# Pred Report VII Join us as we talk about Ranked Mode (among other things)! 2024年7月4日 ## Predecessor will be at Gamescom! Summer is here meaning that one of the biggest games industry events of the year, Gamescom, is also almost here! Gamescom is _**the**_ destination for games studios and publishers to showcase themselves, and we’re pleased to share that Predecessor will be one of those games shown off during the event! We won’t unfortunately have a booth that you can freely visit, but a number of the team will be out and about mingling with investors, press and partners. If you see someone wearing a Predecessor t-shirt be sure to come and say hi! For anyone unable to fly out to Germany for this event have no fear - you’ll be able to catch up on all the highlights at home! Keep an eye out for some exciting Predecessor reveals during Opening Night Live, streaming globally on August 20th. ## We’re halfway through 2024. What’s next? We’re 6 months into 2024 and a lot has happened in that time. We’ve added two new game modes and six new Heroes. We overhauled nearly every stat in the game when we added a 6th new item slot. We launched on Xbox, transitioned to Open Beta, and began rolling localisation making Predecessor more accessible than ever before. But there’s still so much of the year still on the horizon and we believe that the best is yet to come for Predecessor. We’re working on a brand new roadmap that covers the second half of the year, which we look forward to sharing with you all shortly after the next major content update (sometime in August). Until then however we can exclusively reveal that the long-awaited Undertow Skins are nearly here, set to release next month alongside one of the final remaining legacy Heroes that many of you have been asking for. Keep an eye on our socials for the latest! ## Summer Sales There’s still time to grab a bargain! The Steam Summer Sale continues, with Predecessor game bundles being up to half price on Steam with similar discounts on skins in game too! It’s the perfect time to top up your platinum reserves and grab any missing skins from your collection! ## V19.1 Balance Patch With work continuing on a number of important Predecessor milestones, we’ve made the decision to move up the V0.19.1 balance update! Instead of releasing in 3 weeks, we’ll be pushing it live at some point next week, to ensure that our game balance is as tight as it can be for the coming month. Expect the V0.19.1 Patch Notes shortly before the update drops, including all the balance changes we’ll be releasing before the next major content drop next month. Thank you for understanding! ## Ranked Mode Ranked Mode has been out now for around 4 weeks now, but in a very limited form. As you know, we've tackled this game mode with care and deliberate intent. We started with the game mode being open for just 8 hours a week and on just 2 regional servers, which was understandably met with frustration by players eager to jump full-time into a life of Ranked play. ### Why no NA West servers? This is perhaps the simplest question to answer. There's simply significantly more Predecessor players living closer to our servers in NA East (NAE) as opposed to NA West (NAW) - almost 3x as many in fact! ### Why such a limited time? We knew that launching Ranked Mode with just 8 hours of availability was always going to be an unpopular move. That said however it was important that we were conservative with our approach to expanding availability of the new mode. ### What does the data say? If you've hung out in Discord much or followed some of our team on Twitter you’ll know that we’re taking a data-first approach to rolling out Ranked Mode. We're carefully monitoring multiple data points to ensure that our rollout is as successful as possible. ### What does success look like? Success for Ranked Mode is twofold. Firstly it means providing a polished experience for competitive players, featuring effective progression and the shortest queues possible without comprising the tightest possible skill-based matchmaking. ### Next Steps At the time of writing this we’ve just announced Week 4 of Ranked Mode, bringing the total playable days to four times what it was a month ago, meaning players can now enjoy the mode Thursday through Sunday each week. We’ll continue reviewing our success metrics, examining queue length, matchmaking and player numbers and, if all goes well, continue to expand availability over time. ## An Update on PlayStation 4 As you know, Predecessor has been in early access development for over a year and a half. Unfortunately, we’ve also got to share some difficult news. **We’re sunsetting the PlayStation 4 version of the game.** This decision hasn’t been made lightly, but unfortunately Predecessor’s performance on hardware released over a decade ago simply cannot keep up with modern expectations and the power afforded by the current generation consoles and PCs. We will be removing the PlayStation 4 version of the game from the PlayStation Store on **July 11th**. Anyone who has already downloaded the game before this time will be able to continue playing until we officially close support for the game on PlayStation 4 in January, 2025. ## Community Roundup ### Dastard Drongo MADDKATT is back at it again creating epic new stickers for the Predecessor community. His latest shows a vulnerable Drongo, and we LOVE it. ### Dragon’s Fortune Howitzer Skin Concept Recently he shared his concept for an oriental inspired Howitzer skin. Stunning! ### Grim.exe Abaddon Skin Concept This deadly duo would surely cause stir on the battlefield! That’s it for this time folks! We hope you enjoyed learning a little more deeply about some of the recent decisions we’ve been making as a company. Thanks for reading and have a lovely rest of your day! \- Kari, Lead Community Manager