Why not? Look at all anyway. Hello everyone and welcome back to for the minions the weekly show where we talk about predecessor over prime and ethereal this week.  And then we'll go to talk about over prime, possibly adding a fog wall into the prime spirit and Xena being part of Maeve and a virtual hip hop idol group, which is wild. And ethereal is bringing us some noxious gameplay and some changes to the map, specifically the bases, which are really nice. So without further ado, I am your host, the man goose, joining me as always, my friend and co-host jelly knees. How you doing, jelly man goose? I am so good. And I can't imagine why you're talking about tank counters today after I literally did one game of it and went 24, 8 and 15. No idea why you're suddenly bringing that. But I am fantastic. Happy to be here with all the information. And we also have the Viking Jedi with us. Welcome back Viking Jedi. Thank you. Thank you. It is, it is the best beard on, on all platforms. You know, so I'd go so far to say I'm just saying anyway, but yeah, I'm doing good. Thank you for not asking me if I'm doing well, but I'll throw it out there that you care about my wellbeing. You know, I'm too blessed to complain. High chat. Hopefully you guys are also having a blessed week and had a good weekend. And yeah, I'm ready to get into it. Right on. Then let's move right along as soon as I find the media source for for predecessor here.  Oh, I mean, I made that a long time ago. I thought it was cool again. I'll take it. I tried to make it look very 16 bit. Anyway, let's talk about predecessor. He's so sad, though, because I missed prime dunk and that was in the prime. Oh, shoot. I just want to cry now. I need to adjust the size on this stuff. There we go. All right. So let's talk about predecessor. They added Revenant in. We talked about the patch last time, but now we've actually been able to get our hands on him looking at just the chat, the hubbub. A lot of people are saying that they think he's weak. I don't think he's weak at all. I just think he's a much higher skill gap, ADC than any of the ones that they have in right now. So in the right hands, he's strong as all hell. In the wrong hands, it's like they don't even have an ADC, which experienced in our in our game today. But yeah, jelly, what do you think about Revenant in predecessor? I think overall, I mean, he's he is Revenant, right? He's got all the Revenant things, the foreshot, which also props to predecessor for adding in his basic attack to the website after the fact last week and then check during out the week. And sure enough, they added a right on basic attack one on there. I think like you said, he's, I wouldn't call him weak as an overall implementation. I think if he pops off, he's probably one of the stronger AD carries. And if he doesn't, he's probably one of the weaker AD carries that he's really on either side of the spectrum, depending on how well the person does with him.  The almost full item Revenant still felt like he wasn't doing a thing because he just got deleted or didn't do any damage if he managed to stay alive. But I've seen plenty of Revenants this last week, just destroy people, just two shotting people, just the whole nine yards. So it's definitely one of those it's going to come down to individual player skill and how well you did throughout the entire game as well. Jenna, have you got a chance to play? I know you haven't been playing a lot of predecessor lately, but so I haven't gotten my hands on him, but where it was in a lot of games with him after the patch through. And it did seem that that's the thing who knows, attacking him. I think that it comes down to what you guys are describing, which is skill is the best thing I could think of online. By the way, the cameras are doing all kinds of weird stuff.  Oh, okay. It's all Uno's fault. But yeah. So I feel like Revenant is a niche 80 carry where you do need one. I think you need your team to play around him in a specific way to you as the Revenant need to understand your role is not the same as a typical 80 carry role and like using your ultimate and all those things are way more niche and finite. Like you can't just spam abilities where I feel like some of the other 80 carries are a lot more forgiving in that regard. So Revenant takes a higher skill, I think, to really show the strength of him. I still think he's not super hard to pick up and play necessarily, but to play him well, I do think I put him on like a shm medium level of needed skill and understanding. And I think you need to know like other 80 carry sometimes can just, you know, attack the nearest target and, you know, like, you know, front to back teamfight in a sense. I don't think Revenant's strength is that maybe like, I think Revenant needs to really be trying to find clever angles to destroy the backline or the squishies. Because if he's just sitting there fourth shotting on tanks, I don't think he's really going to be as efficient as say a Murdoch would be or almost actually any of the other carries would probably do a better in front to back. So knowing that I think is the key to making Revenant more successful. But that's not always feasible in some of the games that you might be getting into, despite you maybe having the know how of operating him, the game itself might not lend it to providing that for you. So I think that's really the difficulty, at least in predecessor where Revenant kind of sticks out a little bit as a sore thumb, but I'm very happy to see him in the game because I think it's made things a bit more interesting as far as like how people are approaching the game, which is always good. Yeah, I think I did. Oh, there you go. No, I'm sorry. Back. Now you're back. Jelly summed it up pretty well. He's a hypercarry. I think he's I think they implemented him well. He's he is what he is supposed to be. I think he's like, like, I think it's great. I think you are going to have people that think he's weak, but you have people that think he's way too strong. So I think that's good. I think they did a great job of implementing Revenant. That's a risky pick. If you're talking about like, if you were talking about 5v5 gameplay, Revenant's a risky pick because you have to be able to get him online to bring him into the late game and be any kind of meaningful anything for his team. Right. And so if you boil that down to solo queue, he's an even riskier pick because now you're going in with potentially a support you don't know against a team. You don't know how well they play together. A team that may be coordinating better than your team, right? They have more fang teeth, whatever it's going to be, right? It's just all around. He's a risky pick in comparison to the other carries that are in the game. But if that risk pays off, he will be better than every other of one of those other carries. Now, the other thing I did want to talk about, though, is this is something else that's been a hot topic on Reddit recently is tank counters and just tank pages in general, but specifically tank counters. And we experienced a bit of that today. It was Jelly was playing counters for us, the enemy team had a, had a counters and they both had, by far, the top damage out of both teams while building incredibly tanky and being extremely survival, survivable in teamfights. It was kind of, it was a little crazy. Both of us had over 30,000 damage over the next person in damage charts. We were at 65 and 70,000 and the next person was at 40. Like it was, it was not even close. And sure enough, every team fight was, whichever one of us goes down first, the other team wins. Like if I went down, their team won the team fight. If they went, if she went down, our team won the team fight. That was all it was, was which count has survives. It's absolutely busted, especially early on. I was told, I told Mangus at the beginning of the game, I was doing 70 damage in radius around me. Oh, look, Alex Brown. Hey, thank you, Alex Brown. But you appreciate it. We didn't even really hype this up that much, but this is a hundred. I mean, we're not really doing anything special though. Well, that's on you. I, you were like, I know it's the hundred. I don't really want to do anything, but I think it's a pretty cool achievement. So I'll hype it up a little bit along with Alex Brown.  I'm a later addition, but getting to a hundred episodes on this and still having people bought in and wanting to be part of it. I think it's really cool. I mean, we've moved to live now versus it being just a podcast format that you do before and you would edit it and then upload it. I mean, it's really come a long way over a hundred episodes. I think it's something to be proud of. I remember when Jelly was a new addition. Way back when. But getting back to the 10 count is I have my own idea of why I think it's so strong, but I'm very curious, since you've obviously played a Jelly, what do you think it was that makes it so much stronger than just saying like the typical count is build that you would expect? It's, so it's not just a count as thing. Anyone running this build will do decent at the very beginning of the game and propel themselves forward into late game. The biggest thing is you build fire blossom and then you build the tier two that builds into fire blossom because they have different unique passives. You get to stack both of those things.  The tier two version gives you 20 damage over time. So you build both and you're doing 45 damage over per second, over time to everyone around you, just in perpetuity, while building health, armor, et cetera. Like you're getting the good stats that keep you alive longer, as well as just radiating more damage than you can do realistically at level four, five and six, right? And then that helps you take jungle camps easier. That helps you get into lanes healthier. That helps you do more damage just as you're running around, right? Especially on countess, where you, once you blow your cooldowns, you're kind of SOL, right? You're just on a hope that things work out for you and in your gank or whatever is going on. Being able to have that constant 50 damage going out there is just absolutely insane and super strong on anybody, but especially on countess. Hey, so it's just wild. Is there, because my, my thought process to go along with it was, uh, are you able to get like through your rotations because you're able to survive? So you're getting multiple rotations where typically I would think of countess as like, you get in, do your full rotation, then you get out. And that's kind of that. Hopefully I killed somebody like that. There's, there's what you guys get. Uh, I'm just going to hang out here until my cooldowns come back up and hopefully I can dive back in and you guys aren't all dead.  Like you're able to get more rotations, more autos, all that stuff because of the tankiness. And you can easily, by the time I was at like late game, I was getting four or five rotations off without even worrying about my health, right? And that's in big old teamfights too. But even there was a game, it wasn't the man, one mangoes and I were in together, but one before that that I was by myself and streaming my screen. Mangoes watched me one V one a steel with impunity that steel was just losing health over the time he was fighting me.  And I didn't, I didn't care. I wasn't worried about it. It was just nothing. And that to me was like, whoa, like this is actually insane. If I can, a steal that was doing pretty well in the game already in one V one me, and I'm not doing great. And I can just stand there and just not really worry about it and just let him burn him down over time. Super great. Do you, do you think anything like kind of goes along with what Alsasa said in the chat about it? Tank count is good because it procs are passive or is there, do you know already if passive is that's what it is. It's, you don't have to execute anything to get the healing out of her kit. All you have to do is hit your abilities to get the healing out of her kit. That takes a little bit of the skill of playing count us away and it enables the tank count us made up to, to be what it is. And once you get that 10 stacks, like it's just, it's so hard for you to die. Like you really have to, it takes a whole team coordinating against you in order for you to really be at risk of death in any way shape or form. There were several times, both the enemy count us and me in our game we played earlier that we're running away with, yeah, a quarter health, but we're running away with quarter health after going in on four or five people and then just walking out afterwards. Because it's, especially with her Q, if you're using her Q effectively and chasing people down and then at the last second, just pop right back out. There's no risk on it and you're not at risk of dying either. Like it's just, it's wild. Pretty crazy. Sounds fun. Fluvio Martins, if when there is console news, new console news, that will be the absolute first thing we talk about. I promise you. Yeah, I'm sorry. I didn't know I was going to mute him for that long, but I do. He just was spamming it. Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. I was like chill, chill out. But no, there's no new console news.  So. So Mind Traverted just pointed it out to you. I've seen this on Reddit. I've seen the same thing. I've seen screenshots on Reddit of nine or 10 people running the same two items or running tank builds because of these two items and their combination with each other. Yeah. And that's just because it's so strong. It's wild. 50 damage every second in perpetuity is just going to be hard to beat on any character. Yeah.  Which was insane. Combustion Narbash. Oh. Terrorized test way back when. The other thing I want to talk about with predecessor, it's a problem I've been having and Jelly said that he's seen that other people have been having it.  And then if I record anything else, like if I'm trying to record desktop or something, it goes into the folder where predecessor is because my computer is reading that predecessor is still open.  I'm not saying that fucking, because it's easy anti-cheat and predecessor, both are still running in the background after you close the game out. So I'm not, I'm not saying that they're doing anything shady. I just, it's something that they need to fix. It's something that I need to personally go in, look to see what the fix is and fix it myself too.  Mangoose is saying that they're farming crypto in your machine after you close the game. That's what he does. It's not what I'm saying. Before we actually too far away, I actually, because I'm curious, again, you guys have both played with it. Do you think it needs to be nerfed? Like, do you think that items themselves need to be nerfed? Or is this something that people can play around once they know that it exists? Like, is there any outplay ability? It just needs to be taken out. It needs to be looked at. And the tier two and the tier three need to have the same unique passive. You shouldn't give the stack the items. And so the downside is that you can't build two of the tier three, right? So you're sitting on a tier two for the vast majority of the game or all the game if you don't sell it, right? So it is limiting your item slots by having one less item that you can get a full tier three of, right? So like a super late game, I sold it and sold the tier two and built a full tier three item because that is more beneficial for me for that trade, right? But in general, you shouldn't be able to stack those two of the exact same passive or on a single person. It's just wild. As far as counters to it, I wouldn't say like the tainted items work, but mainly the tainted armor items work against Countess because a lot of times with Countess, by the time you're hitting her with an ability, she's already dumped her kit on you. So to prevent some of that healing, just having like the tainted guard or something like that would be a decent counter. He deals damage to you. You have to apply the anti-heal to her. Yeah. So I'm guessing maybe if one of the devs are in chat, they'll probably confirm or deny that this maybe was an unintended interaction because it just seems like or they just didn't realize that it could be as strong as it is on some of these characters. You know, it's a brand new game. There's going to be stuff like this that happens. Yeah. Yeah. I highly doubt they intended for you to be able to double up the Fire Blossom passive, but if they did, then that's nuts. I think a way that they can counter the build without making them the same unique passive is make them scale. Right? In the shop at least, I don't think they do, but in the shop it says deal 20 damage and then deal 25 damage when you get to the full Fire Blossom. Right? So if I, and it's 1200 gold for the 20 damage version, right? So 2400 gold, I can do 40 damage around me. I would rather see that scale based on a stat. Right? So then early game, it may only be 10 damage, but late game, it may be 50 damage. But for early game, which is where Countess cares about it the most, right? Then you're not seeing every Countess build this item. Now it's an investment item that they have to be aware of. A bunch of artists says it's a combination of factors. First they buff mages base damage, which means mages who don't build full damage will still deal more on average. So I think that's also true. Especially in games, and I'm going to bitch about this later on because it's a both a predecessor and overprime thing, and you guys know my thoughts on this, but surrendering early.  It's finally happened. Like I knew this would happen eventually where I would be the old man saying old man shit, but it would be about video games.  Game out.  You didn't just quit. You kept trying, you know.  I notice it most after a new patch. You know, because people maybe were like, okay, I'll we'll stick it out. Because let's say, for example, you wanted to play Revenant, but it was locked in. Somebody else is already doing it. So you're going to try something else. And then that Revenant feeds or whatever. Something happens where you're annoyed.  I just want to get out of this game and I want to go and do something else. I can relate to that, but there's there's a lot of people who I feel like have that mentality before you even get into game regardless of game state. And they're wanting to FF when things are even or you're maybe slightly behind, or even sometimes we had a game where we were ahead.  I know you guys both I think play with the chat off. I still have it on so that way I can see how toxic people are. But that's a lot of it. Sometimes these guys are keyboarding at each other because a gank didn't go the way that they wanted or whatever. Like somebody didn't follow through on the call that one guy thought was the better call. And so they're upset about it. And so they're just like, well, I'm not going to play the game now. And I'm just going to keep FFing over and over and over again. And I think that's the weak mental stuff that to me is super, super frustrating and why I laugh so hard on air short in your TikTok because that's what it is. And some of these guys that are just have these weak mentalities about like the whole game like one, I didn't get the champion. Oh, I didn't get the role I want. And it's just like you can see it. You can hear it. You can feel it. Like it just is palpable. And it's so frustrating because there's no solution other than trying to reach to a broader audience and be like, stop being that guy.  Other than adding a, what is it? The lane prior or whatever, right? Like where they can pick which lane they want to be in before the queue, like top, mid, whatever. I'm blanking on what to call role selection. Be able to do role selection and before queuing up. Here was my suggestion.  And in a, in a predecessor, it solves two problems. Make it cost coins to cast a surrender vote. And that gives you something to spend your coins on. So bam, there you go. Two birds, one stone. I think the biggest thing for both games, honestly, with surrendering in mind, there needs to be a longer cooldown between surrender timers. Yes. I can't stand that you can fail a surrender vote and within 60 seconds already be starting another one. Right? Because I've seen so many games for both sides that it's just like every time you hit no and the second it's off cooldown back up there and you hit no again and again back up there and back up there, increase the timer between it. Make it five minutes, right? Make it something that it's if that, because then if it goes to a no, you're either going to get the AFK from the person who wants to surrender, in which case get them out of the game, ban them, or they're going to get with the program and know that they have to wait five minutes and play the game for another five minutes. And maybe the game turns around in such a way that the game continues instead of that surrender vote coming out. But the constant 60 second surrender, they never have that moment to switch that mentality differently. It's just, okay, well now I just wait 55 seconds and I hit surrender again. Do it again. They're always just waiting for the next one instead of having a moment to actually shift into, maybe this game is winnable. Yeah, I do like the idea of it costing something.  No, because to me, I feel like it didn't, you have people like holding games hostage. And there's definitely been games where it's like, we're just getting like, you know, you have somebody running it down or trolls or doing whatever is, you know, especially if they recognize us from FTM, sometimes they get people who just want to do some nonsense. Right. And I don't think it's fair to punish people for wanting to get out of a game that's not fun to play, especially in the quick play, maybe in ranked, you can be a little bit more aggressive in that regard. But in quick play or these, you know, like supposed to be four fun modes, I don't want it to be too egregious for people to be able to get out of toxic games. I do think though, to Jelly's idea that you added per person. So yeah, you do it that first time. Okay. Nobody surrenders. All right. You're on a five minute cooldown. You cannot, you know, maybe somebody else can be like, you know what, that guy had it right. Let's, let's, let's be out there that surrender. And then everybody again says, no, okay. Well, you two are both now on a five minute cooldown and you just have to hope that, you know what I mean? I think that would be a little bit of a solve. But again, I think a lot of it just comes down to, I've noticed it more when it's new patches, new characters that people want to play and they're not getting what they want. And they just hold games hostage or cause issues. They are. Every time he comes in, slam something. Uh, I don't know. I think that's about wraps it up for predecessor. So we, we kind of got on a surrender tangent there. But uh, yeah, you guys ready to move on to a thorough after all, let's do it. I love ethanol talks. Oh, gee. Uh-oh.  All right. So for ethereal, we've got some new bases. Uh, you can see in the imagery right now, the bases used to be kind of like a barren dirt environment sort of. And now it's a very kind of very clean, very shiny, very cool looking base now, which is a welcome change. These, these images make the, the old base look worse. I think that it actually was. No, that old base was terrible. The old base on the old map just, it was a double whammy of like, oh, this map and then the, I get to the bases and great. The bases remind me of the rest of the map. Not great. And then you look at the new one, you're like, yes, like this is, this is one, it's a base, right? It's not an encampment somewhere in the middle of the end of the road, right? It's a base. All right. That's a, that's the biggest win for me. And that was, that was the thing. When I joined the team, that was my biggest like sticking point. When I looked at the map, I was like, I want bases to be bases. I don't want them to be encampments. I don't want them to be little podunk nothings. I want people to go in there and be like, this is my base. I'm defending this giant structure, not this little teeny guy in the middle of my encampment. Like this is 100, 100 million times improvement over the previous. I don't care what Mingu says about the old one not being that bad. It was terrible. It wasn't that bad. What I really like about, okay, go ahead, Jenna, am I bad? Well, not only visually, does it just look amazing, right? I think the thing that seems nutty to me is how much closer the portals are to the spawn. Is that going to expedite like too, like how the minions are going to travel in? Like what did you guys have to change like the pathing to get to the core and all that stuff? Because I would imagine that this is a pretty big, not only change visually, but balance wise, because you're going to have people rotating into their lanes faster, all that kind of stuff. Because there's way less dead space. So not only is the visuals, to me, amazing, it's so much better than before. But like that to me was the thing that jumped out. I was like, man, those portals are way closer to the base. I mean, rotations are going to be faster. Minions are going to be coming in faster or leaving fast. What, right? Like am I right about that? Maybe. This post is about the bases. So, you know. No, I don't. Jesus. This man.  No question. What I really like about it though is you'll see as the video scrolls through, there it is right there. There's an actual shop at the in the back end of the base.  I like that there's an actual shop with like weapons and stuff that you actually could be entering and purchasing whenever you go back to base. By the way, I don't know if people know. Hey, that's for Nikolai, right? Maybe. I mean, I don't know. It's maybe there's stuff in there. There's stuff in there for characters.  No, but I completely agree. I think having a shop, having a central location of like, this is where I actually get my stuff. It's a little tiny, tiny detail, realistically, right? I've never gone into a game like predecessor or over prime and been like, they don't have a physical shop. Like that. I've never done that. But whenever I see that there is a physical shop, I go like, that's a cool attention to detail. Like, that's a little thing that goes a long way. And I mean, a part of that as well is there will be a shop keep in there that will have voice lines and interact a little bit with what's going on. So it's not just going to be an empty place where there's just items. There will actually be a presence in that, which is super cool as well. Also a cat. Yeah. There's a little cat in there moving around. I love it. In Jelly's room or in the on the map? Oh, OK. There's a shop on the left side. On the shop cat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The table. Oh, shop cat. It is great. The lighting like messed up perfects as the lighting is so good. Yeah. I got some bombs. God, man, how do you not look at the old bases and think they're just awful? Like, I didn't think they were that awful.  And who's wrong? Uh, no, I think there is something to be said that the drastic like difference in contrast of the two is making it seem like one is worse than the other, but it wasn't great before. So, but yes, music, this is the ethereal. Well, not the map, but I guess it's a map change, but it's the base change is probably most accurate. We got the static image of the new design for the base as well. Bit on the screen here. Size it. Go. Oh, yeah, the concept design. Yeah.  Like four by three, I think it's a square. Yeah. No, this is just so this is just the concept for the basis of what the initial idea was for them before it was modeled and put in the map and all that kind of stuff. Cool. Looks good. This is what the testers are using currently. This is live on test. Yep. This is actually, I think some of the gameplays that have been revealed already have like pieces where like you can see a part of the base, but yeah. Kind of one. And then we have another still here. Put you over to it. I think there's also just another concept drawing. This one, if I'm remembering correctly, is they took an actual shot of the map of where the basis sit in the map and then our concept artist drew over that. Okay. Kind of get the exact feeling of size and scale and all of that kind of stuff to show what it's going to look like actually on the field itself. So this is just a drawing over an image not the actual top down of the base itself. And then also we got some Noxus gameplay. And also myself. Also myself. Okay, go away. Go away, you.  So Patreon people probably got to see this weeks ago. So if you, yeah, so if you're somebody who likes to follow along with projects and have a little bit of disposable income and want to support ethereal, I think the Patreon is a really good way and you'll get access to some of the content that they put out well in advance. The shopkeep I was mentioning is actually already shown on the Patreon. So Patreon members have already seen what that shopkeep looks like. And there have been some really encouraging comments about the shopkeep that I love too. Nice. So the Noxus gameplay. Noxus is one of my favorite heroes. One of the reasons I've gone from being a support main to a mid main is because I enjoyed playing Noxus so much in ethereal. Perfectly honest. And we're seeing here her new targeting radicals. So it used to be very difficult to tell what area you were going to be placing your abilities in. And now it's very easy.  And you now have like that center target radical know that if you hit them with that center targeting radical they will be stunned by that rock as well as taking the damage. Everybody else I believe gets slowed on the outside if it lets us change. But yeah, this is Noxus. Incredibly fun to play. Mangus is being very kind by saying very difficult to aim your stuff before. It was not impossible. Yeah. Because there was literally no indication. You just cast and hope it went to where you wanted. Yep. Now you can actually see where it's going to go. So I think that is a huge, huge improvement. But Noxus in general is super fun for sure. I did not know that it was going to be just supposed to be a mid lane main though. So that's good to know. Yeah. Not that I disliked Marina. I still like Marina, but uh. And he thought he was going to hate Marina too. I did think I was going to hate Marina. I thought I was going to love Malaya. Hate Marina. I thought I was going to hate Leah. Love Leah. Lovely. I love. I didn't think I was going to like Sky Slayers at all. Fuck. Love playing Leah. What's up cat? Um, but yeah, just so Noxus is good. You got like a straight line theme attack. Um, you've got a root that you could put on the ground. Then your other ability, um, you have, um, it shoots out a line of, um, projectiles that tracks onto your target, kind of a lock on. But if everything that gets hit by the root gets hit by that lock on and for, for the, for the full damage. So if you catch somebody inside of a minion wave, you're clearing the wave and dealing damage to them at the same time. So it's nice to have that sort of combo skill expression in her kit. Like I said, her ultimate big look, kind of like a giddy and meter, meteor, except way, way bigger. And then, um, she kind of has a gray stone passive too.  I think it's all dependent on how much, um, um, damage you had built up beforehand, what health you come back and how much damage you deal while you're in that, that state. So really cool kit. Like you were mentioning the, the light pound portal into her, um, man, I can't remember this name now and I'm beating myself up about it into her roots, um, is just wild to see all of those little light bolts flying out of there, damaging everything in there. Yeah. And you just feel so good. You press those buttons and you're like, yes, this wave means nothing for the next 10 seconds, right? Like, uh, it's just so good. So good. I love this little clip at the end of the, uh, short that went out today of like the prolonged fight from the mid to the, about the tier two tower, the middle of the river to the tier two tower between the noxuses that like, it was just this like, please, just one bit of damage more. I need my beam off cooldown. I need it off cooldown. No, you know that they were spamming that Q key waiting for it to come up. That thing goes through walls too, which is funny. Does not anymore, but I think if the noxious actually gets, because I think she didn't get the center blast. And so it didn't stun. So that's why she was able to keep running and clip.  And then so chat when she comes back and gets health like regenerating, that's, that's what they were talking about the passive where she kind of comes back alive. But very effective, very effective. I'm a very long cooldown. So it is fairly balanced by the way, chat. And it's not like it's up all the time. You guys ready to move on to overprime? Is her. Put your own mediums on her. To the blast on that ultimate is nuts. It's pretty nice. Pretty nice. I've been trying to get away from setting up multiple scenes. I did stun her. I did stun her. So it was like on the edge. Yeah, she's right there on the edge of it. Yeah. Which has to feel terrible that you're like, I'm almost there. I'm almost there. Please. Where's my link? Not running, floating. Yeah, yeah. All right. So overprime, I don't think I actually got the picture of it, but one of the main things from this week was they're talking about putting in a fog wall to prevent you from seeing the prime spirit. So right now there's just, there's a kind of an archway, big open area. And you can see directly from Duolane into the prime pit. And you can see if somebody's attacking it, which makes it a very dangerous prospect to take that thing, especially if you're trying to sneak it as just your jungler taking it. If they, if that, we don't know if they're going to, but if they put in this fog wall, it's going to make it a little easier to sneak objectives like that, which I think will make Wukong just a little bit better. What do you guys think about this fog wall for prime spirit, Jenna? So in exactly the way you're describing it, I like it. I think it's going to, one, it'll change the way that supports mostly, but even junglers and anybody else who's like, you know, roaming around, will need to pay attention to warding, you know, and getting visual confirmations on things. Like I think that that's, to me, a welcome change, because it is a little too easy to kind of just keep track of it. I mean, unless you're just full on like blinders on and you're not looking at all, which definitely happens. Especially the ADCs. ADCs just, they're so focused on that minions health bar. I got it. I got to get that last hit. Yeah. So I personally am a huge fan of it. I think you will create that sense of mystery and exactly what you're describing. Some junglers will be more adept at being able to secure that objective by themselves. I'm thinking like, you know, Chimera's, maybe Cruxes, depending on how they build, like, you know, some of the more, I don't know, tankier, I guess, junglers might be able to do Wukong is another great example of being able to just jump in there and be able to solo it because that's what he's supposed to be good at. But I do worry, gosh, I do worry about like what it's going to do as far as putting pressure in that specific zone because of how difficult it's like really you only have the one way in and then you have four ways out. And so it's like, I don't know, it's going to be interesting to see how they do it. Also, if the fog wall is just on the dual lane and not in mid, like that's the other part that I'm curious about. Are they going to also put it there? Because then that makes it to where you can, as the mid, you can ward just the pathway and see if someone's coming in from that side. And same thing for supports, as long as you have one of your bushes warded, you don't need to ward the actual Prime Spirit pit. But if they don't, if it's only on one side, then that makes the warding a little bit more interesting.  I don't know. I think it's good overall. I'm excited to see it because like with mini Prime and big Prime, you almost always have to go physically check. Like sometimes you'll see the animations going off. But a lot of times you do need to have a ward on it or you need to go over there and put eyes on it yourself to be able to see if anybody started that objective up. It's not the same for spirit. Literally mid lane or the dual lane can just peek around and say, okay, they're not doing it or they are doing it and start spam being, to let people know that it's being taken. So I think it's a good change at overall. I agree that it's a good change overall. If they also do it on the mid side, because if they don't also do it on the mid side of things, it's a wasted change. Why? Because the mid laner almost has an easier time looking down and consistently seeing it because they're not, they're not as close. So they can easily just turn and look, be like, yay, nay, and then make a choice from there on out if they want to go to the other side of the map or whatever. Whereas the carry lane, the carry lane is almost never where I'm worried about being spotted because I just assume that they know I'm there because I either have to walk right through their bushes to get there. I've probably ganked the carry lane most recently because I'm no chance in hell. Am I seeing the carry lane pushed up against my team's tower?  Prime spirit, that's where I'm heading. To me, it's an unneeded change. It's a good change, but it's an unneeded change because if you're doing your job effectively as a jungler, you shouldn't be trying to sneak a main objective of the map while the laners are sitting right there and can easily turn and look at you. Right? Like that defeats the purpose to me, is now they are encouraging sneaking the objective, which has never been the problem. Right? Like to me, it's putting effort into something that didn't need to be changed. Right? If I'm playing effectively, I'm not doing it while the laners are there watching. The most I'm worried about is someone running up into mid lane and looking over and being like, yep, he is doing the prime spirit. But if dual lane, I know where they are and I'm starting it based on where they are. Or if I just killed them or whatever it's going to be. Mid lane is definitely the more of the threat of people that can approach that I'm more worried about. Yeah. I think it will also matter a lot more as the game goes on. I do agree with you that early game especially, you're probably as a jungler not looking to take that as a solo objective. You're going to be looking, you need your team. So you're better off ganking or doing something else with your time than trying to sneak the objective. But I do think as like that past that 20 minute mark, where a lot of times we've talked about that things kind of get stale and you're just waiting for certain things to come up. Having those in place, again, I do agree, it should be on both sides. But having those in place makes it to where you can't sit in mid lane and keep an eye on the objective and then keep bouncing back to the prime. You know what I mean? Like you have to have a ward in there. You have to maybe physically check it. Like it's not so easy to just keep an eye physically from one lane or the other while you're pushing up or doing something else. You know what I'm saying? Like so I think that past that 20 minutes is where it's really going to shine. Early game, you'll probably have some people being able to sneak stuff and do some things, but I think it's going to be most present. I disagree because if the team is missing off of the map post 20 minutes, you know they're doing an objective because there's nothing else to be doing. So them being off the map, whether they have a fog wall or not doesn't mean anything because you know they're there or you know what objectives are available. Post 20 minutes, if prime spirit's up, one of the teams is on it. Like it's just, it doesn't really mean a lot. It's a weird change. Like I've not heard people complaining about it actively. Sure you're going to get the 1Z2 complaints, the 1Z2Z complaints of people like, well how the carries can see this, that's not fair, right? But mid lane can see it too. Like they just creates a lot of weird opportunity. At the same time, you're going to find, great if they put fog walls up on both sides, a single ward now covers both entrances into main entrances into the prime pit. So you're pseudo buffing junglers or people that can get into the prime spirit pit using the buffs that can make that dash over the pit because now you're not walking over a ward that you know is going to be able to watch that entrance or exit, right? So you're creating more opportunity for those people to do well, comparatively to a Kalari that can't do that thing, right? Like it's just, it's just weird. I also think Soul Reaper also brings a really good point. It'll help with ganks and I think in a lot of ways or rotations from mid lane and vice versa supports like dropping into that fog wall. Where's the support going? Or where's, okay, my mid laner dropped that way.  But it puts that pressure on. I can definitely see it creating, I mean, more question marks, you know, like more thought as far as like macro. I don't think it's a massive, massive change. Like I don't think this is going to be game deciding, game breaking, at least in the long run. I think initially it might because if people won't be familiar with it and therefore stuff might whack a doodle stuff is going to happen. But I do think as people get more accustomed to it and used to it, it's the same thing with like the one ways into those pools in mid lane. I think initially people were like, there's still some that get caught by it. But for the most part, everybody knows, okay, I can't run through that and so they don't get caught by it anymore. They just go a different route and sometimes it's just suboptimal and they get caught out anyway. But I think with that change in there, it'll be, I don't know, it'll be interesting to say the least. I think, I don't think it's a bad change. That's why I'm going to go with this. I don't think it's a bad change. I think it could be really good. I think the benefits far outweigh the consequences of adding it. Does that make sense? Yeah. Potential consequences. Yeah, good. My turn to nothing. There's a lot of stuff I'd like to smush together about both games to be perfectly honest. But I think the main thing is going to change. Like I said, I think it's going to make Wukong just a little bit better because him being able to actually sneak that thing is going to be beneficial to your team. And the other thing I think is you're going to have supports upgrading their gym a lot faster than they used to. I will certainly be upgrading it a hell of a lot faster because usually I'll build my gym. I'll build an item and then I'll start building it to my gym. I think now I'll start building a tier three gym first or at least a tier two before I start building an item so that I can keep a ward inside of that prime spirit bit and still have one for my lane. Yeah, pull stuff. I hope it at least makes things, like I said, feel a little bit more macro. Like I think that's probably my biggest complaint a lot of times with with over prime is that especially past that 20 minute mark, the macro becomes very basic and kind of boring. And it's my least favorite part. It's like once we hit 20 minutes, I'm like, oh no. How are we going to randomly throw this game now? Because that's almost what it feels like. It's going to be something random, somebody getting caught out, whatever. So I don't know if this will make that a better experience or it's just going to be a jelly scene. Basically, it's not going to matter at all. I don't know. I think, though, that there's probably no downsides to it. If anything, it's going to be all ups potentially as far as increasing macro and increasing warding and necessity and all that stuff, which maybe other people than supports will be buying wards. That's kind of why I saw a jungler actually buying wards like constantly. I was like, what? Who is this jungler buying wards and warning stuff? I can't believe that. So constantly buy wards when I jungle. You might be one of the few people to do so. Why wouldn't you? That's anyway, taboo saying he ain't upgrading that gym at all. 20 minutes sell and get the destroyer gym. Get that smite. Well, let's move on now. There was a message from Ranger in their Discord talking about how they they have been able to communicate with the community as much as they used to before early access started. And they would like to try and get back into that communication a little more, which I think him just saying that is pretty good communication. Yeah, I really don't hang out in their general Discord as much as I used to. Once the game kicked off, things got a little toxic. Same way with predecessor. I used to hang out predecessor Discord all the time.  It's the same way with the OP general Discord. So yeah, I just don't hang out in there anymore. But he's probably usually he would be giving everybody a good morning in the general chat talking to people throughout the day in the Discord. So it's that's nice to see. Now, the other major thing for overprime is Zena. We know that she she's like her Lore Lore wise, she is a pop star that got summoned by Shinbi, but she's actually in a virtual pop group now called Maeve. They released their first video this week. I got a picture of her in the video right there. It's like four girls or something like that. But it's kind of interesting and I'll pull up another. If you slow the video down, you see Paragon emblems in the background. You see Twin Blast. You see Adele. You see a lot of Paragon imagery in this video. However, nothing really alludes to Zena being in Paragon, which I think is probably smart. We'll get to that in a bit. But I'm going to you guys talk about it. I'm going to switch this image up so people can see that the Paragon logo is in the background. Yeah, I mean, I think one, the first thought I had, honestly, seeing Zena in this video was, why don't we have that as a skin? Especially because we have that like her pop star outfit as a skin, but it's not this one. So I sat there and I was like, where's this one?  Yeah. No, but honestly, the first couple of times I watched the song, I was surprised at how subtle the Paragon, the over-prime imagery was, right? That it's in the background. Like this just popped up on the stream, right? It's in the background on a building, like a logo of a building, right? First time watching this, I did not see that at all. Like it was just like, I'm watching what's going on. I'm watching Zena walk to the glass, like all those kind of things. I did not see that at all. And I thought I expected a lot of heavier hand when it's like this person is in a video game that you can play, right? Like I expected that a lot more than it was throughout this entire video. I think that's like I was saying, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing that they haven't really pushed that with her yet. And it is Zena. It is the same Zena from Paragon, the over-prime. Their first original hero is the Zena that is in this pop group. It's the same virtual person, not such a weird thing to talk about. But anyway, I don't think right now is the time for them to try and bring in influx of players from the popular, because it's gotten four million views in four days. Like it's quite popular. People enjoy it. And I think people, if they learned that Zena was a character in a video game, they would be in a lot, not every single one of them, of course, but at least a couple of thousand would be inclined to try it out.  Just like what happened with the vast majority of the new players that came into over-prime. So they're going to need to set something up like a versus AI or something where new players can actually ease in and just stick around with the heroes before I think they try and leverage the popularity of Maeve into more players for better. That's my take on it. Completely, completely agree, Mangus. The thing with this is they don't have to push it initially. Build a fan base for this group. And at any moment, be like, by the way, Zena that you've come to love over the last six months in a video game. Right? And bam, that same group of people will still come and play Paragon the over-prime. Right? Like it's not something they have to do off the top no matter what. Also, the people saying it as a ripoff of KDA, it is, but KDA is a ripoff of any other all-female K-pop group. Right. I mean, listen to any all-female K-pop group. All the songs are very similar. It's really not that big of a surprise necessarily. Yeah. The difference here, too, is that they are making a pop group and then making video game characters out of the pop group. They're not taking video game characters and turning them into a pop group. You know what I mean? Yes. Like they're going to kind of do a reverse order. Which is fine. So many comments on a Reddit post with how I found it about this video before I sent it to you guys. That was like, see, they're just focusing on K-pop in over-prime now. It's like, what? Oh, people always find something negative to say. Exactly. Right? Like it's just let it be what it is, guys. They announced the next character is not going to be a K-pop star. Ta-da! I only listened to K-pop correct minimum 10. You're absolutely right. I listen to K-pop non-stop every single day. Yeah, the song is catchy. It's not really my cup of tea. I don't listen to K-pop, but you can't deny that it's going to be popular and that it could be a possible source of new players for over-prime. For the future. Yeah. Yeah, and for- I don't think it's something that could be ignored. Oh, for sure. If for everyone at home, this was not made by Team SoulLeave. This was made by Metaverse Entertainment, who was also owned by Netmarble, who happens to also own Team SoulLeave. They are not the same company. They are not- SoulLeave did not put development hours into making this. Yes, they did, and strange matter wasted all their money making one up. Oh, man.  What is it? I kind of actually, since we talked about this a little bit, but I do, because I think Jelly's taking a very good approach about this is that- because Ranger talked about a lot in his announcement or whatever you want to call about saying that he wants to get more involved in stuff and that a lot of it was the growing pains of developing a game while also handling the live services of a game. And I think that it's easy for us as players a lot of times to forget that that's two very difficult and different things that require different teams. Like you're typically, unless you're fault, going to have people working on both sides of the things, right? You're not going to have to separate those and make sure that they're operating at a high level. So I'm happy to hear Ranger talking about it, but it also makes sense that they're not working on making music videos and K-pop groups. That's not what they're doing. Even the big guy that we talked about mentioning KDA, Riot didn't develop the KDA music video. They hired a group to do it and they outsourced it and paid for it because there's zero chance you're going to have guys like now he's a color commentator and play-by-play, but you're not going to have a freak who's working on the balance team now working on KDA music videos. Like there's no reason for it. And the biggest thing that I would want to stress to anybody watching these games is there are different teams for different things. Artists aren't working on balance necessarily. So if a piece of art comes out, that does not mean that nobody's working on the balance side of the game and vice versa. Like chances are there are multiple departments and if one department releases something it doesn't mean the rest of the departments are twiddling their thumbs waiting for their turn to work on something. It's not how it works. If anything it helps solely about that metaverse almost certainly created Xena and handled all of the 3D modeling and creation of her. I guess now we know why Xena was introduced before Adele. I did have a here in tinfoil hat theory, right? It is me after all. The character we knew about before Xena, before Xena was announced and anything like that, was Rina. Right. R-I-N-A. But to me, again, you're not going to introduce, we talked about this couple of weeks ago with Richter and Ractor, right? You're not going to introduce two characters with very similar sounding names. So it makes me wonder if Rina became Xena. Metaverse entertainment was working on this and then decided to change the name of the character via whatever reasoning and the model and all that kind of stuff. And that's why we haven't heard anything about Rina since then either, right? We heard about Adele. Adele got dropped, Rina was suddenly introduced, and then Rina got dropped and Xena suddenly exists, right? And now we know Adele's coming at the end of the next six months, but Rina was still not talked about at all in that. So it wouldn't surprise me to hear that that shift happened and Rina became Xena. And again, for all the reasons I just outlined. And then that's why Xena is in this K-pop group now because Rina very much was looking like she was going to be like a K-pop star, KDA equivalent character for them. And so it was interesting that I thought about that this week, just that it's weird. You had two very similar named characters and one of them no longer is at least being marketed comparatively to the other. I don't know, kind of interesting thing, but I don't know. You guys ready to move on from Oberprime?  Well, I actually have one question for you guys, but also for for chat if they want to get involved. We've been now playing Oberprime for about a month and a half, almost two months. Give or take, right? Xena's been out for that entire duration. First IP champion for Paragon since Paragon closed its doors. Successful champion two months in. We like her. We think that this is a good direction. That's mine because she's my most played champion. I fell in love with her from the get go. I helped her old kid and they nerfed her pretty significantly. She's not as strong and as fun as she was because of the lack of strength. But I still think she's a very interesting character. What is your guys's takes thoughts on now two months in Xena being the IP of Paragon currently? I think she was good. She's a good hero that was implemented really well with incredibly smooth animations. She's really fun to play. I think she's a success story for Oberprime. Even if even if she isn't a top tier top meta hero right now, she's still fun to play and people enjoy dicking around with her. And eventually through balance changes, I mean, that's the way every mobile works is somebody every dog has their day. Like every hero is eventually going to be on top eventually. So I think Xena's time to shine is yet to be seen. But she definitely shines in quick match when people don't know how to play against her. That's for damn sure. Yeah, I think in general, I would say that Xena is a success for Paragon the Overprime just in terms of first IP character releasing to the game, right? Fun to play. I think she's a safe first character to be implementing. I think that her abilities are fairly basic and that's not a diss on them by any means. But I just think I think there are far bigger ways that they can push the envelope with characters, original characters that they didn't with Xena, which is probably the safer option to be sure, right? But I would be very curious like Mako. I'm very curious to see how that changes that dynamic or if they also go very safe in terms of character design. And so, but again, I still think that Xena's overall a successful character for a first time IP of a character. Right on. All right. So let's move on now from Overprime. Let's get into some of the questions for this week up over to the media source. And we got a question from Trollface. We got a question from Stranger. Viking just wants more K-pop characters confirmed. Yes.  I am a big fan of it. I do also, I don't think Kit Wise, did she's a better Kuang? Actually, I wanted to give some kudos because some of the points. She's a worse Kuang.   So good. Where you left your sword in the jungle.  You get the Muriel speed up. I was like, oh, that's so clean. Oh, man. And I also saw the one where I backfired where you tried to go back into the lane and they were waiting for you.  But I was sitting here and going, I was like, man, he looks so much more fun than I think I was giving him credit for. And I haven't played him that much. I played him like a few times when I'm sitting here watching you and I'm like, man, I kind of want to play him because they changed his kit quite significantly in comparison to what we were used to. So same question. I know we're about to move on to the questions, but the things that they changed dynamically, like Kuang is a great example, success, not successful. It's still to be determined. What are you guys feeling about that? I think, I mean, coming from a newly mythed Kuang main here. Yeah. Great changes. Super interesting kit. Really fun to play. Not very easy to pick up, but an extremely hard to master. I think you need a hero like that in every game. So much, I think his kit is so much better than the old Paragon days. However, there are, of course, a few problems. If you don't know, attack speed just does not affect Kuang in any way whatsoever. So that's an entire, like, post of items that are kind of worthless to Kuang because you're spending gold on a stat that you're not getting. So I would like for them to do, and that's a good thing, by the way, because he has a four-stage attack string. The third stage is a knockup. So if you could build a attack speed on Kuang, people would just be going max attack speed and keep the people juggled throughout the entire team fight. I'd like to see that though. You could already do it with it. That's what makes, by the way.  But anyway, yeah, anyway, his kit is just amazing. I just wish they would do something like, have as a, instead of giving attack speed, have it give like physical power, like a percentage of that attack speed gets converted into physical power, or maybe physical and magical armor, cooldown reduction, anything. Give him something so that he can actually use some of these other items without feeling bad about spending your gold on something. Yeah, I think the cooldown reduction one, I think would be such a great route for it. You could not give a one-to-one, right? Of course, because that'd be insane. But the cooldown reduction, because then his dash and his right click, being able to manipulate his combo so well, gets more and more fluid as the game goes on, as you're building those items up, instead of just a completely wasted stat, right? Revenant being a prime example here. When you build attacks, his reload is faster, right? His means of doing damage is still faster, but just in a different way. And I think you can do the same thing by giving his attack speed to CDR, and then going from there. And I think that'd be so, so, so valuable. Rex Recap says... Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. All right, so Rex Recap was saying, very curious how Kuang will play in Predecessor. I'm kind of curious about that, too. Are they going to just introduce old-school Kuang? Or... Because we've already seen that they kind of... They play off each other a little bit. They definitely look at what each other is doing.  I don't know. Yeah, I think overall Kuang definitely is a good change that has been made. I know initially everyone was kind of like mad that Kuang is not Kuang anymore. I think there's an amount... But I feel this way with the Legends characters that are getting reworked as well, to an extent, is that there's an amount that this could have just been a new character. That the really only thing that Kuang has kept from his original kit is throwing his sword and teleporting to his sword. Everything else has changed. I mean, even that's changed because you used to have to use your ultimate to teleport to your sword. But the mechanic is still... That's the only existing mechanic that's between the two things, right? Whereas everything else is brand new. I feel like you could have either replaced just that mechanic in Kuang's kit and made this entirely new kit for somebody else that would have been the push to the envelope that I was talking about earlier with safe characters. And I think this is the complete opposite of Xena. This was a huge risk of a character to implement and put in the game. But I think it's paid off for them, right? Whereas Xena's way safer and way easier in terms of design to flush out a little bit better, right? That I think this could have been a brand new IP character that and would have been just as good. But it's a little weird that you replaced a fan favorite with all of these abilities. But the same thing can be said for Decker in predecessor. There's definitely a no-win scenario. You're either updating a outdated kit or you're getting rid of a fan favorite. You're not going to be able to do both, right? And so, or yeah, be whatever. You guys get what I mean. I hear you. I'm picking up what you're putting down. I mean, I have been a big advocate for the changing of the old kits into new kits. I think Kuang is a success in that. I know we were very worried about it when we first found out what his kit was going to be. And we all kind of thought, ah, it's not that great. It's really difficult to land those autos and blah, blah, blah. But again, I think as Mancuse is talking about, as people are putting in more time and effort and willing to get good on him and get good at understanding his mechanics, I think it's a success. Like I see it as exactly that. Like he's very different, but still holds his identity. Like I think him being able to teleport to his sword was the thing that made him so interesting and unique as a champion. All the other stuff was fluff around that idea. But now they've made it way more impactful. You can do that more often in it with his kit. You can't teleport from base to it like you could before. You know what I mean? And do all that kind of stuff and get a free back. But you're also able to spam it a little bit more. You can get that, you know, those out plays. Like, I mean, again, that montage was really cool.  You can make some really cool things happen for yourself. And you couldn't do that, I think, in old Kuang the same way that you can on current Kuang. And still add it as part of your rotation to be able to make those maneuvers and out plays and all that stuff, which I think is neat. That's not a montage, by the way. That's just a game of overprime. Okay. It was edited, so I figured there was some kind of montage of you like clips together. It's just a game of overprime. That's how that's how much action happens in overprime. All right, so let's move on to these questions. I'm Stranger asked, why do you think overprime is losing more players than they anticipated? Also, is it weird word that the Paragon subgenre is to niche or do you think the games have a chance to truly succeed? Is it a funding issue and or is it just a dev issue? 2000 players is not enough realistically. I 100% agree that 2000 players is not enough. I have my theories. I'll let you guys go ahead unless you want me to go. It doesn't matter. Do you want me to start? I'll start. I'm already talking. I do think that a big part of it is the Paragon subgenre is to niche. And I think that that's just the third person MOBA as a whole is fairly niche and hasn't been done in a way that really captivates a larger audience. I still think that that's possible. It's just a very big uphill battle. And I think SMITE is an example of that. SMITE has been around a very, very long time at this point has had every opportunity to be able to capture a bigger audience and try and maybe fight up against the top MOBAs that we are familiar with and hasn't really been able to do so. And I think it's just the innate difficulty that comes with third-person shooter MOBAs basically is what these are. They're all skill shot oriented or with some lock-on abilities. Usually in this genre, I think it's a higher floor to be able to come in. New players are going to struggle hard for a long time. So that makes your casual players diminished. So you're left with more of your medium to hardcore players.  They want to be the hardcore guys. They want to, but they just aren't skilled enough. That's who your player base becomes. And I think that all of these games are going to fall into that same area. And there's not a big player base for that. So that's what I think it is. I don't think it's almost any of the other things. I don't think it's any of the funding, the dev time. I don't think it's really anything to do with that. I think it's purely just that it's a tough genre to get new players to stick around in to get past the learning curve. If that's, that's what I think. Jelly, maybe? I mean, I think I wouldn't say that. I think the Paragon aspect is too niche. I think it's just not been done well enough yet. Because I think there's plenty of potential for it, especially as higher graphical fidelity games become more and more the mainstream, right? Ten years ago, right? The top down League of Legends, everybody could run, but not everybody could run Smite, right? For instance, because the graphical difference was there, right? As that becomes more and more approachable, games like this will become more and more approachable and more and more people will be playing them, right? The requirement of League of Legends, I can play on a Raspberry Pi if I really, really wanted to. It is really well optimized and not as intensive on the lower, lower, lower settings, right? That I could play it. I'm not going to by any stretch of the imagination, but I theoretically could.  No, right? And that's what I mean is as that floor becomes more accessible to more people, and we're starting to see that. And that's why Consul is such a big, big thing for that, is that floor is accessible. I don't need to spend $1,200 on a computer to play the game. My $300 Xbox can play it just fine, right? And so it's finding that medium that's going to be the biggest thing that propels the Paragon 3D MOBA niche into more of the spotlight compared to a Dota or League of Legends. So I think that is definitely still to come. As for this Paragon the Overprime in general, I think there's an aspect of expectation setting that wasn't done well. And I would say this for both games, I think, that leading into their early access, the test for Overprime definitely helped, but for anyone that didn't play in the test going into early access, there was a lot of expectation setting that wasn't done super, super well. And like I said, I think that supplies both to predecessor and Paragon the Overprime. But in general, I think they are both undercooked in different ways that is deterring enough people away from these games, right? And more evidently in Paragon the Overprime because they had 30,000 players that's now down to 2,000 to 3,000 players on Steam specifically because we don't know what Epic numbers look like. But I think that these undercooked elements are proving to be a much bigger deal than either developer gave them credit for. I think it's, to me personally, I think the reason that both of the Paragon games aren't doing as well as they could is the people that want these games to succeed, the most are the ones that are killing off these games' chances to actually succeed. It's a weird sort of thing to say, it's a weird thing to see, but with Paragon it was like a totally new thing that attracted a whole bunch of players that all came together and learned, and we all learned together as a community as we progressed through Paragon. With Overprime and Predecessor, and you don't see it in Predecessor as much because Predecessor is just all almost 100%, all original Paragon players, not 100%. There's still, there's a few people out there that didn't play Paragon, but for the most part they're player basis Paragon players.   That's why I think it's so important that you have a versus AI mode that people could just kind of mess around in and play the game that way, and then if they, you know, get a little bit better, maybe they can step up to PVP if they want to, whatever.  You know what I mean? That's just how it works. And it's kind of, it's the, that's why I think console will help. Uh, bringing these games to console, and especially having it free to play on console, it's going to be just like what happened with Paragon, is everybody's going to be like, oh, look at this new shiny game that's fucking free, and I can download and play for free, and it's going to bring in a host of new players so that the new players outnumber all of us old crusty veterans, and they can all fight it out amongst each other, learn from each other, learn from us as a community. But there will have a chance to actually win games as opposed to people that are, what happened, I know what especially happened with Over Prime is people were just coming in and getting trashed by OG Paragon players, and it kind of sucks for them. And I think a lot of that has to do with like, if we are going to throw some shade at the devs, it would be in their implementation of like an MMR system, and how quickly the MMR detected new players versus players who obviously understood the game, and because you're right, there was a huge influx of players when it first launched into early access, like massive amount, and so many of them have left, and it's probably exactly that. They got into games and were going up against people who were way too good, like way, you know what I mean? And they're just like in their first, I think they put out that information right in their first game, 75% of them left and didn't come back, and that's insane. That's insane. And I've been a proponent of saying that yes, we just need to get in front of more people, and I think that while I do think that that is a solution, it's not, it's a band-aid on a bigger issue, which is the onboarding and the MMR of the game needs to be more flushed out and cleaner across the board. So that way, when people are coming into the game, they're not immediately, you know, running into our five stack, where we've got, you know, Soul Reaper, who's a top 30 player, and we got Raven, who's a top 50 player, and then you got us three who have been spending a lot of time playing this game, and maybe, you know, could be fighting for some of those higher ranks, but we're doing other stuff. Anyway, and you end up against guys who aren't even placed, or are in silver, or whatever, and you're like, if I'm even in quick play, and I'm like, bro, what are we doing against these guys? Like, why are we playing them? Even if I'm five stacked, like, and I think that's the issue. I also think that there's an issue with the regions. NA West is basically a ghost town, especially in comp. I sent you guys a screenshot of it for fun. I lost, I was playing on my computer and I was in ranked on West. I wanted just to see if I could get a game, and I got distracted doing what I was doing, and I looked back. I forgot that I was still in queue. It was over 40 minutes in NA West, and I didn't get a queue. And that's just, to me, that's just bogus. I shouldn't have to play on 100 plus ping to be able to enjoy this game. So I do think that there's something else to go with that. I know placements are broken still. Oh, real easy, literally just said it. There's lots of issues, I think, on the back end of stuff. Yeah. See, I've heard both ways on that. I think it's going to be dependent on time you're playing and how many of the people are on. Like, it's, because that's really the issue, right?  But if you're playing when everybody else is already placed, then you may wait 45 minutes. And to the credit of the NA West thing, I saw somebody in the overprime discord the other day put it on and was at 345 minutes. And you're just not going to get a comp game. They got a Q pop and then it didn't go through. So they were right back into the queue of NA West. Like, how did they get a Q pop? Who's waiting that long with them? That's the real question. Right. But like, at this point, just get rid of NA West, right? Do something, even merge NA West and NA East and do an NA central server where you then have some kind of middle ground between the two. But you got to do something to support those players because how many people are potentially going into the game queuing NA West going, Oh, I've waited 10 minutes. There must not be enough people on this game. And then just quitting out. They don't switch the server to NA East, right? Like a plenty. I'm sure there are plenty of players that are doing that. I've done it. And that's the problem. Yeah. But I mean, but you know how to go in and switch to NA East. Oh, yeah. I want to. I'm talking about players that don't even know how to do that. But they, it asked their region. They said NA West, they go into a game, wait 30 minutes, don't get anything. And they go, all right, well, I'm out and then quit. Yeah. Right. Because they don't know that they can switch the server or don't want to switch the server or whatever it is. Right. Like it's just wild that that hasn't been addressed yet from Paragon the overprime. Yeah. And I agree with that. Because like I definitely have, I was like, oh, I just want to get a comp game in real quick. And I'm like, but I don't want to play on a hundred ping. Like I just, I just really want to try and like win this game like in and remove any, you know, excuses I can have for why I lost.  It just, it's a frustration. So I guess if we were going to throw shade again at Devs, I definitely don't think it's a funding issue. I think it's a timing issue along with all the other stuff. And that's what Ranger kind of was alluding to is like operating a live service as well as trying to do development is, was proving more difficult and time consuming than they anticipated, which is why communication was the thing to get sacrificed. By the way, I'm okay with that. Like sacrifice, you know, jumping into discord and memeing with us if you're building a game and making it trying to make it as good. I still do have, you know, the silver lining here. I do have faith that they will get there. And I hope that, you know, when things are smoothed out, the way that we want them to be smoothed out, when they start putting in more marketing, so the stuff with Xena, for example, and the K-pop group. And, you know, maybe getting some bigger streamers to come in and doing all the stuff that we've talked about as far as marketing and getting out there to the bigger populace will be more successful because of the, all the other stuff is there. So I do still believe that they can. I think at the end of this quarter, we'll have a lot of those questions answered because they're going to be way farther into development at that point. Go ahead, Mingus. Sure. You want to go? Fine. After you. The, I'm going to bring up the F word that the community doesn't like very much and it's not fortnight, it's fault. Fault proved to us that first impressions matter more than anything. In this, in this community, that first impressions matter more than anything. And fault till the day it died could not shake that first weekend impression that it gave people for, and that it undeservedly was getting bad rap later in the game from people that didn't play it except for the first weekend, right? Even after free to play, even after all of that. Paragon the overprime did a lot of those same bad things in terms of first impressions being terrible. They literally two weeks before early access did an open test for us to try out and they didn't put their monetization in that open test. Why? Because if they had put their monetization, their unlock scheme, their currency, the whole nine yards in that open test, they would have gotten the same exact feedback two weeks prior. And then early access that actually was successful with good monetization in mind or with decent monetization in mind with community feedback as part of that. They would have also known that you can't just give five free heroes and not everybody else, that you can't just do, you can't put ranks behind a level 10, 12 character grind when you're not giving people any more than five characters. They would have found out so many of these issues if they actually had put it ahead of time and actually tested it out like the test should have been for that they would have gone into early access 10 times more successful than they were. Paul, I see the I agree. After point 13 update, I mean, there's an argument you made and I know we've said it. The fault is in it was in it. When it closed down was in a better state than I would say it was in a better state than predecessor. Predecessor cleaner game like animations and fidelity and stuff like that. But as far as what you could do in fault versus what you could do in predecessor, it was awesome. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, no, that's pretty much it. They had like, you know, progressions they had, you know, like they were trying to make the game a full fledged game and I granted they're obviously in two different places. But I do think that, you know, while I never thought that fault was amazing, it ended on a way better note than it started. And I think that to Jelly's point, them missing that opportunity to make sure that everybody who logged in to play their game was able to, like I don't know why they even made it to where you had to unlock the characters that are from Epic, in my opinion, they should have just let all the Epic assets be available. Like or as far as like, you know, the champions, just have them all ready. Don't you don't need to buy them or at the very least offer a pack to unlock them all at once because it did. It's stifled and whether you were a new player or a returning paragon, you're like, Oh, I can't play my favorite character because I haven't unlocked it yet. And if I want to play it for free to see if I even like this game because I'm not going to put money in it. I'm not sure if I like it.  I still don't have every character unlocked. I don't know that's part of that is because I'm spending those Jeremy's on recolored skins instead. But I still don't have every character unlocked. And I've put hours and hours and hours and hours in the Paragon, the overprime since early access dropped. Right. Like that's a prime example. And for everyone that in chat of talking about fault and what you guys were saying about fault too, I've talked in the past about the four categories of gamers. Right. The achievers, killers, explorers and achievement hunters that those four categories fault appealed to every single one of those four. Maybe in various strengths, like one was weaker than another, but all appealed to every single one of those categories. Neither Paragon, the overprime nor predecessor appeals to all four of those categories in their current state. Right. And by that alone, that puts fault above both of these games for me. You are not doing the things you can do to get those players of all four genre types or of all four categories into your game and happy in your game and happy in your ecosystem. Right. And that's fault was alive for two years. They had a lot more time to develop those kind of things. Sure. But these games were also in development at the same time and could easily see that those features are important and did not prioritize those features by any stretch. Yep. I think it's funny. My trip started out at the very beginning of the podcast talking about how he wished he could squish some of the stuff from bread and overprime together. And I think fault kind of did that because like I wish I had just a separate ward slot in overprime. Yeah. Fault had that. And then what kind of pisses me off about predecessor is that you have to take that one starter item. It's cool that you get this flexible cool starter item that upgrades the crest. But it kind of sucks that it takes up an item slot. And then fault had the aspects where it didn't take up an item slot, but it still affected the way you played and let you express and differentiate yourself. So Fault had a lot of cool stuff. Rest in peace fault. It was better than people gave it credit. The thing that I wanted to bring up earlier though is I think even more than the full release for both games, whichever game releases on first releases first on console, if they aren't able to pull in and maintain a player base after they release on console, I think that spells doom for both games. Yeah.  They're two very different games to us. An outsider, a brand new player.    No matter, I don't care what you say. You could say, oh, predecessor to MOBA and overprime is a third person shooter. I don't care. It's still the same elements in both games enough to where a brand new player isn't going to be able to tell the difference. So if one of them releases on console and can't maintain a player base, I think the other one is probably going to be just as doomed as that one. So it's new players that we need.  You need new players. You need fresh blood. Yeah. Go ahead, Viking. Well, this is a quick one, but this is why I advocate so often to the console kids that come in here and ask, oh, console win, console win, console win. Bro, let them take their time. They need to get the rest of the game figured out because if they come to console now to appease the old Paragon heads, yes, we'll get an influx of a few thousand players who are from the Paragon days and want to play on their console. And I get that. And I want you guys to be able to play. I do. But it's you're not who we need to be honest. Like you guys are not who we need. You're not going to make this game successful. In fact, if anything, a lot of the Paragon guys like Mingyu said are making it worse, hurting the games.  And also, in my opinion, holding too much onto the old Paragon and not allowing these devs to feel like they can innovate and make the game better and more appealing to a wider spectrum other than those few niche guys who played Paragon back in the late 2000s. Sorry, you're not the player base these guys need. And so I think getting to console, of course, can be the make or break moment. But I'm glad and I hope that they don't rush it. Get the game in a really good place. So that way, when they are on console, it's smooth. It's the other F word that we don't like to talk about. It's Fortnite.  I don't want that. And something the Paragon community likes to forget is that Paragon died a long time before April 28th or 26th when this river shut down. Paragon died a long time before that. That the player base was non-existent on console and on PC and the community was toxic as hell.  It got an uplift when they announced the server shutting down, but that didn't mean anything. And it's those same people that were part of the reason Paragon died that are now pushing these developers and are being negatively affecting their development and doing the same exact thing like Mangus was talking about earlier. This next one's a big, big one. Yeah, this is a big old question from Trollface. Basically what it boils down to is... Are you going to read out this? No, I'm not going to read the whole thing. It's on the Discord if those of you want to read the whole question. But yeah, go ahead. Basically what it boils down to is do you think that the Parazombies would have been more successful if instead of going with a MOBA, they just went with something completely different. If they went with like a 3v3 sort of like capture the flag or plant the seed of the VX reference for you right there, if they just made it a completely wildly different style of game instead of a MOBA. And also, if you were to start removing MOBA stuff from the game, at one point, does it no longer become a MOBA? And at what point does the removal of stuff actually add more to the game? So if you took the portals out of Overprime and if you like they already took a tower out, if you just took towers out and just had this field to play on, how would that affect the game? Would that make it more fun? Would it make it less fun? That's the kind of question he's asking. And what it boils down to is... What he's talking about really is Gigantic, which is another game that kind of came out alongside Paragon and also died around the same time Paragon did. And again, not because the game was bad, but because it was just very poorly managed and mishandled. So Gigantic was fairly popular, so I think there could be a market for that style of game out there where it isn't just towers and everything. It's capture points and buffs and just a hero-based sort of... a more linear hero-based system than you have for Call of Duty and Battle Royale and stuff, but not strict as a MOBA. And there's an amount that you could boil this down further to just say, would they benefit from different game mode types? Yeah, like Smite and Arena. Arena is almost more popular than Conquest, right? Like it's just one of those things, right? And so would, if Overprime or Predecessor had an Arena mode, would that be better for the game? Would more people want to play that mode compared to traditional mode? Oh God, so many comments this line. Would an ARAM mode benefit either of these games? Would whatever it's going to be, right? And you can make these modes drastically different or just aesthetically different with the map changes and things like that. And I think the short answer is absolutely that there's always a viability in other game modes to be popular. Again, I use Arena as the example for Smite, right? If you talk to a smart player, they may tell you to play Arena. Like if they're trying to get you into the game, because Arena is A, a lot more approachable, B, a lot shorter, less time commitment. So fun.  Like it's just like the even the most tilt that I've ever been playing Arena is like the lowest form of tilt in Conquest, right? Like the, it's so much different and it makes the game feel so much different that you can have a lot more people have more fun in a different game style like that comparatively. So I think I, for me, it's taking issue with what makes a MOBA a MOBA. Because I, one, first of all, I do agree with Jelly's take on this 100%. I think if you add more game modes, it'll make it more fun. You know, Aram is a good one. You know, that Arena is fantastic. And Smite, I do think that those are all very valid. But like, even if you were just to change the core game itself, I, too, let's say for example, you know, a twisted tree line. So you make it less about five players. Maybe make it like, you know, three or four players. Still have a jungle, but it's not nearly as, you know, diverse or as big as it was, but still impactful in its own way. I do think that there, it's still a MOBA because MOBA stands for Multi-online Player Battle Arena or whatever it is. It's, there's so many variants of what MOBA itself.  That's just its own niche of MOBAs is the three lanes, two jungles, you know what I mean, five, five V five. That doesn't mean that that's how it has to be. I do think that there could have been value if they came at it with like, you know, we're going to take Paragon, but we're going to make it a 3v3 or maybe even a 4v4. But it's drastically changing the map style and, and all that stuff. But still bringing in, let's say for example, we go with overprime, bringing in the overprime characters and the speed of combat and the flashiness that we like and all the fun features, but it's just two lanes instead of three. And, you know, I think that that could have worked honestly. I think it would have fit maybe more to what the game is trying to be than what it currently is with the three lanes, because you have to have the portals to really keep that speed up. They obviously nerf the portals a little bit, which I think is a good thing, but like it does, it feels different. The one tower versus having three towers or whatever. Yeah, I think it could have been better. I still think though that they can make a traditional MOBA work, but obviously that's the difficulty. And I also think that MOBAs as a whole are losing players. I mean, even League of Legends is doing everything in their ability to try and get new players back into the game or get players to return back into it. This season, for those of you who haven't paid much attention to League of Legends is that's like their big push. They're putting out shorts and TikToks and talking about all kinds of stuff on how they're trying to battle toxicity and smurfs and all this stuff because they know that that's what's essentially hurting their casual player base. And a lot of it I think has to do with just the fact that it's a 5v5 extreme competitive macro chess style level of game on top of being really aggressive micro. It's already difficult in League of Legends, and then you add in almost all skill shots through a third-person shooter style MOBA, and it's like, come on, dude, it's hard. They're hard games, so I definitely think it would have been easier if they shrunk it down and made it like a two-lane type thing or some version of that, but it wouldn't be Paragon anymore. And so I think they would have to have changed it all. I mean, I don't know. It would have been different, and there would have been a lot of people upset about it. To me, it sounds like Viking is saying he wants a theory. The 6v6 is completely separated from the game. Hey, you know what? So when can I play that game? But even Ethereum still has the basics of a MOBA, like Ethereum is a MOBA through and through. If anything, they've added to the equation instead of removing things from it. I think any of these games would benefit from a mode, like an ARAM mode, but I think they'd still need to keep their 5v5 standard MOBA thing.  However, it was so radically different from Dota and League of Legends and Heroes of New Earth and all that, there was no way it was ever going to be successful. It's still going, but it's not successful by any means. So I think if you take too much out of it without just marketing it as a completely different and just not marketing it as a MOBA, that's the way you would have to do it. I tried to answer that question too, right? I'm glad you brought it up because Kings Hunt, as a mode in any of these other MOBAs, I'm bearded Wolverine in Feastal and Chat, brought this up originally, who I saw say this. If Kings Hunt was a mode in any of these other MOBAs, I could definitely see myself playing that mode. A hundred percent. That I'd be like, you know what, I'm tired of Agnes of Light in overprime, but I'm going to go into the Kings Hunt mode and go in, and it's like TDM and like, not TDM, tower defense, those aspects. I'm like, you know what, this is cool and different. Sure, I'll play this. Kings Hunt feels like the arena equivalent for like an overprimer of predecessor, right? Where I'm sitting there going like, this is drastically different from the core gameplay, but not bad in and of itself, right? And I think that's the potential of a lot of these for sure. I think Kings Hunt, if it had a more experienced studio and better funding could have been amazing. Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. I agree.   Oh, a hundred percent. It was weird. There were moments. So I mean, me and Jelly played it a lot. Like there were still moments where it was fun. Like, and you were like, oh, okay, I can do this. And like, you know, like it still required like thought process and doing all that and what you want. I think when you think of MOBA, I think of something that requires you to have to still think and you have to have your brain on when you play. I don't want to play an AFK game. You know what I mean? And I think MOBA is supposed to capture that. Yeah, I do think that, but like, I mean, Jelly really hit the nail on the head. If they add a game modes sooner rather than later, obviously it's going to be difficult with them trying to also add all the other things that they need to work on and add on. But yeah, man, I think having it, I think having it would have been having an Aram. Actually, I don't want an Aram. I want something more like a Kings Hunt map or our twisted tree line map. Aram to me is fun. But I think these games would benefit because I've done now some customs where you play as Aram. I think it's boring quick. Like, it's just it's just not as it doesn't feel like you get that maneuverability a little bit. So if you just add two lanes or do something, I don't know. There's way more opportunity to make it engaging and fun while not being the traditional MOBA. Yeah, great question. Yeah, I think that about wraps it up though. This was after he shortened it. This was after he edited it down. So I think that's going to about wrap it up for this week unless you guys got anything else you wanted to talk about. Anything you wanted to say? I'll just plug this again. For those of you guys who are in chat now, we do have the FTM Discord now. And there is a section for you guys to go in there and ask questions like Troll Faced and I'm Stranger. So if you have questions for us, you want us to answer them on air, that's the place to do it.  So that's it. Yeah, Jeleneese. Nope, that's about it. Anything you want to plug, Jelene? My stream and my YouTube's. I stream every once in a while, you know, more often recently than not. But yeah, no, that's it for me. I'm sure it's linked down below. And what about you, Viking? Same thing. Gosh, I probably, I know I'm going to stream when we get VFX or VX, I'm sorry, out VFX. Yeah, that's what I'm going to play and plug veiled experts. Yeah. Yeah. So veiled experts is going to be a one, just it's a super fun game. If you guys haven't checked it out, do so. It's great. And I think Mingus is going to give a little bit of a plug for it. But I'll stream that. I don't know when I'm going to stream other content. I do over this next week, maybe two weeks, want to make a tier list of the champions for overprime. In each of their roles. And I think we are going to try and plan a overall tier list for like everybody to, you know, regardless of role. At some point, maybe. I don't know when, but that's, that's the only things I have to plug. So keep your eyes here. The discord, follow me on YouTube and Twitter. That's it. And yeah, that, that generally brought it up veiled experts. The alpha starts in March. So if you just go to steam, you can sign up for the alpha and try and play it. It's a really cool third person shooter economy based dynamic maps. They change the actual map. You can like blow stuff up on the map. And then when you load into the next match, it the map will be changed. It'll be different depending on what you've done. Basic bomb diffusal sort of stuff. It's third person, but you can also switch. You can also ADS and you can also go into first person mode. If you're like, you're sniping or just any gun, you can actually go into first person mode too. Really great game, really fun stuff. I am a partner or veiled with veiled experts. So look for more stuff from me on VX coming out fairly soon. I think that's going to wrap it up for this week, for the hundredth episode. I feel like I probably should have done some more fanfare for this, but oh well. Also my channel, my channel's birthday was like two days ago. I didn't even know until YouTube reminded me.  It didn't matter in hots though. It was a shared experience. But that is going to wrap it up for this week. I appreciate everybody coming out to watch this live. I appreciate everybody that's watching it as a video. If you have some mangies, let's get them up in the chat. But for now, this is the four of the minions crew signing off you guys. A good one. Very similar to Rug Company Auto.


They personally decorate themselves with funky accessories and they take a lot of selfies before they come in and see that there is a machine inside.