minute. Get me out, picked her up, checked her off the edge. It was pretty rewarding, pretty rewarding. See, but stuff like that, that's what makes the games memorable. Just interesting mechanics like that. It's nothing out of this world. Wasn't like, oh, this is like a crazy mechanic that they're working on. It's literally just to pick up and throw. And you just happen to be close enough to the ledge. It's it's awesome. Speaking of new kits and stuff, they also released the Exiles kit. He's I put all of his kit here, but I don't think we really need to talk about everything. He's going to be an invisibility assassin hero, which every fucking mobile has. You think they're ready for that? I don't because we all know I don't because we all know that vision is like so tricky. And MOBAs, right? Like what how they do it like because in ethereal, it's all just direct line of sight. You don't have bushes that you can hide in currently, for example. You don't have invisibility sections or whatever. So having a character with any sort of invisibility. That can prove problematic. You know what I would have liked? I would have liked for them to tell me more about the wards and their warding system before you talk about Exio. Yeah, well, the wards because that's something that's going to come down the road on the wards. Yeah, but that's something that still isn't officially in there. That not yet, at least, right? What works? Yeah. Did they actually put in the wards? I thought the wards weren't in there. Yeah, that wards. So wards are fully functioning now. They're functioning, but they don't beep whenever somebody enters their radius. So you don't get that's just a technicality. Yeah, that's just a technicality. But as long as the wards are actually in there and working, I would I would like to see a post about that, quite frankly. They did make a post about that. Where? It's they put it in their patch nose for before the stress test. Oh, see, but that's the thing, like I'm in like a social media post. Oh, OK. Like just like a quick little like a like a gif or a quick little clip of like the wards system working or whatever or them even just a picture with like one of their wards the way it looks because it's a unique looking thing. Right. So just showing their wards that wards are now working or something just to let people know. But I didn't read the back notes at all. So rip me. Yeah. The war is working there. But yeah, yeah, like you said, I don't I don't know if they're ready for for a stealth hero. It's this is going to be down the road, though. Like Grognark is coming before him, but maybe he'll be after Grognark. I don't know. Now, they did have a holiday post. They did. They did. And I loved it. Like, you know, like just scrolling through my Twitter and stuff. And I saw. Undyne games, ethereal class of souls, just mad simple. It was a picture with little snow falling. It's simple, happy holidays to all of you. Like it's just something so small that goes so far with the community. I'm telling you, like Gigi, Gigi to theory on that one. That's something that I paid its entity. I was like, Gigi. Yeah, they've always done that. They've always had a lot of little holiday posts. They usually do Chinese New Year, too, so they don't just do. American holidays. Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, that's smart. Specifically, how big mobas are in the east. Yeah, that's super smart. And yeah, I think that's about all I had for a theory, unless you had anything else. I'm pretty chillin on it. I'm sorry for the weekend. Yeah, let's get into predecessor. We don't really have any updates for predecessor. You said they did have a holiday post. Like, again, I didn't really pay attention. Yeah, no, you're chillin. So their their post was interesting because they put like, you know, your account leveling, how like they have like a progress bar around their avatar, so to speak, right? They literally just showed an animation of that leveling up. It glows and then just snow around it. It was very, very simple, right? But I found it more interesting that. They they took it as more of an opportunity to, hey, let's kind of like focus on what we've done. Over the past year, right? Which I didn't think that they were going to do. I thought they were going to give us like, hey, this is the stuff we want you guys to focus on moving forward, right? Instead, just before the New Year ended, they did an end of the year update. Like, hey, don't forget, we gave you the new UI. Don't forget, we updated map visuals. You know, we did music. We did menu different war wars were added mechanics. We changed kits around. We added items, just kind of giving everybody an overview. We did all this for you in the last year. Can't wait to do more for you. Yeah, so that was interesting. I'm more curious as to when are they actually going to talk about something like like an event coming up? Yeah, we actually talked about all those updates last week. And that was my big takeaway from it was I don't care about what happened over the year, they didn't even in their update, didn't even include everything they've done over the year. But what I do want to see is is a roadmap going forward. I want to know what's going on. I don't think they're going to. I don't think I would say that. I think these companies are scared of roadmaps. Like I you know what I probably say? I probably can see them first quarter doing another stress test. Probably first quarter. And then depending on the results on that, I could see them then moving towards open weekends because I because predecessors kind of stuck with that in the past, just open weekends weekend went OK. Let's do another weekend weekend went OK. Let's do another weekend ran into an issue. Let's let's simmer down. Let's work on stuff. So how do you how do you feel that predecessor? Has I don't want to use the word recovered because, you know, it's a sensitive subject to talk about with people with the whole, you know, how the stress test went and whatnot. So let's just call it adapted. How do you feel the predecessor has adapted after the the stress test and, you know, like they mentioned acquiring a partnering with that one company to handle the back end work and so by. Yeah, I think that was the best thing they did was they identified, you know, that they did have back end problems. And and presented us the solution like, hey, this is how we're going to solve this, so that doesn't ever happen again. Yeah, I like that part of it. I just wish they were more open like they used to be. I that's another thing I've been saying for a while now is. Pred, a strange or not so strange matter. A medicine is kind of closed off to us a little bit. They used to be so very open and transparent and it's very easy to, you know, to tell people no and then say yes. But they've been telling us yes for years and then all of a sudden it's no, they cut us off from the flow of information that we used to get and it kind of hurts kind of sucks. I I think a smoke, he still had his way. He'd still be live streaming his progress every day. I do, too. I do, too. I like he loved doing that shit, bro. Like, I think if it was up to him, he still would do it. I think that that's more of like a team decision by saying, hey, let's not do it. Because and it's something that you just talked about, like Over Prime was taking with Zoom and certain things. And then you can kind of tell the theory was taking a little bit of influence from stuff like that. Like that's bound to happen, right? Even subconsciously, like you just might be playing the game or you might see something. You're like, that's a great idea. Why don't we have that? Let's do our own version. So I think that's just them trying to be as incognito as possible so they can make a bigger effect. On people. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, they've from what they released, like, you know, like even that in development map, like camera walking through and stuff, just looking at the video and such. They they've been heavy contenders from the beginning. I think they've generated enough hype that they can afford to be quiet. Does that make sense? Because it's not like they have. I almost feel like they they they might feel like they don't have to prove themselves to anybody anymore because of all the public reception. I think that in their eyes, we proved our concept. Now let's just let us make it better. Yeah, I mean, they're running it more like an actual business than just a couple of guys that were excited about Paragon and making a remake, which is probably good. But again, it kind of sucks because I miss watching those old smoky streams and stuff. I miss watching Fringe stream himself working on the map. Yeah, just like and being able to see it, being able to even input on it, because that was huge for both of them. Yeah, like Fringe and Smokey, they would interact with the community and be like, you know what? I do like that idea. I think that's a good that's a good way to implement that ability on a character. Let's see if we can do that. So I miss that. I miss that for sure. But I'm willing to bet. As soon as these as predecessor becomes a little bit more open, let's say like early access, right? Watch them start doing it again. I could see it. I hope so. I could see it because that because at that point, it's like, hey, cats out of the bag. Like, here's some things we're working on. Give us your input sort of vibe. But yeah, I could totally see it. Now, let me ask you. Do you think companies like predecessor that haven't even gone into early access, for example, because they were aiming for a twenty twenty one early access that they didn't meet, right? Which it's it's fun. They could always just do it twenty twenty two. It happens. But do you think they should be focusing on cross platform as much as they've insinuated? It's a focus, which, for example, like Epic and Steam can be considered cross platform. Console and PC can be cross platform. Do you think they should focus on cross platform so much when they haven't even gone to early access in one platform? I don't think it's something they need to worry about because of Excel, but that's something that Excel might will handle. You think so? Because I know that they're certain. Yeah, I look I mentioned they're going to do all the back end stuff. But I'm not a hundred percent sure what that entails. Yeah, yeah, I looked up Excel by and all the all the services they provide. And that's one of the main things is being cross platform. Is having that personality. So that's already handled for them. They don't really have to worry about cross platform that much. That's massive, but having that like having to even if it's handled by somebody else just having that infrastructure in there so that they can actually just be like, hey, we're going to go to Epic Store. We're going to go to PlayStation next. Like all that infrastructure is there. We just got to do a few tweaks. That's dope. Yeah. Yeah, it's nice to hear. They handle their matchmaking, too. So like alls they have to do when I made his end is like there's just boxes. Like, do you want to match people up by win rate? Do you want to match people up by experience level? Do you want to, you know, do you want to just do away with that stuff? You can fully customize the matchmaking. That was it was big. Then them them them I'm picking up Excel bite, picking up the services of Excel bite was bigger than a lot of people, I think, realize. Yeah, I didn't even realize it was that in depth. Now, I also wonder and worry because, of course, one of the things that predecessor has for them is investors. But at the same time, it's it's a constant funding game for all these early projects, right? Just constant proving concept, getting more money, proving concept, getting more money. So I wonder if it's more of a high risk, high reward partnering with them? Or as far as finances go, or if that's something that they could probably just like, hey, we're willing to take that chunk out of the finances and just pay them and do it from now because that's something that we're 100 percent going to rely on. You know what I'm saying? Like, is it is it something that's going to affect that budget much? Because I can imagine those services might not be that cheap. Yeah, I have no idea for a recurring like contract wise or whatever. Right. Well, I didn't look. I couldn't find anything about the cost of outsourcing to Excel bite. But imagine it's probably a fairly large chunk of their budget. It's probably money well spent, though. Well, that's the thing I don't doubt it'll be money well spent. But imagine spending that money. And then for the next six months, you don't have any money coming in because you're not in early access or you haven't done a founder system where people can buy it into it earlier, whatever, because how long how many months has it been already? Like correct me if I'm wrong, three three ish, I think, since they picked them up. You remember when I'm not sure when they picked them up. Excel by announcement November 11th. OK, OK, so we're we're we're two months deep start about to start the third. That's already two months partnered with them without any extra money coming in that we know of. That's going to start piling up. They then if they're going to consistently pay for any service, even if it's just paying for servers, yeah, that's slowly. Just dwindling that that wallet. They're going to have to do some sort of income. Like I would be OK if they did a paid early access. I know a lot of people are against it. I I would not mind. It's pretty normal. Like what do you think? Do you think they should do a paid early access? I think they should. Yeah. I don't everybody. I don't know why everybody is always like, well, Paragon was free. They should be free. Now, Paragon, the fuck was not free in their closed beta. That was a paid closed beta paid early access originally for Paragon. You didn't get in. You didn't get to play Paragon at first unless you paid for it. Like people seem to forget that. I think it's just a play. Yeah, it wasn't always free. I just happened. I won a beta key. From somewhere or another. So that's how I got into it. But then I paid for the founders back just because I loved it so much after I got that key. But yeah, he said when I played, you either won a key or you had to pay for early access. So Paragon was not free. In their closed beta, I think. I think people forget to just length of development like Paragon was years in development before it even went to pay back early access, right? Predecessor, when was the first predecessor test that you and I met at like April 2019? I think it was March. March of 2017, 2018? 2018, I think. Was it March 2018? Yeah. It was definitely the very end of March is when they had that that first. Gotcha. We're starting to transition into this into the topic of discussion. I'm going to wave right now so I know where to cut and look for the timestamp. But yeah, people don't realize how long these games have been in development. We'll get into like what like how we feel about it, right? But like, predecessor has been working since probably 20, like I would say at least a year before the early alpha. I remember playing overthrow consistently. And that's how I met Smokey. Smokey just came into my channel incognito and he was like, hey, what if somebody was making one of these projects? What would you say to them? And I fucking went to him. I just said how I felt, right? And he was like, I like you. And then, you know, we just became homies, right? I didn't even know who the hell he was. So shout out to him for being a fucking ninja. Sneaky as shit on that one. But yeah, like it. It's crazy to even sit here and think that predecessor has been being worked on for about to be four years, maybe more. Yeah, something like that, because I don't fully know the time that it was behind the scenes. I just know from the time that he started streaming it, you know? Yeah. But yo, that's that's a while. And people don't realize that because of the development team's size that it's more than likely going to be substantially longer than Paragon was. Paragon had a good solid team working on it for, I want to say, three and a half years before it went to early access. So I've known these numbers in the past, but I can't recall them right now. Yeah, I don't remember exactly for it. It was a long time before Paragon was actually playable. And that was a good solid team. But the predecessor was a team of seven for a while. Create assets, too, though, right? And that's a big part of it. That's a good point. That's a good point now. Well, I think it's important to differentiate like for all these games, right? And Epic and creating the assets and stuff. So the person that makes the character model and the person that rigs it and then the animators and stuff, right? Like everybody had their own specific job to do. Essentially, the coders, like people that just put all the Lego pieces together. As far as they were concerned, they're like, OK, we got all the Lego pieces, we work. We're just going to put it in. And now we'll put everything together. So all these companies, they just necessary, well, you know, with the exception of Overfront, that they have their own new assets being introduced, right? All these companies are low key just picking up at a certain stage of development, right? If how long do you think these companies would take if they were to start adding characters and character models? And like, hey, like we can input a character once a month, for example, but we but we got to wait for the character guy to finish his model. He might take two to three weeks. And then the rigging guy might take like another one or two weeks. The animations guy might take a month doing all the animations because he's very specific. So like how long like do you think that's even in the feasible feature for companies like predecessor and and fault with smaller teams? I really don't know. It kind of depends on their artists, because with Omega, they did have that guy that made that pretty bad ass Murdoch, that Jailer Murdoch skin. Now, that was just a skin, but that still required a lot of 3D modeling and stuff on his part. Same with fault. They did their own skins and that still requires a lot of 3D modeling. Now, it doesn't that doesn't involve all the rigging and all that, but because you're just taking you're taking a pre rig structure and putting a code of adding to it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, yeah, do you remember like if we're if we're going to go back down memory lane here since the beginning that we've been watching these, right? Do you remember the first time playing over? I mean, sorry, the first time playing predecessor with British and everybody in there? Mm hmm. Holy shit, the rollback, bro. I remember being so excited. Yeah, I remember hitting my left click and be like, so it was a little odd, but I'm all right. I'm chilling, right? Like, oh, that took a little bit to actually fire. But yeah, I got I got to lead my shot a little bit. You know, I'm fangmau, so I'm swinging a little late, but you know, still kind of going at it. And you know what's crazy? People didn't look at that weekend as a failure or anything like that. People looked at that weekend and they were like, yo, they had to work on it, but it was a success. It worked. What do you think that is? I think it was because it was early. Well, it was it was a it was a lot of different things. It was this is about the time people were starting to realize that made above was kind of full of shit. They were looking for another beacon of hope and they were starting to jump on to the predecessor train. And then predecessor came out and it actually worked. I mean, it was it wasn't perfect or anything, but they they met their goal of doing a alpha test in March of 2018. And it was visible to the community. People were able to see it. I mean, like you said, it wasn't sure as hell wasn't perfect. There was a lot of bugs with it. And the they identified their first major problem, which was the server ping interactions, which they had to they had to fix. But yeah, I think that's mainly the reason people viewed it in such a good light because it was the first it was the first inkling we really had that a Paragon successor could exist in some shape or form. So that's a great point because overthrow was still out at this point was out, but nobody ever thought of overthrow as a as a sustainable game because it wasn't originally supposed to be a sustainable because it was just a project right originally. But I will say you brought up a great point. So there was a big wave of hype created by Metabuff specifically. And that wave of hype was let down. And predecessor was at the perfect opportunity, perfect location, perfect time and day, you know, the stars were aligned. They were just in the perfect spot to be like, hey, they disappointed you. We didn't. I think that might have to do with why it has such great backing from the beginning, yeah, because they were able to capitalize on a moment like that, whereas opposed to if you look like a company like Fall, right? They just kind of came out of the blue and they're trying to make their their mark, right? It's not like they were there to ride that original wave of hype. I think that's big. I think that's probably got a lot to do with predecessor's core support and why it's been so strong from the beginning because they've been needing expectations from the beginning. Does that make sense? Yes, but they did lose a lot of support because after that initial alpha test, they went just dead silent for like a fucking year, wasn't it? It's like a full year before we had anything back. Oh, I don't even remember, bro. Yeah, it was a long time before we ever heard anything again out of predecessor. But you think they actually lost people because of that? Because I feel like if you ask predecessor fan base now, I feel like you'd get the same answers that you got back then. It's like, hey, how do you feel about predecessor? Bro, they're going. They're amazing. You know, like they got a stuff to work on, but we're excited for it. You know what I mean? I don't think people, even if they were quiet for years, like I just I feel like if you would have asked after a year of silence back then, people still would have been like, can't wait for it. Somewhat. What really helped them out was when they finally did come out with something and it was like everything had been fixed and it was gorgeous and it played really well, really, really smooth. I've said for a while now, I think that predecessor feels the most like Paragon, whether whether that be a good or bad thing or not is up to you. But it definitely, to me, feels the most like coming home to Paragon. And that's what a lot of people love and want. Not to mention, for whatever reason, a lot of the major the larger streamers have gravitated towards predecessor. And then they got a huge amount of clout with Steve Superville coming in as a as an advisor for advisor. Like the Godfather of Paragon himself is their advisor. So there's there's a lot of stuff falling into place for them. The stars are aligning for predecessor, which is why I think they have such a huge following. I think I mean, after that alpha test, it was received rather well. But then that silence afterwards, they lost a lot of their momentum. But they've just they have gained it back with the quality of their workmanship and some of the people that they brought on board. Yeah, I could I could totally see that. Now, you brought up an interesting point. That was a hell of a chess move by them. Like, you know, just in hindsight, 20, 20, being able to announce that you had Steve Superville in the corner. Right. The Paragon refugees was like, oh, this game's good. Right. Yeah. Like, that's that's all they care about. This game's approved. It was just such a smart. Like I I got to give you the tiger. Like once Tiger Stripe guy became the the marketing guy over there. That man's been killing it. He's he's just done so many good chess moves that I look at it. And I'm like, that's sneaky as shit. But I like it because it's smart. Like mentioning Steve Superville is now part of the team as an adviser, huge. I even asked I was like, yo, the the stress test that, you know, depending who you ask, fail, success, whatever. I was like, did he actually did Steve Superville have anything to do with that stress test at all? And I was told by insight is like, nope. Like he he had nothing to do with that stress test. Like by everything that everything that for that stress test was already. Set, basically, before Steve even joined, right? But them marketing it just before the event made the event even bigger. It was so smart. It's clever. Like they've been really, really good about when to capitalize on moments. Like, hey, they're planning on having an event. A month before, let's mention that we're working on cross platform. And now the hype is crazy and stuff. They've been really, really good about their selective, their word selection and actually implementing marketing strategy. I just I just think the the quiet is the only issue that I have. Waiting for so long. Some of it, too, if people kind of give me shit for. They seem to think I'm against predecessor now for some reason. It's here's the thing. You and I both lived through made above that hype roller coaster of made above. They were promising shit that they couldn't deliver on. And I feel somewhat responsible for overhyping my community about made above because I did see some things that were going on and were like, that can't be right. Like that that can't be true. So I just didn't say anything about it and I wish I would have back then. Now I did start to start to call out made above after a while. And then, you know, we saw what happened with that. But I'm going to I'm going to do the same for predecessor, because I don't want that I don't want to repeat those mistakes. Like when I see people say they're backed by Epic, they're not backed by Epic. And I'm not talking shit about predecessor or made of studios by saying that they're not backed by Epic. But yeah, they got an Epic grant. But I'm just pointing out that no, they are not backed by Epic. That's not something that you want to spread around. That's something that they should probably nip in the bud themselves. They should say come out and say, you know, I know I know a lot of Yeah, they're not going to, which I think is going to that's because that's that's a made above style shit right there to because what made above did was they announced that end users agreement with PlayStation and everybody was like, it's going to be a PlayStation. And I was like, no, motherfucker, that just means that they signed an end users agreement with PlayStation. It doesn't mean anything about they haven't shown us a dev kit. They haven't shown us gameplay, but everybody lost their goddamn minds and everybody was like made above was like 98 percent of the community were behind them and nobody give a fuck about predecessor because of that. Because of that. So, you know, there's a lot of things that can go unsaid and that the community can be led to believe. And then you just let the community to believe that and stay silent. Yeah, they're letting and you can say you can step back and say, you know, no, I never said that we were going to be on PlayStation. I never said that we were backed by Epic. But if you're letting everybody fucking believe that, then you're complacent. I just don't think they're going to because they've done little hints and words here. Very, very sneaky mode, but it's just it's smart marketing and it's playing with people's emotions in a marketing way. Like, for example, when they released the information of we're going to be cross platform on release, everybody started going, wow, they're like, oh, my God, that means it's going to be on PlayStation and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, yo, you guys realize it's a possibility, but you guys realize it's much more likely that they're talking about like Steam and Epic or they're going to be on Steam, Epic and Ubisoft. Like who fucking knows, right? But those are different gaming platforms. People don't realize that. And I don't think they're ever going to do that because I think their marketing specifically. Revolves around that he said, she said, as long as people are talking about the game, it's good for them, whether they're whether they're saying something positive, saying something negative, whether they're saying something factual, whether they're saying what their opinion might be. At the end of the day, their goal is people are talking about the game. People aren't going to forget about predecessor as long as they're talking about it. If we still have motherfuckers till this day, arguing whether predecessor is going to be free to play or not on early access, that is a success in the marketing department because they are talking about predecessor. Yeah, it's true. And that's why I'm like, that's why I'm like, yo, I hate how clever Tiger is at times because I catch all this shit. But I'm like, that's a fucking Gigi at the same time because that's what you want from a marketing department. You want conversation and they and they've never let anybody astray, but they're they're ambiguous enough to where they don't give you all the details. They might give you 70 percent of the details, let you fill in the other 30 percent. Yeah. And then you go from there. I say now. I'll go ahead. I'll just go. It's been nice watching Omega Studios grow like I have because I remember back in the day when it was Smokey, Fringe, Patrick Star. Yeah, it was Smokey's wife was was part of the team just handling like the head mod. Yeah, she was she was she was the the go to. Yeah, man. And now to see how far they've come and the product they put out and everything is amazing. And I absolutely love it. I'm so I'm so proud of Omega. I'm very proud of them. Dude, it's crazy, right? They like how they basically when they brought brought in RGSS, right? And then eventually made him like the president of the company because he's handling all this business side stuff. I was like, we all live these these motherfuckers are making moves. I was like, yo, good chip for Ace, good chip for you. Ace is making moves. What? He went from being just like a content creator with information about the game and, you know, helping out with the game dev to I don't know what being president of the company. I was like, yo, seeing their development was exciting. But I think it was more exciting just knowing what that meant for the future of the game, the fact that they were taking all the proper channels and publicly saying, hey, we're registering as a full business. You know what I'm saying? We're actually establishing CEO, etc. Like all these different rules and roles in there that that that gives people like us hope that there is longevity in this by having all those official structures. Right. Now, if you don't mind me changing, how did you feel when overthrow turned into? Well, actually, let's not even go there. When overthrow turned into overprime, right? How did you feel when it was when overprime first release and it wasn't going to be a MOBA? It was going to be this other random game you were talking about your prime X, right? There you go. That you remember that? Yes. When I heard that, I was like, what the fuck is happening? Open world arena brawler using Paragon assets. Well, actually, it was crazy. I was like, yo, like I I didn't even fully understand it, to be honest with you. Like I wasn't following it. I was like, I don't even know what that is, but I don't want anything to do with that. Like the subject alone was like, no, I don't want it. Like forget it. That had as much validity as that one game where you played music with the Paragon assets to the beat. You know what's what I'm talking about? Like, yeah, that one, like it had it was that much validity. Like I ain't touching it. Not for me. Did you play? I didn't. I heard some people had fun. That game is amazing. I saw a YouTube video of somebody speedrunning it. Yeah, I didn't even know people were already doing that type of shit. But I saw it and I was like, yeah, I'm not touching it. No, it's fun. I'm not doing absolutely nothing to do with Paragon, of course. And it's not which is fun. Yeah, but yeah, it's pretty cool, pretty cool game. Now, how did you feel whenever Rocket Mania got breading? Like when that news happened and then over throw was being reworked and then they were kind of going to be a side by side, both projects at the same time sort of vibe. I didn't like how they announced it. That's for God damn sure. I still remember that. But, you know, there was Prime X and they weren't planning on doing a Paragon remake at all. It was either their own weird thing. Then they brought in Rocket Mania and then their announcement was we've been watching everybody else fail at making their successor. So now we're going to step up and do it. It was so fucking cocky and condescending to everybody else that was making one because at the time fault was out. Not well, fault wasn't out, but it was it was in development. They'd been they'd finally been announced. So it was fault and predecessor. And they were pretty much the same. Yeah, strange, better or no, better. You're doing a shit job of this. We weren't going to do it. But now that we now we see that the community needs an actual successor. They need us. We're going to step in. Yeah, that was some cocky as shit they did right there. You know, I think 2020, considering the net marble acquisition, considering how far they've actually gotten. Well, playboys, the cockiness. Yeah, we can't can't even hate too much to be honest with you. I don't even think they kind of put up. I don't think that cockiness is really intended. I think that was just something was lost in translation and culture, different cultural differences there. I could see that, like, and trust me, if somebody uses Google Translate to communicate with some relatives sometimes. Yeah, shit can get lost sometimes, for sure. Now, I'll tell you what. I still think the biggest wow to the Paragon refugee market came out of fault when they just showed up out of nowhere. They did with the bang that they did, right? Because it was like, hey, nobody knows who these guys are. But they bam, here they are. The game's playable. Everybody's in there and playing like a month later for like the the the Christmas event that they had or whatever. And I feel like that was a double edged sword. I feel like that impressed people and worried them simultaneously. Mm hmm. They kind of showed up a little too quick. They feel me with predecessor. Well, people had a year to get ready for the event. Like, people knew that predecessor was coming, showing up out of nowhere. And, you know, me even knowing the origins behind the scenes, which probably you do too, right? Yeah. I feel like when they made that announcement to the world, like, hey, we are here. We're serious. A lot of people got a lot of red flags from fault originally because of how quick they showed up. And not only that, but they showed up on the heels of Project Agora with eight of the names. So we had just got about that. So we had. Oh, my God. Huge scandal of people faking the creation of a Paragon successor in order to and actually getting money donations. Yeah. And then here comes this other. Oh, we're a fault. I'm like, oh, are you are you really? Yeah, I bro since day one, I was like, what the fuck is it called fault? I stood on up to the day every every lead to their credit, though. Like, I put out a video. I was like, hey, guys, I was like, I know everybody's going head over their heels, head over heels over this fault stuff. It's like, let me check into it first and verify how valid they are, because that's what I did with Project Agora. And then I told everybody this is a fucking scam. Get the fuck away from it. When I contacted OmniNOT, I was like, hey, man, do you mind sitting down with me and answering a few questions about the game? And I'm going to warn you right now. A lot of this is going to be about verifying whether you're an honest company or not. He was like, sure. Do you want to play while we're doing it? And I was like, what? What? He was like, yeah, we could play. We could load up. You could play we'll play a match and we'll have just somebody on the other team and you can answer questions while you play. And I was like, yeah, OK, you know, OK. So yeah, that blew me away. Absolutely blew me away. I think that that probably was. It would have been the best results if they would have done a little bit of marketing leading up to it, right? Just kind of even a month or so, just start making posts about it, sharing, et cetera. You know, a new Paragon remake coming out around the corner or whatnot and then show the world and then they could see everything that they had done. You know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like even those little things and which kind of begs the question that, you know, well, not necessarily the question, the statement that fall has struggled with marketing for a good little while. Yeah, they have, right? Like, if I could, I think we both agree that if fault had stronger marketing since the moment they came out, fault would have had a much better alpha. It would have had a much better early access release, much better overall attendance to the game. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, and they've just had a lot of unfortunate problems, too. Like when they're released, yeah, that's true. The Internet for the entire East Coast went out. Yeah, like a third of the World Wide Web shut down. Like that was early access and that was just. That's not a good thing to go bad, Juju. And see, but the fact that we can say not their fault at all, that the name needs to change, bro. But do you remember? Like, I'm curious as to what you felt about fall from when they were Christmas event alpha and six months later, Early Access. How did you feel when the Early Access actually came around? I didn't care for it because I thought their Christmas event, like it ran better for me than any other iteration of fault after that. Like it, I felt like they were going downhill and then the Early Access was even further down the hill for me. And that wasn't true for everybody. Like it just, I don't know if something to do with my computer settings or something. It just played like absolute dog water whenever I finally got to play the Early Access. See, I thought, and I don't know for sure, right? But if somebody, like, you know, being part of the testing team at that point and whatnot, I distinctly remember the Christmas event and how much of a success it was, right? And then when I went into Early Access, I was like, this just feels different. Like it looks different. It feels different. Why do I feel like my character is walking in molasses right now? Right. Like I definitely feel like there was a bit of over ambition on their side to be like, hey, we want to give them the next step. And I don't know if that next step was as ready or let me say as well conveyed, because I think it would have been smart to like get all the like the major content creators in there, for example, like a week before and just haven't tested, you know, haven't played it, give feedback, etc. They did that. And then well, not for the Early Access. For the like for the Early Access, I remember like I had to wait just like everybody else for the release of the play. It was a very weird feeling. Because like, for example, of, you know, being a fall partner now, we get so much communication from fall now, as opposed to what was back then. Right. Like as far as partners or even just community members, like the posts that they make. I am not sure what it was. I can't pinpoint it exactly, but I definitely feel like there was a change between the Christmas and the Early Access that. Was there is just something shifted, something shifted as to maybe the way that they wanted to take the game. Something shifted. Like it was just like a sudden enough change that the entire community was like, wait a minute. Why is this happening? Or why am I moving so slow? Or what's going on with the pace of the game? Or what's going on with my visual settings? Like I think they. Might have gone through what overprime I go through all those drastic changes of and then when people go in there expecting Paragon, they're going to be like, what do you mean I got all my abilities off for it? Like you get me? Is like, I'm a little confused. What do you mean there's only two towers? So why am I moving so fast? Like you get what I'm saying? Like I kind of fear for overprime on that side because they're going to get that culture shock and hopefully overprime is better received with the proper marketing because they've been showing people for a good while. Hey, we're different. You know what I mean? Whereas to fault never showed people all those changes. They just surprised them with it. And I think that's that's something that we've noticed out of all these games. Like I love I've loved how each of these games have evolved from a marketing standpoint. I love how I love and hate how predecessor went from being super open, not talking. I looked it up for nine months and then I don't know where we're open again. And then now we're just kind of chill out for a bit, like, you know, like that roller coaster that we've been on. I both love it and hate it because I've been through it the entire way, right? Right. Do you think these and this is a hard question, right? Like you don't have to fully answer it if you want. But do you think that we as community members are even going to get to see these games early act? I'm sorry, not early access. See these games full release within 2022. All right, before we get into questions for us, yeah, before we get into that, though, we are running a little long for the actual show. But what I would like to do is true, go ahead and close out for the Minions and then we'll continue this conversation. And if anybody does want to watch the rest of the conversation, I'll post it as a separate video. How's that? How's that sound? But if the video gets like a hundred likes, you'll post it about that one. Yeah. Yeah. I'll do that one. I'll do that. No, I'm just kidding. I'll post it anyway, because I'm not like that. I can't do that kind of thing. It hurts me. Yeah, but you got to drive those like those those likes up, bro. You got to do it. Yeah, I said, like a little mile tired. All right. So, yeah, that's that's going to close it out for now. But we are going to continue this conversation. I will be I will post that as a as a separate video. But before we do close it out, when did you got anything you want to plug? I just. Give your boy, Mangoos, some love, like it. Get it to a hundred likes, regardless. I don't know if he's not going to say it. I'm going to say it for him. Get the video at least a hundred likes. Leave a comment down below, both because the YouTube algorithm is a savage fucking beast. And the more likes, the more comments, the more the video gets shared out to people, right? So show your boy, Mangoos, some love, and y'all can find me on any social media, Twitch, whatever, under Windu the Mace, much love. Thank you for having me, bro. And I'll have you linked down below and be sure to check out when do host the Fault Partner Panel where we talk about nothing but fault, really. It is a it's a good a good time. It's a good time. And we do it that every Friday at what, about 738 30 on the bearded Wolverine channel. And then it gets posted as a YouTube video on Windu's channel if you prefer to consume the content that way. But, yeah, that's a podcast. And all it's a podcast, too. I forgot. I forgot about that. Yes, bro. Yes. OK, OK. We do talk about all the other projects in comparison, even though that podcast is specifically focused on fault. Right. But, yeah, that's going to that's going to close it out for this week, folks. Thanks for coming out. If you want to hang around and watch the video, that'll be posted. I don't know what I'm going to name it, but the continued conversation or some something like that. But yeah, the real talks. And the real talks. Appreciate you all coming out to watch the show and I'll see you guys next time. A man goes special shout out to channel members foolish blood hunter jelly knees me I'll mix for men stunt Farith and Raven.