 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus, you are awesome and today we're going to be talking about the future of Predecessor, the Paragon Resurrection Project currently in production by Omega Studios. The last closed alpha held from October 23rd through the 25th is supposedly the last closed event for the game before they have an open phase. They haven't said whether or not that open event will be labeled as an alpha or a beta nor have they indicated what they perceive as the difference between the two. They have given us as an outline of what they plan to improve before the event occurs. I'll go through that outline while supplementing information gained through streaming events, discord conversations, and some good old fashioned common sense. Please bear in mind that the schedules are fluid and nothing that they have said is set in stone. Things can change quickly so stay up to date by joining the Predecessor Discord linked in the description below. While we don't know much about the nature of the open event we do know that it will be months away. Smokey conducted an AMA stream on the 24th while he attempted to play some games while answering community questions and he kind of failed it both. I'm kidding he did a good job of answering the questions. One of the questions was if they would have the open event during the holiday season and the answer was a pretty solid no. So we can assume that we're not going to see anything until some time next year which next year isn't that far away. Omega has not yet said if this open event will be an alpha or a beta. The difference between the two development phases is that an alpha is generally described as a period used to make sure that the game functions without crashing in the core systems work while a beta period is described as a testing phase for an almost production ready game to test relatively minor systems while continuing to stress test with more and more players. I personally feel that Predecessor is well beyond alpha. While there are still some crashes here and there the game's core functionality is solid. My personal belief based on everything that I know is that the next time we see Prede it will be as an open beta. While Omega feels that they have a solid foundation for the combat mechanics of the game they still aim to improve hit reactions, sound and screen effects. Most importantly they have heard our feedback about the game being very floaty. If you've played or watched others play you may have noticed that jumping from a tall structure or getting batted away by Severog's hammer made you feel like Luigi and Mario too. Mario plans to tune player gravity down a bit before they reintroduce the game. They will be adding more heroes into the game. I tried to find out how many if not exactly who however made a decline to answer. I can understand that since if they say that they'll have five new heroes in the next phase and then they can only do four people will lose their shit. It is safe to say though that there will be additions. I'm currently betting on the introduction of Kalari since she was the top voted hero via community poll that they held. I think it's also safe to say that we'll be getting another ADC. Predecessor currently has three main hero options for each role with the exception of ADC where they only have two, Sparrow and Bardock. There's nothing wrong with either of those heroes but they're a bit homogenous. They're both pretty bland basic definitions of what an ADC and a MOBA should be. I would like to see them add one of the more imaginative ADCs. I'm talking like Revenant, Yen or Serath. Of those three my personal choice would be Yen. Serath is out because while she can be played in the duo lane, she was much more often used as a jungler or solo laner. Revenant is out because fuck Revenant. So that leaves us with Yen. I think her unique playstyle would fit in well with the current game and provide a truly different experience from the other two ADCs. I made it themselves hinted at Drongo. I don't know if that was serious or a joke but to be honest, I wouldn't be mad at it, not at all. I've said before that the only reason Drongo wasn't played more is because his kit relied on precision and delayed damage during a phase of Paragon where you could just equip multi-shot gem on Murdoch and delete people faster and without really aiming then Drongo's rad rounds could detonate. Drongo could be an excellent addition given the current state of the game but I would still rather see Yen than Drongo. Drongo kind of falls into that homogenous stand back and shoot people category as same thing as Doc and Sparrow. One dark horse that I've seen suggested to fill the ADC role is Wraith. While Wraith was never billed as an ADC, many people played him successfully as such and he comes with the added benefit of being able to fill the role of support, solo lane or mid lane. I'd be happy to see Wraith added in but I'm still personally rooting for Yen. Ameda has been working on a new map this whole time and that map will be used for the open event. We've seen the map change several times throughout the history of predecessor. Here you see mid lane from December of 2019 compared to gameplay from the most recent alpha test. The new map will feature more interesting side lanes, better tuned rotations and more verticality. I'm a bit concerned that they will be implementing a new map for their open phase without first having tested it in a closed environment. However, Fringe, the Italian stallion behind predecessor's maps hasn't felt us yet and any map used in the future will be tested internally before being put into the community's hands. The team believes that the time to kill is still a little bit too fast into the game's current incarnation. Much of that is due to some of the crazy item combos that they recently introduced. Ameda plans to balance the items better as well as re-evaluate attack speed. This is where you can help the team out by reporting your thoughts on what seemed overpowered and how the game felt overall. I know many people said that Severog in particular felt like he was swinging that hammer a bit too fast at the start of the game. They will be making some improvements to the user interface while I feel that the current UI is damn near perfect. There are some changes I would like to see. For example, it's hard to tell who the hell anyone is via the UI. The hero portraits seem to be, I don't know, too big for the boxes they put him in or maybe they just need completely different portraits or maybe I should just learn to identify a paragon heroes by using only the shape of their nose. Smokey spoke about several other improvements during the stream. He indicated that controller support is at or near the top of Ameda's list of priorities which will make many people very happy. They will be looking into adding quick and smartcast options which makes me very happy. I hate having the right click left click when throwing a straight line skill shot. Ameda also plans to add in tutorials and better onboarding for new players which is extremely important. Believe it or not, there were many people participating in the alpha that had never played Paragon before and they need something from the developers to use as a learning tool. We can help as players but as many of you know there's a lot of people out there who won't exactly use tact when they see someone using multiple items with unique passives. While we still don't know how Ameda plans to fund the game we do know that they will have at least three brand new Ameda develop skins finished before the open event. We've already seen the Murdoch skin so there's one. We've also seen the Scythe mod for Severog so I'm betting that with some other alterations will be the second. As for the third, I have zero clue. I just know that charging for original Ameda develop cosmetics is by far the safest option for monetization. Not saying that that's what they plan to do just saying that no one can really complain if they charge for those. The one thing during Smokey's stream that excited me the most was his indication that Richter wouldn't be that hard to add in. I've been under the impression that my boy Big Dick was going to be very hard to program. Probably because I've been told many times that he was going to be hard to program. However, when asked about Richter, Smokey gave the impression that the biggest limiting factor for the addition of new heroes was how complete epics released assets were. This gives me hope that my boy Richter can be added in sooner rather than later. I know many of you assume that I'm a Narbash main but for real, while I've always liked his character design, I rarely played him during the days of Paragon. The only reason I play him so much now is because he's like my decaf Richter. He's a fat dude with a straight line skill shot crowd control. But you best believe when my fully caffeinated daddy Richt drops, that's who you're going to see me on. You know, as long as nobody else picks him first. If he drops with quick cast enabled, I don't care if I play him solo, jungle, or support as long as I can get some Big Dick game changing pools. I hope all of you are looking forward to playing Predecessor in the future as much if not more than I am. Each time this game has been made available to play, the experience has been even better than the last. If you enjoyed the video, please hit that like button and subscribe if you aren't already. For now, this is the Mangoo stunning off. You guys have a good one. Mangooos.