Pred Report VII

Join us as we talk about Ranked Mode (among other things)!

2024年7月4日

Summary

Greetings Champions!

It’s been a little while since we last sat down for a Pred Report, so join us today in discussing all sorts of hot topics from Ranked Mode to Roadmaps.

Let’s dig in!

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 localization 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.

Matchmaking Times and Match Quality We want to create fair matches with closely-matched groups of players.

The Rate of VP Gain and Loss We want Ranked to be a game mode that provides closely matched solo and duo-partied players an opportunity to prove their skill.

Ranked Distributions Salute to those already on the Ranked grind!

Hero Balance Our big overhaul patch, V0.18, certainly shook up the meta.

With all these different data points to monitor and many more besides, it's an extremely layered process to successfully roll out a high-quality competitive game mode like Ranked.

What does success look like?

Success for Ranked Mode is twofold. Firstly it means providing a polished experience for competitive players.

So far we’re pleased to say that aside from the first week or so of free-for-all matchmaking, we’re starting to see that first criteria for success being met.

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.

An Update on PlayStation 4

Omeda Studios, Predecessor, and our thriving community of Champions have gone from strength to strength during this time.

Unfortunately though we’ve also got to share some difficult news.

We’re sunsetting the PlayStation 4 version of the game.

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.

Dragon’s Fortune Howitzer Skin Concept

Recently he shared his concept art for an oriental inspired Howitzer skin.

Grim.exe Abaddon Skin Concept

Peach has shared her vision for a far more sinister rendition.

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