Oh, you did not miss it. Jamie at 63 welcome on in. Hello everyone and welcome to the Paragon, the over prime partners that pop as we're calling it, where we're going to be talking about Paragon, the over prime. And this week we're going to be talking about the history, how they got that name and the recent developments, the final beta test and Xena joining me in this adventure is going to be stunt and neurona stunt. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself, tell people where they can find you and that you are streaming right now. Both of these fine people are streaming right now. What's up, everybody? I'm Stump V. As Mangus mentioned it earlier, we have one handsome guy and then there's me and Lolita. Yeah, that's right. Welcome to pop our first episode where, like Mr. Mangus said, we'll be going through a lot of stuff, answering your questions and and having some fun. Going on to you. Everybody, as much of you know me, I'm Lolita. I go by neurona and today I'm joining the handsome guy and the buttercup in the middle and this pop episode Paragon over prime partners. I am streaming on my Twitch and if you want to see Mangus live, he's streaming on Mangus, Gigi on YouTube.com. Yeah, for those of you that are only YouTube streamers, you can definitely watch Mangus every week, but me and Lolita will alternate between our streams every week, so Mangus will always be at the same place where you find them. Links to the Twitches should be in the description. I'll pull them up right now. I can't pull them up right now. I can't pull them up right now. It went away. But yeah, we're going to talk about the history of over prime because a lot of people don't seem to know that it started a long time ago. It was probably actually the first one to start using Paragon assets. It went back in 2018. Yep. You guys want to go over what you know and then I'll just correct you when you get things wrong or? Well, from what I know, Mangus is that way in the past when Paragon shut down. Anyway, let's actually talk about why Paragon shut down. We remember if people don't know, if people don't recall, Paragon had started moving its development team and most of its man work into creating Fortnite. And it ended up with a very low man sourced working force. And that's when they announced the shutdown on April 26th, 2018. I'm pretty sure everybody remembers that date. And that month exactly is when a team and I believe it started off with Rocket Mania. They were working on a project called overthrow and then project prime X. If I'm not wrong, correct me if I'm wrong, Mangus. I will correct you. Rocket Mania was working on the project by himself. It was never meant to be a sustainable game. It was just overthrow Paragon. He was just making it pretty much for his resume, which he did indeed end up landing a job by creating overthrow. He was soliciting donations through Reddit. So it wasn't completely his own funding. He was a bit funded by the community. Overthrow, if you've ever played it was very janky. It was a great attempt for one person doing it by himself. It was amazing, but like I said, it was never meant to be a sustainable game. Then later on, you had team Soul Eve created prime X, which they called a prime dunk royale, which I still don't know what that means. I've got some old footage of it. It was like twin blast hiding in a tree, shooting at rampage, rampage is throwing rocks. I don't know, it was freaking crazy. So, but eventually what happened was Soul Eve ended up bringing in Rocket Mania to their team. And once they did that, they made a pretty aggressive announcement, stating that at the time you had predecessor fault, core was still kind of around. They made a very aggressive statement. It said they don't think anybody is doing these Paragon remakes right. So they're gonna do it themselves. They said, we're not gonna do prime X anymore. We're not gonna do this prime dunk royale. We're gonna merge with overthrow. And that's how the name came about, is a portmanteau between overthrow Paragon and prime X, over prime. And the team Soul Eve name, I believe you have that pulled up, the story behind their name. The team Soul Eve name was that they decided, they said, let's put our hearts and souls together and let's get this project done by Christmas Eve from Soul Eve. And if on Christmas Eve, we don't have it all done, we all go our separate ways. That's how it came about to be Team Soul Eve. And I believe after that, Netmarble, because they needed, of course, anybody could just say, hey, I'm just gonna sit here and develop a game, but the manforce, the money, the raising that is needed behind that, that is exactly when Netmarble FNC reached out and collaborated with Team Soul Eve to bring you what is now called Paragon the over prime, previously called over prime. No, we don't get money for being partners. We get some nice videos to create content on well before anything goes. Let me mention anonymous gifter, anonymous gifter coming in with the hot 25 gifted. Thank you very much. Nice. Stunt is frozen. Either that or he's creepily staring at low right now is what it looks like on my screen. He can give us a blank so we know he's a lot of stunts. Are you with us? Come to Slimming, I can give you money. Just come to my house and I'll give you a five spot. So after that, after that, after, no, Netmarble was the big turnaround for them, but before that they had peer to peer, they had over prime, they were putting it out for free to the community, but it was peer to peer.    I was smoking weed in high school and chasing girls. I didn't have any computer skills.  So I had no idea how to do this download process. So I made a video on it and how to do it. I ended up taking several people and walking them through the process and now Stunt's camera is down. So now, Narono, on my screen, your name is now Stunt, but anyway. Oh no, I'm supposed to be the Buttercup. He's a beauty guy. So what, and then what happened there was, there was peer to peer, you had to open up, you had to like, basically host a game on your own PC. So you had to have a pretty high power PC to host a game. A lot of people absolutely hated that. It was free, but like it, it was the kind of free where people just didn't even want it. But then after a while, they did create servers for the game. They created new maps. They had a monolith map, then they made a legacy map, and then they made a three lane, a one lane ARAM map that was 3v3.  That was a ton of fun. And it was around that time that they did their 3v3 ARAM map that they did get picked up by Netmarble. And that's when things completely changed.  So we're going to take everything else offline and work on that. And that kind of brings us to where we are today. What about the name change? Let's talk about that because I remember the first name was Overprime. Their heroes were called differently. Remember Scott? I don't remember all the names, but then they adopted the original Paragon names. Where did that come from? Let me know if you can tell us a little bit of history. Well, the original reason that they weren't using the Paragon names is because they wanted to do a Netflix graphic novel and they couldn't use, they could use the assets, but they couldn't use those names in something like that and like the graphic novel type thing.  And but after like, obviously they had been in talks with Epic about using Paragon, the actual name and logo. So that's why they were able to change them back and they should be able to still do this Netflix graphic novel. In the future, I would think, using the original Paragon names. Yeah, absolutely. If you guys check on, if you guys are part of the Paragon Overprime Discord server, if you go into the facts, you will actually come across a fact like that, that they are in the works of releasing. They have their own lore, by the way, and they are going to be working very soon on a Netflix series in regards to Paragon, the Overprime heroes with the original Paragon names.  That's pretty awesome, man. I haven't seen any other company do that before. Oh, here we go. We got something back here. There it goes. Can you blink for us, Sons? There you go. Jesus Christ. There he is. Just as I was starting to move the names around and everything. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Can you raise your volume a little bit, Sons? I have a problem here. It looks like you've been ducking under your desk for a minute. I was ducking somewhere. I can't really say. Can you hear me now? Yeah, we can hear you. Nice. We can do a Verizon commercial right after this. So awesome. But yeah, that's basically brings us, basically brings us to now because they got the Paragon name. Now they changed all the names back. What I would like to see is them change the ability names back because some of these ability names are trash. Yeah, such as. Well, what's the most recent? Let's talk about Zena for a little bit here. She's a hot topic. Let's talk about her ability names, for example. What do we have for ability names for Zena? I don't know what her ability names are. I can look it up real quick. Do you guys know off the top of your heads? Not off the top of my head. Off the top of my head. I don't want to. I have a voyage. The Lavoyage. Lavoyage is where she swings her physical damage dealer at the enemy. It's it's a sword. That's the Lavoyage or Lavoyage. See, I'm fine with her names because she's new. She's a completely new character to the Paragon universe. So they could name her abilities whenever they want. It's when they take make it rain and call it howitzer's showtime is what I'm like. Oh, come on now.  We're actually comparing. We're actually comparing the names of the abilities now to what we originally know or kind of like seem to be wanting something around that idea. But that's why you say that Zina's names, ability names are now are OK because she's new. But definitely how is your showtime? I believe you have a lot to talk about how is there in his showtime? So she after your famous YouTube video of him coming out of the sewers. Oh, my God. He wouldn't just come out of sewers. Do you guys suppose that these name changes or or the renames are probably they didn't sound good translated in English? Maybe they're probably not their own language. Like I keep going back to howitzer, but our 2000 rocket is how we've always known as Q. And in over prime, it's called super powerful missile. Like super powerful missile. Like, come on, guys. Oh, yeah, yeah. The actual does brings it up in my chat. The thunk being called Pew. You. Pew Pew. Pew Pew wasn't supposed to be the voice line after face. She comes along and she says, Pew Pew. That's that's the sound effect from face. Actually, it is, I believe. Yeah, maybe a big difference. Oh, yeah, that's crazy. Like being called Q. Speaking of Xena, though, have you guys played Xena? Yes. I have laid my hands on her. Not one time.  So I've let her go for now. I was when we were talking, I was mentioning this, that it's very interesting when you have a new hero come to the game and it is not broken. Yeah, she's fairly balanced. Whatever their testing team is doing, they're doing an amazing job. Like to have Gadget and all these other heroes be extremely more powerful than a new hero that comes hot off the press and to be as balanced as she is.  So, I mean, my hats off to those for the team itself, they're doing a great job. She's not broken or broke. I believe if we run a poll here in the community, I'm pretty sure there's a lot of people saying otherwise.  She's too overpowered at this point. Is that what you really think of her? Like, she is a broke-it-all? Like, her man, her la-viage, she hits hard, especially if there's a certain build that people are putting on her exactly like how you would build, I don't know what the exact card's here, but man, I went against Xena, not one time did I go against Xena at any game and she shreds me, no matter who. Like, I can probably do some damage with her with a carry, probably Sparrow or maybe Murdoch, but by man, that woman, that warrior, it's hard. She hits hard with all her abilities and she's got to an escape means too, so. I just think that there are characters that do the same thing as Xena, but they do it better. I think Grux does the same thing as Xena, but he does it better. I think Fing-Miao does the same thing as Xena, but does it way, way better. Like, Fing-Miao has got to, he won't talk about broken, Fing-Miao. A little broken, but yeah, I don't think she's broken anyway. I think she's pretty well balanced. Of course, if you get ahead in any game, you're gonna run rampant, you're gonna run rough shot over the enemy team no matter what character you picked, but especially like a melee bruiser type character, they are very oppressive when they get ahead because it just seems like there's absolutely nothing you could do to escape them. I will say her kit is freaking cool. Like, I dig her kit a lot. Like that charge up, charge thing that she does, like you charge it up and it deals higher damage, it goes longer the longer you hold it. That's super cool. We haven't seen that in a Paragon type game. Are you talking about the fly high where she like swings them, stuns them, and like pulls them in the air? No, the right click. The right click. The right click because she gives her a farther distance. And the interesting thing is you don't have to time it where, like her distance where it ends, you don't have to time that with any of the heroes. She just slices through.  Yeah, I think that's the leaf through time then that you guys are talking about. I'm reading here through her ability names. I believe that is leaf through type, her R and B still. Yeah. See when you say right click for you, I got to hold my controller and look, okay, I was supposed to right click. Yeah, see that's different. I play out of control. I'm going to address my chat real quick. Got Fred Anderson says, isn't she only OP because three lanes have 80 C's in them? That is so common right now. People are taking 80 C's freaking everywhere. And Eric Kilmonger says, wait until they put Wukong in the game. Yeah. You want to see overpowered? Yeah, absolutely. Well, see, I mean, like I said, when they come up with their own hero and it's pretty balanced, I'm pretty sure they'll figure out a way to. I think that did a great job with her. Kong. And she has a I don't know who they hired for this, but she has her own voice lines, which I did not expect. I figured they would give her like, I did not hear them because I haven't played her. Yeah, she says she's like through time and space. She looks good on you. I just figured. So yeah, now you guys were talking about the trend of taking a carry everywhere.  Maybe those two people want to carry. So they just end up two carries in a lane together and then you have another carry in the off lane. Like, I don't know, what do you guys think about that? Because I remember back in fault, I used to say, hey, we don't want to see a Decker carry or a Muriel carry. And now like you can take any character, any hero and build them in any freaking lane you want. Especially that phase, man. Especially that phase. She's meant to be a caster in mid lane and now you can play her support and she is all cracked. Let me tell you. I think the ADC combination, all the ADCs are pretty powerful. Even if you take all the ADCs and Sparrow being among them the weakest, she is powerful in another lane if you play it right. And just like any other parry zombie or even in Paragon, for some reason the ADC is going into solo lane against a melee hero, it's unfair. I've seen it so many times with Murdoch, it really is unfair. We had a game, I played about an hour ago, maybe two hours ago. They had a Sparrow off lane. Wraith as the support, Twin Blast as the ADC and Gadget mid lane.  We had zero chance. I was happy I had five kills at the end of that game. That is so oppressive right now. They, I don't know what they need to do. I don't know if they just need to directly nerf ADC's early game damage. It's been a problem in all these games. It was a problem in fault for a while. ADC early game damage was just through the roof. It was definitely a problem in predecessor of their very first beta test. ADC's like four shots early game and you're dead. And so like, I don't know what is up with these companies and not knowing how to correctly balance ADCs. Maybe ADC's is just harder to balance than I think they are. I think one thing that could help though, especially with the off lane ADC meta is if they made minions hit a little bit harder so that when they poke you, the return damage they get from angry minions actually saps their health a little bit. Angry minions. Angry minions. I'm sorry. That's over the same kind of aggro. Angry. Angry Tears. I think there are a lot of effective solo laners between Feng Mao and Kuang. Like, Sevrog is a great player. I mean, Sevrog is a great hero. But if you don't know how to play Sevrog, solo lane is definitely not for you. I've seen some great Sevrog players. And I think when it comes down to ADCs going into solo lane, your only counter now possibly is Xena if you can play fair or more safe. And Kuang or Feng Mao, because of that shield ability. Yeah. The thing too is it used to be like, the reason to take like a tanky character in the off lane, that's the reason most people want to take a tanky character in off lane is because it gives you a tank on your team and that's a good place to put them. And sort of the, it was always a hard early game if you were up against a ranged as a bruiser hero. But it seems like in over prime, they get so far ahead that there's no coming back.  In over prime, like that late game gets there pretty early and like all the ADCs are at full build and they're just shredding any tank that tries to come at them. It's a problem. It's something that they definitely need to look at. From, you know, taken from back from the approaches that, you know, for example, fault head went through. I mean, I personally have no problem taking a, for example, a decker or even a gadget, you know, gadget shreds right now. If I take her against anybody, any tank, any crux, any set rock, any fangmau, that is very nice, I believe. And I don't know, people just in general, people in over prime seem to be wanting to take every single hero, build him wherever and however. And if you look in the Paragon over prime net marble site, you will see that they have categorized every single hero into like groups.  You know, if she's supposed to be a caster, you take her into the support lane and man, she does a lot of damage. Like I play a lot of phase and I can 1v1 a kite anytime. The jungler I can 1v1, I can 1v1 a sparrow.  So I'm not sure what they want to do after, you know, this brief break that they're gonna take and then to relaunch. And again, we're gonna get to that in a little bit here. Maybe, I don't know, tweak some characters, balance some characters. We don't know that yet, but we do wish that from them for sure.  I do enjoy phase being a mage over a support. I have a lot more fun playing her in mid, to be honest with you. She is very fun. Yeah, but I do remember. I'm getting bored.  And again, we slower yank here because it's been used a lot often to yank your teammate out of a fight. I mean, I think that just adds to the ADC problem. If you add phase to be able to link to the teammates and get out, you're just adding to that because these ADCs are really powerful in this game. So phase being a mage in mid, I think it's a good counter for a lot of players. Faze a little too strong right now though. She is. She is, her blind man. She shreds half of that health, no matter where that health bar is going. In my opinion, I think it's gadget and then phase for mid. I mean, I don't know if you guys agree, but first gadget and then phase all the way it comes down to how powerful they are. I'm really excited to see that the tournament starts tomorrow and then the EU tournament is tomorrow and then the NA tournament is Sunday. I'm really excited to see what people take because gadget's going to be banned out.  Why do we know that gadget's going to be banned out? What's that, decided? If they're commenting when you go ahead and do that. Yeah, it's not decided. It's not like in the rules that gadget can't be played.  Nobody wants the risk. Like everybody wants to have gadget on their team, but nobody wants to risk the enemy team getting her. So I think we're going to see a lot of gadget bans. I want to see how people fare with the other mid laners. Like I want to see in this tournament, if they've just only been grinding gadget because she's the best and then they end up without a pick or have they been spreading the love and learning other heroes that they can play? I've seen quite a few Howie picks where even if you go into a quick match or a casual match, I see a lot of Howie's being picked over a phase in mid, which is very interesting to me. Or even a gadget. I mean, absolutely take a phase against a Howie. Even when you go into competitive playing and you play against players who understand the game, gadget is the first to get banned. But when you're going into a casual play, usually picks are Howie, Gideon. Yeah, people just want to have fun with their old Paragon papers, yeah. Yeah, I haven't met a gadget player yet. Maybe once or twice, if anything.  And I think Ray is an amazing hero in this game, too. His kid, but he doesn't get as bad as much banned as Murdoch or Revenant do, for some reason. I think Revenant should get a ban if any of the ADCs. Oh, what are you, Murdoch? What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Because of my personal experience against any Revenant, I'm always being shredded. Oh, really? It's usually Murdoch, yeah. Not like I'm not saying in any casual game where you run into like newer player who's trying out Revenant maybe for the first time in their life. I'm talking about an actual Revenant who knows how to play Revenant. Man, that that guy could be deadly. His kid is pretty impressive. I do want to say, though, Ray is a hero that I will always hate.  You know, I can't. I can't with Ray. Yeah, no, the fact that you can go into a portal and still get Rewinded by Ray. Yeah, that's just it's OP. It's crazy. I've had it happen once to me. I've had it happen there in our game. I was saying, imagine going through a portal thinking you're all done and that and that Ray we won. Oh, yeah. You're right back. I didn't even know that was a thing until yesterday. That and Kalari can actually dash through a portal and still get you. Yeah, she starts her dash. Invisibility, just being an all. Do you think out of all the kids, it's probably like like the whatever kid, like whatever part or. No, that's not a long as time ago. I think Ray's I think surprise, surprise, his ultimate should be a basic ability. And I think Rewind should be his ultimate ability. I will say today, I played with Dapper nice and I played the ADC for the first time in forever. And he was really good with his phase pulls, pulling people back. I know that's not a Ray three wine, but it's kind of the same thing. And it confused the shadow of me constantly.  It's the same way with Ray. That's the thing with Ray, too, is like if you have a bad rate, that they're going to be saving people more than killing people.  But yeah, I definitely agree that. Rewind should be his ultimate. And being able to go stealth for a little bit should just be a basic ability, I think. Rewind as an ultimate. Wasn't an ultimate supposed to be a damage dealing ability rather than just an ability? It doesn't have to be. But it's still just an ability right now, too.  But that's pretty powerful. You just become a Kalari. That's about it. You become a Kalari. Yeah, that's true. I mean, if we compare it to phase, her ultimate isn't to pull you, even though I've seen players that abuse that a lot. Like, I know with phase first, but I know I'm drifting from the subject, but with phase and just because I played her a lot in Paragon of the Overprime, you get to pull the enemy so many times that it really gets frustrating. Even though hooking to the enemy will cause more damage, I believe linking them back and pulling them is more frustrating here. And I don't know, would you guys say, like, you'd want phase pull to be the ultimate, for example, rather than her actual alt that she has right now? No, because to be effective, it has to be done more often, I think. That's to be done more often. I think phases, the ultimate is pretty balanced where if you just pop the alt, you get attack speed and damage, like a lower damage. But you have to link somebody to get the damage, which also, it makes it great because if you detach from the link, that damages leaves. So it gives people a chance to run off or run away or do all that other stuff. So I think if phase is pretty well balanced in the sense that you don't need to add any more things to her alt. But you did say phase is pretty well balanced. I think she's struck. No, no, I mean alt-wise. Yeah, alt-wise. Alt-wise, yeah. If you don't do your thing, if you add more stuff like another pool or someone else to that alt, it's perfect. You get to pick. You either, you get a health regen or you damage a player where you're close enough where you can get wrecked too, if you're in a team fight. A lot of people in my chat are requesting to bring our old kit back and just make her a sheer trade-up support. I don't know, I like her as a mid laner, but... I like her as a mid laner, yeah, that's okay. Again, it just comes down to preference. If they like playing support and they enjoyed her as a support, I mean, I would agree with them. I think I got bored of playing her as a support, which I'm enjoying that she's a mid laner now. She's a mage. A lot of people said that phase was one of the weaker supporters back. And again, we say back and fault just because it was the most recent mobile that we all shared together. People, for example, would rather go with steel. And again, let's go above that topic of steel. I don't see a lot of steels.  His shield, his kid, is this pretty insane? I said no, I think he's very weak right now. But his shield actually serves a purpose. You kept putting a description that it shields you from projectiles, and yet in other games, everything went through. This shield actually prevents you from everything. His steel is incredibly strong right now. I've been seeing him, as I've been watching people do competitive play, steel is being picked more and more as people have come to realize just how freaking strong steel is. Not only do you get a support in the early game, once he actually gets a little bit of gold, you have a tank for the late game. That's just the best of both worlds. And nobody, nobody will watch a steel run up to them and then huddle up in a group and charge at your team.  Like turning the lights on, the cockroach is running everywhere.  The enemy team's a cockroach, they scatter, because they don't want that, they don't want that dunk. They don't want that dunk on top of their heads. And here's another question for chat too. How do they feel when they play these heroes? Like when you play Chimera and you're swinging away, you feel the heaviness of his swings. When you play steel, you feel the heaviness of his attacks. Like, it's interesting how you can feel that through the way the game is developed, but I do like that a lot. When I play Chimera, you know he's a tank, you feel it in-game. Sound effects combined with the hit-stop animations really do lend a lot of visceral weight to a lot of the melee attacks for real. It's nice. Same for Rampage, I believe, yeah. I only got to play Rampage and that's how I felt. Holding that rocks, tossing across to an enemy team. That is so satisfying. That is so satisfying. But what is one character that you guys played so far and have indulged, enjoyed and yet to come back and pick him again? Enjoyed once and then never came back to him? No, and came back to pick him again. And you just were like, oh man, I'm enjoying this character so much I want to pick him every game. That's a toss-up for me. Stunt, what do you got? It's between Rampage, Xena, and Fengmiao. Oh man, that's a good try. Solo lane, nine out of 10 times I might pick Feng if I can't get Xena now. But before Xena, it was Fengmiao and Rampage for jungle. Right on. The Faye for me. I absolutely love the Faye in old school Paragon.  The Faye is just my girl. I don't know what it is about that hero, but for some reason I'm on the Faye.  Oh man, I thought you were laying it down for Gadget before just because they stripped her down and gave her a bra for 10. Yo, I like that titties out Gadget. Don't get me wrong. That's just a cherry on top, Debs. All right, you heard that, Debs. Give that man a nice skin for Faye. Yeah, I ain't that superficial that I'd pass on the Faye just for some titties. So now again, you guys have that tourney coming up for tomorrow, right? And you're going to be cast in that tourney? Yeah, it's a two-day tourney, right? You never said you're a hero, well? Yeah, see, she just changed the subject. She didn't like the answers, Wiki. My hero?   I was going to say, I figured it was Faye's, but you never stayed it up front. Yeah, yeah, yeah, man, everybody knows. I run Faye's a lot, guys. I believe everybody should run her. You know, go in 1v1 pits and play Faye's. And you don't like Faye's phrase, right? It's an anime version of her. Absolutely not. She is deadly. She is deadly. I'd rather take her as is being a caster with her kit and how crack she is on a support role rather than play her on a mid lane role. I'm not sure. I really like to poke that enemy hero, the enemy carry man. I just like to poke the enemy carry to where they actually have to bring in Rampage to be a support and I would still take on that Rampage. I'm telling you, Faye's is cracked right now and I really hope if the devs hear me now, do not play with her kit. Keep her as is. She's pretty cracked on support right now, but I really like her. Another topic of the week. Let's talk about something hot that just happened this week. Let's talk about the little event that we had called Paragot, a partner team versus a dev team. What do you think about that stuff? I think that was pretty hyped. I think that was pretty hyped. So the partner team consisted of me, Mangus, Lolita, or Norona, Ego, and you can go watch the full gameplay on all of their YouTube channels, including Windus, who was obviously spectating the game and he has some really good footage. And we didn't plan on playing the devs just to beat him or look good or anything like that. Obviously, we wanted to win, we wanted it. But this was another way of showing the community that we're always asking questions about how the devs react to the community and how important is the community to the devs, where these guys in the middle of everything, in the middle of a stress test, in the middle of a global test, put away everything to come out here and play two games with us, which was amazing. And the communication, everything from John Snow to Bumblebee was extremely, extremely respectful, friendly, just overall, like, it proves how these guys are towards their community, how much they care for their community. Oh yeah, absolutely. When I contacted Bumblebee and John Snow. Obviously, you're playing the top player in the world. What did you think? We lost it. We lost it, though. Guys, we lost it 40 minutes on a second. Let's forget about the first thing. Lasting 40 minutes is a good enough win for me. Shit. Imagine beating the devs in a game that they created. Ouch. Oh man, that would have been something lit. I wanted to. I mean, end of the second round, guys, I was saying, let's at least, we had lost our first, right? We got annihilated, let me be honest. Oh god, yeah. On the next one, I was like, guys, it's 30 minutes past. Let's try to keep these devs in the game as long as possible. Let's farm up, gain up the levels, right? Catch up, and let's keep them on their knees the whole time to where maybe they'll just get bored and got things to do and just, you know, freaking surrender. But that did not happen. We lost it 40 minutes, but man, it was so enjoyable to go against the team of developers who've created the game, who know the game, who know the ins and outs. And I think they were just trolling us at one point. We got them, they're just a piece of cake. They invaded us, their team, the way their team moved in altogether, the synchrony, their warding was amazing. And again, I say next time after I played the devs team, guys, man, warding is so important. And I think it's something that is very underestimated. I don't think I've went in one overprime game so far since the launch of this test. And I've realized that people actually are warding correctly. You have your support, you know, she picks up here, she picks up one ward at the beginning of the game and then it just goes. And then they're fighting the whole time. I don't have the spot to carry a ward. Orders are so important. I remember in that team against the developers where we could not even move in the jungle if they wanted to take the spirit, if they wanted to take all prime. The moment we went in to try to go around, they knew exactly where to place the ward and we just caught caught. And we had to turn around and not be able to, you know, because obviously they were way ahead of us, but their gameplay showed us a lot on how, you know, this game could be really competitive as opposed to a lot of people that I hear oftenly say, man, this game is too easy because I can close my eyes and hit my CCs and I don't think this is competitive enough for me. I believe this game is very competitive. I played a competitive match and I'm pretty sure for you guys who have been grinding competitive and ranked, this game could be very competitive. It's just, you know, the matchmaking system, when it hits on point, that's when you're gonna start to see, you know, people of your level in the rank and that's where competitiveness starts. I mean, let's not forget how professional mangoes is. He was playing ring around the rosy. How about bubble bee? With the decker? I didn't even realize that was bubble bee until afterwards. I sent him that video. A lot of people in the chat, I got some good suggestions here. A ward slot like we had in Fault, that would be nice to have, especially with all the bushes. I would also like to see an item or a magic power item, a physical power item, armor item that has a ward attached to it, an active ward, so that everybody can pick up a ward that they can keep in their kit for much longer because the warding is so goddamn important and overprime specifically, which is why I think Wraith is so good in the game because he has a ward on one of his abilities. And another thing that I know a lot of our community members have told me on the side too is having the ability to put quick cast on each hero in the settings. Whereas when you put quick cast once, every hero ends up getting it. If they can separate that where we can choose which hero we have quick cast for and which we won't, it would be perfect.  Yeah, yeah. And then I have another community member asking, saying I understand that they support their community, but how can they disrespect their original so bad? Well, again, here's one of those subjects where yes, we all come from one common game that we enjoyed back in the day, Paragon. But at the same time, we do need to, we need to realize that games that, you know what I mean? You are gonna get changes from this game. Again, everybody comments on overprime changing the name to Paragon. Well, it's a move they made for their search engines and for their crowd.  They know that their game is gonna be different. They know that they're gonna have their own abilities. So it's kind of hard to answer that question when people always ask for like the original, we fell in love with, but I mean, it is what it is. We can't, you can't really... We can't expect to have the exact same thing that we exact same hero kits that we had in Paragon. We can't expect to get what, you know, people, you know, that played fault. There was a big community that player based on fault that we cannot expect to see exactly everything in here. And to be honest, personally, I'm enjoying the changes. Yes, there are certain, you know, some few tweaks that they need to do and some balancing that they need to do other than that. I am enjoying taking my favorite character in a different lane. I like Fasement as well as I like her support. And I think she's playable in both. Yeah, Fred Anderson in my chat brings up a good point though. They do use like Paragon is back as like their tagline, like they really do use that. And it's definitely 100% just for marketing. And then, yeah, but yeah, that's a good point, man. Maybe they shouldn't be saying that. It's again, it comes down to what different people say it might be marketing. It might be clickbait. It might be because search engines when people are looking for a MOBA, they go to Paragon first and they search it. But, I mean. I don't know. My thing with games is like the worst score that a game can get is a seven. A seven might seem good, but a seven is a game that didn't piss anybody off but didn't make anybody happy. And it's a game that's gonna be forgotten quickly. If you make a game that some people are given a 10 and other people are given a zero, if you're pissing people off with your game, that's a good thing. As long as you're making other people extremely happy. I think that's what, that's what their vision is. They have their own vision for the game and they've stuck with it. They've made changes with community feedback, but they've still kept the game a very fast paced version of Paragon. They call it a third person shooter plus a MOBA. Like they don't just call it a straight up MOBA like Paragon did. I think that's what they need to do. You gotta, you can't please everybody. So why try?  And as we see in this testing session, this testing period has been very, very successful. I think we hit a high of 32,000 players at one point during the testing period, which only says this was an actual success. I've seen a lot of people, you know, for lack of better terms, a bitch about why is this game Paragon? I come here expecting to see Paragon as is. However, it's not, yet this is the same group of people who are coming in and joined their game and they're having a blast. I think guys just give this game a try, play it, give it some time, you will get used to it. You will get definitely used to it.  It looks nothing like Paragon. It's more for brawler, we're fighting the whole time. You know, this, this and that, we're always used to two towers and now there's only one yet to come later on and say, man, it's growing on me. I just, I'm so hooked.  I want to give it a try. You know, think of that. Think of somebody who hasn't played the original Paragon or somebody who hasn't played Fault for a time because definitely they were the only two games out and that's why I mentioned them and come to the game and play it with a fresh eye. What would you say about this game? This is how you are able to judge it fairly. I love when somebody leaves a comment on one of my videos where they hate OverPrime but they tried it and they have an actual legitimate, legitimate explanation and criticism for why they disliked OverPrime. I love that. I'm perfectly okay with that. That's feedback that I can take and give to the devs and let them know.  Like, motherfucker, how out of the loop are you? Like, do a search for OverPrime.  Oh, it's just a brawler. Oh, it's so fast paced. Oh, it's this. Oh, it's that. Oh, you get all your abilities unlocked at first. That's not even true anymore, dude.  If you don't like it, fine. Let me know why you didn't like it, but try the goddamn game. Don't just listen to what everybody else is telling you. I had somebody argue with me because they had just finished the training in the beginning when you first opened it, not even gotten into a game. Oh, I don't like the game. No, bro. That's a troll. Yeah, that's a troll. Okay, I mean, that's your opinion. I respect it, but it doesn't work like that. I mean, to be honest, I'm one of the people that said I didn't play the first close beta, by the way, guys. I did not lay hands on the close beta. I opened that game. I think I saw it in Discord. One of my friends was streaming it to me and I was like, man, this looks nothing like Paragon. Yet again, it doesn't like any close default. Nah, I'm not gonna even give it a try. Why? I want their original names back. I don't want to have all my abilities unlocked and I need another tower. I complained so much. I was like, nah, there's no way I'm playing this game. And here's another misunderstanding I get from a lot of people who are complaining about the portals. Look, yeah, Paragon Over Prime has portals. The original Paragon had the ramp that went from when you jumped over mid lane from one jungle to the other, right? And people automatically assume when you go through these portals, your whole team are gonna go through the portals at the same time. It's a one-time use. There is a cooldown fray. So I'm not that against it. You know what I mean? It's not, it doesn't bother me that this game implemented portals into the game. I've heard comments without anybody playing the game saying that, oh, the whole team ganks and this and that. And I go, no, they don't. If you play the game, you'll realize one person goes through and then there is a certain cooldown to it before the next person can get through. Yeah, I think the addition of the portal was a good idea. When I heard about it before we tested it now in this period, I was like, damn, I'm gonna have a problem with that. Why? I think people were gonna abuse it. I didn't know there was gonna be a certain cooldown. And I think, you know, everybody's just gonna keep trying to teleport on cooldown and abuse it and be in that lane the whole time. I don't think people do abuse it. They do use it to escape when they have to. Yeah. They use it when they wanna go gank. I think the addition of the teleport was a great idea. You know, and again, it's just by getting used to liking the game. If you go into any game, not fault, not Paragon, not any other game, with a mentality, this is what I'm expecting. You won't be able to appreciate the game or enjoy it. Go in with a fresh mind, guys. Try it, enjoy it. Go in with friends, for example, and then see from a different eye. And I'm pretty sure a lot of you are gonna get hooked. I mean, what are we saying? I'm pretty sure we all know that there's a big player base for this game already and it has yet to grow. And this is only a testing period that we're doing here. And then one thing I wanted to touch on tonight because I don't feel it's discussed enough and it is definitely one of the highlights personally for me of OverPrime is the sound design. It is so important that you have your sound on in OverPrime because you can hear footsteps. You could tell who it is by their footsteps.  That's not your jungler, so you know what their jungler is. They're in your jungle right now. I think they did an incredible job with the sound design, especially compared to their last beta test. The last beta test that was a bad, this time it is greatly improved. Believe so too. And yes, sir, go ahead. No, no, I'm saying that's absolutely it. Just the first time I heard the footsteps, I thought, I initially thought it was your own teammates. I thought you hear the footsteps of your own teammates is another way of being aware of the sound. When that grucks came out of that jungle and I saw the orange bar, I'm like, oh shit, it's not my teammate. Anybody sounds like you can, you gotta look at the map, bro. You gotta look at the map, bro. It's a detail that you're not expecting, but you see.  If I'm escaping, I can literally tell, and I'm pretty sure you guys have tried this too, I can literally tell that I'm still being chased. And again, tweak your sound settings, guys. I don't know, like for me, the announcer voice, I just don't like him. I don't like his voice when he calls it, an ally has slayed an enemy. That voice line, I hate it. I don't want to listen to it. I lower it down all the way. I just keep them up briefly when he's trying to say our tower is getting hit or prime is up or prime is being taken. Other than that, I have the effects on high. I like to listen to the birds in the jungle. So I have that sound effect on as well. Ben, definitely, definitely character voice lines are to me very amazing. I was saying something the other day. I was playing Decker and my stun was on cooldown. And Decker was able to tell me because usually if you're looking at your screen time to stun, right? And you just, like it makes that sound effect. Like you don't have it. Decker or any hero will actually tell you, oh, it's not ready yet. Like they will communicate and that's actually nice voice line communications. So again, guys, like tweak your settings, use them. Just like Saber said, footsteps are very, very important. Talk about tweaking your settings if you guys have any problem with controller support, go to low, go to low. Oh my God. She will help you get those controllers set up. The announcer, though. Yeah, they need to work on that.  It's like, bam, bam, all the shit's going off.  It's like, Quadra kills. Like motherfucker, that happened two minutes ago.  Yeah, you get the kill. Just killed an ally. No, I didn't. I just got the kill 30 seconds later. Ally has slayed an enemy. OK, minimum 10 says the portal has spawned on the battlefield. He takes a break, huh? Have you guys gone to Pentakill yet? No, yeah, I came real excited. I came real close. Who stole it? Just say their name. Who stole it? Nobody stole it. They got away. You got away from a fey jelly. Got a pit to kill, but the announcer, I guess, didn't count it. That kind of sucked. I counted it in the next game. I think what happened was he killed Murdoch. And by the time he was done killing the other the other ones, Murdoch respond came back in. He killed Murdoch again. I think that's why I didn't count. OK, I counted it in my heart. That's that's another thing. I think if they want to nail the 20 to 30 minute mark for this game, they need to raise those death counters. I've noticed the counter goes higher after a certain certain certain time frame after when you hit 35, 40 minutes is when those death timers start going to a minute, a minute and a half. Well, it depends on your level. Your death. Yeah, I think that for your death and stuff. You need to make it longer because, again, I'm pretty sure both chats have mentioned this, you get into a prime fight, you eliminate the team.  Let's prevalent now because they nerfed the health and the armor of the prime guardian. But yes, that was a problem at the first. It's still a bit of a problem.  It's a new game. We all know they're going to go through hurdles or they're going to go through. They're obviously going to go through bugs, but the fact that these guys pay attention to all of that and they keep us up to date when they fix all of that, like, for example, the Xena and the Countess alt when they all together at the same time, I guess one of the players ends up going through the map and starts falling, falling through the map. Yeah. They're on top of that. They're fixing it. These guys are paying attention to all of that. They're on top of it, but there were more bugs in this final beta test than I had anticipated 100 percent. I'm a I'm a little disappointed with solely with this final beta test because of all the goddamn bugs in the game right now. I did not expect that. And this is their final beta test.  Oh, a lot of bugs in the game. Like that Aurora, when your teammate escapes from using the ice, standing in the middle of that ice, getting stuck in that ice. Yeah. Well, next to a spirit, the spirit, the prize spirit. I haven't had that happen. It's it's kicking you around and there's nothing you can do about it.  Oh, man. I agree with you guys. And if you guys didn't pay attention for those of you guys who are in the Paragon Discord, Paragon Overcrime Discord server, there is a channel talking about bugs. There is a specific one where you can submit a bug's report. And then another one telling you, confirming, you know, we, hey, we are dealing with this bug today and we are going to fix it. And if you guys are not in the Discord server, if you head over to their website, they actually have announcements and events. Like if you go right now, you will see that they are aware and they have announced it as an update that Xena. And there's a bug involving Xena, Xena's ability or her alt with another hero's ability or alt. So they are aware of that, you know, and again, let's not forget, this game is not out yet. This session, this period is a testing. It's called a final test for this reason because they did all that work, you know, since the close beta, they're releasing the game out. Hey, give this a try, community, give it a try, submit your bugs to us. Then they're going to go back, work on those bugs, work on whatever feedback we as a whole community give them yet again to release it. And again, for those of you who don't know, I would like to include that Paragon the Over Prime is going on a free early access on December 8th. Again, not your calendar is free early access to November 8th. So they're not going to actually leave us for a long time, you know, basically two, two weeks from now, two, three weeks from now. Right. Yeah, yeah, just going to be just going to be a few weeks. Yeah, so hopefully within that time period, guys, keep playing the game. We have until Monday, keep playing the game, enjoy it.  I don't want to play. It's too bugged for me.  I mean, I don't want to try. I got stuck under the map because so and so. So definitely they are aware and they will work on a fix to it for next time. Yeah, Fred Anderson in my chat says, do you think they're rushing because of competition? I think that Soul Leave and Omega are both rushing a little bit right now to compete with each other because you got predecessor releasing what appears to be of an unfinished game in early into early access from their announcement. And then you got overprime with their final beta test has so many bugs. I think the overprime rush was to get it out before G-Star so that they could have it as part of their announcements at G-Star was their thing. And I don't think to answer a question. I don't think on overprimes side, it was necessarily a rush. You were the one that caught it, mangoes, when they were doing their live overprime corner that where they had the calendar of the final test. And when the trailer came out for the final global test, the trailer had a secret date and that date said 1208.  And in my opinion, predecessor ended up rushing to make it out there before them. That's what it looks like because these guys already had the date. It was already it was already stamped in their and their their trailers. Yeah, they already had their date, but I think this final beta test just has too many bugs for it not to have been rushed just a little bit to get it out ahead of G-Star. I think that was their goal was to get a final beta test either early access or a beta test out in time for G-Star. And that was their main goal, I believe. That's my theory. That's my tinfoil hat theory right there. We need a new line from you. We need a new line from you, Mango Star, that you speak. All right, man, that how it's coming out of the prisoner sewers has just rung in my ear. You made my day, man. You just made my day with that comment. Also, since we're talking about overprime and and and their gameplay and everything, would you enlighten us about you and Jalee hosting the the tournament? I believe you said you were doing the semifinals and the finals and what they can we watch you commentate on these on these players? What's up? I'm not I'm not doing that. I'm not I'm not casting that tournament. No, tomorrow, EU starting at 9 a.m. EST is going to be the EU tournament. We're still kind of working out the details. I can't cast every single game or my voice will. Just be gone. So I think we're going to cast one game of the quarter quarters, one game of the semis and then we'll cast the finals, which will be a best think two out of three or maybe three out of five. Best three out of five. That's what it is. But yeah, that's going to be get through gaming. You can check out their discord. I usually have it linked somewhere. But you're you can look up their website, get through gaming. They're going to have it. And then the N.A. tournament starts at 3 p.m. on Sunday and yeah, we'll do the same thing. Jelly knees and I will be casting that it will not be live on my channel. It will be on jelly knees channel. I will be doing the link for that. So if you do want to check that out live, you can head over to jelly. Twitch.tv forward slash jelly knees. Follow jelly and you can watch the the tournament. I think jelly is going to probably be operating the camera this time. We kind of we messed up last time we cast one of these tournaments and we tried to both independently operate cameras and it just didn't work out. But this time I think we got it nailed down. Should be a good time. There's still plenty of time to sign up. No, there's not. There's not plenty of time to sign up. You want to sign up?  And I thought there wasn't more anymore time there. Time said for you to sign up with your team by the 16th. But on the 15th or 14th, they only had two spots left. That might have already been filled. Yeah. So I think it's it's that they got full and not that the time out sign up time is over. It'd be a good time for sure. It'd be a good time. It's it's going to be interesting. The last close beta was very interesting now.  But this term, it should be a lot more interesting. I would think since I don't think there's really any cheese strats other than loading three 80 C's into the game on your side, which will be. That's not going to happen because of bands. So yeah. They have to play. Is there a rule in the tourney where they have to actually play true roles? Like you have to have an actual support. An actual. No, there's no rules for that. No rules for that. And where can people watch that journey tomorrow? Which dot TV forward slash jelly knees. There you go, guys, forward slash jelly knees. Enjoy it. It's going to be so anything you guys want to add up here or are we concluding? No, we just want to think think the the community members for coming out because of my movie careers and everything like that. I only have Fridays that I'm able to do this. So so far we're going to we're going to keep this show on Fridays. Just pay attention to Twitter and YouTube. Mangus is going to go live every week on his YouTube. Me and Lolita, like we said earlier, will will jump twitches one week will be me, one week will be her. And we'll keep everybody posted for next Wednesday because next Friday is Thanksgiving. And after eating turkey, we all get lazy and want to sleep. At least you get lazy after anything. I'm busy with my Nutella. Oh, let's not start that one. No, don't start that one. We're not talking about different figures in Nutella. I'll have to run a poll for that. But anyways, guys, we are here to bring you and pop. Our intention is to bring you guys the latest news from very on the overprime as very on the overprime partners. We are going to be we can be your voice as well.  What do you think of this? What do you think of that? What do you guys want? What do you guys expect? You know, let's discuss it. Let's talk about it, you know, and I hope to see you guys and more games. And I hope to see you guys again when the game launches in early access free through Seaman Epic stores. And other than that, thank you, soft to you. I just thanks for coming out. Thanks for watching this live. Thanks for watching. This is the VOD. If you're watching as the body gets uploaded later, if you'll see, I have a little space on the side now. I'm going to be putting chat there pretty soon. As soon as I get that, I'll figure it out. A lot of people are requesting next. What? Where is that? She just went right. They see it. They see it on my screen.  Over cities. I think you better. I'll put a gadget over there. Well, I don't want to cover them up. Red partners to I don't know. We'll see. We'll see if we'll see how that goes.  Thank you for that. Thank you, everybody, for being here. And thanks for sticking it out to the end stunt. You got anything you want to say? No, I love this community. They're all awesome. And we we definitely love your feedbacks. There's no other way we can. We can go and talk to each one of you one by one. So like Narona said, please give us your feedbacks. We'll we'll pass it to the devs as much as we can. We will try to implement a lot of the changes you guys are looking for. There's there's obviously stuff that we're playing and we're we're giving them ideas. So let's let's let's see how this goes. And like we mentioned in the beginning, if you want to see us get shitted on by the devs of of overprime, go watch it on mango system, windows, menaces or egos, egos, YouTube videos. So and check, check, catch it there. Check stuff in the run out. I've got their twitches and YouTube's linked in the description. So check them out if you want to if you want to watch their their their angle of this, maybe maybe I won't be able to stream one time. Maybe you'll have to go over to watch where their twitch streams. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to like spread the love a little bit. But yeah. Is that going to wrap it up, guys? Everybody good? Yeah, we're going to wrap it up, guys. Again, we're going to be live back again tomorrow next week on another episode of pop. Obviously, we're going to make we're going to try to set it for every Friday, however, because next week it is Thanksgiving. And stunt here is going to get lazy after eating so much turkey. I'm going to be in Vegas. What are you talking about? Oh, you're going to be in Vegas. So yeah, we're going to hold the next episode. The same thing we did today is just going to be on a Wednesday. And for now, I would like to thank you guys for being in here. Everyone, if you guys, I appreciate your presence. Don't. Mangus, thank you for, you know, holding this show with me today. We are going to be hosted rating. We are going to be rating somebody in the Paragon, Paragon, the over prime community, and we are going to be rating one dude who is trying to play the game, have not played it a lot. And let's give them, let's give them some support. Yeah, yeah, which I could read, which I can't do that. Way, YouTube doesn't have a read. YouTube does have it. I could redirect, if I pre plan it.  Doesn't let me redirect to Twitch. Come on out. Love you guys in YouTube, too.  Back camera. Do not come close. Yeah, come closer.  Yeah, I like it. I like it. Bye guys, see you on the next episode!


Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart-Turner and this is Sustainable Hawaii, streaming live every Tuesday at noon at thinktechhawaii.com. My guest today is Kyle Dada, managing partner of Ulupono Initiative, a social impact investment firm whose ambitious mission is to improve the quality of life in Hawaii through investments in locally produced renewable energy, food, and waste management. Kyle received a master's degree in public and private management from the Yale School of Organization and Management, as well as a master's degree in environmental science in resource economics from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. His previous positions include CEO of U.S. biodiesel group, managing director of research and consulting at the Rocky Mountain Institute, and a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he served as managing director of the Asia Energy Practice and the U.S. Utility Practice. He currently serves on the board of directors for Blue Planet Foundation and the Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation. He's also national co-chair of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders. Welcome back to the show, Kyle. Very good to be here, Kirsten. Last time you were on was in November and I had you talking about your investments at Ulupono in food security and agriculture investments. So this time I'd like to focus on energy, particularly since I read your illustrious background and credentials in energy. So Kyle, you know that, or everyone our audience knows, of course you do, that we have the 100% renewable energy goal by 2045 in our statutes. What do you think is our potential for reaching that goal? Well, technically, we can achieve that goal today with the technologies that we have and still maintain system reliability, so that's the good news. Then it becomes a question of will that be affordable to everyday people? How much more will that cost and what benefits will we get? And as we look at it, we find that in all of our counties, especially the neighbor islands that have a lot of renewable resources relative to their population, that in fact it will be a cheaper solution when you take to consideration the risk of fossil fuels. Because many of you remember in 2008 when prices hit $145, all of us suffered a lot. Our energy bill went up by billions. And what renewables do is you essentially take away the risk of fossil fuels by putting in the money up front for the solar system or the wind farm and they don't have to worry about the risk of the fossil fuels you're displacing. And when you take those benefits into consideration, we actually find that on a risk-adjusted basis it's more affordable and it appears to what customers want. It's also more affordable because we've taken on a lot more of that power generation ourselves in Hawaii. Maybe talk to us a little bit about how that's made the energy scenario different. Yeah, so it's good for your listeners just to recap a little bit about the history of the industry and so to understand where we are now and understand where we're going. So when the industry was formed over 100 years ago, the utilities were given a monopoly but also had to undergo regulation because we wanted to allow them to have the capital to put up the wires and build the power plants. And then about 30 years ago we decided, you know, it would be good if other people could build power plants too so we changed the rules to allow other people to build power plants through competitive bids. And so you had another source of capital come into the system. Now with technology, not just for the solar panels but for your smart meters, for your smart thermostats, for your car, for all the devices in your home, you want the customer to be able to put all these devices in using their capital to also be a major contributor to the total system. And that's where we are now. That's the new frontier that we're looking at. How does that new group, the customer that's also a producer and a consumer, how does they interact with the utility? How do we change the rules so that everybody can really win? And speaking of changing the rules, we just went through this merger process where NextStare was trying to merge with the wind electric company and the PUC, the Public Utility Commission, turned it down, did not approve it. How is that going to change this scenario? Because we expected a huge infusion of capital with NextStare and that's now not coming. Well you know, it is true that the amount of capital we need for the whole system to let go of our old fossil power plants, modernize the grid and put in all these new renewable plants either at the utility scale or at your home, costs more than our local utility can afford to pay on its balance sheet. That is true. And I think if we had NextStare had come with their plan 15 years ago, we would have thrown Plumeria at their feet because we wanted the local utility to really embrace renewables and do that. And it's true they had the balance sheet to do this. The issue is that there is such a strong aspiration from the new technology suppliers and the customers, the regulators, and the government to start to embrace the business model for this century, not last century, which really involves the consumer and the utility and the independent power producers, all three of them. And that's what I think where NextStare had a challenge meeting what we would define is the public interest. And so that's why I think the merger failed ultimately because they were looking at a different model that would have gotten us there. Now I think there's an opportunity for all the stakeholders to really work together to define the model that is going to work here, that we can do on our own. We don't need a third party to come in. But that everybody will benefit. The utility will benefit, policy will benefit, the customers will benefit, of all economic classes. And the environment, of course, will benefit. Now that new model you've somewhat described, but is there a way you could encapsulate it for our audience? What would you call that new model? Well I think it falls under the general heading of 21st century utility. And what that really embodies is it embraces the technologies that we now have in this century. And these technologies really have changed our lives. We are fundamentally interconnected in a different way. And that's the essence of the business model change, is that because the customers are so interconnected and can be interconnected, they literally can form virtual power plants. Which is an extraordinary concept and something that we wrote about in 2002 and now the technology has come of age where we're doing it now, today. Can you explain that technically? Sure. In the traditional power plant you have a power generator that then you provide fuel to it or you have a windmill or a solar plant and it sends electricity down the wires to the rest of the grid. So it's one, it's one clear plant that's tied into the control room. In the virtual power plant case you're taking all the devices in the home, the solar panels, all the flexible loads, your dishwasher, your air conditioner, your refrigerator, your car, your electrical vehicle, everything. And you're allowing that to be controlled by a system that then allows the loads to up or down or power to be provided to the system and needs it or drawn from the system. And essentially it creates through lots and lots of customers, thousands and thousands a virtual power plant. This is not science fiction, it's not a visionary thing. It exists at a very large scale in Germany today. In the northern German area of Hamburg and Hanover there's a company called Lichtblit and it's the largest utility in Germany and it's created something called Schwarmpower which has reached a thousand megawatts or a gigawatt scale of virtual power and to give everyone a sense of how big that is, all of Oahu is 1800 megawatts, that's 1.8 gigawatts. So this is a power plant that is bigger than all the neighborhoods combined and as big as half of Oahu made up entirely of customers and it's cheaper than the central power plant that is displaced and that's an extraordinary thing. That's how far technology has progressed and I think that's one of the solutions, not the only side. The utility still has to modernize the grid and we still are going to need some centralized power plants. There will probably be some degree of decarbonization of fuels of modernization. So decarbonization of fuels meaning emphasis on renewable? Well it's probably a combination of things because the energy system does not exist in isolation. The energy system and electricity which is where our targets are uses the bottom of the refinery. But one of the questions we have to ask is when we take out the bottom of the refinery the refiner is going to close. So what do we want to do to replace them? We could just bring in tankers and have tank farms but I think what we're going to see and where the rest of the world is going is the rest of the world is decarbonizing it because of climate change and probably applying natural gas to the transportation sector and the marine sector and then a small amount of the power sector just for the modern turbines to play well with the variability of wind and solar. So there'd be an easing in, in other words we'd use some of the fossil fuels. Right. It's a transitional thing. It's like a 20. What you're seeing in most the world is a 20 or 30 year transition playing out where we're taking out the highest carbon things, coal, we're trying to figure out what to do with the old nuclear plant that are low carbon but dangerous. And you're seeing this, this shifting to renewables back by natural gas as opposed to the other side which was natural gas back, back by renewables. Now it's the other way. It's really renewables back by natural gas in the power sector but also and then in the transportation sector you're seeing the electrification of vehicles. Because here's the question. We have, we bring in 45 million barrels of oil equivalent every year to the state and mostly oil but other fossil fuels. So we have to think about how are we going to take that all the way down, not just in power which is one-third but when we do that how does it affect the rest of the system? What do we replace it with? What do we transition and how do we integrate the system for to think about the whole energy system? Right. And I know that Ulupona was looking at that. I think you had a study that may have been completed now on the status of the electric utility. Yeah. We've done a number of analyses of working with UH, Dr. Fritt and of course the teaming of Blue Planet and many other stakeholders. And then the utility sometimes itself, the essence of the situation is we have choices. I think during the merger the utility expressed one choice which is let's really have a wholesale switch to LNG and we'll back it up with renewables and eventually swap it out 30 years from now. There was another set of choices saying well maybe we go all renewable but how will that work? And this course is an intermediate hybrid choice where you do mostly renewables but you transition through a process. So we've looked at those choices and looked at the cost of those choices but also the relative risk they impose. And what we found is for a very, very small amount of additional cost you can take away lots of the cost of, lots of the risk of fossil fuels and as a society that's probably a better choice. So we wanted to... Was the study published? I know it was also from... We provided it as inputs to the power supply planning process to be transparent and... Which is still a docket that remains even after the PUC didn't accept the merger, right? Yes. So it's still an open plan, it hasn't been completed. There is a number of parties, ourselves included in virtually all the other parties, mostly environmental groups, community groups, all the renewable companies, the gas company, the state that want to reach out to the utility to say hey we need to really pull our numbers on the table, make sure we use the objective planning model and just see what our choices are and what are the trade-offs around the choices. Terrific. When we come back we'll talk with Kyle a little further on where Ulupono is investing in energy. We'll be right back. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii which streams live on thinktechhawaii.com, uploads to youtube.com and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Olelo 54. State content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Hi, I'm Ray Starling and I am co-host for Hawaii's Wednesday afternoon state of clean energy. And with me today is Leslie Cole Brooks and she's going to tell you what's happening this month with our shows. Hi everybody, I'm Leslie Cole Brooks, the executive director of the Distributed Energy Resources Council and this month is the focus is on distributed energy resources. We just had a great show on smart grid technologies and the rest of the month we're going to discuss storage, different strategies, micro grids and then we're going to have live man and woman on the street from Verge. So it's really exciting, very informative, lively and just worth doing. So see you next Wednesday. Hi. Hi, we're back with Kyle Dada Ulupono Initiative and we're talking about what they're going to invest in energy. What is the scenario you see for Ulupono's investments and you mentioned natural gas so I'm wondering is that an area you see is right for social impact investing? Well it's probably not going to be directly one of our investments but we will be investing in renewable natural gas in partnership with the gas company because we believe that there's a portion of the gas stream that can be created here from both our waste products and some biomass and of course landfill gas and whatnot that has an important role to play and we're very, very big believers in what's called combined heat and power. That's known as cogeneration technically where you are essentially displacing not just the electrical load and say a hotel but also the heat load for heating and cooling and laundry and whatnot and it's so efficient that we think that's a very, very good use of the fossil molecule when we're going to use it and it also plays well with renewables. Have you, folks, also invested in the cold water air-conditioning in RKP? Yes. One of the most important things to always invest in is efficiency and the number one efficiency project in our state is Honolulu Seawater Air Conditioning which is really district cooling. It's using seawater to replace all the cooling towers and all the air conditions and all the buildings downtown. And I understand that's actually how it was done many years ago that coming into this very street of Bishop Street that there were a couple of the buildings that were cooled that way. Yes. I think you're right. And it's very, very common in the Nordic countries and Sweden it's nothing to be scared of. It's really actually plumbing. It's literally plumbing. It's cold seawater. And so it's very environmentally safe for the oceans because you're recycling it back. So efficiency is an important project. We very much believe in investing on the customer side. So there's many really innovative technologies around demand response. One of the most innovative is shifted energy which essentially takes all the water heaters and allows them to, as I was saying earlier, charge and discharge depending on what the grid needs. So they become part of that virtual power plant I was talking about but it's very inexpensive because many people still have electric water heaters. And of course we have... And that's... Sorry, that's... I just want to clarify. So that's very much dependent though on the smart metering technology in order for that to be able to happen. Yes. Yes. We are in favor of the application of smart meeting technology because that's essentially a grid modernization tool that allows the utility to play nicely with its customers and vice versa. That is the... You need that gateway into the customer's devices and vice versa so the customers can sell to the grid. But the essence of why this all works is the ability of our control systems to understand what's out there and send signals to it and they get signals back and you need a meter to both do that but also to fairly charge or pay for the services used. So is that an area also that Lupono is investing in? Well we don't have to invest in smart meters because actually it's the utility function they already have a proposal out. We're very supportive of that proposal. We'll certainly invest in the things on the other side of the meter. We're clearly very interested in investing in the largest scale renewables whether it's biomass, geothermal, wind or solar. All of these technologies at this point are very proven. And what we see is that the neighbor islands can truly for a decade be at essentially 100%. Also the new battery... In a decade. In a decade. I want to note that. That's really ambitious. That's exciting. It truly is possible and affordable. The other thing which I think is an important element of course is storage where you have both pump storage which is really moving water up and down elevation so you're using that kinetic storage like a giant battery. And those places and most of the counties where so mountainous where that makes a lot of sense is environmentally appropriate. Often in former hydro or former ponds that used to be part of the plantation of the agricultural infrastructure or the ranches. As well as of course better technologies including one by our very own entrepreneur Hank Rogers which is using a more advanced version of lithium with cobalt so it runs cooler than the normal sort of Tesla type batteries which is of course more beneficial to the home because you're not adding any more energy load. Now we had Hank on the show talking about the blue lion. And I haven't followed its success though commercially. Is that... I think what we're seeing is it's all starting to move. We're in an interesting situation now which is really the challenge and the opportunity for the customers in many cases especially in the neighbor islands where rates are much higher than Oahu it actually makes sense in many cases to defect to leave the grid which is not necessarily the best social outcome but it makes sense for them as individuals. It also makes sense across all the counties never to connect. That's how affordable microgrids are but they're only affordable because the utility has not taken the steps to turn off their old fossil plants that are very inefficient modernized with just the minimum amount of fossil needed and really embrace the renewables because it is true it is cheaper for the utility to provide that but when they don't the customers vote with their wallets in their feet. Exactly. And so that's what we're seeing. So if we have that possibility and we're seeing that happen already and indeed we know that the probably the best example of microgrid at least in Hawaii is at Camp Smith. So we have the Department of Defense taking that route also. What's it going to take now without this infusion of capital to get our monopoly utility to do that? I think it's all about choice and ultimately about trust. I think part of what you know we had a big scrap over next era between the utility and all the stakeholders. I think it's time for us to say okay we had that let's now move forward together and how can we find solutions where the utility, the ratepayers, the customers, public policy, the environment all win and that's important that that dialogue needs to happen and that requires trust, requires extending trust to the other parties especially to most importantly kind of the emerging executive team that are inside HECO because they are the next generation of leadership and they are far more open-minded than the prior generation because of just their youth and their energy. So it's an important time to kind of pick up a new chapter in this relationship. So that's part of it. I think the other part is recognizing that we're all going to accommodate a new business model. And so that's a lot of change. It's a lot of regulatory change. It's a lot of business model change and we're going to have to strengthen our regulatory institutions and ensure that they are truly have the capacity they need, have the independence they need because at the end of the day we have our society does best when decisions are made openly, transparently and whatever we decide we can buy into because we understand how the decision was made. Basically with regard to the regulatory changes, what are some of the major dockets or changes that we might see also in the legislature coming up this fall that are required to make that happen? Well, there's a number of changes that will happen. Most of them will be with the public utility commission itself. There will be some things that need legislative change. I mean clearly we all understand that the way we defined the renewable portfolio standard which essentially sets the targets in the quarter for the utility to meet actually technically was misdesigned a bit. So it has a double count in the formula and we probably need to fix that. And that's a couple loopholes, we probably need to close those. So that at least when we hit 100% it really does mean 100% because right now technically we could be at 100% and actually only have 80% renewables on the system. So that's a legislative fix and we hope the legislator and the governor will leave that charge. At the PUC the essence of the discussion is how do we actually make the following principle real? If a customer should pay for the services it uses, but it should get paid for the services it provides, that's simple, very, very simple concept, very equitable, totally fair, but making that real in a small utility in a small place with that incredible transactional cost, that's where I think the art comes in and that's where we need the collaboration. And so what is that solution? Well it's not one solution, it really is around how do we price grid services, that's the essence, and whether you buy them or you sell them. And given that we're not going to be like New York, we're not going to be like California or Pennsylvania, we're not going to have big markets for people to bid into these services, so we won't be able to do that. How do we on the engineering level estimate the cost of these given they change over time, if they're in the day, to say here's a reasonable estimate that we can all live with for the next five years, let's try this, a new update periodically. The pushback we always get, the argument about really allowing for continued expansion of distributed generation, particularly when the issue has been over solar on people's rooftops, is that now net metering is gone and the argument is very much that if we allow those folks to get the fair market value or the exact value of what they produce, that puts the onus of the rest of the grid, the rest of the utility lines on the public that can't afford those improvements on their rooftops or wind on the top of their buildings. So I understand the concern, the principle I espoused eliminates that concern because of course, if you're paying for what you use and you're only getting paid for the value what you receive, what you're providing, then there's no equity issues. So that's why the principle is so important, but to the other point, there's two other things that are very important to think about in terms of equity. I think for almost a century, we in Hawaii have defined equity as equality of outcome. Everyone gets treated the same. In the modern age, we have to think of equity as equity of opportunity. Everybody had the same opportunity to participate, whether they chose to or not was their decision. They had to have the right to choose. They had to have the resources to be able to make them have that. And I think that's what community solar is all about. The knock on solar was it's just a rich people's thing, which it was in the beginning or the same thing with storage, a little bit to be a rich people's thing. With community solar and the GEMS program, now we're saying, look, you can be in an apartment, you can be a poor person, you can be a rich person.  That's on bill financing. We're going to give you loans when you need it. That's GEMS.  So that is a quality solar for the three programs working together. So that's a quality of opportunity, and that's a very, very important thing because then everybody, your auntie, my wife's mother has gotten her house up at Honano. They have a choice of making that choice with just a check of a box. So that is important. So that's a critical element of how to create equity as we go forward. Very, very important question. I'm glad you asked it. And so part of your effort at Ulupono, and we only have one minute left, is social impact investing. So obviously all of this has a social impact. But looking at that equity issue, I imagine that's something that you're also investing in. It is. How do we plan for this? How do we pull it all together? How do we, as you said, I think in your advertiser article, which was a very nice feature on you, really what you're about is getting people to work together and to make change. That's right. I think we invest in the ability of society to work together, and then we invest in the business balls and technologies that we need for everyone to prosper. So we're going to look forward to seeing how you're doing that, and I want to have you back again to give us an update. But this has been Sustainable Hawaii with Kyle Dada, general partner at Ulupono Initiative, and tune in to us again next Tuesday, where we hope to have Celeste Connors with Hawaii Green Growth. Aloha and Mahalo. Thank you. Mahalo.