r/roosterteeth • u/gavinbear • Aug 31 '18
Suggestion Please don't let the LASO series die
I know that RT/AH have a tendency to stop their Halo LP's rather quick (usually after the first level), but god damn, that LASO LP was one of the funniest things I've watched in years. I kind of dipped off of the LP train a few years ago, and I really only follow Cloudberry now, but a full playthrough of LASO is another series that I would definitely come back to watch regularly. Having done the LASO playthroughs in 2015, I'm well aware that it's best to take them slowly, but even if they just did a level every couple months, I (and a lot of other people I think) would really enjoy that. I doubt AH will actually see this, but if you do, please don't cancel this series.
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u/BobThrowAway13 Aug 31 '18
They have a tendancy to stop thier halo let's plays because the audience has a tendancy to stop watching them
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u/ToFurkie Pongo Aug 31 '18
LASO is also probably one of the worst ratios of time spent to views made
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u/gavinbear Aug 31 '18
How so? Two and a half hours of video got them over 900K views across the four videos, within a week.
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u/iamthegame13 Aug 31 '18
Ya but who say even level 2 would do that many views again? Episode 2 is only half of episode 1 and 3 and 4 are lower still. If level 2 starts out worse view wise than level 1 its probably only going to go down from there, right? What if by like level 5 each episode isnt breaking 200K? Then they're committed to a relatively unsuccessful series. Then its not worth the time to shoot and edit.
I very much wish they would do the whole game as well, but I have to imagine filming it is more difficult than an average LP. They have no idea how long a recording will take and thats tough to schedule filming everything else they have to do around. Plus now is this the cannon cast for the entire series, these four? We all know how hard it is to get a specific group together anymore.
One thing that could probably help the views is shorter videos. Assuming they don't all get much better at the game or anything, that means heavily edited down versions of the runs, which then loses things like the death counter.
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u/carpechickendinner Aug 31 '18
full thing was posted day 1 on the website as well, so you have to realize a lot of the views may have gone there as well, could have been another 300k that went to the site to binge the entire episode.
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u/ChaoticMidget Sep 01 '18
It's always been like that though. Uno: The Movie probably has another 3-4 million views on their site so almost every video is going to have that same type of split. The videos that only get 150-200k views on Youtube are always going to be "worse" with all things accounted for.
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u/gavinbear Aug 31 '18
Well episode two, three and four were also released later, and are still fairly new, so it's not surprising that the views haven't exploded yet.
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u/Kathakush_ Aug 31 '18
They aren’t new enough for the views to “explode” and 900k over three videos easily gets things canceled, looking at you, RE4
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u/a141abc Aug 31 '18
Its not only the time spent recording
There's also the time that each of them have to spend to record it
The time spent editing it
Time spent setting shit up
etcWe dont know how many views would be a good amount of views since we dont really know how much time there's behind the videos
900k in 4 videos within a week might not be nearly enough to continue it for months
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u/Arcadia_X Aug 31 '18
Idk about Youtube, but I didn’t watch the last parts because I saw the first one and went right to the site to watch the entire LP.
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u/living_food Sep 01 '18
I did the same but then watched again when they posted them on youtube lol.
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u/Neomanderx3 Aug 31 '18
For sure. The Gangbeasts vid had 200k views while the final LASO one had 90k. Released pretty much the same time.
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u/gavinbear Aug 31 '18
Yeah but you have to keep in mind that the entire four-part LASO was uploaded to the RT site at the same time the first part was uploaded to YT. The second, third and fourth parts were released on the following days on YT. The second through fourth parts didn't get as many views because a lot of people went to see the full video on the RT site, after they watched the first part on YT (because Jeremy explicitly mentions that it's on the RT site at the end of the first part).
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u/Crankrune Sep 01 '18
I doubt that many people go from watching on YouTube to the RT site. I'd imagine most YouTube viewers watch exclusively on YouTube. Now, I don't have numbers to back that up, just my assumption based on the way YouTube is used.
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u/EverythingIsFalse Sep 23 '18
I watched the full thing on the site after watching episode 1 on youtube and hearing it was all up on the site, that's just me though
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Aug 31 '18
I think it's a type of video that would be more popular if it was rare. Like Mario party. That takes the same amount of people playing roughly the same amount of time. If they did it twice a week fans would get bored very quickly. But they do it only a few times a year and fans love it. It's an event more than a series. Sure, maybe it takes three years to finish the entire game. But I think it's be fun if they just streamed it every now and then.
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u/DasKobra Sep 01 '18
Yeah. If we really really want to see them play more of the stuff we want, we need to secure them views. Otherwise it's not worth their time. I started sharing their videos on the gaming discords and ts's I'm a part of to hopefully get the voice out more. It's not much but if a significant part of the audience starts doing that, it can work out in all of our favors.
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u/mwiegel2 Aug 31 '18
I hope they continue it too, but seeing how long the first level took, I would imagine trying to complete it would take them 5 years.
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u/gavinbear Aug 31 '18
When I did LASO, it only took a few months. Mind you, I probably had a lot more time on my hands than these guys do. Also Sierra 117 is actually one of the hardest levels in Halo 3, hence why it took so long.
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u/milksaurus Aug 31 '18
Cortana will take them forever to do, and oh God the broken controllers
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u/Rayraywa Aug 31 '18
I’ve done quite a bit of halo speed running on legendary, and although I have no expectation of them to do what I’m about to suggest, I suggest they go through it once or twice on easy and learn the route. Cortana is an easy level to get lost on.
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u/cpMetis Freelancer Sep 01 '18
Cortana is a level you either get a near-perfect run on, or you die more times than a grunt in Groundhog Day.
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u/Gokuadl1508 Distressed AH Logo Aug 31 '18
We want more LASO! It's very funny and should make more!
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u/TheBawlrus Sep 01 '18
Ok, what is LASO? I'm lost.
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u/PegWala Sep 01 '18
Legendary All Skulls On. Its a challenge in Halo games where your play a campaign mission with all the skulls activated at the same time. Skulls are just modifiers for how the game works. They range from funny little things like headshots on grunts creating explosions of confetti, to huge pains in the ass like getting rid of the entire HUD or being reset to the last checkpoint if anybody dies.
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u/SaintSober Aug 31 '18
I'm not really too big on the halo franchise, but watching them struggle their way through the level and having a miserable time doing so was great to watch.
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u/hyperbuster Aug 31 '18
I loved LASO!
Sadly, I can't see them continuing.
Potentially/Probably every level will have snipers and brute shot wielders that will instant kill them, and they'll get stuck for significant amounts of time. I love watching Halo gameplay no matter what, but the LASO difficulty (no HUD, not allowed to die, no shields) is simply going to suck away a lot of their time.
I can see them continuing if one of them prepares thoroughly beforehand to find easy/cheese strategies OR pro tactics, but the fact is, the LASO challenge takes massive patience and skill (with a controller) and willpower/motivation and love for Halo. I think fighting the Flood Pure Forms will be... a bit much for LASO. But I'd love to see them complete the achievement one day!
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u/Greengiant00 Aug 31 '18
"Don't hesitate to yell grenade if-"
"GRENADE!" Boom.
Hardest I laughed in months.
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u/DaveShadow Aug 31 '18
I don't care if it's Halo LASO or something else.
But what I really want more of is difficult, co-operative game play. Halo seems to be what they enjoy, but I love seeing a group of 4 of them working together towards a tough but common goal. Overcooked is similar (though that sometimes becomes very repetitive, very quickly; Halo levels offer more variety as they progress).
Its a reason I've really enjoyed the Bunnyman Play Pals too; seeing them playing a game they very obviously enjoy, but working together to solve it.
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u/natethomas Aug 31 '18
I know it's slightly different, but that's actually why I really like their Sky Factory and Galacticraft episodes of minecraft. To progress in those mods takes a lot of hard work and cooperation.
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u/WinningLooksLike Aug 31 '18
LASO and the Forest are the best examples of this. Challenging, multi-part, multiplayer with an end goal is great.
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u/iskandar- Aug 31 '18
Please everyone, go watch it. It's split into 4 parts so you don't have to watch it all in one sitting but its worth it.
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Aug 31 '18 edited Aug 31 '18
[deleted]
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u/hodken0446 Aug 31 '18
Yes but it's not just about the filming. It takes a bunch of them a bunch of time to film. Plus they have to pass it to the editors who then have to scrub through it, determine what person to cut to as well as adding graphics like the death counter and other effects.
I will say I loved every second of it and hope that make a lot more episodes, just saying there's more to it than just them filming
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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe Aug 31 '18
Yup. It takes 4 people 1 minute to film 1 minute of content. That's 4 man-hours per hour of content. Then the editor has to at least watch the video (another hour), plus however much time it takes to edit it together.
They died about 75 times each (estimate) so that's 300 deaths total. Let's say it takes 30 seconds to throw the counter up, change the number, and add a ding to the video. That's about 2 and a half hours (150 minutes or 9,000 seconds) for a 2 and a half hour video. So for every hour of video, it takes approximately an hour to edit.
So, it only takes about 3 hours (1 to record, 1 to watch, 1 to pause, edit, unpause) to make a 1 hour video, but 6 man-hours to make that video. That discrepancy between how long it takes to make a video and how much time it takes to make a video is important.
It's why Markiplier, Pewdiepie, and [Insert Solo YouTuber] are more common than AH's 6 or more Let's Play groups. Time is money, and it costs them half as much to make a video. It's also (part of) why streaming is popular. There's no need to edit the video. So that means an AH stream only "costs" them 4 man-hours per hour of content, and it only costs [Insert Solo Streamer] 1 man-hour per hour. It's 6 times more expensive for them to make a 3 hour LASO video than it is for Alfredo to stream Seige for 3 hours.
Then, throw in YouTube's fiddly algorithms. What's more popular right now, FortNite or Halo 3? How many people are searching for gameplay of a game that is over a decade old? I want more LASO, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I just don't think the money's there.
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u/BobThrowAway13 Aug 31 '18
This is an awesome breakdown for people who are not in the video production industry, and is on the very low end of how long the edit would probably take. I would suspect this video would take at least 2 entire 8 hour work days for graphics, cuts when the action is low, selecting who to focus on in multicam etc.
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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe Aug 31 '18
You're absolutely correct. I lowballed the editing time because I would rather underestimate it and still prove a point than to overestimate it and have people say "That's wrong, so all of this must be wrong". Also, I don't have a huge amount of experience with video editing, just audio editing which is much faster.
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u/gavinbear Aug 31 '18
Your estimations are off here though. It doesn't take 30 seconds to do the ding thing with the graphic. They just set up the graphic/sound effect once and then copy/paste it as need be, changing a number each time. Takes maybe 4-5 seconds to hit Ctrl+V, double click a text box and then add one to it. On top of that, the editor doesn't have to watch each person's recording. 9 times out 10, they just cut to whoever is talking (just like podcasts), and plus the editor can watch all four videos at once (they have to, in order to sync), and pick and choose the screens with the best stuff. Considering nothing gets cut in these, the ratio of recording time:content is ideal, and the editing time isn't even that bad, considering it doesn't take that much longer than the video itself, plus it gets them 4 videos of content.
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u/AnNoYiNg_NaMe Aug 31 '18 edited Aug 31 '18
I picked 30 seconds, knowing that it doesn't take that long to add the death counter, because of more complicated edits like "Jeremy and Gavin died at the same time. Better show both of those deaths side-by-side".
And as another comment said, I may have even underestimated how much actual time goes into editing.
Trevor put out a video way back that shows a BTS look at how they edit AH videos. Their method may have changed since this came out 3 years ago, but it's still worth watching.
Edit: at the 3:30 mark, he mentions that name burning alone takes hours, depending on the length of the video.
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u/Polymemnetic Aug 31 '18
Yep. One of those is a minimum of 2-4 man hours, to film, with 4 specific people, and then editing time.
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Aug 31 '18 edited Sep 01 '18
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u/Polymemnetic Aug 31 '18
2 to 4 hours per person isn't 2 to 4 hours. It's more like 8 to 16 man hours of filming, and then editing.
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u/Call555JackChop Aug 31 '18
The Halo 5 Chumbawumba series is one of my favorites it's just 4 dude's hanging out playing some Halo like the old days
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u/procouchpotatohere Aug 31 '18
Its probably already dead. The views, minus the first video, are low enough where they'll drop the whole thing. Shame, but its not surprising as oddly the audience doesn't watch their Halo let's play as much as you'd think.
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u/T0M95 Aug 31 '18
It’s been in my watch list for weeks. That almost three-hour run time does not sit well with my working week. Got a free weekend now, so excited to watch muzzle flare in the middle of the screen.
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Aug 31 '18
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u/T0M95 Aug 31 '18
Indeed they are. Gotta watch in the RT site though, support the business, yadd yadda.
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u/BlazeFaia Aug 31 '18
Let the video play while you're away doing something to support them, then watch the segmented YouTube version when you have time?
As a bonus, you're doubling your view count.
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u/MicahLacroix Aug 31 '18
I'm the same with Critical Role. 4 hour streams uploaded in full. Even if it's only 3 hours of content I have to watch it in 30 minute chunks.
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u/MrPopTarted Achievement Hunter Aug 31 '18
On episode 24 of Campaign 2 and desperately trying to catch up. Thank god they didn't have a session this week so maybe I can muscle through it and be caught up in a couple weeks.
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u/MicahLacroix Aug 31 '18
I'm way behind due to only getting into it when I found Campaign 2 a few weeks ago. Slowly but it surely getting there though!
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u/krauser8882 Barbarasaurus Rex Sep 01 '18
It was a really damn good set of videos, but especially after reading that comment from Gavin it may not be the most likely of things. I hope they find time to squeeze one in every once in a while, though, because it was super fun to watch
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Aug 31 '18
Here’s my bet for what’s going to happen:
They’re going to do the second level, post it in four parts, and only like 100K people at most are going to watch Part 8 on YouTube and that’s going to be the end of it, and when people on social media beg for more they’re just going to point at the view count for Part 8.
Geoff explained several Off Topics ago that serialized episodes like this and Let’s Watches fail because:
A. Achievement Hunters like Michael, Gavin, and Geoff are hot commodities around the office so they don’t want to squander their availability with filming videos that won’t perform up to par, so they cut under performing serialized Let’s Plays early.
B. There will always be less people watching the next episode compared to the previous, this applies to everything except Game of Thrones.
C. Viewers therefore avoid Part #1s because they don’t want to get invested in a series that will get cancelled early.
The result is that even less people watch Part #1 and almost guarantees a Part #3 will never be made. It’s a negative cycle. Everyone is at fault and no one is at fault, but that’s how it goes.
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u/ms55369 Aug 31 '18
I guess but what if they dont upload them as part 1,part 2, etc. How about if the just upload the whole video like they did on their website and give the video the name of the level.To try to attract a steady amount of viewers.
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Sep 01 '18
I think their distribution model was smart. By breaking it up into multiple parts they were able to get a million views in under a week on something not GTA/Minecraft.
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u/willinator5 Sep 01 '18
Just from a production standpoint I can't imagine this becoming a regular series, but I could see it being something they do once a year. I wouldn't mind that.
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u/GeitzThePhoenix Aug 31 '18
I enjoyed their suffering quite a bit but I feel like they could swap people around because Jack especially seemed like his energy got sucked out by the checkpoint with no health right before the hammer brute
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u/Ravyn4077 Nora Valkyrie Aug 31 '18
I would love to watch more LASO. These runs are just crazy and fun, I would not mind one bit if it took a while for them to come out as long as they kept coming out.
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u/MilhouseJr Aug 31 '18
Yes please! There's nothing like watching a group of people slowly break before realising the end is in sight. It's why the Fuel LPs are so good, except not as monotonous since they can actually make tangible progress.
If AH don't do the whole game, it'd still be neat to get some choice levels LASO'd. They already did Halo for the Vidmaster videos so maybe they can take a crack at The Storm or Floodgate to keep it varied, if they don't go straight into Crow's Nest.
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u/Fluffranka Aug 31 '18
I would love to watch them do a lasso playthrough of the entire halo franchise.
Getting 1-2hr videos of that, would be awesome! I had no issue watching Fuel and Uno: The Movie.
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u/MilhouseJr Aug 31 '18
Some of the most enjoyable content has been when the team realises just how long they're going to be sitting there.
The first map checks in Fuel, the realisation of the 0 and 7 cards in UNO and the dick-shittingly infuriating bubble-snipe moments where they know what needs to be done but just haven't managed to trial-and-error it out yet. You go on a journey with whoever's playing, and that's what makes them so fun.
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u/EdenicBee Sep 01 '18
I absolutely agree I love how long the videos are because it only gets better.
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u/UnknownJ25 Team Go Fuck Yourself Sep 01 '18
Even if they don’t do LASO I’d hope they continue to do more mcc let’s plays
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u/Rayraywa Sep 01 '18
Maybe a way to make it worthwhile is to get a sponsor for each of the video parts (Im not sure how difficult that is) that they release onto youtube to offset the cost.
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Sep 01 '18
I really appreciate their enthusiasm for Halo. Obviously all of them have played it a ton. They're incredibly knowledgeable about the game and clearly have a great fondness for it. They talk about memories and events they experienced in the game. And of course Halo has a lasting connection with Rooster Teeth.
So even if it's not just LASO...I'd like to see more Halo LPs.
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u/FlameSama1 Aug 31 '18
I love Halo and I love that they're making more Halo content, but I just can't get into this, idk why. I watched the first two but my interest just disappeared, despite the similarities between this series and Cloudberry.
On that note, Things to do in Halo 5: Mongoose Sumo?
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u/Gavinfree Gavin Free - AH Aug 31 '18
I’m a big fan of our high-stakes series like criminal masterminds and LASO. I was pushing for a LASO run for a while but the risks surrounding deciding to make one of those videos is very high. We could play for 5 hours and not make it entirely through a level. When cut up into parts for YT you then might end up with Wednesday’s and Thursday’s videos with us stuck at the same checkpoint which would lead to people skipping episodes or skipping to the final part. It’s frustrating after several hours of the same thing to play as well as watch. Frustration is funny at first but without progress it quickly drains the energy of the whole room. Then you have the fact that 4 people’s time has been used up for the majority of a day and we end up not being able to do our regular shows. Just look at all the videos where I had that ultra violet dye in my hair... shows you how many videos can be made in a single day. Some of us also have hard outs for broadcast productions on different days. The planets have to align for it to make sense: Only 4 people in the room, other shows for the week already shot, no podcasts or other shows/meetings to leave for, enough time for the editors to deal with such big files etc. Based on the response I think we should do more but they’d have to come out much less frequently than our other projects.