Gaming: A look at Fault

The Strange Matter Studio banner for Fault

When you think of the word Fault, what comes to mind?

By definition of noun; a fault is an unattractive or unsatisfactory feature, especially in a piece of work or in a person's character. Or maybe you thought of the fact that it explains responsibility for an accident or misfortune? No, those couldn't possibly be it, it has to be the geology based term for an extended break in a rock formation.

While none of these are wrong it is time to add a new meaning to the word. Fault is the brain child of Strange Matter Studios, one of the many Paragon spiritual successors in existence at this point in time.

Before we can even begin to walk down this road let me take you back in time to the game in which our subject at hand derives some of its assess from.

Paragon was a third-person Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA for short) in the similar vein to the current SMITE, but with more of a shooter vibe. It featured several symmetrical maps over the course of its life; three lanes separated by fog walls with access to an area called the jungle. Wherein special resources such as buffs that provided a variety of effects, extra minions existed, and at either end of the map was the team's core, the PRIMARY objective. 

The unique bowl-shape of the map allowed players to lookout from either end of the map and tactically plan their approach to combat or coordinate with their team when it came to approaching map objectives. 

The Monolith (Version 35 Update) UI.

In addition, the game did away with the traditional item system seen in various other MOBAs for a card system where players would build a deck based on the hero's two given affinities before going into a match and farming Card Experience in order to use and build these cards. 

Later, it would be done away with allowing players to build decks using any combination of two affinities they wanted as well as inserting special gems that granted passives based upon how many points you placed into Intellect, Agility or Vitality. 

Where SMITE uses various deities from the plethora of pantheons that exist around the world, League of Legends heroes are based off the various continents that exist in their universe, and DOTA 2 pulls from its roots of Warcraft. 

Paragon's various heroes came from a range of backgrounds that blended almost seamlessly into each other to create a lore rich, Sci-Fantasy fusion take on the modern world. I'm talking about a shaman turned pop-star that uses magical wolves to assassinate targets, meets a synthetic who was originally human, and now uses shields to protect the damage dealers on her team. 

Muriel, a shield-based support whom used to be human and is now a synthetic. 

Or maybe you're more interested in the cowardly warrior who lost it all save for his niece, then got kidnapped by a religious sect and forced to undergo a rite that made him immortal, meets an Ogre whose drum beats turned a war into a dance battle and now he travels the world making friends, as an exile unfortunately. 

Greystone, a melee fighter who needs to die twice in team fights.

Narbash, a melee caster support whose drum beats can grant movement speed and healing to keep his team in the fight!

And still there we just plan creepy creatures who drank, what we can assume is motor oil, and belched flames that could end the existence of anyone foolish enough to stand in it.

Iggy and Scorch, a pair of runts who specialize in zoning and siege using lots and LOTS of Fire, turrets and oil, which they may or may not drink.

Sounds pretty freaking cool right? Now for the sad news. Paragon would close its doors April 27, 2018. It lasted two whole years and some months before being shutdown to the sadness and shock of many who either grew their communities through the game, discovered other communities, dived into the genre for the first time, and many other unique experiences. 

We won't get into the semantics about the shutdown as I am sure you can find a plethora of articles that have already dipped, ducked and dived into the topic at length.What I do want to get at is the hole that the loss of  Paragon created. Many would flee to one of the established MOBAs of LoL, DOTA 2 and SMITE but still many did not feel fulfilled in those environments. 

While those games are absolutely amazing and have made their own strides, they did not have that "It-Factor" that Paragon possessed.

In the following 2 years rumors would swirl about possible successors to Paragon, once they released $12 million worth of assets free of charge in the Unreal Engine Marketplace. As long as the assets were used on the engine Epic Games gave users free reign to my understanding. 


We would then come to hear about games in development Core, Fault, Ethereal, Predecessor and Overprime to name the prominent ones. Core has gone silent, Ethereal is taking on an entirely different look to the point it's not really considered a Paragon successor, Predecessor is currently in Alpha where you need a key to play, and as far as Overprime is concerned can't say I know much about it. What I do know is that Fault caught my attention and despite it's current $15 price tag to play EA on steam I was ready to dive in.

I should mention that there were quite a few people who were a bit upset about the Early Access being buy-in. This is no different from when Paragon was also in EA and you needed to buy one of the game's packs to play. Many were under the impression Paragon was always free-to-play when in fact it didn't go free-to-play until the following year when it went into Open Beta. 

The pre-Alpha UI of Fault.

Anyway the first 48 hours were rough to say the least. Many audio queues that we are used to in other games have not been hooked up yet (hit sounds, ambient music etc) thus when playing a match and you and your lane opponent are ducking it out all you get is the sound of chirping happy birds. Couple that with the fact servers were several hours late going up due to some kind of back-end issue and IGG backers experiencing delays in receiving their game keys as well as issues sorting out the way DLC was to be purchased on steam and you have a recipe for disaster. 

Despite this Strange Matter Studios worked as hard as they could to correct as many wrongs as they could in a short time span.

The Current Fault UI (photo credit: twitch.tv/Kirschey)

I won't lie in this current day and age I think we have been spoiled to have perfect products delivered to us right from the get go and no longer give space to devs (especially indie devs) to breathe and make mistakes in order to do better going forward.

It's understandable too with the current pandemic and money being tight for a lot of us, so when we have the room to treat ourselves or splurge we want to make sure it is money well spent. However, once you push pass those faults, at least for me you come to see Fault is a game with so much potential.

I was never able to play the game in its earlier iterations so for me it was my first experience. Once I was able to put aside what wasn't working in the game and took it for what it was I was able to see what SMS was trying to do. I feel like they are/were trying to recapture that feeling of Paragon when it first hit the ground; the rough graphics, unpolished animations, missing sounds. I fell like they want the community to grow with the game as it changes. Just like those who played Paragon from the start got to see it when it was ugly up until those servers were closed.

So what makes Fault standout and make me feel that it has such strong potential? 

Well they took the affinity system that we knew and put a twist on it, turning into a sort of LoL current rune system where you load into a match and have a choice of slotting in two of the thirteen aspects each with two effects. The item system further plays upon this by having final built items be associated with certain aspects, and receiving bonuses for having points (gained from various map objects) placed into the aspects. Also the trees remind me of something fierce with how DOTA 2's item trees are deep and contain many actives. 

The current 13 Aspsects within the game.

To push things even further to differentiate itself from its former shell heroes are receiving some nice passives akin to LoL champions that have slightly altered how some of them function.

For example, Lt. Belica now has a passive drone that shoots what she shoots or even Sparrow now passively deals extra damage with successive hits on the same target. 


While there are some nasty bugs still lingering around, such as the fps bug, Fault is due to receive a face lift with a new UI in the coming weeks which is sure to alleviate a host of problems. 

As such I want to reserve harsh judgement and criticisms until we have that update and whatever it comes with applied. To many SMS released a product not worthy of having players pay $15 and I cannot argue it is rough but if you are willing to grow with a game and contribute to it becoming great it is an investment. 

SMS (and the companies behind the other successors for that matter) are in a position where they can breathe new life into a genre that still has room to grow and groups of people searching for their homes. 

Fault, in specific, once they release the content that existed in Paragon and begin releasing their own hero concepts I pray they use the unique universe to produce diverse and representative heroes, on top of maybe bringing back those hero teasers and keeping the community guessing what does this hero do? What does this hero look like? What they have done conceptually with the game so far is amazing and probably more than many of us could have even imagined.

Once they stabilize the client, unleash their UI, and really start rolling out updates I have every faith they will rise to the challenge of running a great game. 

All it takes is giving them the chance and space to do their thing with gentle guidance and constructive criticism when they make missteps we might not agree with. 

Well look at the time, I probably kept you longer than I should have but I appropriate you listening to what is hopefully the first of many Fault related thought bubbles. If you want to see more of that or whatever other thoughts cross my mind consider following the blog and spreading the word. Until next time!

(Blog published during patch 0.2.0)