Overdunk
114: Overdunk Ep. 115 Post Worlds Show!
[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Welcome back to Overdunk everybody, your favorite competitive Pokemon Unite podcast. This is episode, I've lost count honestly, but it's a super important one. It's super exciting because it is our worlds of 2024 recap episode. We were back, we took a week off to refs relax a little bit, but we had to bring in some extra firepower to be breaking it all down. And that's right, she's back then, welcome back to the episode. I'm so excited to have you guessed it on this one to talk about worlds. I know you watch the whole things, then how have you been update the people who have been? I mean, there's a lot of people in chat super excited you're here. So, let us know how you've been. >> True, hello, yeah, I've been doing pretty well. Spent the last eight months kind of mostly focusing on myself. Literally watch zero competitive Unite the whole year. >> Good, good. >> I'm doing great in my games QA career, though, can't tell you what game I'm working on unfortunately, but it's a cool one. But other than that, I was excited to come back. I really enjoyed world. It was a great experience, had, I think it was some of the best competitive Unite that's ever been played, it definitely set a new bar that I hope continues into the future. >> Mm-hm. >> And also set some very interesting lows that I would love to talk about, so. >> Yeah, yeah, it was quite a wide array. I mean, there's a lot to talk about. We had a whole world championship and we've taken two weeks and there's already more news on top of it. So, before I introduce my other co-hosts, of course, just want to give everybody. Actually, we'll do the intros first. Bridget, you were back as well. You were doing a co-stream of the entire thing. I know because my wife was watching your stream the entire time. And she was absolutely loving it. So how was the experience of co-streaming the world championships? >> It was so much fun. It was kind of a last minute decision. I had a family thing that got canceled, so I was like, you know what? Let's just see how this goes. And it was great. Yeah, like I ended up streaming all of it unexpectedly. But it was just really fun to get to talk about the games that are happening with everyone in chat and seeing the chat of the main broadcast. But not have to just be sitting there in a silo watching it. So I had a great time. Yeah, you guys did an amazing job. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for putting on a good show for us. >> Oh, of course. I'm excited and I hope those continue. I think Bridget co-streams are a pretty pock. But you were there alongside me there in Honolulu. I had an amazing time. I assume the experience was the same for you. So how was your experience in Hawaii? >> It was terrific. It can't be understated. I think when they nailed it, when they said it was the best set of competition we've seen in United Period, I don't think there's much of an argument against that. But man, it was awesome. And then getting to spend a couple days in Hawaii afterwards, not so bad either. >> Yeah, you were an island time for a few days. That's awesome. Do you have any fun stories that you and your family got to experience while in Hawaii, anything cool? >> So on a Monday, we went to a luau. And it was the tau luau, it was called, but it was like a warrior luau where they're going through all the Polynesian regions and doing dances and things like that. They had actual coconut tree climbers that would climb up all the way up to the top, which was insane. So that whole experience was awesome. The food was amazing, Olive had a great time, we had a great time. But like randomly leaving, I just like bump into a guy, we look at each other and I just keep walking, I was like, that was Bert Kreischer. That's exactly who that was. >> Okay, sick. >> And I didn't like go back and ask for a picture or anything like that. But it was funny because I just stood on Twitter, I was like, just bumped into Bert Kreischer in Hawaii, going to a luau. That's the story now. And Alex Dow, who's going to know, but is a UK TCG player, also a caster, goes, huh, I'm at the luau with Bert Kreischer. So I didn't see Alex Dow, who was on the opposite side of the island, going to this luau as well. But he ended up taking a picture with Bert and sending it over to me to like, confirm my suspicions. So I wasn't crazy, Bert Kreischer was at the luau that I was just at. So anyways, that would be the one, I'll say, off broadcast story that I will share. >> Cool, cool. Hey, I'm glad it was a positive one. If anyone wants to be updated on Spraggles experience, there is a banger. >> My gosh. >> Banger, 30 minute video on his Twitter, breaking down. And one of the most insane travel stories I've ever heard in my entire life. So- >> The original one, Spragg, yeah. >> And like, we can laugh about it now, by the way. >> Yeah, honestly, and honestly the video they put together, very, very good. So go check that out, Spraggles Twitter. My experience and why it was pretty awesome. I unfortunately didn't get to stay very long either way. Like I got there right before the event and I left basically right after the event. Just as work and stuff couldn't take too much time off. But I had an absolute blast, I agree with the consensus here. I think this is one of the highest heights of competitive unite that we've ever seen. Specifically and just game play that we were seeing. So that was awesome. And then of course just the event was so unbelievably fun. Obviously there's pros, cons and all that stuff. We'll get breaking down all of it. But overall, I think just a really fantastic experience. So let's start talking about some of the things that went down at the World Championships. Let's just say we're just broad strokes. What was everybody's favorite part of the weekend? Was it the grand finals, a specific team? Any specific match? Anything like that that really jumps to mind as like this was my favorite part of the entire weekend. Do us next, do you have anything off the top of your head? I think the finals was great as a phenomenal exclamation point on another just what was clearly the best team in the tournament, showing it and taking it down in just an absolutely vicious fashion. And we're now three for three in World Championships where the champion wins 3-0 in the finals. And it's like an absolute no doubter. So you know what, if that's what we're going to be doing, then Fennel was certainly the team to do it this year and they looked great. Yeah, yeah, they looked awesome. It has gone past just like a funny house, always happens like now it's just culture. Like now it's baked in. I don't think we can have a World Championships come down the road. Yeah, it has to be. Whatever format I just think the loser will not win a single map. I really do. I firmly believe that in my heart of hearts and if it looks like that won't happen, I will sabotage the stage. Then how about you? This was your reintroduction to competitive Pokemon Unite watching this World Championships. So then how about you? Anything out that throughout the weekend, you would call out as like your favorite thing to watch the experience. I think my favorite one was specifically Talon Fennel. Yeah, that was the best set of the entire weekend. That was a really, really awesome set to watch the adaptations in draft and in game. I think it was just overall like the best series played. Otherwise, I really, really loved the -- I don't remember when it was another Fennel series though. I really, really loved the Serena. I thought it was a really excellent pick that they had in their back pockets and I'm surprised for people that didn't have it. Yeah, you were messaging me and I think Dupe's nice as well a little bit before the event and you're like Serena kind of cooks in this metagame which I don't think you were wrong about. Honestly, anything melee really seemed like he was crushing all the game long. How about you, Brigitte? Anything during the co-stream that you wanted to think about? I know you had a lot of fun like interacting with a few of the social aspects too or was a match going to be your call out as well. Um, I did really like bingo. That was pretty fun. The official Twitter just put out like a cute little bingo card and I was very into it, aggressively into it. Like as I'm watching like almost every team, I was just -- as soon as I started cheering for a team, they would lose, so it was very -- I was kind of cursing everyone, so I thought I would have been my bad and I'm like, "Wow, I'm like so sad but at least I'm getting bingo." So that kind of kept me going. Were you the one who started the like comb phase as select -- like as checked off bingo boxes? Yeah, that was my like -- okay. -- Like I used like a comfé. That's awesome because I saw like the official Twitter doing it too and I was like, "Oh, sick. Like so, Brigitte, they're well done. Well done." Thank you. Yeah, that's awesome. And I don't want to take the option away from you. Is there a specific match throughout the weekend that you thought was your favorite? Honestly, I really liked watching Zora and Onyx runs on day two because in retrospect, I should have expected maybe like I underestimated them because they were the last two teams picked when all the teams got to pick their match ups for day two. They were quite literally both last ones, which I thought was interesting. But they both had such hard match ups round one. And I was like, there's no way like sorry, I'm like, I'm going down and yeah, as I said, I'm like all day about everything. So it was really fun to yeah, just see them kind of shine. It was really great. That's awesome. That's really awesome. Yeah. I think it was Onyx runs. I don't remember. It was a backstage moment. I remember clearly where I was sitting there as Talon was preparing for their stage match. And it was their manager. I was sitting beside what we were watching the previous game. I think it was Otig Rice with walking off stage had just come off a win. And one of their players walks up to the manager of Talon and goes, please beat Fennel. And I was like, everybody is begging someone to take down this team. Oh my God. I was good into that. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. That was a good match up too. Gosh, I'm with so many good matches. That might be my favorite match of the day. I think Fennel versus Rice was a really solid one as well. I mean, you were might still be in this chat, but they were a player that I specifically called out as a player to watch and they were having one of the best games I've ever seen them play. So I was pretty pumped about that. But I think we have now, well, I do know this, but I think it's time we talk about our new world champions, Fennel from Japan. I think we should just talk about the general storylines going around this team before they actually entered the event. It was a team that kind of everybody who was in the know knew about, right? You see that ton and he and Luke Oppo formed a team and everyone's heads immediately turned like, Oh, this team is going to be something big, but they didn't qualify and compete in the ACL. I forget what happened in that situation. I think it might have been a player joined later or something like that. And then they also were not one of the two teams invited to the Aos cup. So we didn't have any international exposure to this team leading up to the world championships. But the one time we did watch them play was when they absolutely crushed the rest of the competition in Japan. So everyone was like, I mean, I put them number two on the whiteboard. Like everyone was like, this team can win the whole thing. They are going to be one of our tournament favorites and lo and behold, they dropped a single map all weekend long, which was in their semi final and unbelievable dominant run joining the likes of the other dominant runs we've seen at the world championships. Fennel's crazy. We all will got to see it happen time and time again. But I want to ask each of you, what do you think is kind of the what makes them tick? What's the secret that made Fennel so unbelievably strong via this tournament weekend? Then I know you kind of had a few thoughts and analysis prepared around this. But I'm going to throw at you first. What do you think makes Fennel so good? Why are they now the second, I guess, technically a chance we've seen? So I think the number like the biggest thing with Fennel is they approached the game in a way that like is very distinctly like separate from the way the rest of the world approaches the game. Maybe there was some parity within Japan. I don't remember exactly how the rest of the Japanese teams did, but they basically look at the game as a whole and not like, okay, let's go this way. Most teams in their drafting, they like think of the way they could like handle a specific Pokemon or like do a laning phase, that kind of thing. Fennel very clear, like very minute, I know. Yeah, Fennel very clear, clearly had a holistic view of the whole of the game. While doing their drafting, they had very clear game plans at every single phase of the game. They always found distinct ways to force the opponent to play their game and it was a game they never lost. The only time that someone even looked like they were pushing them was Talon target banning them to make it so they couldn't like specifically play the way they wanted to play. And that was a very unique, that was a very, very good strategy on Talon's part. I think that if a team that was slightly more mechanically proficient than Talon had gotten that game plan, they probably could have pushed Fennel even harder. It would have been very interesting to see in that case, but that's not the word we got. Yeah, in this room, so Fennel's just swept all the way to finals. And I think it's worth noting that like a lot of the things many analysts in North America flamed Japan for for the last couple of years, rightfully so, what added up to like the way they are now, they've played very experimentally as a region for like years, and this is kind of like the end result of that. We start to see Japan final form, that is terrifying. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think that is a fair criticism. I mean, last year they did incredibly well too, right? Two Japanese teams within top four of last year with like, was Oisumi macro in third and MJK in fourth, like very strong performance in your two, but let's be real. There was a very real shot. They won last year or two, if it wasn't for the whole sub situation. That is true. That is true. Not what we saw. But it's true. Yes. Let us hold on to this. You're 100% correct, but okay. Thank you for that analysis. Bridget, how about you? When you're watching Fennel, what does it really look like that makes them that championship team, that championship material? Well, it didn't even seem like they got every Fennel game I saw just looked like a stomping until they were in like the quarterfinals, which is when they played Talon. Right. Talon was the quarterfinals. That's right. That's right. And then Onik was there. So my final game, but so I was like, okay, their play gets really good teams just making them look like they're nothing, which is more fighting. But what I thought was really interesting and what I'm sure a lot of people noticed was their attacker player was just Perma, EXP share until one game in the finals. Yeah. Talon finally was like, all right, if I had cannon, Talon was egoing them onto EXP share, but I just really think like the characters they were playing, like, obviously was predominantly new, who's like, so good early game that it's like, you kind of don't even like need it to scale as hard as like a lot of the tanks they were playing that could be like more of the hypercarious. But even when they were playing like Pikachu and Expion, it was like Perma, EXP share, which no one else was doing at all, which I don't like, it just goes back to what Ben was saying. They were just like playing their own game, truly, like it was really unique compared to what everyone else was doing. Obviously they had like meta picks, but still made it their own. It was cool to see. It's hard to push that in drafts, right? It's hard to change, do enough changes in drafts and make that team feel uncomfortable and still feel comfortable in the game plan that you're going to employ in draft, because you're so used to playing into other things, which is really challenging, and obviously a great asset that Fennel had. How about you do snacks? You get to cast them winning a whole lot. So yeah, what are your opinions on Fennel? Yeah, obviously they're insane. I was pretty funny after the semi finals won, which Spriggles and I cast, then we were on break before grand finals. Yeah. I was in the crowd and I caught Asinable, and Asin was like, "Holy shit, brother." And I started talking to him. And the last thing he says to me, which I thought was a great thing, is as I was walking away, he goes, "Hey, snacks." I was like, "Yeah, Asin, what's up?" And he goes, "Don't forget that Team YouTube six months ago was getting flamed for running all of the same stuff Fennel's doing." And then I was like, "Yeah, we're not going to get you." No, right. But it doesn't matter. Like, because they gave up on it, and there's tons of stuff. I don't know what happened. I don't know how the conversations went, right? It doesn't matter. But it is a worth note that Team YouTube, uniquely in our ecosystem of North America, was the team that was oftentimes just doing stuff like that for the sake of pushing the boundaries in different ways. So I thought that was just like a very interesting, like, quick hit insight as I was walking away from, you know, another top NA team that was like, "You know, maybe we need to pay a little bit more, a little bit more respect to those types of things and truly make sure we're flushing those out." Mashio, again, they're Mew about 50% of the times on EXB share, like Bridget said, which was nasty, right? It was just, "How did the rest of the comp go?" "Okay, I'll be EXB share this game because that's going to help us out." You know, usually it was like when Taun was going on Char's heart or whatever, right? They just switched into that Flex support type U, which is really cool. And ultimately, to not belabor a point anywhere, they just knew more information about everybody else, or at least it was more ready to adapt preemptively to teams, right? They would kind of usher them into the corner that they thought the team wanted to play, and they already had a strategy on how to kind of outflank that. And we only saw, for example, the Sable I once, but it's a great, great example. If the West was paying attention to the East in the middle of the season, they would know exactly what it means when Sable I gets picked by a Japanese team. It's an engagement off the back of two speedsters, or a really aggressive all-rounder speedster core, and they just pick off one by one using the Sable I to give all the vision, and that's exactly what they did. And, you know, I know we don't have perfect information, but that's a prime example to me at how the East kept track of everything that happened throughout the season. The West tried to just, what was the latest thing, what, how were they going to approach in this big event, whereas they kind of had the whole color palette to paint with, and they literally executed something that was so popular in Japan that they're banning Sable I for it. Yeah. Yeah, there were specific couple teams that were getting the perm of Sable I bet every single game. So I think we just need to expand our horizons as we get further into our discussions about the rest of the teams. But, of course, Fennel was head and shoulders above the rest, and it showed, and they deservingly won because they're definitely the best team in the event. Yeah. We've talked a lot about their strategy and their game plan as a point of success. I just want to mention, because I don't think we talked about too much, just their mechanical skill. It's like, yeah, people have been telling me all the year long, and I think it took me too long to listen, but P is, I think the best player to ever touch this game. He is. Insane. Unreal. Craft on the sticks. And he is the Switch player, too, so I can say that. He's unbelievable. Isn't P like Joy-Con's attached to the Switch player? No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. That's the Zay to Division support player. That's the Zay to Division support player. We will not enable Joy-Con's attached to Switch. Thank God. No, no, no. He's a pro-controller, slouched gamer mode rock in everybody's world. So that is the game pattern. He goes into it. Absolute war crime of them getting away with like Serena Mew, bought into Kram Slowbro and talking out of that level seven. What does that happen? I don't know. I mean, what are you securing with? How are they? How are you still winning that is? It's so cool. I mean, it's so cool. I love watching that player play. They're so phenomenal. Even finals was just a literal walking highlight reel of them and tone all over that match. And I do think they're some of the most mechanically talented players we had. And when those two things line up, like great game plans, a good meta understanding, and then of course, the ability to play everything that they're talking about and trying to put into practice is amazing. So that's why we got our new world champions, Fennell. So congratulations to them. Of course, an amazing tournament run. They were so fun to watch. And I think it's very likely, but I am hoping they stick together next year. Or at least the majority of that roster, because I would love to see the run back of that team. And I think it is quite likely. But we'll see. Let's get into some other topics, though, about kind of a bigger, bigger topic. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for the rate, Kirias. From a world champion, I guess that's the first time we have to say that. Dang. Crazy. But hey, welcome back, Kirias. We are going to be talking next about just some of the overall arcing storylines that happened at this world. Obviously one that was talked about a lot on Twitter was the West not having the best showing in this event, which is kind of funny, though, that I was looking at it because it's actually quite similar to last year's LG not included, just because it was very top heavy for Asia in the final bracket. But just for some metrics, I mean, top eight was six out of eight teams were from Asia, where two were from the West, I think down's infusion rounding out that squad. Top 16, I think was pretty close to even with a slight edge to Asia. If I remember correctly, because we throw orange juicers and nemesis into that crew as well. So I think it gets somewhat close. It's still more dominated by Asia. And then, of course, we have an Asian champion with only one Western team making it to top four in fusion. So definitely a stronger performance for Asia. So you've kind of already mentioned your thoughts on it was just more of a global awareness of what people were playing, how they wanted to perform. Then how about you? What are you thinking? Why? It's not even really a flip-flop, but I guess just a general trend that we have seen from your one to your two to your three is the general rise of Asia. I think it's partially the thing I mentioned, Asia is a lot less afraid of experimentation. And when they do experiment, to go back to the team YouTube example, team YouTube, I don't think, at least when they were doing it in previous years, I didn't watch this year. Obviously, I can't speak to it. But based on some of the things, Twitch chat was saying it didn't seem like they fully understand the purpose behind that experimentation. It comes down to competitive culture and like playing to understand and playing to improve versus playing to get through your scrim block, right? I think that's a big piece of it. I think the general like development of play styles over time in Korea and Japan is something you see very clearly versus like this is going to sound like a distinction without difference, but like it feels like a lot of North America isn't a development of play styles, but it's a development of game plans. And I think it's very very predictable and it leaves you open and it like stifles your growth otherwise. It also makes it a lot more difficult for you to adapt to new meta picks. A lot of North American players don't tend to practice things. They don't think are very good. I can't speak to Europe, but at least from my experience in NA. There's just like so many factors that like and also like let's not forget like a good chunk of the support staff, like myself included just did not come back this year. Wonder why that happened. There's like there's all sorts of things that lead into it and I don't think you can blame any individual piece of any one of them. Okay. Fair enough. Yeah. Bridget, how about you? How are you feeling about? Not how are you feeling, but yeah, why are you thinking that the Asian teams are having such a big burst of success? I feel like my thoughts are definitely a continuation of ends, but she said it a lot better than I probably ever could, but to me, even just watching primarily like date two, it just seemed like a lot of like the APAC or Eastern teams had like had a much more like solved meta than what the West seemed to bring, like they, and I feel like this goes off to them just being like more curious and maybe understanding like the why is behind certain picks other than it's just like it's meta and good, which I know it's definitely not that simple, but it can be something I feel like easy to like mindlessly rely on as opposed to like being innovative, especially like when you're in the moment in like a high pressure situation, like feeling comfortable, like doing something maybe that you didn't exactly plan on or didn't plan as much, but the situation calls for it. I don't know. It just felt like they had it a lot more, I don't know. They went further down like the web of what the things they could pick or what they wanted to do than what the Western team seemed to bring. Yeah. Okay. Fair. Fair. How about you do snacks? Any more thoughts on this topic? Yeah. I think that there's two axes on which they found success that the West didn't. The first being exactly what Ben and Bridget mentioned, I think the other one that hasn't been mentioned yet is the teams that didn't get down into the well of solving the puzzles and everything like that with, you know, if this then that type reactionary drafts or strategies or whatever were teams that just genuinely knew who was on their team, what they liked to do, what they were good at, and then played to it. I mean, Kekalok is a perfect example. They're like, hey, if Dragonite's there, it's first pick because that's how we're going to win the game. If it's not there, we're taking our Shifu first pick because that's how we're going to win the game. And in their top eight games that we watched, the first one was like, obviously ridiculous right that they won, but the second game, they were, they had such, they were, because they had Dragonite, right? They first picked it, wasn't Ben. They thought that Urshifu was going to be the problem to care for, and that's how they're going to stop Kekalok. It wasn't true. It was just a bait and switch. So they actually got the Dragonite they wanted. And in the Dragonite game, they had, I think, four knockouts total in the entire game, but so much map control that the other team couldn't actually take advantage of these radical team fights that they were taking and knockouts that they were getting, which allowed them to execute their exact strategy and why they have Dragonite, which is to take Ray with a hyper beam and win themselves a game, right? It was so very clear what they were trying to do. And up until that point, it was mitigating the score, right? To make sure that they were, was then striking distance at Ray, and then taking Ray. If we do that, we'll win the game. Fine. Give ourselves the tools that we need to do that, but they didn't shy away from who they were, right? They just instead did the exact opposite. They just leaned into it. They're like, this is our A strategy. This is our B strategy. And if we get neither, well, we're taking the loss and hopefully we can break the draft next time, and they did great. When I say they did great, they did great for the world stage on stage. They delivered a result that I'm sure they wish could have gone a little further. But given what I just described to you, you wouldn't think would be the recipe for success on the world stage, right? So if you don't know, and all of that goes back to understanding your team. And I think the West doesn't understand their teams, to be quite honest. I think they don't understand their pieces. I think they have a difficulty adjusting and they say this player is great. But why isn't it working in this, you know, the microcosm of our little squad? So I've got a couple examples off the top of my head, and I think we can start with LG, right? We look at Overlord. Overlord is obviously a phenomenal player. And Zoinks, you can attest to this on Thursday when we were during our content piece and they said, who's the best player to ever touch the game? Who what did you remember who I said to you in that before the fake interview? No. I said Elo. I said I think Elo is the best player that I've ever played. Now I remember. I said, I think Elo is actually the best player to ever played. I mean, silently a phenomenal member of that LG squad. And is JL one for one replacement for Elo? No, it's not a skill question, it's just they're different players, right? But then we saw them put JL on Comfy when JL is an insane Blissey player. Okay, so why in the one game we saw it kind of crack off with that zero or strategy. Well, JL is back on Blissey. So it's like, well, why isn't he doing that? And then you're starting to think, well, JL's also one of the best stabilizing the planet. And like Japan clearly always keeps a sable eye on head ready to go. But why didn't they ever pivot into that strategy and put the trust into what the best supporter in NA is, right? That's why they picked them up on the team. Why don't they have any trust in him to run that strategy? And then you can go down the list with all of their players. You can do that. But they just ran the same type of strategy back that they did the years prior. The other prime example is why like at some point, like, I just want to say, I just want to see Gatlu on Greedon and nothing else because if they're going to be like, if they're going to be doing ridiculous engagements and setting the team up to have these off-kilter fights, it read, man, give them the tools to get in and out and actually do some damage and have fun, like let the kid have some fun on the map, right? And I don't know what the decisions are. But at some point you have to understand, okay, Gatlu plays this way. And yes, 10% of the time they have the sickest engagement we've ever seen that we saw in game three where they had that big time win where he was the one leading the engagement on the backside where he was kind of in the middle of nowhere and it's like, oh, is he going to get caught? But no, it totally worked out and it was never safe, right? But like if that's how he plays, give him a character that can do that successfully 90% of the time instead of 10. And then just play like that. And that's totally cool. Like I can't even imagine how much like work Gatlu would have been able to put in on Greedon instead of a 22k Charizard game, you know, like, I'm just being happy. I'm sure after the game, Gatlu would have been like, shit, I really wish I would have played Greedon instead. And everybody was probably, man, I shouldn't have gone with Greedon, hey, like, but they know that about Gatlu, but like, why aren't they putting the faith in these best players that they have to like lean into strategies that they're good in? Like you can't just always go, okay, it's overlord, then it's, you know, then it's otter. And then, okay, if Joey's cracking off on tree block, like, like it can't be a pyramid, right? It just can't anymore. It doesn't work like that. And if it is a pyramid, you better know every single block in that works to build a good pyramid. So I think all that again goes down to do you know the players on your team? Do you know what they're good at? And do you trust them enough to lean into them when it's their time to step up? And the East certainly does that. I don't know if the West has figured it out. I can see the, I can see that point be pretty big. I actually think it is worth, we've kind of dabbled into a little bit, but I think it is worth talking about the overall meta game that happened at Worlds, right? Because I don't think, I think this was one of the hardest ones to predict over all of the Worlds meta's that we've had. I also think this was the most open meta that we have ever had at Worlds. The last couple of years were dominated by specific pairs, right? Number one, it was like, Blissys Arena, kind of Dragonite, if you really want to throw that into the mix. If you want to make it a trio, I suppose. The year after it was like, Zoshen Lapras, Komefae, what am I getting this right then? Does that, does that, does that feel like the dominating trios? But this year, it felt a lot more open. I mean, most of the Western teams, and I think a lot of the Asian teams too, AIPAC was kind of wise to this already, but a lot of teams were like, Charizard, we are betting that every time. And it had like almost, like just over 40% win rate, I think definitely was struggling out there in tournament play. Yeah, I, I've been saying, I've been saying the Charizard, but I think we all kind of discovered that as we were watching, I will say, my Mamoswine prediction, pretty excited about it for a lot of reasons, one, that did win Worlds, two, I was looking at the poker stats. Sorry, I can't bring them up on screen because I goofed this set up before we went live, but Bridget just nods, he's like, absolutely you did. So, Mamoswine, the only Pokemon with a above 50% win rate and above 50% win, and pick rate. So the only Pokemon that met those metrics both at over half the time, which I think is pretty sick. So shout out Mamoswine for absolutely crushing it, helps that ton was playing that Pokemon was playing that but, shout out the fusion for picking like two tanks and one of them was Mamoswine, it was picked like 95% good time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very consistent draft strategy. True. That's very good. I locked in. Hey, when they, they're the only team that'll give me double speedster to cast, I will accept it with open arms. Okay. Speaking of playing to your strengths, Lat Tam lives and breathes that stuff, but yeah, I think, I think that was a pretty exciting thing. Any meta, I mean, we talked so much about Fennel's meta game strategy and stuff. So we should probably have Fennel with standing. Any other interesting meta developments that we saw play out specifically in day two, you know, the teams that got a bit of an event time, visit time for the Korea talk. Yeah. Okay. You can lead us with the Korea talk somehow it's not me championing Zora Tiger's gaming with my flag held high. But okay. Then go ahead. Talk to us about Korea. Okay. The thing that Korea like in the first couple of years, the thing that Korea was always best at and they they had mixed results the first couple of years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were really good. It's like somewhere in there. Yeah. They were really, really good at playing the game in extremely disruptive ways. You saw this the most clearly when you were getting like Korea versus Korea matchups and you were like, getting that like weird, like level one talent flame invade and they were just like, what the hell is going on? I'm so confused. Uh huh. I remember that game from your one. Yeah. I remember. Okay. But like that they was, it was very similar way to the way they played versus other regions too. And I think Zora Tigers took that style that what I would call like a greeted style because that was the core of that idea. Yeah. And it's the core of how greeted plays, um, disclaimer, gold came up with that idea first, not me, but I am perfect again. Okay. Shout out, hello, uh, they, they decided, okay, here's what we're going to do. We are going to not play the video game for seven straight minutes. Yeah. We're just going to load into a match and we are going to stall. We're going to pick a magic carpet, we're going to do nothing. Mm hmm. Nauters. And then all of a sudden, the moment they think they have the download, they just turn it on. Yeah. Yeah. The moment they think they understand your macro, they play in a way that is designed to disrupt your game plan and they just keep at it and they never stop. And the only team they couldn't beat like that was a team who they could not read. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Tough to get a good read on Fennel at any moment of the game, but you're right. I mean, Zora brought us some crazy stuff. You are correct. They had it unbelievably slow early games, which is uncharacteristic of winning teams in this year's worlds. Right. Like if we look back at so many of these teams, early game was so important, like more important than it's ever been in any world championship game, keeping score tempo, especially against the Japanese teams looking at Zeta and Fennel primarily was paramount to having any kind of success there. So that makes sense. Um, but yeah, Korea playing outside of that bubble in total, which is awesome. I mean, hey, and that I think leans well on to do through this whole rant there. They had they had a like strategy they developed a strategy that like if any American team attempted it, they would like get bullied on whatever the pro server is now for like two straight months, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like they like it just it wouldn't work out and they would probably lean out of it before they really fully developed it. That's fair. Yeah. Zen head butt metagross. Right. We're seeing that was that was Zora. Right. I think I'm I think I'm correct. Uh, I believe so. Yo. Yeah. Was it synch one? Yeah. No, that's talent. Oh, that was talent. So maybe it's talent I'm thinking of. I think it's talent that I'm thinking with the with the Metagross. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Metagross. Working. Yeah. Working is underselling. You were absolutely correct. They were crushing. They were crushing. Yeah. It was awesome. Awesome. Okay. Uh, but I guess the question to you, Bridget, the same one, the metagame. I mean, I don't expect you to have a, uh, developed point of Korea is greedened. Were there any other, were there any other interesting metagame developments throughout the weekend that you found particularly cool or fun to watch or anything in between? I'll stall for a second to get Bridget. I just realized Korea is great in this game. Sage and parks, whole thing is pottery, Sue. Maybe Korea is just squirrels. They're squirrels. I mean, Sage and Park, one strict greed in world's year one. Oh, that is true. He did. That is an actual be true. They didn't win much, but he did. Wow. That is correct. That is correct. Can't take that away from him. All right. Exactly. All right, Bridget. Same question to you about meta. Okay. My developed thought is nouns is like confe, no, I don't know. Okay. Um, no, no. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. Now everyone pick a book over its email. Okay. It's not as you had to compare. What do I do? Um, yeah. Okay. So ultimately I loved how diverse it was. Yeah. Like, Pikachu, I was very shocked that like we were seeing it at all, much less seeing it like almost like popped off and like counterpicked like in the semi finals even like I really, I'm not sure like in my notes like if people were even like, I feel like we didn't see it until like quarter semi finals at least on stream. I guess I don't know everything that was happening in groups necessarily, but I was like, yeah, yeah, then I were all up in that local PDF page during the games, but yeah, I was really surprised by that one and as beyond actually, I was surprised at what mages kind of popped, yeah, I wouldn't have expected as beyond to be as prominent and like do as well as it seemed to do obviously like these were things fennel definitely leaned into and also probably why they shine but it's almost like they saw their enemies doing it and when they like banned away the new or picked away the new they were like, okay, we'll just snag this one. Um, I thought that was really exciting to me. That is interesting. It's interesting too, because that was the big difference to me in the top two Japanese teams right where fennel would play very crowd control focused attackers like they would play into the mages, they would think it's you or sp on or even you, we saw zeta division going with snipers every single time like if we can get rom on a italian we're winning like we are we're going all in on that long range damage it was pretty cool to see the like total flip flop of the strategy between the two teams. Um, obviously zeta played way more leafy on than fennel did however fennel did bring it out. Um, every now and then but zeta definitely leaning into, I want to say almost a more western take but it's not really true because they had blast always wrap it's been the whole time. Which, oh yeah, was interesting. Um, I mean certainly they were winning they got to top eight, I believe zeta division made it to right yeah they got the top eight so still pretty sick performance up there with a lot of great teams so. Um, still very cool. Uh, metagame development for me I mean I've already mentioned it I was so excited to see so much mammo swine. Uh, I think I was saying mammo's finally found its time. Um, it's great into this entire melee focused metagame. Uh, you don't need mammo to make the ice fang combo work. I've talked about this a lot of like why I think you always wanted nine on mammo before was because you're playing the high horse power with the ice cream crash build and you kind of want the unite was the third step of that combo. You land the ice you land the high horse power and then you want it to lead into the unite. And that's kind of what mammo does best with that build is you create a giant hallway for your team to run down and then you're able to create crowd control with ice fang you don't care about your unite. Like all you're doing is camping in bushes with earthquake waiting for someone to walk by and then just absolutely ruining their day you don't need your unite move as this piece right so instead of being a whole team wide focus. Uh, crowd controller, you're just looking to take down one target for that you don't need that level nine piece so it's pretty nice. I like that a lot. Um, will I see it continue to have success and competitive folk on your night. I don't know this feels like I found the one tournament. The one tournament will have really well have succeeded but I don't know. Who knows who knows how long this game will be. In the long term. Mambo Swine will prove to be like an effective. Like, I don't want to say like island top lane or like a tank top laner that like yeah. Gatlu pops off. Like 50 like if you want to it's not bad to invest resources but also like it's fine on its own. Um, I don't think it'll ever be remotely viable in the tank roll though I'm not going to lie I think it's. I think it's seen it today. Yeah. I, um, I could get on board with that but. Read the two points five teams pick Pikachu across 13 games. Um, wait. On day two. On day one and day two. Oh wow. Okay, there was a lot of Pikachu a lot more than you probably think. Yeah, definitely. I know I'm trying to think back to broadcast games on day one but it feels like. I don't know. Uh, Zora and, uh, dream whatever. Dream mix. Cool. Okay. Very cool. All right. Well, sick that brings us to the end of our meta game talk. Sorry y'all. This is going to be like one of our longest episodes said every episode. Okay. Um, yeah, I think that's basically the as much as I think we're going to get out of the actual competition at worlds. I think that. Sums it up pretty nicely. If any of us have any more thoughts to throw in, we can get those in in a bit. But doob snacks. I know you had some cool. Numbers to talk about that you wanted to. Yeah. Let me pull them up so I don't get them wrong. It's the numbers guy. Formerly Zollings. But now he's the cool guy. So I. God that bit was so fun. Good bit. High quality bit for certain. Really enjoyed that. While you're pulling those up, doo's nice. Quick story of how it happened. Uh, wonder chef and I were up pretty late the night before. Like on Thursday night, we just went down to like the hotel store like little bodega down there to go grab like some energy drinks. And I think I needed to pick up like toothpaste because I always forget it. Um, and so we grabbed that. I was about to go up and we both looked at the sunglasses rack. Looked at each other. And then. And the next day we were wearing sunglasses on broadcast. And that's, uh, that's all the story really is. I thought it was fun. It was a terrific bit. I'm glad you liked it. Um, okay. So, um, across Twitch and YouTube day two, uh, we peaked at 38 K concurrent viewers. Japan surprisingly hit this about the same number. Okay. So collectively was about 70 to 75 K viewers. Uh, across the Japan broadcast and our broadcast. Um, watching unite on day two, which is terrific. Um, that's very, very exciting. Um, the average viewership was, uh, a little bit all over the place because of obviously the grand finals bump, but it was around, uh, seven, seven to 10 K throughout both days. Cool. Um, the average view time is is about, uh, about a set. So it was about like 30 to 40 minutes. That's not bad. Um, a little, little less than that, uh, depending on when, uh, we're on the front page and stuff like that, right? So that really liked obviously that adds some numbers, which is terrific. Uh, but it really kind of acts as the view time. So if you incorporate when we were on the front, uh, it was just over 20 minutes there. Cool. Um, how we compare to other games, uh, we rinse TCG in every metric. Um, great. Uh, go, go, go, go beat, go beat us in on Twitch for average viewers. Uh, but we shattered them on YouTube, which, uh, is a more organic feed, uh, is, is what it's deemed because there's no front page type boost. Um, obviously they had, um, drops going on all weekend long stuff like that. So there drops on YouTube question. No, no. Okay. And I know the go drops were good. People were fiend for the go drops. Just say, yeah. Oh, our drops need work. That is like so fair. Yeah. The go drops are exponentially better. Right. Um, so they beat us on average viewers on Twitch because of that. But we destroyed them. Uh, we did much better than them on YouTube, which is more organic. Obviously because the drops aren't activated. Um, and VG beat everybody because they sit on the main Pokemon channel. Um, and they get the majority of the Twitch money spent to keep them on the front page. So, um, I think just in within our own brand, I think unite is very solidly, we can make an argument in that second spot behind video game, which for a three year little trajectory is great. Um, I, I think it was, uh, hex graph that posted online that we actually are doing better than Call of Duty Mobile, which is kind of something against COD Mobile. I don't know what it is. But every second tweets like, yo, COD Mobile viewership sucks. But hey, I'm here for I'm with it. Yeah, I would. So, um, that was just like the quick breakdown of the viewership numbers I was able to get. And I think it's easy to extrapolate that. That's good. We're, we're, the game itself is growing and I know. We also beat our peak. Right. So last year, we were at 50, we are 58. I think was our peak and this year we were like, um, the 20,000 more than like somewhere in the higher 70,000. Oh, yeah. I mean, drops help a ton. We had drops this time. We'll take those numbers are awesome. But again, I think something that's important to note along with the drops, right? Imagine if one, we had good drops but to a lot of our viewership comes through YouTube. Which the other games can't really boast, so something to keep in mind there. But all in all, I think it just shows a great upward trajectory for unite in terms of who's watching who's paying attention. And warranting us to get a little bit more change in terms of financial support when it comes to drops when it comes to time spent on the front page of Twitch. Um, because we're certainly getting a pretty big kickback to Pokemon just for being on YouTube and the numbers we bring in there. So I wanted to talk about that because I thought that was super duper exciting. Um, I think it's a great way to think about the game that sometimes when we're in our insulated bubble of NA or EU, right, which is mostly what we cover and talk about here on overdone. That, um, although those regions sometimes feel lackluster, right? In terms of participation or what have you, this game is very active everywhere on earth, it seems. Uh, besides, I think you could make a mention like OCEU and you know, and NA is, is, you know, we'll say, we'll say positively at a stagnant spot. Uh, but everywhere else. Plata kind of crushing. Yeah, it was a plateau. Good. Um, but everywhere else is, is doing well. And it's slowly going up, which is great. And of course it's absolutely rabid and these so I'm super excited about the game. I think it gives it just kind of that injection of life. It's kind of like the big hold your breath and see what happens type fall out of worlds, right? Because it's truly one of the metrics of is this worst continuing to support to invest in. Is it bringing eyes to our game? And it's uniquely bringing a lot of eyes from different pools of people that the other games don't touch, which is terrific. So, um, Eastern Unite viewership carry. No, that's not true. I just, I literally just said, there's the Japanese broadcast and ours. So, like ours collectively sucks up all of the English being countries. Japan is so rabid. It matches. But that doesn't necessarily mean that Eastern Unite viewership carries. I think you can give a big tip of the cap to latin. But to say, I think one time, those numbers be 20 shows on that screen, I feel like the Australian fans everywhere. The Brazilian fans, you got the Peruvian fans out there for, for fusion, it's saying. One of the fun ones of the whole weekend was like watching like every single time a team like did something that seemed mildly disrespectful into Brazil and then like they would post on Twitter and their replies would just be like 15 people flagging them in Portuguese. Right. Listen, hey, I'm glad because we'll talk about the actual point I was trying, the actual like non maybe point was, I think a big reason for Unite success is the, it has, in my opinion, even better than vg the best viewing experience. Yeah. Like, I have pretty good margin like, no shade the TCG. I don't think there's a way to make that viewing experience like washable if they did better this year. The play out thing was good. That definitely helps. But, but I'm with you. I'm with you. Continue. So sorry. Huge. Like, and, and obviously like go in TV or turn based games, there's always going to be limitations there as well. So, but like huge shout out to the observers who improved year over year, there was a lot less like observer low moments this year. Yeah. Like, I can only think of a couple off my head and those are always going to happen. Right. Right. There were almost that nobody expected huge shout out to obviously all the casters, like you guys have put like great energy forward, especially for like the more casual fans, which are what those streams are trying to capture, you know, like, yeah, people will be like, well, why did they need to explain the toolkit of that Pokemon because you're not the target audience. Yes. Yeah. Literally. Let me, let me speak to this for a moment. I, I've had a good amount of conversations with this with viewers with players and everything. Esports landscape has changed so much in the last 10 years or so, and one of the biggest changes has been the introduction of co streams, right? Like co streams are a brand new frontier to what esports is. And that's why you start seeing official co streams because official co streams mean that the companies can use those numbers and add them to their metrics. That's what having an official co stream is. That's why you do that. But what all that allows you to do is you're just going to find the, you're going to find the environment that you want to watch in right if you were top level competitive player. You're most likely going to be ending up in like Chris heroes chat right like when they're doing that stream or someone because that's the, the kind of thing you're looking for if you put the whole job of the main broadcast is the landing page. Like that is the first experience that anybody is going to have with competitive Pokemon Unites. So our job is like kind of multifaceted. We do want to be, we want to explain the game in simpler terms than top level players would probably prefer so that new players can experience it. But we also want to make sure that we are giving the game its credit in its complexity and in how it is interesting to prove to people that it is not just a simple game because it is not. I mean, we could say there's been meadows where it's been simple. But overall, it is not a simple game. So we, we kind of have this double faceted job on the main broadcast and that's a fun spot to be. I think right now the broadcast is doing a really good job of that so I've been happy with that. But yeah, that's Twitch numbers stuff baby. Twitch numbers stuff. Yeah, so we were looking for. Let's go on to our next topic everybody and that is going to be the 500 point mode. Now this was showcased on day number one is like the final thing on broadcast. I know Twitch chat wasn't super happy about it and blah blah blah blah. But I listen, we were all aligned like this game needs something new needs something exciting. I think it was exciting so but do sex, you got to cast it. I was not going to lie. I was watching the B stage game so maybe I'm hit by hypocrite right now. But let's talk about it. You and I know I know I know Bridget you and I did an entire podcast episode with Gek about this game mode and the whole China version and everything. We saw a lot of that happen. Also, if anyone was watching my Twitter, I got to go on the it's super effective podcast recently like this last week and did a segment with Steve who hosts that show who's playing in the 500 point mode on stage. So we got to talk a little bit about it. We discussed like his thoughts on it. What he felt differences between the main game and this one and then, of course, I talked a little bit about it. The announcement trailer and the graphics on screen and everything. All they have promised us is the 500 point mode. I want to make that so clear. The only thing that the game has promised us is that game mode. We don't know if we're going to get more stuff. I know there's been data mines where like maybe little tidbits here and there we might get. I don't know if we're going to get the double plus moves or the different held items, all the stuff we talked about in that episode. But at least we know one thing we're getting. That's a brand new mode. So do you guys think you got to cast it? I was watching something else so Bridget let's start with you. I'm sure you saw it on your co stream. Hopefully you didn't tune away. What did you think of the 500 point mode in practice? We did watch it. I also was not hype at first. But I'm happy we got to see more nemesis when we were going to day one, which I was already in arms about. So I was already like, you know, I was kind of up from getting seen nemesis game. I was surprised when it was on, but I watched all of it. I mean, they were pretty quick matches. It was very fun. So it was like. A lot of like Pokemon like broader Pokemon content creators. I think some of them like play unite like casually and stuff. And some like MOBA pros that I think Timmy invited. I think I got that from links to some other podcast. They were all like X pros of other games like a couple of like honor King's players from China. I think not arena valor is honor of Kings in China. I think so. But that's how it was said to me was another player from there. So it's a whole thing. But yes, X pros from other games. Yeah. It was actually really fun to watch. It just moves so fast. This 500 point mode. It is very chaotic to, I mean, even watch. I can't imagine trying to like talk and cast about what is happening. But it was fun. I was really grateful we had done that episode with Gexo inks for anyone interested. He is like. Oh my gosh. I mean, he was so knowledgeable on this like months ago. Like when it first, the first beta dropped. She's a bit of a nerd. Yeah. How dare you. That's so insulting. But I was because I had so much more context. I feel like as to what was happening. Even just with like where the objectives were spawning like the Pokemon evolving so soon. You can like see the score. It was also very funny. I feel like you could tell. I don't remember which team he was on, but there was definitely a player who was like sweating and you can tell. You can tell the other like pros were like kind of like, okay, you know, like being like chill. There was one guy who was like not being. I'm here to win. Thank you very much. I'm doing one game. If anyone goes back and watches the show match. There's a kid being a demon. That's really funny. Um, but I, it made me actually pretty excited. Um, I, and I watched like during the closing ceremonies. They play the trailer. Like when they're doing all the Pokemon announcements. It's you know, like they're kind of like going over all of the new stuff for all the new games and they showed the trailer again for Unite 500 point mode. And I went back and listened to exactly what he said because I was like, did I just hear this? Cause I interpreted like, Oh, we're going to see this at world to some extent next year. I think maybe like just like chime will play it. But he basically said might play a role in future competitions. And I was like, whoa, crazy. That is even saying that obviously doesn't come out until spring next year. But yeah, that's, that's news though. We got like a release season. Like we, we have had no idea, right? We've been in the dark. So China supposed to launch in November and then 500 point mode in global in spring. Which is pretty cool. Yeah, I'm hoping like we have some like China representation at world next year. Like even if it's like their own, like, I don't know. It just makes me excited because I know they've been trying to get them into this game. Since it came out. So it just makes me excited for them and excited for the sport in general. Anyway, fair enough. No, no, I'm trying to turn as a trans of one gate to a lot of players and a lot of potential money. So, yeah. Biggest market on earth and specifically in this genre more than any other else. And I mean Pokemon as a entity has been trying to get into China for a lot of it right TCG just made their debut. Like, I think a little over a year ago into the China market. So they're playing with like a slightly different version of the game a few sets back. So I believe you could play the mainline games now in China. Go is still not available, but they're, they're doing everything they can to get Pokemon there because it's extremely popular, obviously. But then I, did you get the chance to actually watch the show match on Friday? And if you did, what do you think? I think I watched it, but I'm going to be honest, like, I'd watch saw tonight, that day that I have memory. Okay, fair enough, fair enough. Well, quick, quick idea on it then. Okay, I will try not to make this too long, but there's this like concept in game design called like a cursed problem, right. Where you have two different ideas that are both like a court, the game that like conflict, right. So in the case of Unite, you have the idea of like decisions matter versus like you get like advantage for making good decisions. Because over time it will lead to game states where decisions no longer matter, which is why, like, especially which is then amplified by the 10 minute time limit. That's why, like, we have to have the most powerful thing in the middle of the map. Correct. And over time that eventually leads to flip matters. Like year one, let's be honest, if that meta had continued for another two months, it probably would have been a bunch of flipping. Yeah. You're three, like, even year two to year three, there were more games decided by stupid flips on the broadcast this year than were last year. Yeah, probably. I think I don't know about that many, but like it was, it was like getting to the point where it was like starting to creep into the back of your mind like. Yeah. Shout out cake a lock for this year, but yeah. Yeah. Having that like hard line, like, no, this is, this is how many points you need to win the game allows them to better tune comeback mechanics, as well as like, you know, having the extra like system for like builds and stuff. And just like adds so many different layers to the game that I, if it is well executed, I don't see it not being better compared to the format. Yeah. I agree. I am like fully aligned with you there. Yeah. Just reiterate with then saying you were saying, just so I'm clarifying basically, then it will be, if it is done well design well, it will be a better competitive format that what we have now. Yes, sweet. I agree. I agree. No, no, no, you're totally fine. Yeah, I just thought I'd make it abundantly clear. Do snacks. How about you thoughts on it? You got to cast it. We've cast it in a couple of games, like of the China mode, you and I, and then you obviously got to cast this one live with the creators versus Timmy creators. So what were you thinking? I think it looks incredibly fun. I think it's exciting to have something new to the game. It's definitely a nice shot in the arm. I think worlds does kind of like the, the, the front work, right? We're starting the season earlier, which will help carry that momentum. It dropping in spring, I think is great timing. I don't know with how early this season is starting, that it'll find its way into the competitive realm for this season, which might be a good thing so we can kind of massage out all these kinks, if you will, with this game mode. Because to be quite frank, you know, Sprigles and I had the information on some of these A.S. technologies and they're berserk, right? Something that, you know, you all may not be tapped into is like the text on all of them. When you say that it leads to inevitable situations or the flip situation, what happens in these games as it currently exists, so definitely room for improvement here is essentially the team that starts getting ahead. Essentially throws the sort of Damocles over their opponent, so they don't know when they're going to lose, but they're going to lose and it's inevitable because the spikes that you get at each gated point is so egregious that it becomes insurmountable in its own right. Like where you just don't have any capacity to fight back against a character that has, if they're over 90 HP, they have 50% more damage on all their moves, or unite move charges up three times faster, and stuff like that. So it's snowballs in a different way, which that is one thing, something that Shino Haro and I were talking about the Japanese caster that him and I were uniquely on the same page on when discussing with all the other casters are. In its current state, it becomes a much harder ride to bring spectators along on, which for a game that is as short winded as ours is, that's a tough pill to swallow. And a reason that things like Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Dota, and stuff that have this more paced out, kind of similar to the 500 point mode station, if you will, is because you actually get time to explain, then, to your point, the very cool, intricate decisions that they're making throughout the game. But right now, it is so crazy that you can't realistically cover one thing in enough time to give people insight as to why it was cool before the next three things have occurred. Whereas unite right now is cadence to the spot where you do have a few low points to address those moments, even though the game is fairly short. And the last thing is, is yes, the games can go longer than 10 minutes, but we saw one on stage that ended before the eight minutes after showdown. So, like, that means it was below eight minutes, and that is overcooked chicken, that's tough. That is a dogwater experience for everybody. Oh, okay, interesting. Yeah, I think that sometimes ending a game earlier is nice. Like, there is some UCS games that I really wish we allowed surrendering sometimes, you know, we are watching a match, and it's like, oof, we are having, we have a tough four minutes ahead of us for this next one. Haven't a game end when the team just beats them? I know sometimes can be nice. Sure, but then the counterpoint is they're beating the brakes off them and they won't end it, which is arguably infinitely worse too, right? At least you're gated by some time. So that's my concern is these AO's technologies really need to be rained in a little bit, or a balanced out across the span. So it doesn't feel like a different alternative alternative wind condition where it's like, well, this team hit 200 first, and the other team has still not hit their 100 AO's technology unlock gate. And now things go from like a little behind to irredeemably bad, because they got some of the AO's technologies I just mentioned. Like, when you, when you, you know, get knocked out, you don't lose any of your AO's technology, or like your opponent can't pick any up. And it's like, there's like some crazy stuff out there. So it's just a matter of, oh, you know, Insta score. That's one of them. Well, that's just one of them, like 50 Insta score. Yeah, it's a hard score. But yeah, it is. But it's still like that's a huge. That's huge. So, you know, so I just want to, I'm excited for it. I think it needs work to get it to a point where it can be a positive competitive experience for the players and the people at home, because that matters too. It really does. So we'll see how that all balances out. But overall, I'm excited and positive about it. I think it's a perfect tempo to what we've got going on in this upcoming year. Bring it up. Cool. I think the best way of like kind of summary of the whole conversation is the potential highs are so much higher. Oh, my God, the lows so much lower. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's interesting. The only, I am forever the optimist sometimes on this show. It feels like we're going back old school over and on a little bit here, but the 1v3 and 1v3. But I, I don't know, I just think back to, I watched a lot of those like China land tournament new snacks like those matches, and not a single one of them went the way that we watched the show matches go. Those were like really exciting. They were always going to like 11, 12, usually, we saw continuous, we saw teams come back. And I think their way of mitigating around just like a landslide victory for one team via some of these sales technologies is one, you get a bunch of them really early. It's like 050 and 100. Like those are all super easy metrics to reach, even if you're behind. I got a couple of back caps and swing that back into like you're catching up with some of the tech. But the other thing is they flood the map with objectives, which I think is a super positive decision that they've done with this game. They, even if you do have a big advantage, you have to be pretty careful about where you pick and choose to take your team flight. You have to read your opponent hard, because you could try to split push for the three different objectives that spawn at the same time, because you have Rotom spawning every single minute, and then a different main objective in the middle, and like every, I don't know, whatever, two or three minutes that it ends up spawning in. There's just so many points of pushing that it's like, I mean, the team can only focus on so many things at once. I don't think that these text will give you to the level where a Pokemon can 1v3 or 1v2 consistently all across the map. If you're losing, it's like any other moba now. What happens when you're losing? You got to bulk up, play together as 5, and hope you catch out 1, take about, and then make a push, right? I don't know. It just, it feels like more of a traditional sense, and I'm very excited about that. So I'm a little more optimistic. I don't think it'll be as snowball-y as maybe we're looking at it on paper, but I mean, the show match didn't do me a lot of favors and proving that point. So I'm going to be holding on to hope. Yeah, I mean, the last thing I'll say to that is, yeah, they're going 11, 12 minutes, but there's not 11 and 12 minutes worth of ability to explain to people at home what's happening in their face. Oh yeah, I'm not talking about like how it is a cast during the summer. Like, I'm just talking about like the competitive excitement and integrity of the match. Um, but yeah, you were right, trying to cast this game is definitely going to be different. I think it will, uh, we'll have to learn what KOs and what objectives are not important. You know, we'll have to be like, you know what, we can, we can color over this one or we can, we have to play by play over this. It'll be an evolution for sure. It'll be challenging, but we'll get there. We'll get there. It'll be fine. Yeah, a lot of everything. There's so much going on calls will be happening for the first few months of casting. I can guarantee that that will be happening, but okay. Any more thoughts on 500 point mode before we move on? Perfect. Okay, fantastic. Um, now. There is a whole other topic that we have to get to, but I think we're just going to kind of talk about it a little bit before we end the episode because we have gone super long, but, uh, I think we've kind of got partial information with it is the reason that we're only going to talk about it somewhat, but that is going to be next season, the season 25, 2025 for Pokemon Unite. The schedule has dropped. So, uh, few changes. The main that I'll just highlight and then we can get into the conversation. First and foremost, Unite is now at LAIC, which I think is unbelievably hype. It will be an open bracket event open to 32 teams who will be competing over a cash prize and some other prize that is still yet to be announced. We don't know yet, but it was not mentioned a world spot in that category. So I think it's safe to assume me nothing there. Then, uh, Unite will be returning to EUIC and NAIC. EUIC will be is looking like the exact same event that it was this year with a qualifier event happening a couple of months prior that will bring some teams from across the world to compete as well as having an open bracket. The big change here though is that the open bracket has been expanded to accommodate 64 teams this time. Do I think we're going to hit cap? Probably not, but it's cool that they are willing to accommodate teams if that if that does happen. That's really awesome. NAIC, we don't know exactly the format. It will be called the final stretch again. However, the way it is laid out in the schedule is exactly the same as EUIC, a qualifier a few months prior to the event, as well as having an open bracket open to 64 teams. So we're giving a world spot. All that is super exciting. Also, this season because of LAIC, this season will be beginning in November. And then of course, the last thing is championship points are now going to be awarded per team, not to players. So those are kind of the main highlights, the things that we're missing before we get to the conversation is what do championship points mean or do now that they have been changed for team and not for players. We don't know that and what exactly is the pricing, both monetary and world slots. We don't know anything in that regard when it comes to any tournament or championship points structure, how it's allocated by region. Nothing of that has been said yet. However, I've got Word on the streets says it should be very, very soon. So soon, TM, keep your mind down. Keep your ears up. But okay, I've just rancid for a little while, but I gave people the information. So let's start talking about a little bit doob snacks. How do you feel about the new season? I'm excited. More Pokemon Unite is good, cutting down on the lull between the official seasons. Also good. It's something we've all clamored for for a while now. I know the season starts at LAIC. I don't believe there's championship points on the line for that event. I think we don't know. We don't know. Yeah, it is kind of a coin flip and a few of the paragraphs of the announcement page are a little conflicting. So it's like, we just, we need the rule book. But anyway, sorry, continue. Okay, so I mean, either way, if it starts in November with championship points or starts in December championship points, both is good. And then those are both very good things. So I'm excited for that. It's going to be nice to be in front of the Brazilian crowd, which definitely deserves a live event of its own for how amazing they have been throughout the last couple of years. I'm excited for the change. I'm interested. I'm interested. I think that's the 48th time I've said that this, that's why I'm interested to see how the CP thing works out by team is interesting. How they're going to execute that is also going to be worth keeping an eye on. But I think overall, if we land on a system that makes sense, it is a net positive, because ultimately, if we want to grow this as an esport, there has to be some barriers to give incentive for organizations to not just pick up a team at world, but pick up a team all year and get their name out there all year, because they know that the team for the most part that they've signed on to will be together all year. Perfect example is LG sponsor right before the world championships year two, they say cool, we're going to do year three, and by the end, it's literally one player that would that they've signed, right, like that they initially thought was going to be there is there. So, and that's through multiple revolutions and that's just, it's not tenable for a company to be like, well, who am I actually backing here, right? Every time there's another revolution, it's one person less that you actually have done your research and background on that you are willing to put your neck out on a neck out for and your money out for so that's that's particularly exciting in my opinion as well. Yeah, yeah, I think, if you hit one of the nails on the head, you said a lot of great points, but I think the one that you really land to do snacks so credit here is just is the focus on orgs like so many of these changes in my opinion. And once we get a full rule book, we'll be able to parse this out a little bit more, but it does feel like the focus from unite is going in that direction. They want more organization investment. This has been the frontier for Pokemon on org investment, more so than any other of their titles. I mean, first to have jerseys on stage and being playing like they are putting orgs first and foremost, which is really interesting. No other Pokemon titles doing that so clearly we're seeing that investment. I think that's cool. I am stoked for unite to be at LAIC. Like you mentioned Brazil has been one of the best fan bases at every world championships wherever baby Mazo goes. There's always a sick fan base there to cheer the bomb. That is awesome. At any IC, we had one Latin America North team make it up to compete in the open bracket. That was awesome. They were really chill team. I really like talking to them. Dr. Mario was a lot of fun to chat with. They were chill, but it'd be awesome to see some more international representation, but I don't exactly know how visa situations look getting into Brazil from some of the other South American countries. Safe to admit, I just don't know a lot of the visa policies out there. Very familiar with US visa policy as someone who came into this country on one, but other than that. I struggle. So I'm hoping it's a moment where an open bracket will incentivize a lot of teams to come out and play and just more so have some of those local fans get excited about the game to in a land person environment. That's going to be awesome. Bridget, how about you? Any new season changes that you're pretty excited for? A little wary of? Overall, super duper stoked. LAIC is so hype. I definitely looked up flights to Brazil, and then I'm like, I can't go to Brazil in two months, that's insane. I'm like, God, it would be so cool. I just think the environment's going to be amazing. And I'm just kind of interested to see what they're going to do with it, because now, especially with NAIC just being final stretch. It's kind of like the land events are more so, like, you show up and you get to spot the world. So they're not really like championship point based, which I think is cool. But it'll be interesting to see obviously what they want Brazil to be just because EIC and NAIC kind of have their own little unique things now, which I do really like and it would be cool to see. LAIC gets something similar, but I feel like both those events started off just kind of being like a regional journey, so I wouldn't be surprised if that is the starting point. Yeah, it feels like a safer rollout, right? But yeah, that's fair. But it is an open bracket, so a little bit different already. We're seeing it. So that is quite open to international competition. And again, we don't have the full rule book, but parsing through the announcement that was said, which I went through with a fine tooth comb before we, before we got on this podcast. It did feel like last year where if teams were participating in TPC regions, AKA Asian teams, it sounds like they would be open to participate in these events. They would just obviously not be eligible for any of the championship points awarded if there are any, because their circuit does not revolve around championship points. So, then, how about you? I'm curious. I mean, you kind of took a break this year. You watch Worlds, any thoughts on season four of competitive unite. Oh, oh, do you phrase that question a very interesting way. That's what I do best. Well, before we get to me specifically I'll talk about the format we're generally. Okay. I think overall it's a net positive. If the rest of the rule book is sensible, which is a big if, of course. I think that the, my ideal world would be no championship points for land events, because just to keep things fair and the most competitive environment possible, of course. And like it's, it's fairly reasonable to assume that championship points will probably use for spots in some places are a cool. The big one for me I think that that will help competitive unite like viewership and especially like casters is the previous system technically incentivized to backstabbing a fair amount. Yeah. Yeah. It did. You're right. Like, and like you can hate some individual players for doing it. Like, I know there were a lot of people upset, especially with like the Latino GT thing last year. But like, Latana was doing what was best for him. That was what the system incentivized. Sure. I think it's a net positive that people are going to be more as a device to stick with their current teams. It lets you build narratives better. Again, assuming it's all like well constructed. And I think all when all it will lean to both a better experience for orgs, which a little bit of Hopium here. I remember in the pre luminosity days, while we were talking to several bigger organizations than luminosity. They were right on the fucking fence. Like, just a little bit more comp support still a little bit more sure it's and they would have been there. Cool. One thing on a note, a random change from year one to this year, which I just thought about then, but after what you're saying. There was Red Bull on jerseys this year, and that is a, that was a big no no. Yeah, interesting. We had the JCB, the Japanese commerce bank or something was on fennel jerseys. I mean, they, they kind of like. Yeah, I only saw a couple of things like for the most part it was Red Bull was not one of them because I distinctly in my mind was like, huh. Right. Can we put it on? Can we put it on our Catholic desk, like every of the resport now? Do we have to be honest, I was surprised they even like, I think they like, I don't remember. I was surprised they even approved black and dirty you're one, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I was pretty shocked as well. But yeah, like that is a huge thing like there is so much more or friendly and like, the actual competitive structure seems like it might be more friendly to players as well. And it might incentivize people to learn social skills, which is always a plus. I don't know if you ask. But yeah, you are a resolution learned in people. Yeah, so let's, I think we're obviously all really excited about the majority of the changes, the one I have been pretty trepidatious on for a long time has been the championship points being allocated to teams. My biggest concern is just who actually holds those points, you know, like when it comes down to it, you have to play as the entire roster of five. Can you make no change? How does that happen? Couple of things this format will do incredibly well though, if it works on how I think it will. Subs work now, which is awesome. Subsitudes are a real thing, because let's face it. I don't think that Kiriost and Jungle Book, I don't think that situation, I didn't want them to do that, but like, I think we can all look at that situation and see why they like, you know, had an account sharing, add an account sharing moment. Yeah, they shared an account sharing moment. If you see why they did that. Yeah, no, but like if they're on the team and Jungle Book's the official sub and the points stay within the team, then it's like so clear and easy. Exactly, we check that out, right? Yeah, so that is, that is one of the, that would be like the best thing to come out of this. Now, what players are going to be signing up just as a sub for the whole season? I don't know, but if you find one, awesome. Hold on to them tightly, because, well, someone's got to go to prom or something, you need players to play. Sure, right. That's the, that's really what it comes down to. That's what it comes down to. But yeah, Ben, were you going to mention something there? Probably not. All right, let's, I don't know legally allowed to. Yeah, let's let's not get you indicted here on the podcast. I'll go back. Okay, awesome. Well, we next week will probably be talking about this a little bit more. We just went really long. I didn't want to go too much in depth. The new changes outside of LA. She's going to be so sick. I really hope that I'm going to be there because Brazil crowd going to be the best thing of all time. Oh, gosh. Yeah, I just hope the open bracket fills up 64 teams. Very ambitious, but if it fills up, that is sick 120 people. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. Hey, be so cool. And then worlds in Anaheim. We'll talk about all that other stuff later. There was also a patch. We'll talk about all that stuff later. We got a lot to talk about our next week. Here's Renee jazz leafy on now. Hey, you said that is a bad thing, but I read it as a positive. Sorry, Karen beyond grand the other day. It was awesome. That's right. Talk to him, Bridget. Tell him. Okay. Let's close out the episode. Zoo around. Oh, plugs. Then it was awesome to have you back around to get on the podcast. We'll definitely have to be doing this more. But then I need to plug before we get out of here. Okay, so I'm going to answer the way you had originally asked me a question earlier. All right. My, my opinion on competitive, how it stands for me. I will not be doing anything with a team this year. Probably. There's some stipulations there that I'll talk to talk on a later episode where we're not pressed for time. But I was like, when I wasn't in Bridget's chat, I was on the TTM versus like unofficial co stream. So there is actually lots of be flaming people. I know people really love that last year. Generally speaking, I'll be doing more stuff with TTM, which is a queer safe community within unites. One that will not post straight pride flags during the month of June. That is a direct shot at someone. If you know, you know. But yeah, open that I have a new Twitter account now. I'm not going to advertise it, but if you know, you know, great. All right. Hell yeah. Do sex, anything to sell out or shout out. If you know, you know, follow our big Bridget on Twitter. Also, Zoinks get ready to get a picture of me and Bridget having a beer on Friday. I'm flying to wherever you live. I'm flying to wherever you live. It's over. It's over. I'm coming. Good. I almost unplug. You can't tell me no. I'll sleep at a ditch. Okay, Bridget, anything to plug. I just don't know, but you should check out Zwing's on. It was it's super effective podcast and I forget the name of the special one. Tweet talks. Yeah, but I watched it on YouTube, but he did a great job and they were really fun to listen to. Yeah. Yeah. If you're interested in Super Smash Brothers, I can't recommend. I can't recommend Tweet Talks enough. It's like, it's the best Super Smash podcast out there. Lights out is also very good, but Tweet Talks is the best one in the business for sure. If they cover every major, Tweet is on that podcast and it's one of the best players in the entire world. If you're asking me the best player, so go check out that episode. We talk a lot about how there's a lot of similarities between competitive Smash Brothers and competitive Unite, specifically in the competitive communities, which I actually find really interesting. Those are really fun discussions. So check that out. And then on it's super effective, we just talk all about 500 point mode. So if you want to go here about that, that is also the spot to do it. The only other plug I think we have for Unite Mikes is obviously keep checking out all the episodes on YouTube.com/UniteMikes or on Spotify or any other podcast platform you want to listen to. But watch out in October. Unite Mikes is planning on running back our 16 hour charity stream marathon event. We're almost exactly settled on a date. I think it is like officially sub, but we don't know the charity or anything yet. So like keep an eye out for a big announcement coming up soon, but we're hoping to do a marathon stream that will, of course, include a tournament with all proceeds going to charity. Last time it was literally so much fun. We had a blast. We had people from other game communities, casters from around the United Space as well. Like we did Jeopardy. We played games. It was so much fun. So look forward to that. We'll be talking about it probably every single week on the podcast up until then, up until then. So keep an eye out for that. But I think that will finally bring us to the conclusion of our post world episode a lot to talk about. But I think we crushed it. Also, liquidation is somewhat better. Please don't play it in my games. All right. I think that'll bring us to the end of the episode. We will talk to you all next time. Until then. Bye bye. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING]