Predecessor Report - June 2023
Greetings Champions, and welcome to a whole new type of blog!
This isn’t a standard game update blog, and it’s not a big one-off news piece like our PREDECESSOR'S COMING TO PLAYSTATION! or ROAD TO ASCENSION | SEASON 2 EARLY ACCESS ROADMAP blogs (even though those are great blogs and you should definitely go check them out).
Nope, the Predecessor Report is a brand new monthly blog where we’ll deliver any exciting news we have to share, as well as some of our favourite community highlights, sneak peaks at what’s ahead of us and more. Think of it as like sitting down with the Omeda Team at the local pub - pint in hand just chatting about Predecessor!
So at this point you’re probably asking “Well what can I expect in this month’s Predecessor Report?” Great question - and rather than actually answering it here let's just dive right in!
SEASON 2 SO FAR
As you know Season 2 has been a bit different to Season 1, with our attention shifting away from new features to focus more on addressing game balance concerns and pushing through the new user interface (UI).
First and foremost, we’re thrilled to have delivered the first little chunk of the new UI. And judging from a lot of your feedback it seems to have been well received! We’re already hard at work adding artwork for all the alternative skins each character can have, which we hope to deliver in either the V0.9 or V0.10 game updates. We won’t spoil them all, but here’s a couple of our favourites that are coming soon to a loading screen near you!
We’re also very grateful for the positive response to the Heroes we’ve delivered this far; Phase, Morigesh and Greystone! We feel as though each of these Heroes bring so much to the Predecessor roster, and are very happy with how they’ve impacted the wider meta.
As mentioned too, our dedicated team of game designers have also been busy bees tackling Predecessor’s ‘time to kill' or TTK, which kicked off in the V0.7 game update. These changes were felt across the game, with nearly every Hero and item getting a shake up. Overall we’re pleased with the progress we’ve made on this front, but we’re relying on your feedback to fine tune these changes over the coming months.
We should also mention the addition of Spectator Mode and the replay system. This snuck in right at the start of Season 2 but has already become a core part of the Predecessor community experience, thanks to awesome fan events such as PCC and Fangbooth.
But enough about what’s been and gone, it’s time now to talk about what you can expect from the rest of Season 2.
SEASON 2 EXTENSION
Let’s borrow Greystone’s shield to hide behind for this next bit.
In order to wrap up Season 2 on a high note, we need to extend it. Season 2 will now end with V0.10. We promise it’ll be worth it though.
Zeal aside, this is important for two reasons. Firstly our second Omeda Studios Original Hero is still in the oven. We want him (yep, they’re a he!) to be the best he can be when he ascends the battlefield.
And secondly, by moving the original Hero back a month, we get to release an extra Hero this Season! Not only will this additional Hero also be free for everyone who plays during Early Access, but they’re already locked and loaded, so you can expect to see some teasers for them soon!
Rewards are also on the line here! By extending the Season we can create more opportunities to earn those tasty end-of-Season rewards.
Decisions like this are always very difficult, and we’re grateful for all your patience and support as we continue our mission to make the best game we can.
MATCHMAKING IMPROVEMENTS
Speaking of tricky topics, we also want to take a moment to recognise that our current matchmaking approach hasn’t always been hitting the mark.
We’ve heard your feedback and have been monitoring our data points closely throughout Early Access.
We’ll be releasing a dedicated blog about this in the near future, but until then please look forward to a number of changes and improvements to how we match players in a game update soon.
GLORY & RUIN COMMUNITY EVENT
Back to the topic of extensions, we recently announced a new end date for our ongoing Glory & Ruin community event.
If you’ve not heard of this one yet, the Glory & Ruin event is your chance to unlock some epic new ingame profile icons featuring Greystone’s iconic sword and shield, with the reward you gain being based on whether you win 20 matches with a Greystone on your team or defeat a team containing a Greystone 20 times. Achieve both and you get both rewards!
You can find the full rules here.
You spoke and we listened. The original timescale for the event was a little tight, so we’ve doubled the event duration. It’ll now run until 15.00 BST, July 3rd (previously June 25th), making it much easier to earn one or even both of the rewards.
Your feedback is super important for community events like this one, and we look forward to doing more and bigger events in the future!
DEVELOPER Q&A LIVESTREAM
Here at Omeda Studios we understand the importance of communication, and are constantly looking at how we can step things up for you all. We champion transparency everywhere we can, from how we talk to you on our Discord server to how we write our patch notes, and we firmly believe that context and communication is key to the success of our communities and Predecessor as a whole.
With that in mind, we’ve managed to book in some time with Senior Game Designer Bloodmordius and Community Manager Nibori to answer as many of your burning questions as they can in a livestream!
We’ve had heaps of questions already, and will try to answer as many as we can in the time that we have. If you’ve got a question you want to add to our list, leave it on the Reddit thread here!
CONSOLE WHEN?
It doesn’t feel right to not immediately talk about Predecessor’s console release immediately after talking about the importance of transparency and community.
Let it be known that we see every single one of the comments asking an update on our delivery for console. Every. Single. One. And there are thousands!
This is just a recent selection of comments from Twitter. We’re stoked that you’re as excited as we are!
Unfortunately though we don’t have any news to share regarding a delivery date for Predecessor on console right now. We’re making great progress, but it’ll be a little while longer before we can start getting all excited about it.
Rest assured that you won’t need to ask - we’ll be making a big song and dance over it when we’ve got a release date locked down. Keep an eye on our social channels and our website for more news when we have it, and until then make sure you’ve added Predecessor to your wishlist on the PlayStation store!
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
We had such a positive response to our recent Hero key artwork that we’ve created a dedicated section on our website to host them in glorious 4K!
From Phase to Greystone, Revenant to Drongo, you can find a bunch of images that are perfect for desktop wallpapers, stream overlays or video thumbnails, over on the new Resources page of our website!
OMEDA ASKS - VINX
The Omeda Studios team is constantly growing, and as we bring in more and more talented individuals we feel it’s important to shine the spotlight on the various hard working team members that are making Predecessor everything it can be.
This week we sat down with Vinx a recent addition to the community team who’s joined us as a Junior Marketing Artist!
Q: Hey Vinx! Can you tell us a bit about what you do at Omeda Studios?
A: I work primarily with the Marketing & Community Team, providing the team with assets and creating visuals for campaigns for all the platforms on a day-to-day basis. Brainstorming and collaborating, the goal is to bring the best and highest quality assets for the community to enjoy, such as the #WallpaperWednesday posts you might have seen lately!
Q: Aside from the wallpapers then, what's been your favourite project to work on so far?
A: So far it is definitely the release of Phase and Greystone’s key arts! Creating the designs and bringing them to life has been giving me the most satisfying feeling since joining Omeda. Though working on the Hero cards for the new loading screens has also given me the a lot of joy, as we get to collaborate with different talents and different teams and then seeing them appear in-game has been the biggest win so far!
Q: Speaking about those Hero cards that pop up during the pre-game loading screen, you’ve been quite involved in designing them. Can you tell us a bit about how you go about making them?
A: Researching helps a lot when it comes to understanding the visuals of each hero and their abilities, and how that fits into the context of Predecessor. Additionally, most of the inspiration comes from the dynamic poses we receive and the skins themself, taking into account how the Hero is rendered to best fit into the frame.
Q: You've also created a bunch of emoji for the community Discord server! Which is your favourite and why?
A: My favorite one so far is Greystone_Grumpy. I feel like I can relate to this emoji, especially when I’m hungry.
Q: Okay last question! Who's your favourite Predecessor Hero and why?
A: My favourites or favourite favourite? C’mon, you can’t ask me to pick one :greystone_grumpy:. Fine, as my favourite Hero, it’s the beautiful Muriel. I’m a main Support in any moba, and with Muriel’s ultimate ability Reversal Of Fortune, she can support the team wherever she is!
That’s all we had time for with Vinx, but you can catch her over on the community Discord server where she’s also responsible for a number of beautiful emoji and stickers!
COMMUNITY ROUND UP
The Predecessor Report doesn’t stop at just what we’re doing however, especially when there’s so many great projects, events and creations happening out in our communities! Let’s dive into some of our recent favourites.
The Great Old One - Sevarog
Behold(er) MR.BANE’s gruesome, eldritch-inspired Sevarog skin! For each stack he gains he grows more eye stalks! Blink twice if you need rescuing, MR BANE!
Uncomfortable Discord Stickers
Everybody’s so creative! We hate love these truly original and inspired Hero-themed stickers that MADDKATT has made and been filling our Discord server with! We have zero notes!
Prime Championship Circuit 4
We wanted to offer our congratulations to Even Worse Timing, winners of the community-ran Prime Championship Circuit (PCC) 4 event that took place over the weekend! It was a hard fought battle against DLAB and you both gave it your all!
The PCC is one of the largest ongoing Predecessor tournament series happening in our community, and winning is worthy of major bragging rights, so congrats again!
You can expect more PCC action later this Summer. The next event is set to be the biggest one yet with a prize pot of $3,000, so be sure to watch out for opportunities to take part!
Lastly we’d like to thank the PCC tournament organisers and everyone in the community who’s running events like these - everyone at Omeda Studios loves cheering along!
That’s it for now! What did you think?
This is our first stab at a longer, dev diary/newsletter type blog post like this. Did you enjoy it? Please let us know! If this format is popular we’ll look to bring it back on a monthly basis, or whenever we have a smattering of news and updates to share.
Thank you as always for all your support and patience! As a little treat for reading right to the end, I’ll let you in on a little secret! I stashed a hidden teaser for the upcoming original Hero somewhere in this blog… Can you find it?
Until the next time!
- Kari, Senior Community Manager
