Developed and published by Omeda Studios, Predecessor is a fresh take on the ever-popular MOBA genre. It's a smart blend of third-person shooter skill expression and MOBA deep strategic thinking, challenging players to aim well, observe their surroundings, and coordinate with their team. Predecessor is a particularly accessible MOBA thanks to clearly defined roles, familiar third-person shooter combat, and helpful features like item auto-buy, which help new players find their bearings.
Closing out its first year online, Predecessor is gearing up for a transformative update that will profoundly impact the game's strategic landscape—and its physical one. Update 1.8 will introduce World Shift, a mechanic that transforms the map midway through the match. World Shift is designed to keep players on their toes every game, as strategies may need to change in unexpected ways once the terrain shifts. The update is also introducing a new playable character, Akeron, who can traverse vertically up the walls of the game's new dynamic map. In an interview with The Best War Games, Omeda Studios CEO Robbie Singh, Lead Game Designer Luke Betterton, and Senior Game Designer Alexandra Lerman discussed the update's key features, lessons learned from Predecessor's first year, and more. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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How Predecessor's World Shift Evolves Player Strategy
The Best War Games: The World Shift is a revolutionary mechanic for the game. What was the inspiration behind introducing battlefields that transform throughout a match?
Singh: The inspiration for World Shift came from a combination of design goals and a desire to address player feedback. While MOBAs do a lot of things incredibly well, a huge source of variety comes from a wide hero roster and the roles those heroes can play. Similar to the Augments system we added in June, we wanted to add an additional dimension that would enhance the overall player experience and add a new layer of replayability. Ultimately, this mechanic had to play into the core strengths of the genre: the feeling of mastery and the balance of mechanical and strategic skill.
The other factor was the challenge of updating our map, Sanctuary. It's one of the most frequent bits of feedback we get from our players, but MOBA maps are unbelievably hard to get right. Millions of games have been played on the map we have, and even small tweaks can lead to unintended consequences or imbalances.
While we're still planning a larger, long-term update to the base map, World Shift gives us a way to put some of what we've been cooking up directly into players' hands. This allows us to run both projects in parallel, adding variety to the game right now while we continue to shape the future of Sanctuary.
The Best War Games: How did the team strike a balance between unpredictability and fairness with World Shift, especially in competitive play?
Betterton: Striking that balance was a primary concern for us. Our long-term plan is to have several distinct World Shifts with different visuals and mechanics. However, in playtesting, we realised that introducing too many changes too quickly was confusing for players and ultimately had a detrimental effect on their enjoyment.
So, we decided to start on the simpler side. For this initial release, we are introducing just one World Shift. Beyond the cinematic visuals, the changes are subtle but materially impactful. We've opened up new pathways, rocks that create different choke points and alter lines of sight, and Geysers which launch you upwards and allow players to reach previously inaccessible terrain, and Gold Plants, which allow a smart player to maximise their gold in the jungle.
We already have improvements planned for this World Shift and a completely new one for our big November patch, but we are taking things slowly to ensure a smooth and positive experience. While playtesting gives us a lot of information, nothing compares to the data we'll get from having hundreds of thousands of people playing it live. We'll be paying extra special attention to player feedback over the coming weeks, and making smaller adjustments as we go, and larger changes in future patches.
The Best War Games: Can you talk about some ways the World Shift influences player strategy as the map changes?
Betterton: The World Shift is designed to change how players approach strategy as a match progresses. A large amount of the map is impacted by this single event, creating entirely new strategic avenues and pathways. The most exciting part for us is seeing how players adapt to these changes and the counter-plays they open up. What you knew as a safe spot might suddenly be open to flanking, but if you're smart, that might also be a perfect way to bait your enemy. The way these plays open up and evolve as players get more and more familiar is what we're really excited to see once everyone gets hands-on with this update.
Ultimately, one of the biggest reasons we went down this route is to start shaking up what you know so that everyone has something new to learn. This adds even more depth to every moment of the game, ensuring that mastery isn't just about character mechanics, but also about understanding and manipulating a dynamic environment.
Beyond the physical changes, the Shaper and their seedlings are new, mid-tier objectives to battle around. The Seedling you claim by taking it (not to mention the gold and XP you earn for your team) can be critical in securing a solid lead or breaking a strong offense.
The Best War Games: How might the broader MOBA genre benefit from exploring ideas similar to World Shift?
Singh: As lifelong players and huge fans of the MOBA genre, we have nothing but respect for the games and the teams behind them. Many of those studios have been doing this for a very long time and on a scale much larger than ours, so we don't feel it's our place to offer advice or comment on the genre as a whole.
Our focus is entirely on Predecessor and building the game we want to make. We believe what sets our game apart is the opportunity to take that incredible blend of action and strategy and push it to the next level.
We're doing that by exploring how the map itself can become a dynamic part of the gameplay, and whilst this is an incredibly exciting first step, we're only scratching the surface of what we think is possible. We're so excited about delivering significant advances to Word Shift and other Predecessor features in future updates.
The Best War Games: The new character Akeron's unique kit allows him to traverse vertically. What challenges did you face implementing his movement mechanics?
Lerman: Although Predecessor features a variety of characters who uniquely utilize verticality in their gameplay kits, Akeron is the first to interact with walls and map geometry in such a thorough and player-facing way. This was an especially difficult challenge to tackle, considering Akeron isn’t your typical humanoid hero, having a twisted demonic form with spider-like appendages.
With such a unique set of parameters, Akeron turned out to be the most challenging Hero we have ever shipped, and the team set to work on a huge collaborative effort between many teams in Omeda.
Akeron broke the game a lot! From properly aligning his spider lower half to surfaces and rotating his torso to match player camera movement, among many more finer details, the team skillfully crafted brand new movement and positioning tech that resulted in the terrifying Demon King truly coming to life.
The Best War Games: Akeron isn't just a new playable character, but also a major lore moment. How important is narrative cohesion when it comes to new hero releases or other aspects of the game?
Lerman: Narrative cohesion is absolutely essential to our long-term vision for the game. For a long time, our primary focus was on getting the core game loops right and ensuring a healthy onboarding process for new players. With those systems now in a healthy spot, we're able to think bigger. We believe elements like lore and having everything fit together in a narrative sense are crucial for Predecessor to become a "forever game," which is our ultimate goal.
You can already see this in our recent work. There are a lot of people in the studio who are really passionate about the lore and the interconnected universe and there’s a LOT we’ve been discussing that we can’t wait to show in the future. We recently updated our website with a rich “Universe” section where you can learn about the origins of each Hero, read exciting short stories, and explore the worlds that define the Predecessor universe, and our last three heroes, Yurei, Renna, and Akeron, are all linked together in one longer story arc.
Moving forward, our goal is to utilize a theme more deeply to thematically tie everything together in the game: heroes, map cosmetics, skins, battle passes, and game modes. We're already hard at work on designing these, and we believe this approach will make the world of Predecessor feel more alive and cohesive than ever before.
The Best War Games: Akeron's abilities can be customized toward various playstyles. What was the process like deciding what paths players could take with him?
Lerman: Player customization is always at the forefront of our minds, and with Akeron, we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce optional, yet intriguing gameplay depth depending on how he is built from match to match. This is done mostly through his unique combination of scalings that result in different effects being enhanced depending on how much is invested into each stat.
Do you find yourself most comfortable in the midst of the fray? Physical Power and Max Health are your best bets to deal more melee damage and stay sustained. If that’s not quite your speed, try becoming a spell-slinging midrange monster by investing in Magical Power and Ability Haste. Whichever path you choose, Akeron is designed from the ground up to support it, so get creative and experiment with all kinds of builds and playstyles!
The Best War Games: There will be a soft reset heading into this next ranked split. What lessons did you learn and apply from the first split?
Betterton: Our Ranked mode is one of the most prized parts of the game and probably the area we’re most cautious about. A good Ranked mode is fundamental, and we’re taking a lot of care to make sure it doesn’t break.
A lot of what we’re doing at the moment is behind the scenes upgrades as we look at how we want to move forward. There’s a lot of preparation going into our ability to upgrade Ranked, which will then translate into more cool stuff as the season keeps progressing.
The changes this split should address a lot of the community’s feedback about our first split. The biggest changes are:
For a more accurate ranking, we've updated the system to better reflect a player's true skill level. Previously, highly-skilled players had to endure a long climb, leading to frustrating matches and keeping them at a lower rank than they deserved. Now, when a player advances to a new division, we perform an additional check to determine if their rank should be significantly higher. If so, they might skip one or even two divisions at a time. This change also helps reduce the frustration of other players who were being matched with incorrectly ranked opponents.
We've rebalanced how you move up and down ranks to be a lot more aggressive. Initially, we were very cautious because we thought erratic rank changes would be a worse player experience. However, with a whole preseason and a full split of data, we can now be bolder with some of those changes and remove a few protections. This means that when you win, your rank will climb more consistently, and it won't feel like something is holding you back. This works both ways, though—a loss streak will also cause you to fall quickly. Ultimately, we think this is going to be way more fun, but we'll be keeping a close eye on everything to make sure it doesn't break.
One change we made for the first split was allowing players to queue in parties with their friends, which was a much-requested feature, but it is fair to say it was not something that all our players were happy about, as they worried about matchmaking quality and being in unfair matches. We’ve been able to monitor this and collect a lot of data, and we are very happy with what we’re seeing.
We’ll measure this, of course, but we think we can still keep our match quality quite good whilst also letting players queue with friends who are a full rank above or below them, without any restrictions on the division they’re in inside that rank.
The Best War Games: Many Predecessor fans are heading into their second split of ranked season one. What is it about Predecessor that makes it the community's game of choice?
Singh: We believe it all comes down to the way we're building the game with our community, not just for them. From day one, we've been in a constant dialogue with our players, listening to their feedback while constantly iterating and improving things together. Their passion and insights are the single most important tools in our development process.
Beyond that, the gameplay itself sets us apart. As a third-person MOBA, Predecessor plays and feels different from anything else in the genre. It's that unique blend of visceral third-person action, strategic team-play, and mechanical skill expression that, when it all comes together, feels like no other MOBA out there.
And finally, we’re built from the ground up to be played with a controller. It's a huge part of our identity and has opened up the MOBA genre for console players like never before. The feeling of playing Predecessor with a controller is so fluid and intuitive, offering a new level of comfort and immersion for players and a level of familiarity for action gamers and MOBA players alike.
When you combine that community-first approach with a gameplay experience that feels both familiar and entirely fresh, we think we have something really special.
The Future of Predecessor
The Best War Games: How do you anticipate World Shift influencing competitive play long-term?
Betterton: We believe that World Shift is poised to have a significant and lasting impact on competitive play by introducing a new, dynamic layer of strategy. When there are several different potential Shifts, it will demand an increased level of adaptability and strategic thinking from players. The best teams won't simply react to the changes as they happen, but will have a deep understanding of how each shift affects the map's geometry, objectives, and sightlines. This focus on adaptability creates more variety in games and how they play out. Instead of every match on the same map feeling predictable, the changing terrain, new pathways, and different choke points will force teams to constantly re-evaluate their strategies. We hope that this will lead to a broader range of viable Heroes and compositions, as some characters may become more powerful or versatile during a specific Shift. Ultimately, this new layer of complexity will keep the competitive meta fresh and exciting.
World Shift also introduces new objectives and trade-offs for teams to consider. Teams will have to decide whether to contest these new resources, defend existing ones, or use the shifting landscape to their advantage in other ways. This constant decision-making and pressure to adapt will elevate the level of strategic skill required to succeed, rewarding players who can make the right calls in a rapidly changing competitive environment.
The Best War Games: Looking back at the game's first year, are there any key takeaways that are informing the team's plans moving forward?
Singh: It's been an incredible year for us. We've seen real growth in many areas, and it has also been a fantastic learning experience that has deeply informed our plans moving forward.
First, Labs has proven to be an incredibly important tool, allowing us to test major features and gather feedback in a controlled environment. A great example of this was our Legacy mode. We were incredibly excited to bring our take on Legacy to the community, and while we anticipated some of the issues we saw in its Paragon days, it was a frequent request from our community, and so we were still eager to put it in front of players to see what we could learn.
The initial response was fantastic, with a large resurgence of old players and extremely specific feedback from a very passionate group of fans. Although the mod’s popularity declined, putting it in Labs was a huge success for us because it allowed us to learn that while the mode has a dedicated core audience, the broader appeal just wasn't there to support it as a permanent feature, and it gave us crucial data to inform our main map update. We're always getting a lot out of everything we do, and now we have a clearer path forward to ensure the future of the game is as strong as it can be for everyone.
Our other Labs mode, Nitro, has been incredibly popular since we launched it, even though we are still only starting to realise its full vision. What was particularly surprising to us was its popularity with higher-level players, like competitive players and streamers, when they're not playing ranked. We have a much larger update planned for Nitro in November, and, because it's a Labs mode, we feel we can take bigger risks and try bolder things than we could with our main game mode.
Our results this year have reinforced the fact that we have a fun game that many people already love. Our focus is on the challenge of how to grow that audience without ever alienating or abandoning the passionate community who have been on this journey with us. We have a clear vision for the game and believe that when we get it right, we'll land in a niche that is both massive and uniquely our own, appealing to existing and new players alike.
We've also learned that we can't make everyone happy all the time. Fortunately, our community is thoroughly supportive when they see us listening and making changes for the long-term good of the game, especially when we share the data and context behind our decisions.
The competition in gaming is massive, and we keep seeing large, successful studios struggling. Having this community that keeps growing as we keep pouring our passion and talent into the game we love is humbling and incredibly encouraging. We know how lucky we are, and we don't take anything for granted.
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- Released
- August 20, 2024
- ESRB
- T For Teen // Use of Tobacco, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Omeda Studios
- Publisher(s)
- Omeda Studios
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- MOBA, Third-Person Shooter
