Predecessor Report - July 2023

Welcome back to another exciting edition of the Predecessor Report!

Codename: L I Z A R D

What can we say about Lizard…
Well for one he can’t change colours, he has a reptile dysfunction! Okay that joke was a tad scaly, but we had to snake a few in! Badum-hisss!

Okay seriously though, with V0.10 nearly upon us (we’re currently targeting August 8th), it’s finally time to talk a little more about our next original Hero!

You’ve known them as Lizard for a while now, but today we can reveal their official name!

Drumroll please!

Oh it feels good to finally use that name. Zarus. ZARUS. Z A R U S.

Zarus, known across the lands as The Champion of Nyr, is a melee bruiser with the agility to chase down his foes and the power to make them wish he couldn’t. His abilities combined with his durability encourages fast paced, high-risk high-reward trade-based gameplay that we hope you will love.

A match made in heaven!

Earlier this week we released Sr. Operations Manager, JShredz, from his deep, dark, data den to shine a light on what’s been going on with Predecessor matchmaking.

The long and short of it is that true skill-based matchmaking is incredibly hard to do well, and takes a lot of time, data and resources to tune just right.

We’ve made some great improvements recently which have already had a substantial impact on the quality of matchmaking, and we have further plans for some major back-end changes that will make things even better still!

New UI hype!

So we’ve spoken a bunch of times now about how we’re prioritising delivering a new User Interface (UI) over new features right now.

Put simply, the new UI will overhaul the entire Predecessor experience ( well, everything except the gameplay side of things). It impacts which buttons you have to press to travel between the various screens and menus, how items in the shop are displayed, what settings are available to you as a player, and much, much more.

Below is an example of an early wireframe design for the new Hero menu (taken from much earlier in the process).

This step is much closer to what we’d expect the finished product to look like, but there’s still a long way to go.

Console when?

It’s still a common question, and we’re excited to see such an unstoppable eagerness from our console community!

While we don’t currently have a confirmed release date for console, we have recently hit a couple of crucial milestones meaning that we’re closer than ever:

• One of the requirements to submit a game to console is the creation and implementation of a Code of Conduct or, as we’ve called it, a Community Charter.

• We’ve begun submitting game builds for review by Sony and Microsoft as we start the process of getting Predecessor in front of their various checks and balances.

Let’s talk toxicity!

Let’s not beat around the bush. There are a minority of players that are purposefully making games unenjoyable through the use of grotesque, overtly aggressive, or outrightly discriminatory language. And we won't stand for it.

Earlier in the month we unveiled the first step in our journey to tackle this malicious behavior - AI controlled, automated chat muting.
For more information, please read Community Experience Manager Zuzu’s blog post, Tackling Toxicity.

Runway or run away?

Over the recent months we’ve really been stepping up the production quality of our marketing assets, and we couldn’t be more pleased with how they’re coming out!

Omeda Asks - Acquazzone

Q: Hey Acquazzone! So what exactly does a Principal Data Analyst at Omeda Studios do?
A: Predecessor has lots of telemetry events, so my job is to make sense of those data points and use them to improve the player gaming experience.

Q: With a dedicated but admittedly small player population, how confident are you with the results you can draw from gameplay data?
A: Oh, we can draw quite a lot!
For example, we can get strong inferences about general gameplay, improved understanding of UI flow, information about marketing audiences and more.

COMMUNITY ROUND UP

She’s a Kira, queeeeeen…

Two’s Company

Superb Screenshots

Predcasts ft Omeda Studios Staff!

Catch up on community Predcast, a weekly livestream.

Prime Championship Circuit 5

Following the success of PCC 4, the Prime Championship Circuit is back with a prize pot of $3,500!

Sign ups are now closed, but you can watch all the action on the PCC Twitch Channel on August 12th!

That’s about all we have time for this month!

Until the next time!

~ Kari, Senior Community Manager