Predecessor Interview: Work On Two New Game Modes Is Underway, Says Dev

Robbie: I’m Robbie Singh, Co-Founder and CEO of Omeda Studios. Predecessor is a third-person action MOBA that my two Co-Founders and I started working on back in 2018. Prior to that, I was the biggest content creator for a game called Paragon, a MOBA being made by Epic Games. When Epic Games closed Paragon to focus on Fortnite, I was extremely disappointed as I saw a lot of potential for a game like Paragon, it turns out two other people did too. I decided to join two of those people, and we began working on Predecessor.

Robbie: Feedback across the board has been fantastic. We’re extremely excited about the response we’ve been getting from our players, new and old, to the open beta. This is the first time we’ve been on Xbox at all, and the Xbox players’ response, in particular, has been great to see. In just under a week, we’ve had hundreds of thousands of Xbox players enjoying Predecessor. It’s been gratifying to see people on a platform we’ve never been on before jumping into the game and enjoying it as much as we do.

Robbie: We are very happy with the rollout of Predecessor on Xbox. We were thankfully able to learn a lot from our PlayStation closed beta that went directly into improving the development and certification process for Xbox, and the team did amazing work to get Predecessor ready and shipped on a new family of consoles in such a short period of time. We are always looking for opportunities to continue to improve how Predecessor feels and runs on consoles, and we already have graphics optimizations and controller input improvements in development for the near future.

Robbie: Role queueing is something we’ve considered a number of times, but in my view, it’s a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it makes it slightly easier for players to get the specific role they want. On the other hand, it can significantly lengthen queue times and reduce the flexibility we have to implement other improvements to matchmaking, like adding new server regions or making matches with tighter skill bands. It’s not something we have planned for the near future, but it’s not off the table as something we may test somewhere down the line.

Robbie: We literally read everything people communicate with us! Sometimes, the comments are very supportive and helpful, and sometimes, they’re… less so, but we do our best to log everything we get in terms of feedback and put it into a queue for action. If we have calls for opposing actions, we weigh the pros and cons of each and see what falls in line with our current plans.

Sometimes, this process can lead to very difficult decisions, but we have a great leadership team here at Omeda, and we’re generally able to find a compromise that we think will work for the majority of our players. As we scale up, so will our process of evaluating feedback. I don’t know if it will always look exactly the same as it does now, but this game is, first and foremost, a community-driven project, so some type of feedback-analysis-action loop will continue to drive our decisions for the future, no matter what.

Robbie: Funny, you should ask! We have two new game modes coming in the next few months: one is an entirely new mode that we haven’t revealed much information about yet but are incredibly excited to share once it’s ready because internal playtests have been unbelievably fun. The other is Ranked Mode, which will finally allow players to compete in a formal, ladder-based structure according to their abilities.

We think both modes will attract new groups of players, both casual and competitive players, respectively, and we hope that by adding modes like these, we can continue to deliver on our promise to make Predecessor as enjoyable and as accessible as possible to all kinds of players.

Robbie: When we launched our paid Early Access, we were blown away by the amount of players diving into Predecessor and while players were loving the experience, toxicity became something that quickly started to become a problem. This isn’t uncommon, as I said, in multiplayer games, but I quickly reached out to Dennis Fong, CEO of GGWP, whom I had met previously, and asked if GGWP would help integrate their solution into Predecessor.

They were extremely helpful in getting things moving, and the proactive nature of their system allows us to curb toxicity quickly at the source rather than relying on after-the-fact sanctions for bad behavior. Their AI solution does a lot of the heavy lifting where previously, a lot of manual involvement would be required and from the data we have, it’s definitely having a positive impact.

Like with any AI solution, there are always opportunities for refinement, but GGWP is extremely open and willing to make changes that benefit our players’ experience, and we’re happy to have them as a component of our efforts to keep the Predecessor community happy and healthy.

Robbie: We will absolutely playtest these new modes internally before any release. We aggressively playtest everything at Omeda because that’s really the only way to know if it’s actually good and not just good “on paper.” In terms of whether there will be a public playtest, that’s something we have yet to determine, but we will have some sort of closed community playtest, at the least, to ensure real players and fans who aren’t inside Omeda’s walls have a chance to give feedback before we mark anything as ready to go public.

Robbie: This is a pretty big and deep question that goes to a number of factors I just don’t feel I’m qualified to speculate on, I’m afraid.

Robbie: We built Predecessor to be an ever-evolving game, and now we are free to play in open beta. We’re excited to support Predecessor with a whole host of post-launch content. We’ll be introducing new heroes, items, balance changes, map changes, new game modes, skins, and more throughout Predecessor’s lifetime.

Robbie: Just that we want everyone who reads this to play Predecessor and tell us what you think! Feedback from our players is the number-one way we are able to continuously improve, so please let us know your thoughts.