Hello, one and welcome back to enter the ether of the new podcast all about the upcoming third-person mobile ethereal clash of souls I'm your host the one and only man goose joining me as always is my friend and co-host jelly knees. How you doing jelly? I'm great man goose. How are you doing man? Doing well and we've got a third person here this week, which is Yuji psionics Who is working on the? Gda team with ethereal Go ahead and tell us just what your kind of day-to-day operations are with ethereal and what you mostly work on Hey guys, like they said, I am psionics. I work on I work at the Gda department So as Gda department we work with all of the numbers in ethereal We also do lots of the we also do lots of the kit designs It's mostly that mostly just balancing and kit designs We make sure our primary goals to make sure the game is fun to play and that all of our characters are Balanced and playable.  I'll take the blame fantastic We heard that you directly created the marksman passive is that right? I Wasn't even I wasn't even around by the point that that Let's let's make something perfectly clear here. I think that's a confirmation man goose. So yeah All right, so as you guys probably saw on Saturday We had that sort of showcase exhibition match Whatever you want to call it or we did the all Dante all mid We're going to be talking about a lot about that today since we did get to see a lot of Dante's kit And since we have a Gda with us, we're going to be talking about that quite a bit I do want to emphasize though that was only a showcase that wasn't the game That wasn't even a lane out of the game That was a map that they created in about a week They pretty much created just a brand new game with their own assets just to support extra life That's all that was it is something to be excited about. I mean, of course we got to see Some gameplay if you want to call it gameplay and it was it was a really good time had a lot of fun But I don't want people to misconstrue that as that being part of ethereal You're never going to see that lane set up in ethereal. You're going to see a lot of those Assets in there, but those minions were Paragon placeholder minions. Those aren't the ethereal minions all kinds of stuff like that So let's get into it jelly your impressions of the of the test. What do you what did you think man? It was incredible. I was like a kid in a candy store playing playing it yesterday, right? It was just it's that for me it was kind of the realization of something that I've been dreaming about for two years And being able to even though it was a very early adaptation with a handful of bugs that they said They've already worked out of out of the game already that they've found so many answers for and I've already working on But it was still so much fun. It was New it felt fresh, but it and it felt good to play and it was just all around enjoyable And so I honest you were moderating in the in the chat the entire time You were answering probably more questions than we're getting answered on the actual stream during the Q&A portion of that Did you ever did you happen to get hands on on that that game mode? Did you get to play at all? I did not It's okay over the past couple of weeks, I've had some some internet issues so I Just didn't want to I I purposefully stepped out like mud had approached me and she was like hey Do you want to be a part of the testing? But I purposefully stepped out. I was like no, I don't want to be in the middle of the game And then have it crash because of my internet But moderating the chat was a whole lot of fun. I will admit my fingers hurt by the end of it But it was a whole lot of fun being able to see all of it all the questions that came through especially when that That gameplay was shown. So I really I really enjoyed being there either way. So and Yeah, I got it. I was completely checked out once the gameplay started I wasn't I was barely looking at chat because I mean look at what we were looking at look at what we were playing it was Gorgeous like Dante's animations the flow of his cape the the lighting that was all the lighting Just in different areas. Oh, it was amazing really really good. Jelly. You were saying something. We did forget to talk about extra life in just the progress that they made On extra life. They did over 200% of their goal for their extra life stream as Undying games so congrats to you guys and from my perspective it looked like it was a very successful event successful event for you guys So congrats on that for sure It was I'm really glad I'm really glad with the direction It worked mad props to our programming team our level design team who like they said did that on the fly in less than a week I think this was our solid proof that Michael is in fact a robot not a human being I have been told the man was up for 46 hours Trying it trying to get that ready. So I Can't be human. It's it's not possible He did it for the kids. It was for the kids. It was for the kids.  I just didn't even Recognize it. I was just in the moment. So I roast in the whole thing I'll be honest. Nobody could nobody could see my face But I was I was grinning ear to ear the entire time the gameplay is being shown everybody Everybody's excitement for the game all of the questions if it just made me so happy to finally to finally be able to show you that Show show you guys in the community that we have been working super hard in the game And we're I'm so excited for everyone to get their hands on it. I really am a lot of people have been losing face saying that this game would Never come out and that you guys have never shown anything Solid or concrete and as I said, this was not a proof of concept by any means however It was enough to really rekindle the spirit of the community Absolutely, I talked to several people in the community already between yesterday and today and Basically just said that what how what we've been saying about playing the game. They feel the same way about just seeing gameplay They feel that it looks great. It looked fun. We were all having a great time. So they're just excited to See that game progressing in a way that it feels tangible to them For sure. Yeah Credit where credit is due so the next Dante's kit was pretty damned cool, especially his especially Well, I am talking I am like a kid right now Especially his Buscete. No, especially his right click was Just awesome and we'll get to that here in a little bit So you guys want to just get into it start talking about Dante's kit and talking about some of the design philosophy around that Yeah, absolutely. I can So obviously I can't I can't mention any specifics I have been told I can't mention numbers or exactly how those abilities are supposed to function I can tell you exactly how his kit came to be Personally, I wasn't around when our first iteration of Dante's kit was and by the way that first iteration was not not the iteration that you guys saw I personally wasn't around when that first iteration was conceit I was there When some of the changes were made And a lot of a lot of what goes into the myths kits revolves around What what is What is needed for their lore a little bit of their personality We try to fit that into their kits and of course a lot of kits they revolve around a theme Of course, you know Dante's got his pu-pues, you know different things like that But the other thing but the other thing that a lot of people don't see behind the scenes is What we really believe the game needs and in order to establish that we have different Different archetypes so when we're when we're designing a kit Every kit has an archetype in a cigar sub archetype. For example, Dante's archetype is gunslinger Here Volter and his pu-pues is auto attacks, right? so When we when we go to design a kit, we look at those archetypes who look at okay What does the game need right now the game needs a Burst assassin or an artillery mage and we were we design a kit around that Okay, so you're saying like you have marksman you'd have a gunslinger marksman and like a bow and arrow like a Ranger or marksman sort of thing or I can't recall I can't recall every every archetype that we have like I said We have a big old list of archetypes that we all that we always look at and we assigned to different characters that it helps us Or it helps us organize all of the characters into Into a pool that we can then expand upon if you know what I mean So something you mentioned there was that the kit is usually based around the lore Does that mean the lore comes first and then you design a kid around that or is it but sometimes it's the lore first Sometimes it's the kit first or how does that typically go about? So that's that's how it used to be some time some some characters would be like pure GDA pure GDA creation or Like we would we would go and you create the kit and and the character design and then it got pushed over to art and The Lord apartment how we're trying to do it now is that we're trying to work as a more cohesive unit So instead We're going to create a very basic kit Basically saying like this ability will fire a projectile that does this and then we're going to hand it over to art and lore And they're going to fit it as into the story as best they can So that's that's something that's something new. We're trying In order in order to give lore and art that ability to to fit it better into the story So you guys will give the functionality And they'll give the the appearance and the backstory and everything You guys give you guys give the function they give the form Yep, that's what I was trying to say Like I said, sorry, like I said GDAs revolves around make the game fun and functional So that's that's mostly what that's mostly With with the kit itself. We don't we don't deal with the design the design aspect I Think his kit really did reflect his personality, especially with his voice lines, which I was surprised to hear voice lines in that Um little showcase that we did but uh, they were awesome They they they fit in with his personality and his kit and his lore really really well um, the the main thing that I say like His right click. Let's let's go ahead and get into his right click. So his right click When you engage his right click you would fire Like 10 shots or something like that or like nine or 10 shots and then as soon as but his his uh transmitters They're not guns or transmitters, but overheat He would have to drop his guns and shake his hands which was kind of hilarious and very much a Dante sort of just You know sort of thing like he just goes all in with with with with with the pew-pews and then just has the There's that drawback and you were completely silenced during that you couldn't It wasn't that you couldn't use the ability you couldn't use his role Yeah, you could honor you could use his role I asked I expected at least to be able to roll away, but I guess if your hands are burning You can't roll in your hands you're gonna roll in your hands But I mean that was a A really cool reflection of his personality and a really cool idea for his kit. Uh jelly. What did you think about that? It's a really great idea. It's very high-risk high reward in my mind Kind of having the ability to fire all of these shots all at once that's a lot of damage just very quickly But then having the couple seconds afterwards where you can't do anything Is a very like you need to secure the kill or secure that you're getting away with this ability In order to get the most out of it. And I think that that's such a cool Dynamic of making the it's not just oh look. I press right click. I do damage It's more of a thought process behind the casting of the ability and I think that that's incredible I always love seeing Counterplay in things Right if that if you can do one thing there should be counterplay toward the opposite end and having a Character have counterplay in and amongst themselves where the person using them gets to choose when that applies I think is a very cool idea Yeah, I could definitely see an assassin Observing waiting watching him fire that off knowing that he no longer has That heavy damage that he could do really really really up close And uh, and he can no longer roll away and he can't he can't do he can't do nothing He can't if there's lifesteal in the game he wouldn't be able to lifesteal Like that would be the time you go in you see him use that that's when you go It's kind of like if you're chimera and you see giddy and uses portal as soon as he uses that portal and you're close You're like, oh he has no escape time to time to go with Dante.  I want to ask about that right click. Is is that something we're going to see more often? Is about is it is having drawbacks on an ability something we can expect on more characters in ethereal? Is that More standard to just Dante um I don't think I can quite answer that one yet. I think that one's uh, that one's a oh and knife question All right I can feel him. He's not even here, but I can feel him breathing down my neck I swear if you guys were able to somehow work some sort of riskable reward system into each and every kit Oh, that would be The bees knees Yeah, that would be amazing. I do want to get into the rest of Dante's abilities that we were able to see last night um And so I mean, let's just start with his first ability the one seemed to be some kind of Long-ranged piercing shot that would go through multiple Uh targets that would deal damage to multiple. Um, man goose. What did you think of that? Fun, it was pretty easy to hit. It was hard. It was easy to hit on minions It was hard to hit on people. Um, if you guys didn't know there was and they intentionally put a 100 millisecond delay into that Play test. So we were at it had had a little bit of lag that we were dealing with so it was kind of hard to hit Some of the abilities that one. Um It wasn't that hard. I was just I can't aim for one thing But it was it was a good ability for for an adc to have I let you deal a little bit of damage to the front minions while still uh Still getting that last hit on a minion that you perhaps you can't Quite get to with um with your basic attacks. I mean, it's a nice little addition to uh to an adc kid. I think Yeah, I absolutely agree. Um, psionics, is there any I don't know. Is there anything that you can give us more detail on for that ability other than what we've Kind of just felt for ourselves Um, so details are one of those things that I I can't really delve into. Um Pretty much pretty much what you guys saw Is uh is what the ability is going to be Dante's Dante's kit through and through Um, it's it's it's really pretty it's really pretty simple. Um There's not a whole lot of In depth he's he's meant to be that character that can guide new players into The moba genre and more specifically the adc role or the carry role. Okay. Um Um So yeah, there's there's not a whole lot of depth to his kit. Um But that's that's definitely that's it's just uh, yeah, it's his line ability. Yeah Basically what I heard there mangoos is if we can't figure it out them we're idiots Yeah Um, I mean another basic ability we can just get into is his combat role I don't know if there's anything necessarily fancy about it other than it just as a quick dodge mechanic to get out of the Way, which was very important for us yesterday with the remaining two abilities Being his grenade and his ultimate which we'll talk about the ultimate in a second But the grenade from what it seemed like to me is you can vary the distance that it's thrown based on where you're looking And it just does like a grenade an aoe damage field um the We had an interesting time with it that last night that it was one-shotting people at the end of the game We could just lob a grenade out there and hope for the best But um, I know kai said that that the damage numbers are by no means finalized So that's not going to be a thing you can do in ethereal the The actual game itself you're not going to be able to toss a grenade and expect to one-shot somebody with just that ability So yeah, not not only are those numbers not finalized. Um, I don't know if anybody knows this But on top of making that entirely new map and and all of that stuff Um Dante got an entirely new set of numbers for that event as well as XP gold all of that stuff was altered for that event. So it'd be a little so the the games would be a little bit more fast-paced Um, we could show off a lot more of the game without having to sit there and just farm for Farm for several minutes straight. So I mean, yeah, we got a lot of those 10 minions to instant level 20 So it was great Oh, yeah, a lot of yeah a lot of those a lot of those numbers were altered very much So, uh, none of the numbers that you saw on there were final or even even close to what they're going to be in the In our final product. All right, and then mangers. Do you want to go over dante's ultimate? Which we had so much fun with yesterday Oh, we did we did we had a great time with it. I do want to get back to the grenade and the roll in a little bit, but um the the ultimate so It's a a lot of people were calling him last night.  It was it traveled all the way across the screen Oh, it was fast. It was very impactful and we were calling the base cannon because the uh The sound effect that went along with it Oh But yeah, it was it was a shocker to get hit by that sucker and it was uh It was fun watching it fly past you too. Like oh, thank god that didn't hit me So, yeah, another ability that was one-shotting us all last night man use congratulations. By the way Getting the first spawn kill of ethereal Snipe them out of there just no big deal.   That was one of the most satisfying abilities to use. It really was something that we talked about probably go ahead jelly something we talked about today man goose was Seeing damage numbers come up when we use that ability.   Can you fire from one level through to the next level or? I you're right. I cannot in fact. Yeah I don't know. I think it's pretty freaking obvious that it's going to be able to go through pierced multiple later of the map you can't have An ability like that that already pierces stuff and goes at that long range on a A game where you have multiple levels. I'm personally going to call it UG's not confirming it. I'm going to say that's definitely going to travel through layers and uh, What do you think jelly? I absolutely agree with you. It's either going to travel through lanes or be a one shot at close range I'm willing to call either one.  Uh, that's that's the the uh enter the ether exclusive character. Okay Okay, I see I one thing I wanted to get to about the grenade Um, there was supposed to be a targeting reticle. I was not uh in the game that we were playing I I had it pop up once while while I was playing and it was extremely helpful to have that So if you were thinking well, how are they aiming those grenades? There's supposed to be an indication indicator for for the uh where the grenades go to land And I'm sure that'll be in the actual game itself But it was not in the uh play test And the role a question I had I don't again. I don't know if you'll be able to answer this It's just hit box going to change when he rolls like would you be able to roll under something that was aimed high at like at his head? so I don't know about as much as can't answer as I not sure um I think I think the safe bet would would be to say For now I can't say But I really just don't know really that that'd be much more programming. Um character design side So, okay, and can you roll in between grog rocks legs? Towards the end of changing hitboxes and Abilities going above something that I noticed that it was very subtle and you wouldn't think about necessarily But we had all three degrees of aiming. I could shoot straight up in the air if I wanted to whereas in a game like Smite right it's just on a single plane. It just goes outwards. I can't aim upwards Which I felt great. It didn't seem like there were any issues with I could cast abilities upwards I could do everything normal That was ranged in some way. I could do in whatever direction. I was looking which was nice For sure. Um, you gotta be able to snipe those skyscrapers. I exactly I think we already answered that I'm going through my questions right now And I think we already answered a lot of them there. Yeah Something we did notice but I I don't know what it does and maybe you can tell us but I expect probably not Is there on the bottom left side? We had this these guns with the three bullets in the middle and then a number underneath Can you give us any information as to what that means? Is that the marksman passive? Is that a daunte passive? Is that anything Nope. Yep knew that was the answer No, I cannot So all we get is what we can extrapolate from playing Oh, man I'm gonna have to go back through and look at my footage to see if that number moved or if those From what I saw I never saw it move at all You probably just weren't hitting shots So Jelly performed much better than I did I believe I uh did pretty well against you and mud by myself Me and jelly already had already had the conversation about the top ethereal player in the game. So right now. That's me I'm just saying I undefeated three wins streak. You can't say that I lost um Um, let me see. I wasn't in those tests anything else about his kit or what we saw that isn't map related That we can talk about turrets That's a a great one. Were those turrets Are those the expected look of the turrets in the main map or were those just created for this map if you can say so um I'm not sure but I believe those turrets were designed specifically for that map. Okay. Okay, and there was something uh man goose and I talked about today is the There was a ring around of the turrets That was at least to me to what I could see is the range of the turrets Is that something you're expected to have in the main game as well Is rings on the ground determining where turret radius is Yes, yeah, I I do believe that is something that we want to we want to have yep I don't know. I don't know if what you guys saw was the range we're going to have I do know the the towers numbers were also altered as far as health goes. I don't know I don't know Um or think that we altered its range. So and speaking of tower health. Dante's right click Did damage to towers is that something a lot of damage? Yeah, is that something that we can expect in the in as a Ability of Dante that he can use his right click to help burst down towers or was that something that Just hadn't been changed yet or whatever you want to call it I don't I don't think I can I don't think I can give you the answer to that one. I think that means you have to speculate on That's that's that's perfectly fine, but just expect lots of expect lots of not sure's or can't answer that one. So um The the core at the end after you took down the tower was a big moving valkyrie Is that uh, something we could expect to see in game? uh As far as Something like that. Yes, that specifically I don't believe so Okay, right. Oh, yeah, that was a lot of fun crazy amounts of damage by the way And it had different abilities. Yeah, it was ingest that it just walks up in autos.  It was it was insane. No give no given that thing I I died so fast I didn't even know what it killed me They are they are brutal. I don't um, I don't know if their numbers were altered or anything. Um As with everything everything is subject to change So uh, don't don't expect that that's that's how it'll be forever You're always gonna get one shot by the final uh base. Oh, yes, absolutely So, uh gg you just can't win. There's no winning It's actually whichever team decides to leave first wins the game or loses the game rather than whoever actually destroys the creature at the end Battle of attrition. Yep That's how all of our games will run All right, let's see anything else you you want to ask psionics while we have them here mangoose I have some psionics specific questions. Maybe not about the The um the play test or whatever we're we're going to call it Out of all the classes, which is your favorite to work on as far as kits go Like just you don't have to tell us about the kits or anything But just which one's your favorite favorite to favorite to work on to work on. Um to work on most likely reapers Because throughout all I don't play league but throughout all the time I played smite Um, I've always been a jungle man and to Yeah, and to add um to add the ability to um To go up down, you know add that 3d add that z axis It's it's my creative juices have been flowing man. It's crazy. I'm not saying he just confirmed reapers or junglers But yeah, but but let me be perfectly clear I we I think I think this was talked about a little bit in the dev talk But it'll really be the players Defining defining the meta or defining what they want to go if If somebody wants to go on it on a standard team of you know Dueling has a claire a cleric or berserker or whatever and a support a support and carry a mid and then And then the night and then maybe two junglers That that part's obviously been there because no other mobas ever done that um But we also talked about if somebody wants to go to two clerics in that duel lane if somebody wants to If somebody wants to go three people in that duel lane That is entirely up to them We're just going to leave one lane abandoned and just five people or four people in the duo lane One person made in one jungler though that third Junglers to free farm if they decide if that's how if that's how you want to do it more power to you um We really this could you imagine that like look at this crazy concept for a game. Let's go aram Um, like I would love to see grace marina and nicolai all with a dante carry and just mowing down a lane That for that for a lane that for a lane But uh, yeah, like I believe we mentioned in the dev talk Um, we just we as a gta department just want to make sure that no character is too oppressive Or too powerful and no meta is too oppressive It's too powerful that you have to go you have to go that specific meta Otherwise you can't you can't play the game. So that is a real error only No, that's a real error only goal um towards that end are you expecting that That once the player players define a meta let's say it's two one two and one jungler um Are you expecting that both sides of the map be let's call it red and blue side The two separate teams are both going to run that two one two one Or is it going to be that one one team decides to run two one two one And then the other team decides to go one one three one Is that something you think is theoretically possible for the two teams to actually decide Two different forms of play but still be balanced against each other or do you expect everybody to kind of play the same structure Uh theoretically absolutely anything is possible really um The one thing the one thing that I um that I've mentioned is just about everybody that's asked that The primary question is then how are you balancing the game? Before the game has even come out like as as you're testing how are you balancing the game? And my answer to that every time is that we can balance it all we can we can look at numbers We can do the math But at the end of the day the one thing that we cannot Uh that we can never really take into account is that human factor What what the players are going to do? Once they get their hands on the game. So that's when that's when gda department's job is really going to start When people start getting their hands on the game and start defining metas um So Yeah, it's the human it's the human factor that we as a gda department can't We we can't take account for okay because humans humans are weird humans do great things Mangus and I'll create our own meta. It'll be the jelly goose meta and we'll just If you're not playing the jelly goose meta, you're not playing the game, right? Okay Fantastic. All right Let's see it. What's the hardest part of uh game development so far for you? Uh for me as a gda member it's been uh Uh So far just without starting I feel kind of repetitive saying it, but it's it's not it's not having The whole community playing the game. It's it's having to it's having to balance the game without having it. It's like It's like having a job in analytics Without having any data to go off of yeah Is Describe it because we don't we don't have any data outside of the internal testing that we've done so I want you to balance my checkbook, but i'm not going to give you any of the things that I bought Yeah, i'm not gonna give you i'm not going to give you any of my i'm not going to give you any of my ines I'm not going to give you any of my paychecks And I want you to try and forget that out perfect Well, hopefully your job will get much easier and much harder as uh I expect a long I expected to get easier in some places and much harder in other places You're hearing from the whole community saying that Dante one-shotting people with his ultimate is uh The amount the amount of Dante 2 op memes I have seen is Just be glad there's not an ethereal subreddit yet. That's where all the Dante 2 op memes would show up. Oh, yes I Let's see. Is there anything else mangoes that you have for psionics here? Uh, I think that's it for me. You got anything. I think that's it for me as well psionics any final Final comments final statements. Oh, actually, I have I have one more thing. Oh, oh here we go jelly So theoretically we're going to be on the 6v6 map Sometime soon cm. So we're gonna have all of the characters out there. We're gonna have berserkers clerics marksmen arch mages Reapers overseers in theory and the last class that I can't remember nights Um, and so with all of those having their own unique class abilities and all of that I just wanted to know when the game was going to come out Soon cm. No, I'm just kidding. Um Wait a second. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Hang on. I might get an answer here Like everybody has been saying um And and like I've been told we are still on course for for Something to release by the end of this year Or shortly shortly after the end of the year. All right So that's that's what I've got for you. That's more of an answer than we've gotten in A year Yeah I've just been I've just I just told you pretty much what everyone is what everyone's What everyone uh told everyone in chat yesterday on the dev stream or we've been telling people for For past Monthish now. I believe Is when is when we is when we said that go? All right now, psionics Any final final comments statements? um I can't wait to see what y'all do with the game what metas you define um I can't I really can't wait to I really can't wait to play with y'all in that meta ether. I'm very very very excited To see what y'all do with the game and watch how many hours of pain and misery you're trying to balance danta You're gonna make me go through but I am ready As is the rest of the team. Um, thank you. Thank you both so much for having me though. I appreciate it Oh, thanks for coming man. We are we're the ones that are appreciative here. Absolutely so uh I'm just I'm just glad to I I feel like one more thing. I just feel like um Um Me personally, I don't know about you guys, but when I think about game devs. I think These gods in the sky that are that that come down from the heavens is like, hello child. I am here to update ethereal Um, personally, and I know I know mud and a few of the mark of the marketing members share my Share my sentiment here that we we want to we want to try and avoid that as best we can we want to show That we're we're gamers just like everybody else. We we're going to enjoy the game um Just like everybody else. I I I really want to personalize UG and and and show everyone that that we're working hard and that we're humans just like everyone else Right on yeah Good to go So plugs jelly you got anything to plug Uh, same as usual twitch.tv slash jelly knees But also I'll have a bunch of videos coming out about the tests we had this weekend Throughout this next week. So make sure to go get subscribed to my youtube for that Which is you jelly knees that's the same as everywhere else Uh anything for you synax that you want to plug? Uh Go check out jelly knees and man goose. That's that's it You stream sometimes though, right? I have a I have I do have a twitch channel. I have streamed I can count it on one hand the amount of times I have streamed on this twitch channel I don't know. Maybe maybe when uh pre-alpha release comes out and the nba or Not pre-alpha release. I apologize. I don't think we'll be able to stream pre-alpha, but when when I am readily able to I I may stream a theory. We'll see what happens when he's ready ready to try and take my throne as the best ethereal player You just wait that's going to be that's going to be long before we can stream. Oh, man The jelly the jelly psionics rivalry continues.  Uh, I think that's going to wrap it up for this week. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I hope you guys, uh Breathe the little sigh of relief once you actually saw some gameplay from ethereal I know I did I was even even I was getting a little bit a little bit nervous not seeing gameplay for so very long but then Actually being able to get my hands on it and play it. It's amazing. It was so much fun There's been so much care put into everything and just I think it all sums it up with the right click I mean, that's just something so different and unique that There's such a high risk reward ability tied to our marksman. I just Really enjoyed that really enjoyed the game overall But uh, yeah, this is uh, jelly knees psionics and the mangu signing off you guys. Have a good one Man go


Good morning, good morning ladies and gentlemen, dear Danielle, dear friends and colleagues. It's my pleasure to welcome you all to this colloquium in honor of Danielle Nui. It's worth recalling where we stood when you, Danielle, took up your position as chair of the supervisory board in January 2014. The euro area economy had barely come out. By the way, 2014 you gave a speech here, I remember that, with all the stuff in exactly the same room. The euro area economy had barely come out of the worst financial crisis in a century. A crisis that had shown how quickly and forcefully the banking sector could fragment and threaten the integrity of the single currency. Setting up European banking supervision was the largest step towards deeper integration since the creation of the monetary union. Expectations were high that the single supervisory mechanism would provide us with the necessary tools to decisively address weaknesses in the banking sector and restore confidence. But an incredible amount needed to be done in a very, very short time. So in early 2014, armed with the SSM regulation, you stepped into a nascent institution and faced the formidable challenge of getting the SSM up and running. You also had to conduct the first ever comprehensive assessment of the banks under ECB supervision. Danielle, you were able to shoulder the enormous responsibility thanks to your many strong qualities, not least your experience. You brought with you more than 40 years of experience as a banking supervisor. At the national level as the secretary general of ACPR, at the European level as the chair of the Committee on European Banking Supervisors Supervision, and at the global level as the secretary general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision. Paired with your strong background in financial regulation and your experience in international negotiations, we could not have asked for a more qualified person to be the first leader of European banking supervision. Now just four years later, the nascent institution has become home to one of the largest banking supervisors in the world. More than 1,000 banking supervisors work at the ECB. Together with around 4,700 national supervisors, they directly oversee 22 trillion euro in bank assets, representing about 200% of the euro area GDP. It is a remarkable achievement. And there is no doubt that you, Danielle, played a vital role in mastering this organizational challenge. Indeed, your challenge was not just building a new institution on the basis of funding regulation. It was more than that. It was about the people who work there and now and how they interact, which meant building a common culture and integrating it amongst the wider community. Bringing together 19 different supervisory authorities into a single European system was a daunting task. I know from our experience on the central banking side how hard this can be. And we have 20 years more of age. That is why it is so commendable that you made integrating European supervision one of your top priorities as a chair. Your actions speak louder than words. In the last five years, you visited national common authorities across the euro area more than 80 times and gave 50 breakfast talks with supervisors to promote a European supervisory culture and team spirit. Yet equally important have been the changes you brought to supervision itself. Your vision has always been to achieve more harmonized and European supervision. And you've come a long way in turning this into reality. And you did this in two ways. First, through the high importance you attached to promoting fair and consistent supervision. Harmonizing the main tool of supervision, the supervisory review and evaluation process allows supervisors to treat all banks across the euro area equally. And harmonizing the application of national options and discretions helps reduce fragmentation in the supervisory framework. As a result, you leave a banking sector markedly more resilient than you found it. Since 2014, the C21 ratio of banks has gone up by 300 basis points in the period up to mid-2018. And bank leverage ratios have increased from 4.9 to 5.4%. The second way was through your determination to promote the European perspective that underpins our work. Supervisors address bank weaknesses in their entirety across the euro area, undisturbed by national biases. For instance, European supervision didn't shy away from addressing persistently high levels of NPLs in certain countries by setting out guidance that helped banks draw up ambitious reduction plans and governance structures for the disposal of NPLs. Over the last four years, NPLs have decreased by around 30%. Moreover, your efforts to build a cohesive supervisory board that makes decisions efficiently has allowed European supervision to play an effective role and cooperates smoothly with the SRB in three bank resolution cases in 2017. A failing bank is always a key test for any supervisor. And under your helm, European supervision passed this test with success. But none of this would happen without the personal qualities you brought to the role. Above all, your dedication as a chair. Everyone who's worked with you can attest to the passion and commitment you showed as the chair of the supervisory board. You were renowned for responding to every email sent to you, for your firm grasp of the detail, and your incredible work ethic. Since 2014, you've chaired 119 supervisory board meetings and adopted more than 7,000 supervisory decisions. You participated in 29 hearings held by the European Parliament and the Eurogroup to explain our supervisory decisions and underline reasoning to the public and to the elected representatives. You inspire the first SSMY network in events. The supervisors connect and onsite inspectors day. You have left a strong European supervision that is well-equipped for the future. Your successor will join an institution that now has a huge pool of expertise in banking supervision. Harmonized supervisory methods forged from the best approaches to supervision from 19 countries and efficient decision-making. By the way, let us welcome the Daniel successor, Andrea Ria. Welcome, Andrea. The ECB is now well-positioned to meet the challenges ahead. Be it preparing for the post-Brexit world, further reducing the stock of NPLs, this we do know, or ensuring the adequacy of banks' internal models. Daniel, for all these achievements, for your dedication and commitment, we owe you our eternal gratitude and respect. European banking supervision is your legacy. I wish you all the best for your future endeavors. Au revoir, Daniel, and merci beaucoup.


Jos haluaisit testata, jos haluaisit seuraavaksi dataa, niin kai-square-testi on seuraavaksi asia, jossa on seuraavaksi suunnitelmasta. Mutta kai-square-testi ei ole vain välttämättä valita kai-square-testi. Let's take a look at these two examples from published research, and these are fairly common in papers that apply SCM. So you see these tables that list the kai-square first, but then are all these other indices, there are CFI, there is RMSCA, and then there are others, so there are many, many indices, and then supposedly they tell us something about model feed. Let's take a look at what is the argument for these indices, and what is the idea behind the indices? The argument for these indices is not actually an argument for the indices as much, it's an argument against the kai-square, and the argument goes like this. So every model is wrong even before it is fitted to the data, and this means that for example if we model a relationship between x and y as linear, very few relationships are actually exactly linear in any real dataset. Another example if we have a measurement scale consisting of five agreement items we assume that the measurement errors of those items are exactly uncorrelated. There are many reasons to believe that they are not exactly uncorrelated, the correlations may be low but they are not exactly zero. If we have a large in a sample size, then these kind of small discrepancies will be detected by the kai-square, and the argument further goes that instead of testing if the model fits the data exactly, we are more interested in the decree of misfit of the model. So the kai-square tells that the model is not exactly the correct, but we want to understand whether it is incorrect in a way that causes problems for our inference. So this is the argument against the kai-square and argument for the alternative fit indices. And this argument is actually made in one of these papers. So in Uli Rengö's paper in the footnote for the table, they say that the kai-square is sensitive in large sample sizes, therefore it can be completely ignored which they do in the study, and then they look at these other indices. But this is a highly problematic statement because the same statement can be made in the context of any statistical test. So if you run a regression analysis, if your sample size is large enough, then the normal test for significance will detect trivially small differences between the coefficients and zero, and therefore the p-values should not be trusted. But I have not seen a single article that makes this kind of argument that the kai-square should not be trusted because it has too much power, but then they would notice that this is the same problem for regression analysis. So there is this kind of tendency that when you see evidence against your model like we have here, we disregard it when you see evidence that supports a theoretical argument, even if the same logic that is applied here would lead to discarding. That's test as well, it's nevertheless not done. So there's some cherry-picking of evidence that is fairly common. Okay, so what are these indices then? So what do the indices tell us? And they are referred to as alternative fit indices and they fall into two families. Or most of the indices fall into two families. The first index are descriptive indices. So descriptive indices quantify the degree of misfit. And RMSCA and SRMR are the two most commonly used ones. The interpretation of RMSCA is a bit more complicated, so I'll just focus on SRMR. And SRMR is basically what is the average residual covariance in the residual covariance matrix. So it's a geometric mean, but basically an average. And if the average degree of residuals is small, then we conclude that the model fits okay. Of course, as I explained in the video about the Caiskor test, if you have a small average, it does not mean that all the residual covariances are small. It is possible that there is an area with large covariances that you should do something about it. But if you just look at the mean, then those mispecifications go undetected. The rules of thumb that you can find in many different sources and you can find multiple different rules of thumbs. But I think this is the most lenient one, goes that it should be below 0.8 or another more strict guideline is that it should be below 0.5 and the confidence interval should be below 0.8. But then you can find these guidelines that also say that 0.1 is sometimes acceptable, just mediocre fit. The other family of fit indices are comparative fit indices. So we calculate alternate invoendos. So we calculate our hypothesized model. So that is the one that gives us the Caiskor. Then we calculate two alternative models. We have the null model. The null model is a model that should not fit the data at all. And typically the null model we use is a model where we say that the variables have variances that are estimated, but they're constrained to be uncorrelated. And quite often what we study, we study measures that are supposed to measure the same thing and we study phenomena that are related. So the indicators are actually highly correlated. And then forcing a model that says that the indicators or don't correlate at all will fit really badly. And then we have on the other extreme, we have model that fits perfectly, the saturated model. We basically allow all covariances between the indicators to be freely estimated. And then these indices quantify how far from the worst possible model towards the best possible model we are on some metric of model fit. So for example, the CFI of 0.95 could be interpreted that if we start from the worst possible model, then go towards the best possible fitting model, then we are 95% of the way. And the interpretation of TLI is similar. Let's just quantify the degree of misfit a bit differently. The rules of thumb, the original rule of thumb for CFI was 0.95, but then you can see these rules of thumb that say that sometimes 0.85 is okay, 0.9 is already acceptable fit. And the original rule of thumb was 0.95. If you are below that, then you have problems. These have conceptual problems. And the big conceptual problem can be understood with an example. So let's say that I like running and let's say that I, if I compare myself to the best marathon runner in the world, that is the saturated model, and the worst possible marathon runner in the world, that is the saturated model, I'm 95% of the way toward the best possible runner. So how do we come up with that kind of comparison? Well, you can just choose a person who is really bad at running. For example, you can choose a person with our legs as your reference point, and that person definitely cannot run a marathon.  So the fact that someone takes 100 hours for a marathon does not make you a good marathon runner if you are like in the four hour or something range compared to the two hours, which is the word record. So this is a bit of an unfair or illogical comparison because we are using a model that should not fit the data at all. So why would it make a difference if our model fits better that model that should not work at all? So that's the argument against the CFI and also the TLI or any other index that uses this principle of comparing against the worst possible model. And when you read about these indices, you can find all kinds of tables from books that list these cutoffs that you can apply. And there are many other indices as well. So there are model evaluation basically reduces to finding the right index, finding the right cutoff and finding the right book to recommend the cutoff that you want to apply. This is of course, this is not a good research practice. So let's take a look at how the chi-square test should be used. And let's take a look at two extremes. So the argument for these arguments of the indices was basically simply an argument against the chi-square. So there are two extremes in this argument. In chi-square, one is that models with significant chi-square are wrong and should not be published or trusted. And the other end of the argument is that chi-square can be completely disregarded and does not need to be reported. So both of these, and this argument would further continue that you evaluate the model based on these alternative fit indices and descriptive fit indices. Both of these arguments have problems. So this argument has the problem that all multiple indicator measures, so if we have a scale, measurement scale, then basically they would be rejected if the sample size is large enough because it is unrealistic that if a person responds to survey questions, then the measurement errors of every question with every other question are going to be exactly zero. No one can design that kind of survey and it will also have to eliminate all item context effects and so on. The second problem is that we lose information from models that their triviality is specified. So it is possible that some of the rational covariances are 0.01 and they are not 0, so chi-square will eventually detect them, but they may not be large enough to make the model results completely untrustworthy. So that is the one extreme perspective. The other extreme perspective, which is actually very common, much more common than this extreme, is that chi-square can be completely disregarded like in a really rank of paper. But the problem with this perspective is that the chi-square detects trivial mispecifications in large samples, that is true, but it does not imply that a significant chi-square means that the mispecification is trivial. Also severe mispecified models are likely to be accepted. If we don't respect the model test, then we are going to be accepting models that have serious local mispecifications in one part of the model that are nevertheless not reflected in the indices that just quantify the average mispecification. And finally, it is not clear if the alternative fit indices will actually help in detecting model mispecifications. There is mixed evidence of whether these indices work or not. We know for sure that they will not work always. There may be scenarios where they work, and then the problem is that how would you know if your study is done in a scenario where, for example, the CFI 0.95 rule is going to be guaranteed to produce only results that are freely mispecified. So a more reasonable perspective is somewhere in the middle. And the more reasonable position would take the chi-square and respect it. So if our model is not exactly correct for the data, we report that, and we say that the model can be mispecified or is mispecified in some way, and then the results may be a bit less trustworthy than we would hope them to be. Then we need to do diagnostics to understand the mispecifications, understand the source of misfit, and when we understand the source of misfit, then we can probably fix the model. So it's fairly common that when you look at models recently in the papers, there are constraints that don't make sense. For example, you're constrained to explanatory variables, to exogenous variables to be uncorrelated. Those are almost certainly simply model specification errors and not intentional, and they just go undetected because people don't do mispecifications. Once you understand the source of mispecification or whether you can do something about it, then the next thing is that you do sensitivity analysis. So if you don't know if your model, if you don't have any theoretical reason to modify your model based on diagnostics, then you can free some of the parameters empirically. Your statistical software will provide you something called modification indices, and you can just check how much changing your model a little here and there would influence the results. If changing the model here and there a little would not change the results by much, then we can conclude that the possible mispecifications in the model probably will not have a major result impact on our results. And importantly, the alternative fit indices are not needed in this more reasonable process. So there are different arguments and foreign against these alternative fit indices. Klein summarizes these arguments really well in his book in chapter 8, and he concluded that there is enough evidence to show that these alternative fit indices don't detect all serious model mispecifications. So it is possible that you have severely mispecified model and CFI is still above 0.95 and therefore if CFI is more than 0.95 it does not mean that we wouldn't have a serious mispecification. And his position is close to mine. The chi-square provides you useful information. If it does not reject the model then we know that the covariance fit is very good. If it does, then we need to do diagnostics and understand the source of mispecification. One final thing about these indices that is worth mentioning is the understanding where do they come from? So who presented the first alternative fit index and why? Well, it was Carl Jörskuk who developed LISREL which was the first structural ecosystem modeling software and the first alternative fit index was the GFI index. And he said that that was developed because users were unhappy that LISREL rejected their models with the chi-square test and then he wanted to provide the user something else otherwise the users would stop using the software and use software that doesn't do model testing. So this is the history. These were invented to make users happy not really to be good yardsticks on with the models of good or not. So conclusions about model fit. The chi-square is the only test of model fit. If you want to test if the model is correct for the data then chi-square does that job for you. The other indices quantify the degree of average mispecification in the model. The problem is that the average mispecification the average covariance misfit hides lots of individual covariances and those individual covariances can indicate problems that are serious or problems that can be addressed and just looking at the average will hide these problems. So these indices are not helpful in doing diagnostics for models. Nevertheless, they can be reported because it's a convention and often reviewers will ask you to report the indices if you just do chi-square. So maybe it's a good practice to always have CFI-RMSI, RMS EA and maybe SRMR in your paper. Finally, if the model does not fit the data it is important to do diagnostics of residuals or potentially modification indices to understand where is the source of misfit.


Hello, I'm Harry Bain, Species Minister of Labor. Our government is focused on keeping people healthy and safe as we work together to address the impact of COVID-19. I know it's been challenging for essential workers, employers, and all who have continued doing their jobs throughout the pandemic, and for many others who are reopening. A lot of time and work has been put in by so many to ensure that the staff and customers are safe and protected. And importantly, the WorkSafeBC team has been there since the beginning of the pandemic, working collaboratively with the Office of the Provincial Health, workers, and employers to help keep everyone safe while at work. Your efforts have been key in helping workplaces safely reopen as part of the Premier's Economic Restart Plan. WorkSafeBC has impressively developed COVID-19 industry health and safety protocols and resources for over 30 industries and sectors. In addition to provide guidance, you have also worked tirelessly to complete more than 15,000 worksite inspections at last count. When WorkSafeBC does these inspections, we know it is because you genuinely want to help key workers safe and help employers to open workplaces safely. I would like to add that WorkSafeBC has taken all of this on while continuing to provide services to injured and ill workers during the pandemic. So big thank you to the whole team at WorkSafeBC for your diligence, your caring, your incredible work. These are exceptional circumstances, and the WorkSafeBC team has stepped up and become unsung heroes who are helping keep our economy going and all of us safe. Thank you.