This is a collection of responses from the competitiveoverwatch AMA from developers u/Blizz_Alec , u/Blizz_JNoh , u/Blizz_Hudson , and u/Blizz_Jodie . Thank you for your information!
Edit: Link to the original competitiveoverwatch thread
Alec answering question from North-Blueberry-7710 about testing in Mirrorwatch

No secret testing of anything upcoming in the immediate! We do look at how some changes play out though when they become more real and get lots of games, I think the Bastion Ultimate in particular was quite fun even if very loud and on the border technically. Reinhardt's Frenzy passive was also something we played around with internally but it was quite hard to communicate effectively. It's always good to see what players get excited about when there are more wacky ideas such as Mirrorwatch or April Fool's, some of those could become real down the line.

Alec answering question from swamp_god about Cassidy and Reaper changes

The two upcoming updates that were mentioned were for Cassidy and Reaper.
For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon.
For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update.

Jnoh answering question from Headedbigfoot8 about the hardest hero to balance in each role

Probably Sombra due to permanent invisibility restricting how deadly we can make her but also because she is a hero that excels with strong team coordination.
There are a handful of other heroes with performance stats that differ greatly from the broader community perception of them and that can create difficulty in how we approach balancing them as well.

Hudson answering question from walter_2010 about average playtester rank

A huge part of our team culture revolves around playtesting. From Designers, to QA and community management, everyone has the opportunity to play what we're working on and give open honest feedback. One of the advantages of this model is we get perspective from a wide range of player ranks from GM 1 to Bronze 5. It's been a while since we've taken an official poll on average rank, but having a wide sample helps prevent tunnel visioning on feedback from specific ranks.

Alec answering question from O2M about lack of patch consistency and Symmetra

1. ⁠We should do a better job about this, especially when it comes to getting the community's visibility on what we are seeing vs. what the playerbase may seem to think is the best hero at any given one time. These can differ regularly as certain heroes get power reputations (weaker or stronger than their reality at a given rank) that are hard to shake off. Thanks for the feedback there, will make sure we have something here even if it's a simple change.
2. Symmetra kept some of the buffs in that patch but yes we hear the feedback of where her current power level is. We may have been a bit overreactive to the Mauga compositions popping up during that timeframe (he was certainly overtuned), but we wanted to be sure of it. For right now, we are in discussions about Symmetra and especially her frontline presence. Believe that's a piece of the kit we'd like to promote further, whether through her survivability or beam damage.

Alec/Gavin answering question from Thee_Archivist about the removed smurf detection from MMR going from QP to comp

I tapped in our own Gavin Winter for this first part, he's what he had to say: "There haven't been any changes to these systems, but there are edge cases like the example of Guxue that was recently posted in this subreddit where our systems don't perform in the way we'd like. Most players will still be placed appropriately as they transition from Quick Play to Competitive Play, but unfortunately cases like this have always been possible. Explaining exactly how this happens would make it easier reproduce, so you'll have to excuse me from not going into intricate detail here."
For the second part of your question, we believe we made it slightly too difficult to climb at the highest ranks and are looking at making some adjustments soon.

Jnoh answering question from Owlcharts about making win and pick rates public (this one hurts).

There aren't any plans currently to shift resources toward supporting something like that. Sites like Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close.
There is some argument against being too transparent with those stats in that it can create a bit of a feedback loop where you might see player behavior driven by what appears to be the meta in the stats, but that kind of happens already with just the general discussion and sentiment around heroes without stats as well.
Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above. Those individual win rates often can fluctuate 2-3% by day, mostly because heroes tend to have a wider range of win rates per map and we're looking at the global average of those, but also individual player performance isn't consistent.
Lower pick rate heroes fluctuate more and there is less confidence in their win rate being indicative of actual strength. Extremely high pick rate heroes have a similar problem when looking unmirrored stats.
In the end stats require interpretation to understand their context and that is why they are not the only basis for balance changes, but are a useful tool to measure impact of changes patch-over-patch.

Alec answering question from AccurateMeminnn about the reworks to Roadhog and WB

For the most part, we are relatively happy with the new bases both have been given but there is still some fine-tuning to be done.
I'll start with Wrecking Ball. Our goals were to give him more flexibility with his movement/engage options, heighten the benefits he gives to his team, and give him some quality of life updates. I think our changes all attempt to address those goals but one I think we can hit harder in the future is heightening the benefits he gives to his team. We were a little conservative with the Adaptive Shields change (overhealth is hyper scary in coordinated environments), so perhaps there's room for that to be more pronounced through tuning and actual feedback received in game (working on some updates there). Overall though, Wrecking Ball is doing much better after his recent updates and we believe we have a great base to work with going forward.
For Roadhog, aside from the conversations about his current survivability (we plan to hit that soon) there are some things for us to look at concerning the frequency of his combo. For example, his Pig Pen begins to go on cooldown when you throw it. So you can pre-place one, it gets destroyed, and then Roadhog already has it ready again (even though the enemy may think there's a window where Hook is less deadly). That's one discussion we've recently had. Still some work here for us to do in terms of the value Pig Pen brings outside of the combo as well and how we can make those windows of combo potential less frequent.

Jnoh answering question from Arrge about Hanzo post season 9, specifically about the one shot

Hanzo is still an effective mid-range burst damage hero even without the one-shot kills. Post season 9 with the projectile size changes actually saw an increase in Hanzo's performance on the stat side. I do hear you on the loss of how good the one shot kills felt, but an overarching goal of season 9 was to reduce a lot of those burst damage frustrations for players on the receiving end of it. Armor changes in season 10 have also been a benefit to his damage.
Still very early but we've been experimenting with adjusting health pools for some of the more evasive or high damage heroes which would also put them back into the range of lethal Hanzo headshots and some other hero combos at 225 HP, but while it would bring some interesting texture to hero interactions overall there are also a bunch of other problems to solve if we want to go through with it.

Alec answering question rom idrkbrotbh about Hog's survivability.

Yes, we plan on nerfing his survivability very soon. We are touching Take a Breather and Whole Hog in an upcoming patch. Hoping that can go live tomorrow.

Alec answering question from Heropon4Hyrule_010 about the difference in pick rates from before the midseason patch (major tank buffs) and after

Some of this is related to meta happenings or balance changes but also related to armor changes/headshot reduction for Tanks. From what we can see the biggest winners (in terms of their performance delta) of the patch are: Ana, Junkrat, Pharah, Roadhog, Sigma, Wrecking Ball, and Zarya.
Many heroes stayed relatively similar while a handful saw a decrease in performance (Bastion, D.Va, Mauga, Orisa, and Reaper).

Alec answering questions uestion from Mefionir-Omnic about Quick Play Hacked changes and Clash mode

These fall outside of hero design but can talk briefly about the first two questions

1. ⁠Think you are referencing the speed boosts that would potentially come to Flashpoint. Took us some time to get these in a good place but they have been promising in playtests and are on track for a later season. It's important to us that when we add elements like that to a mode that it not only brings quality gameplay but is also communicated well through Sound and VFX. Feel good here now.
2. ⁠We got a lot of great feedback but there are some things the team wished we did better with the Clash Preview. Firstly, it should have showed up more in Quick Play so y'all got more reps on it and can get a better feel for the flow of the game mode. Secondly, we don't think it was best suited for Open Queue in Arcade. If we do something like this again, we'll clean that up. With the feedback we received, we've been investigating how to make the final point more appealing to capture for the attacking team. Many games could result in the attacking team not actually wanting to push onto the last point because it wasn't worth the reward (harder to capture, give up a lot of positioning if you lose). Plenty of iteration happening here now to address that particular issue.

Alec answering question from Mabangyan about Roadhog and Lifeweaver

Answered the Roadhog question in a different place, but yes changes coming soon.
For Lifeweaver, one of the discussions we are having right now (actually this week) and have been having for a while is around the friction that comes with switching between his healing and damage. Giving him more flexibility here would be a great boon to his capability within team fights. Additionally, we've experimented a lot with his Petal Platform. Personally would love for that to be a more attractive area to stand on as a teammate (whether that be through a buff the platform gives you or something else) but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often.

JNoh answering question from Scared_Funny_1865 about tank counterswapping

At its core, Overwatch is a game designed around being able to swap heroes to gain a tactical advantage or help solve a challenge you might be encountering. This contributes to keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay experience dynamic, drives hero diversity and offers a wider range of both strategic gameplay and skill expression in learning when/where/how to play multiple heroes.
There is a question of how much of an advantage is too much compared to the cost of switching. Ideally we want counters to be clear and understandable, but soft enough that it's still possible to outplay a disadvantaged matchup. It is a team game though and 1v1 matchups are not the highest priority when assessing the heroes.
Tanks do feel this the most with only one of them per team in 5v5 role queue, but all roles do experience the pressure to counter and be countered to an extent.
We're striving to find a balance between swapping heroes every death, (which certainly feels too often), and rarely swapping heroes or getting trapped in mirror matches every game, which quickly leads to fatigue. We've seen a lot of improvements here compared to earlier seasons, but it could always be better.
"Unhealthy" and unpopular designs are not necessarily the same thing. When designing heroes, we aim to provide a wide range of playstyles, mechanics, and aesthetics for players to enjoy. It's okay if they don't all resonate with everyone broadly. We'll do our best to make the game as fun as it can be for a wide audience.

Alec answerinf question from Skiesti about Mercy's lack of changes since the 20% DPaSsive revert, as well as general performance since season 9 (this answer is super tone deaf being real).

1. ⁠I think we are more happy in the 20% DPS Passive world than the 15% (it cuts through a lot better, helps mitigate the healing more effectively) so Mercy is more worth a look when that world is permanent. There are some questions of how far we can push her movement and know that is one of the most requested changes.
2. ⁠Mercy is still a top-picked 3/4 Support and even higher on console until you hit GM/Top 500. Her performance follows a similar trend, where she's in the top grouping for most ranks and remains above average at the highest ranks. Doesn't mean that she wont receive changes but that is where she is at currently.

Q: It’s not related to S10 balance changes but I’m gonna ask anyway. Were we secretly testing any new upcoming heroes with the Mirrorwatch event?
Blizz_Alec: No secret testing of anything upcoming in the immediate! We do look at how some changes play out though when they become more real and get lots of games, I think the Bastion Ultimate in particular was quite fun even if very loud and on the border technically. Reinhardt's Frenzy passive was also something we played around with internally but it was quite hard to communicate effectively. It's always good to see what players get excited about when there are more wacky ideas such as Mirrorwatch or April Fool's, some of those could become real down the line.
Q: Who is the hardest character to balance and tweak out of the three roles?
Blizz_JNoh: Probably Sombra due to permanent invisibility restricting how deadly we can make her but also because she is a hero that excels with strong team coordination. There are a handful of other heroes with performance stats that differ greatly from the broader community perception of them and that can create difficulty in how we approach balancing them as well.
Q: I know you guys mentioned two upcoming DPS hero reworks. Is there any news about how those reworks are progressing, who they'll be for (I think people have a pretty decent idea, but official confirmation would be nice), and/or when they might be arriving? Also, are there any other heroes under consideration for potential reworks?
Blizz_Alec: The two upcoming updates that were mentioned were for Cassidy and Reaper.
For Cassidy, we started some exploration pre-Season 9 for his update. Due to where he was at that time, this update was originally looking at multiple pieces of his kit but we saw the Season 9 changes largely benefit him so the update has gotten more focused on Magnetic Grenade and other Quality of Life updates (specifically to his Ultimate). In Season 11 we are updating Magnetic Grenade. It will behave closer to old Flashbang (no magnetic homing to the target, used in the short range) and will slow/hinder the target. We think that plays a lot better with his kit and removes some of the larger frustrations around Magnetic Grenade. More specifics on all that soon.
For Reaper, we went fairly wide as well in the beginning and then started to focus closely on updating Shadow Step. At the moment, we have something we quite like but it's actually a large technical challenge and we are in the process of planning out the work/seeing what's possible. In the meantime, we may buff Reaper in some non-Tank Buster ways as he lost a lot in the most recent update.
Q: What is the average rank of your play testers and what level of input do they have in deciding what changes are made in each balance patch?
Blizz_Hudson: A huge part of our team culture revolves around playtesting. From Designers, to QA and community management, everyone has the opportunity to play what we're working on and give open honest feedback. One of the advantages of this model is we get perspective from a wide range of player ranks from GM 1 to Bronze 5. It's been a while since we've taken an official poll on average rank, but having a wide sample helps prevent tunnel visioning on feedback from specific ranks.
Q: 2 part question here: Why the inconsistency with dev comments/explanations for balance changes? There have been many changes that have been questionable (biggest offender was buffing Sojourn in January when she was widely considered the best DPS) that were shipped with 0 explanation. Justifying these changes would help a lot with player perception so we could understand these discrepancies. I have to ask - what is going on with Symmetra? She was weak, then buffed, then immediately reverted, now silence. Is she getting reworked? What data shows she needed a nerf? She is super weak and hard to use on ladder (uncoordinated environment by nature) and was only played in OWCS for Mauga - shouldn't nerfing Mauga have been enough?
Blizz_Alec: We should do a better job about this, especially when it comes to getting the community's visibility on what we are seeing vs. what the playerbase may seem to think is the best hero at any given one time. These can differ regularly as certain heroes get power reputations (weaker or stronger than their reality at a given rank) that are hard to shake off. Thanks for the feedback there, will make sure we have something here even if it's a simple change.
Symmetra kept some of the buffs in that patch but yes we hear the feedback of where her current power level is. We may have been a bit overreactive to the Mauga compositions popping up during that timeframe (he was certainly overtuned), but we wanted to be sure of it. For right now, we are in discussions about Symmetra and especially her frontline presence. Believe that's a piece of the kit we'd like to promote further, whether through her survivability or beam damage.
Q: Why was smurf detection essentially removed from MMR adjustment, especially for new accounts? GM-level players taking 60+ games to reach their proper rank ruins so many more games. It feels like climbing in general is artificially slowed down so people will play more even if they should have reached a higher rank many games ago.
Blizz_Alec: I tapped in our own Gavin Winter for this first part, he's what he had to say: "There haven't been any changes to these systems, but there are edge cases like the example of Guxue that was recently posted in this subreddit where our systems don't perform in the way we'd like. Most players will still be placed appropriately as they transition from Quick Play to Competitive Play, but unfortunately cases like this have always been possible. Explaining exactly how this happens would make it easier to reproduce, so you'll have to excuse me from not going into intricate detail here."
For the second part of your question, we believe we made it slightly too difficult to climb at the highest ranks and are looking at making some adjustments soon.
Q: Will you ever make pick rates and win rates public, even a couple of weeks after the fact? I feel like it would do a lot to help people understand why changes are made. Is there a win rate range you want to keep all heroes to stay within?
Blizz_JNoh: There aren't any plans currently to shift resources toward supporting something like that. Sites like Overbuff don't have the complete picture, but the data there for win rates and such is generally fairly close.
There is some argument against being too transparent with those stats in that it can create a bit of a feedback loop where you might see player behavior driven by what appears to be the meta in the stats, but that kind of happens already with just the general discussion and sentiment around heroes without stats as well.
Our target range for hero viability by win rate is between 45-55% unmirrored win rate at Masters rank and above. Those individual win rates often can fluctuate 2-3% by day, mostly because heroes tend to have a wider range of win rates per map and we're looking at the global average of those, but also individual player performance isn't consistent.
Lower pick rate heroes fluctuate more and there is less confidence in their win rate being indicative of actual strength. Extremely high pick rate heroes have a similar problem when looking at unmirrored stats.
In the end, stats require interpretation to understand their context and that is why they are not the only basis for balance changes but are a useful tool to measure the impact of changes patch-over-patch.
Q: What is Hanzo's new job? Is he supposed to take over Pharah's place as the new go-to permanently pocketed hero? To explain more in depth: Hanzo used to be a sniper, but the recent changes caused most heroes to require 1 extra shot to eliminate a target. Considering Hanzo is the slowest shooting primary fire focused DPS, he was impacted the most. Making him the only primary fire focused DPS who relies on cooldowns to finish off targets due to the very long time to kill: Assuming full charging the arrows (to be able to hit targets past melee range): 3 bodyshots = ~2.5 seconds TTK (~3.25 seconds if bow not preloaded) Or best case scenario: 1 headshot + 1 bodyshot = ~1.25 seconds TTK (~2 seconds if bow was not preloaded) Compared to for example Cassidy: 4 bodyshots = 1.5 seconds TTK Or best case scenario: 2 headshots = ~0.5 seconds TTK Hanzo's only advantage here is that he deals full damage past 35 meters, but trying to hit someone 2-3 times in a row even at 35 meters is next to impossible (considering physical cover + the long time to kill + projectile travel time) At the same time Mercy pocketed Hanzo can still one shot, with the added benefit of now having a 2x bigger arrow hitbox (and buffed storm arrows).
Blizz_JNoh: Hanzo is still an effective mid-range burst damage hero even without the one-shot kills. Post season 9 with the projectile size changes actually saw an increase in Hanzo's performance on the stat side. I do hear you on the loss of how good the one shot kills felt, but an overarching goal of season 9 was to reduce a lot of those burst damage frustrations for players on the receiving end of it. Armor changes in season 10 have also been a benefit to his damage. Still very early but we've been experimenting with adjusting health pools for some of the more evasive or high damage heroes which would also put them back into the range of lethal Hanzo headshots and some other hero combos at 225 HP, but while it would bring some interesting texture to hero interactions overall there are also a bunch of other problems to solve if we want to go through with it.
Q: A month later, and considering he's displayed proudly on the Twitter post for the AMA, I got my question: How have you guys felt about the past reworks on Roadhog and the new one, Wrecking Ball? Like what the goals were exactly, your personal thoughts, the community response, and what you want to fine-tune with them post rework. Those things. I think most people would be interested on how you guys have felt now that it's been a bit.
Blizz_Alec: For the most part, we are relatively happy with the new bases both have been given but there is still some fine-tuning to be done.
I'll start with Wrecking Ball. Our goals were to give him more flexibility with his movement/engage options, heighten the benefits he gives to his team, and give him some quality of life updates. I think our changes all attempt to address those goals but one I think we can hit harder in the future is heightening the benefits he gives to his team. We were a little conservative with the Adaptive Shields change (overhealth is hyper scary in coordinated environments), so perhaps there's room for that to be more pronounced through tuning and actual feedback received in game (working on some updates there). Overall though, Wrecking Ball is doing much better after his recent updates and we believe we have a great base to work with going forward.
For Roadhog, aside from the conversations about his current survivability (we plan to hit that soon) there are some things for us to look at concerning the frequency of his combo. For example, his Pig Pen begins to go on cooldown when you throw it. So you can pre-place one, it gets destroyed, and then Roadhog already has it ready again (even though the enemy may think there's a window where Hook is less deadly). That's one discussion we've recently had. Still some work here for us to do in terms of the value Pig Pen brings outside of the combo as well and how we can make those windows of combo potential less frequent.
Q: Are there any nerfs being discussed for Hog, specifically his survivability? Times where multiple people are shooting a Hog and he just walks away while using his breather seemingly gaining more health than losing health makes the damage you’re doing to him feel pointless and is very unfun to play against, especially now that headshots do less damage to him.
Blizz_Alec: Yes, we plan on nerfing his survivability very soon. We are touching Take a Breather and Whole Hog in an upcoming patch. Hoping that can go live tomorrow.
Q: Hello, with the major tank changes (e.g. armor changes, knockback changes, headshot change, and individual balance changes) that released last week, I am very curious: have there been any noticeable, immediate shifts in the win rates and pick rates amongst tanks? Has there been any collateral shifts within the DPS and support role because of the recent tank changes? I know that, for instance, after the recent armor changes, some heroes have become weaker against armored tanks (i.e. Tracer and Reaper) while others have become significantly stronger (i.e. Cass and Hanzo). I'm interested in knowing how the team's behind-the-scenes statistics have measured lately as a result of the recent tank changes—that is, if it is possible for you guys to share it. If not, understandable.
Blizz_Alec: Some of this is related to meta happenings or balance changes but also related to armor changes/headshot reduction for Tanks. From what we can see the biggest winners (in terms of their performance delta) of the patch are: Ana, Junkrat, Pharah, Roadhog, Sigma, Wrecking Ball, and Zarya.
Many heroes stayed relatively similar while a handful saw a decrease in performance (Bastion, D.Va, Mauga, Orisa, and Reaper).
Q: Ok, I'll try to ask some general questions. Free to choose which one to answer: ^_" In February I noticed that you had received great feedback on the maps after the first hacked mode. But I was wondering when those ideas would be implemented (especially for flashpoints). Personally, I liked Clash Mode. But I also wanted to know what kind of results you received that require modification in your opinion, or if you have noticed any optimal results to maintain, or imitate for other game modes.
Blizz_Alec: These fall outside of hero design but can talk briefly about the first two questions.
Think you are referencing the speed boosts that would potentially come to Flashpoint. Took us some time to get these in a good place but they have been promising in playtests and are on track for a later season. It's important to us that when we add elements like that to a mode that it not only brings quality gameplay but is also communicated well through Sound and VFX. Feel good here now.
We got a lot of great feedback but there are some things the team wished we did better with the Clash Preview. Firstly, it should have showed up more in Quick Play so y'all got more reps on it and can get a better feel for the flow of the game mode. Secondly, we don't think it was best suited for Open Queue in Arcade. If we do something like this again, we'll clean that up. With the feedback we received, we've been investigating how to make the final point more appealing to capture for the attacking team. Many games could result in the attacking team not actually wanting to push onto the last point because it wasn't worth the reward (harder to capture, give up a lot of positioning if you lose). Plenty of iteration happening here now to address that particular issue.
Q: Hi there, I think one of the most obvious questions people here will have is what are the plans to balance out Roadhog. With the midseason tank adjustments I’m sure the general sentiment is that Hog is an outlier for survivability and damage amongst the tanks, especially since Orisa isn’t there to keep him in check now. The headshot damage reduction and his soft rework from before means his survivability is through the roof, and his damage is as high as ever. What are the plans to reign him back in? I will also personally say I don’t think the solution is to buff Orisa, rather nerf Hog to keep him in line. Aside from Hog I think the tank balance is pretty great right now otherwise. Also is there going to be something done about the overbearing passiveness of heroes like LW, that will simultaneously not interact with the enemy team at all whilst also not providing any offensive utility for his own team? I think for all other 9 players in the lobby it’s a pretty miserable experience to have a LW. Thanks for your time.
Blizz_Alec: Answered the Roadhog question in a different place, but yes changes coming soon.
For Lifeweaver, one of the discussions we are having right now (actually this week) and have been having for a while is around the friction that comes with switching between his healing and damage. Giving him more flexibility here would be a great boon to his capability within team fights. Additionally, we've experimented a lot with his Petal Platform. Personally would love for that to be a more attractive area to stand on as a teammate (whether that be through a buff the platform gives you or something else) but there's a lot of learned behavior to work through as allies hop off the platform quite often.
Q: Hey! I have 2 Mercy questions:
1. Is the team looking at Mercy at all for any changes/small buffs? 2. What is Mercy's pick and win rate now compared to Season 3?
Back in Mid Season 9, the DPS passive was reduced and a dev blog stated Mercy wouldn't see changes as she should 'be more reliable moving forward' with the reduction. That nerf was reverted and Mercy stayed the same.
The community has been ranking Mercy as a D Tier support for a few Seasons now and she's in this weird spot where people don't like playing against her, with her, or as her anymore. I and many others still enjoy her most out of all the other heroes but she doesn't play nearly as fun as she used to after the changes that've been made to her (mainly nerfs) and the game over the last year. Thanks!
Blizz_Alec: 1. I think we are more happy in the 20% DPS Passive world than the 15% (it cuts through a lot better, helps mitigate the healing more effectively) so Mercy is more worth a look when that world is permanent. There are some questions of how far we can push her movement and know that is one of the most requested changes.

1. Mercy is still a top-picked 3/4 Support and even higher on console until you hit GM/Top 500. Her performance follows a similar trend, where she's in the top grouping for most ranks and remains above average at the highest ranks. Doesn't mean that she wont receive changes but that is where she is at currently.

Q:I'm not really sure how I am supposed to ask this, but?,
Is the current Balance Team confident about being able to dix the biggest problems the Tank role has been suffering since the OW2 release?
I'm specifically talking about the Counterswap Meta and unhealthy Tank designs being "allowed" to exist, like Tank busters and unkillable tanks (Roadhog, Mauga, and Orisa).
Are we confident that making Tanks able to do almost everything is the right thing to do? Are we confident that we can make Tank fun again for the majority of the player base without straight buffs?
The headshot reduction and knockback reduction changes are especially interesting to me because I really don't think that simple number changes will fix how Tanks feel to play.
I don't want to counterswap. I don't want to face unkillable and easy-to-play Tanks.I don't want Tank Busters.
I really LOVE this game but it currently feels like as if we were going into the wrong direction while ignoring the BIGGEST Problems :c
Blizz_jNoh: At its core, Overwatch is a game designed around being able to swap heroes to gain a tactical advantage or help solve a challenge you might be encountering. This contributes to keeping the moment-to-moment gameplay experience dynamic, drives hero diversity and offers a wider range of both strategic gameplay and skill expression in learning when/where/how to play multiple heroes.
There is a question of how much of an advantage is too much compared to the cost of switching. Ideally we want counters to be clear and understandable, but soft enough that it's still possible to outplay a disadvantaged matchup. It is a team game though and 1v1 matchups are not the highest priority when assessing the heroes.
Tanks do feel this the most with only one of them per team in 5v5 role queue, but all roles do experience the pressure to counter and be countered to an extent.
We're striving to find a balance between swapping heroes every death, (which certainly feels too often), and rarely swapping heroes or getting trapped in mirror matches every game, which quickly leads to fatigue. We've seen a lot of improvements here compared to earlier seasons, but it could always be better.
"Unhealthy" and unpopular designs are not necessarily the same thing. When designing heroes, we aim to provide a wide range of playstyles, mechanics, and aesthetics for players to enjoy. It's okay if they don't all resonate with everyone broadly. We'll do our best to make the game as fun as it can be for a wide audience.

BoxOfficeTheory Presale Tracking
USA Showtimes As of May 17
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DOMESTIC PRESALES
Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle

• Flip (Looking at some theaters near me, Haikyu is outselling Spy x Family (May 20).)

Bad Boys: Ride or Die Average Thursday / EA+Thursday comp: $3.26M/$5.3M

• abracadabra1998 (Comp: $2.63M THU. All these comps had been on sale for longer, so those will go up, with the exception of Civil War, which went on sale at T-18 so that'll go down. Feels like a walk-up movie so it's hard to find good comps (May 19). Numbers are from last THU, as per my post this morning. This is a more walk-up movie a la Aquaman or Apes so I think it's a pretty good start (May 18). Pretty good start for it honestly (May 16).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Comp: $5.30M EA+THU.)
  
• keysersoze123 (This will be a late bloomer. I am still expecting 50m+ OW (May 23).)
  
• TheFlatLannister (Comp: $3.96M THU. Well, this is a pretty good start (May 17).)
  
• TwoMisfits (Aging male-skewing franchises tend to get the biggest bump from this deal. Folks are on the fence but know what they are getting. Female skewing non-sequel ones tend to get zero help. You need baseline interest to get people willing to pay anything, b/c these still are $5. The other effect of the deal is that movies releasing around the $5 hits sometimes get hurt. June TMobile $5 Atom movie. This could help it go huge, like last year's Spider-Verse (May 22).)
  
• vafrow (Comp: $3.2M THU. Nothing of note here. Staying steady. Will probably pick up only in the final week (May 20). Comps are not the greatest. One, surprisingly hard to find a comparable film with similar start on sales. Plus, I think ticket buying patterns have changed pretty drastically in my market over the last few months. Very little up front sales compared to late 2023. Dune was the exception (May 17).)
  
• YM! (Again, another solid start-ish. I expect Bad Boys to have the most diverse audience. Can't really predict much on previews but I am feeling confident in the 55-60m OW range for the past few weeks (May 17).)
  

The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Re-Releases (June 8-10)

• BoxOfficePro (Fathom Events has also announced that select Regal Cinemas will present the films in 4DX on June 22/23/24 for Fellowship/Towers/Return respectively (May 14).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Up to ~1,400 shows now with new locations picking it up and others adding a second showing. LotR1 has sold 831 seats OD, LotR2 sold 715 seats OD, and LotR3 sold 735 seats OD. For comparison, Phantom Menace didn't break 800 tickets until T-3 and we're still over a month out. JW3 comp is currently around 9m (it was at 1,670 tickets sold at this point!) (May 6).)
  

Inside Out 2 Average Thursday Comp: $7.10M

• abracadabra1998 (Comp: $3.86M THU. Not impressed at all so far here sadly (May 19). Holy numbers of shows and seats! Multiplexes are really expecting a lot here. Sales off the bat not amazing here (May 15).)
  
• AniNate (Finally a little movement here. 23 Thursday, 52 Fri-Sun (compared to 18 THU and 23 FRI-SUN on May 17) (May 22). Safe to say the fan rush has ended, and it might not be immediately on casual family and radar when they're making memorial Day plans and there are two other kids movies out or about to be out (May 19).It is encouraging that Canton is already giving me something to work with with 12 THU preview sales. Same number for Fri-Sun. I do see nine sales for first THU at Canton now and I think that's a pretty solid start (May 15).)
  
• AnthonyJPHer (Out of the 4 tracked theaters, there is at least 774 tickets sold out of 1000+ seats. Blown Garfield out of the water (~200 tickets from the theaters I tracked). At least 3 sold out (or close to sold out) showings for Inside Out 2. Looking good for Inside Out 2. Of course this might just be fan surge and all. I was looking at the THU previews in a theater near me. There is an almost completely sold out showing. Out of 195 seats, 175 were sold. Where I live there seems to be real interest. I counted about more than 400 tickets sold on THU for theaters near me, kind of shocked me (May 19).)
  
• charlie Jatinder (Comp: $12.33M THU at MTC2. Moving along nicely (May 21).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Comp: $6.21M THU. Early sales haven't been there lately except for the extreme fans. $12.27M Mario comp (May 18). At 180 shows for previews in my areas and still has a few theaters left to post. Godzilla x Kong finished with 197, Kingdom of Apes 190, and Kung Fu Panda 205 (May 14).)
  
• keysersoze123 (Chugging along at this point (May 19). Show counts show Plexes are expecting a big OW. I dont remember when we last had a animation movie start with so many shows. I wont count Mario as that was a fan driven movie. Definitely not great presales but this is not a fan driven movie. Let us see where things are in the final week (May 15). Families dont book tickets on weekday mornings. Wait until evening today to judge it. From a release perspective, easily the biggest for any animated movie in a long time. Only movie which is not comparable is Mario but that was not just a family flick (May 14).)
  
• Porthos (BAD COMPS: $7.74M THU. 10.0% Matinee sales, 5.3% 3D sales and 42.2% PLF sales. (May 19). Strange pre-sale pattern. Was there some sort of promo that dropped today? Either way, just a great day (for this type of movie at this point in pre-sales) (May 17). Fairly strong day. Was concentrated at a couple of theaters (May 16). I do not have good comps, especially for D1. 5.45946x Elemental on D1 [13.10m]. Will it be as backloaded as Elemental? It's tough to sell 5.5x times the amount of tickets on the final couple of days, so perhaps not. But it does show how backloaded purely kids animation is. Sonic 2 comp is perhaps a little concerning. On the other hand, nearly a weeks more of pre-sales. Of presales, 3.5% are 3D and 40.1% are PLF (May 15). On the SAT of release weekend (NOT EA) there is a special event screening for IO2: INSIDE OUT 2: FUNKO FAMILY EVENT! (2024) Sat June 15th. Might boost OW slightly depending on how wide this event is and how much more these tickets will presumably cost (May 11).)
  
• TheFlatLannister (Comp: $8.97M THU. Definitely the biggest rollout in showings since I've started tracking Florida. Bigger than even Dune 2 and it's only T-26 (May 18). This is a super super strong day 2. Probably just Orlando overindexing, but yeah starting to lean towards something big brewing. Florida presales are somehow even crazier. Sold 2357 seats and is getting a blockbuster rollout in terms of showing allocations. Kung Fu panda comp day 2: gives me $8.50M (May 15). Well, I can't really tell if this is a breakout or not yet. Looks very good especially in the first few hours. These are probably terrible comps, but might as well try something (May 14).)
  
• TwoMisfits (I'm kinda shocked at the opening set from my Cinemarks... 2 screens (1 PLF, 1 not) and 6 showings at my PLF 14 for THU (and 11 showings on the same screens once it runs full day - 7 PLF b/c 1 is 3d on the reg screen, 4 not)... 3 screens (.75 3d, 2.25 not) and 9 showings at the non-PLF 12 for THU (and 12 showings on 2.25 screens once it runs full day)... So, 2 and 2.25 screens for the weekend presale sets... Disney must be charging a huge % for themselves b/c this is an Elemental opening set at my PLF...a little more generous for THU at my non-PLF, but then they too drop to an Elemental opening set after the adult Disney base THU rush... (May 14).)
  
• vafrow (Comp: $3.5M THU. I'm surprised this hasn't been stronger. At this stage, I don't expect we'll see much activity until final week (May 19). No new sales. Whatever glitches in the system on day 1 didn't push sales to day 2. I still think the lack of base ticket options will push families to wait. Cineplex has jacked up the cost of PLFs, plus they're throwing in an increase for opening weekend of major releases. It adds up quickly for families (May 16). With the site glitching yesterday, it might account for the slow start. But, what's interesting is the format breakdown. Nothing is being made available in anything close to a regular showtime. The one non 3D showing in Dolby is a matinee showing. Everything else is carrying a hefty premium. They'll likely release regular showtimes closer to release, but right now, it's priced to get eager fans to pay the PLFs (May 15).)
  
• YM! (Did some snooping around for the Funko Event as I was curious if perhaps families getting presales for the opening Saturday vs opening Thursday as those sales are kind of weak Thursday and uhm it’s at 250 tickets. Which is like 5 times Garfield’s EA showing of 50 tickets all at PLF prices despite normal theaters. Most of which at 9:30 AM with only one theater having it at 11:00 AM (May 22). Based on keysoze123's Elemental, Wish, Little Mermaid, and Kung Fu Panda 4 preview data, $5.66M THU comp and $22.2M FRI comp. Not a fan of the average comp (Disney has underperformed at MTC2 so not within history to rely on it overperforming like KFP4 and IF) but really like the True FRI although it is very inconsistent. Not sure if IO2 would jump that high from the THU average. However, there’s a lot of variable since: 1. TLM should skew more towards young adults than families by nature which should make ATP higher. 2. IO2 should and does have a higher ATP than either Wish, KFP4 or Elemental due to total PLF control and presumably skews a bit older. 3. Wish was on Discount TUES so that should muddy up the comparisons. 4. The comparisons apart from Elemental are either days before or days behind. 5. Both Wish and KFP4 opened outside the summer season so internal multiplier will be different (especially with Wish’s five day) due to how summer and fall have entirely different natures in walkups which leaves just TLM/Elemental as viable comparisons. It does show that IO2 should at least open above 65m? (May 20). Seems IO2 is playing more like a kid's animation than a family event. Pretty solid for what it is. Majestic is healthy and about 66% of Garfield T-6. Thinking anywhere from 75m-100m OW rn (May 17). Only been an hour but yeah sales are softer than I expected. However, it is a month out and will largely skew more towards kids than say TLM/Across so wasn't expecting a blitz like them. Here at Marcus theaters are going all out for IO2 with it having the lion share of PLFs with it getting both screens when there is two PLFs with tentpole like levels of screens (May 14). Was taking a look at Marcus Cinemas to see that they have preloaded Inside Out 2 showtimes which seem to start at 3:00 pm on a THU . It seems like Marcus is going all out on it as judging from showtimes it's taking away all of Bad Boys’ PLFs in that theaters that have two+ PLFs are giving all to IO2 (May 11).)
  

Deadpool and Wolverine Average Thursday Comp: $31.07M

• AMC ("Some 200,000 movie fans have bought their AMC tickets already. This is more Day 1 ticket sales at AMC than for any other R-rated movie ever." Insiders tell The Hollywood Reporter that first-day sales are likely around $8 million to $9 million if extrapolating the 200,000 stat cited by Aron (May 22).)
  
• DEADLINE (Already heating up eight weeks before its debut, having already collected some $8M in first day ticket sales. $8M is pretty remarkable for an R-rated movie two months before release. While there are no direct comps on Deadpool & Wolverine ticket sales in post-Covid history, its current cash bests the 24-hour advance ticket sales of The Batman ($6.5M), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($6M) and John Wick: Chapter 4 ($1.4M). The Batman and GOTG3 opened to respective 3-day weekends of $134M and $118.4M (May 22).)
  
• FANDANGO (Broke Fandango’s best first-day ticket sales record for 2024. Best first-day pre-seller from the Deadpool franchise (May 21).)
  
• abracadabra1998 (Day 1/2 Comps (not serious ones): $25.82M/$28.14M THU. Pretty damn great day 2!(May 21).)
  
• AniNate (THU sales still largely biased towards primetime evening showings. There may be FOMO but not enough for people to take off work early. Good lord already 80+ THU previews sold for Deadpool at Canton (May 20).)
  
• AnthonyJPHer (Off to a hot start! At my theater in my town, there has been 8 tickets sold. That sounds low but it’s actually a lot, especially this far out and because Inside Out 2 hasn’t sold any tickets at my theater yet. Looking more broadly at 4 theaters I track other than my own, there is a mind- boggling 1,029 tickets sold! Already more than Inside Out 2 (May 20).)
  
• Charlie Jatinder (Comp: $30.03M THU. Looking at keysersoze123's MTC1 data: These are incredible (May 22). $40.22M THU (MCU first day sales). Amazing day two at MiniTC2. Well ahead of BP2, GOTG3 and AM3. Not too far off from Thor 4. This is more impressive considering they all were ~25-35 days out while this is 65 days out. MTC2 has lower ATP generally due to smaller screens, less PLF, and more family friendly chain. Does much better PTA than MTC1 (May 21). MCU MTC 1 24 Hours: Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness ~ 210K (T-29), Thor 4 ~ 137K (T-24), DP&W ~ 120K+ (T-66), BP 2 ~ 110K (T-38), AM3 ~ 88K (T-30), and GoTG3 ~ 76K (T-30). At T-30 guess DP&W would have been around 160-170K type. Will mostly be above BP2 and below Thor 4. 3.6k so far. BP2 final was 4.6k. It’s done (crossed GOTG3 day one sales). Almost crossed GoTG3 day one sales at MiniTC2 (May 20).)
  
• Inceptionzq (Denver Comp: $23.98M THU. Drafthouse THU/FRI/SAT/SUN comp: $31.04M/$38.62M/$40.21M/$22.35M (May 21). Drafthouse THU/FRI/SAT/SUN comps with L&T 24 hours and MoM 11 hours: (1.03x0.968x) / (0.884x0.945x) / (0.912x1.01x) / (0.561x1.004x). Denver THU: In like for like theaters: (0.828x Thor L&T First 24 hours) and (0.628x Doctor Strange MoM first 11.5 hours) (May 20).)
  
• keysersoze123 (1st few days of PS is all about fanboys so T-x does not matter. By this FRI it will be in steady state mode. With this long a cycle that would be at very low levels. Looking at FRI sales, its IM will be closer to Thor 4 than BP2. So we can do the projections based on how the previews will go. However Its really early. Let us wait until we have T-x comps. Probably will have to wait until July to get credible comps. MTC2 early sales tend to be way weaker for all movies. The disparity for big movies is even higher. Nothing out of ordinary in day 2 pace for MTC1 (May 22). Obvious skew on previews (compared to FRI) as its 9+ weeks from release. Excellent growth even past 2:15 PM. Finished ahead of BP2 and ~20K below Thor 4 (116k for DxW and FINAL The Marvels previews at 133k). It has the longer cycle. This includes fan shows which sold 18K+ in initial check around noon PST. Fan event is just MTC1. I dont see anything for any other MTC so far or smaller chains. I think at this point we need to comp with 2022 MCU movies if OD presales are on par. Until we are within T-x cycle for this movie, we cannot comp after 1st 2-3 days. Fan shows are yuge. Adding FanShows and Previews should put it between BP2 and Thor 4 for now. Terrific OD. Over time, GotG3 should provide great comps. I can say for sure, its no where in the ballpark of DS2 which did 36m previews. Really good start. Should finish the day ahead of Ant 3 I think. Sales will taper off after fanboy rush. This does not include fan shows. No full data yet but show counts for previews (MTC1 - 7427 and MTC2 - 2914). MTC1 shows they are ready for big numbers. MTC2 is more conservative and numbers will go up close to release. If I have to guess based on really early indications, its OD between Guardians 3 and Ant 3 at MTC1. MTC2 I unfortunately cannot get data (May 20). Thor 4 is the most logical comp but that had meh WOM so IM was terrible. Previews were excellent though. Since its previews was 3 days after July 4, its final surge was stronger than even DS2. I dont think there is any difference between early and late July. All schools/colleges will still be off (May 19). Only number that matters is OD presales. after few days it will hit a trough and then it will plod along until social media reactions and reviews hit close to release. I think we can kind of predict its OW after its OD presales (May 18). RESPONSE TO PORTHOS: Captain Marvel had very strong sales on its OD despite early start. So OD is all about fans. It does not matter if you start 2 weeks before or 9 weeks. They will still book. So it would be interesting to compare OD sales not only with CM for @Porthos but also the big openers in 2022/23 period from MTC perspective. 1) DS2 - 230k ish. 2) Thor 4 - 136k ish. 3) Wakanda - 110k. 4) Ant 3 - 88K. 5) Guardians 3 - 70k ish. I wonder where Deadpool 3 will land. Anything is fine as long as it does pull in a Marvels (May 17).)
  
• Legion Again (Previews this early in summer are almost a THU opening, so Fri soemthing like +35-55% from Th is IM ~4.9-5.5. If we get some strong Fri sales when we’re close maybe I’ll drag it up to 5.6 or something but it will be really really tough to beat that. Expecting an IM close to Thor 4. Better reception (in avg case, just by regression to the mean) but bigger previews/more fanrush element, ~cancelling. T-65 Projection Matrix ($166M-$186M OW) (May 22).)
  
• Porthos (Comp: $21.38M THU. MCU/SW films tend to have a bit longer of a slope-down on the decent of the "u-curve" so I think I'll keep posting "Day x" comps for at least a couple more days (May 23). Pretty standard Day 2, really. Best sign, I think, is it nearly matching BP2 (that also had a long pre-sale window starting at T-38) (May 22). $22.09M THU Day 1 Comps (8.4% 3D and 58.5% PLF) (May 21). Pretty good, all things considered. BP2 and onward tell a pretty consistent picture. Do think the extra month of pre-sales is gonna mess with these comps at least a little (May 21). Since setup took 60-75 min longer, take the following with a slight grain of salt: 1:45 PM with 2,105 tickets sold. (NWH 2am: 6515), (NWH 2pm: 10685), (Batman 12:45 pm: 1693), (MoM 1:00 pm: 5030), (L&T 12:15pm: 2519), (BP2 2:15pm: 2197) and (GOTG3 12:40pm: 1317). Two theaters have not yet checked in. Seems to be broadly in line with other markets that have reported in (May 20). No comparison for a movie starting presales this early (60+ days before release). Only MCU entry which comes close is Captain Marvel (T-58) and only other Disney release is TROS (T-59). Longest pre-sale window for a major Disney release since The Last Jedi (~70 days). Longest major release since Fast X's 99 days. Probably the most on-point recent comparison will be Jurassic World 3's 43 days. Length of the pre-sale window will very likely depress D1/D2/D3 sales somewhat. It's a matter of smaller degrees when comparing something like a BP2 (starting at T-38), but that extra month is probably gonna slice some numbers off the top of the pile, especially after the first day (May 17).)
  
• TalismanRing (NYC Regal Local. 17 shows (3 3D, 3 RPX, 11 Reg 2): 102 tickets sold for first hour - almost half for the 7pm RPX showing. COMPS MON opening week: Marvels: 91 (11pm), Eternals: 266 (7pm), Black Widow: 239 (5pm), and Venom 2: 131 (6pm) (May 20).)
  
• TheFlatLannister ($150M locked imo. Don’t really see under $30M for previews and a 6x multi gets it to $180M OW. With GOTG 3 early reception I think $200M becomes a real discussion (May 22). $44.36M Dune 2 Day 2 comp. Pretty ridiculously strong day 2. Sold more tickets on T-65 than Dune 2 did in its final day of presales. $22.42M THU GOTG3 Comp. Considering this thing is 60+ days out, I'd say day 2 was amazing (May 21). Sold around 1k tickets in the last 8 hours. Keep in mind this is not T-X so once I switch to T-X 30+ days from now, comp will probably be well over $30M for GOTG. Thinking ~8k seats sold by T-30 for ~$37M comp with GOTG vol 3. DON'T TAKE THESE THU COMPS (Dune+APES+GxK) SERIOUSLY: $46.33M. Rollout is pretty insane. Has almost 200 more showings than Inside Out 2. Sold more tickets than Dune 2 did as of T-1 (Dune 2 finished with 13.6k on T-0). Also surpassed Godzilla tickets sold as of T-0. Half way finished collecting data on Deadpool for Florida and it's nearly tripled Dune 2 first 24 hours of sales and data is still flowing in. Passed GOTG3, ATSV, Dune 2 (First 24 hours) in about 3 hours. I think we can put the under $100M OW discussion to bed. To the shock of no one, this is blowing up. First 24 hours update should have average comps near $35M (May 20).)
  
• TwoMisfits (Local Cinemark presale sets for DP3... 3 screens and 15 showings each - the PLF is giving 1 of 2 PLF screens and the non-PLF is doing some 3d showings. Not the set that a normal "big" Marvel movie gets, but it seems my 2 locals have taken a "put up or shut up" strategy for almost all blockbusters lately. This IS equal or more than most everything lately (although Bad Boys 4 is getting 3 screens and 14 showings at my PLF, so...). But, compared to 2019 Marvel, or even 2021 or EVEN 2023 Marvel...this is a low set (May 19).)
  
• vafrow (Comp: $41.8M THU. 8% growth at this stage is very positive. I expect another drop tomorrow, but I'm probably not going to touch this until the weekend at this stage. I'm comping high, and without a proper MCU comparison (Marvels doesn't count), it's hard to gauge, but I feel this is just doing really well here (May 22). 20% growth on day 2 when it had a really strong first day is impressive. Ahead of T-1 for Dune Previews to officially be the highest selling film I've tracked since I switched to the 5 theatre radius (May 21). MTC4 has really jacked up plf prices in the last year or so, and D&W is skewed heavily towards PLFs in my track. I'm not sure how many trackers are doing price adjustments, but lack of good MCU comps in the last year could see a big price impact. Watching L&T comps in particular because being a rare adult skewing July MCU film seems to be the most ideal (May 21). Solid jump over the course of the day. Dolby sales jumped up the most, potentially as good IMAX screens got taken. Not sure what happened for the East coast this morning, but sales seemed to have rebounded. A little hit and miss in different markets, but that's what I'd assume for that region. There's some small communities. Not sure why it took so long for sales to hit when southern Ontario was hot off the mark. People may have assumed 9:00 am eastern time. Numbers pulled around 11:00 am, so two hours worth of data. Chain is pushing 3D for the ticket premium. Exception is IMAX showings, where I think they know people just want the 2D experience. 60% of sales being those four IMAX showings. 40 minutes into presales for my area. Almost triple Dune 2 on my first measurement for that, which was Day 2. Bit ahead of my first measurement for The Marvels, which was T-21, and I think about a week into sales. They're really leaning into 3D showings. I get the desire for theatres to get the extra premium, but I can't see a lot of people wanting to see this in 3D. Has been up for sale on the Canadian East coast, presumably from 9:00 local time. I did a sweep of all showtimes on MTC4, but there's been zero sales so far (May 20).)
  
• YM! (Sold ~10.6x Furiosa's T-6. One theater makes up a sizeable percentage of most mid-sized Marvel's T-2 in a span of hours. Such a strong start. Definitely feels like we got a potential 25m previews/150m+ opener. Still don't buy 200m OW but am starting to see 30m previews/175m+ OW as a strong possibility. On its first day has sold over 10x Furiosa T-6 here in SE Wisconsin. At North Shore, 70% of Shang-Chi’s and Venom 2’s T-2, 47% of Homecoming’s T-2, and 41.25% of Thor: Ragnarök’s T-2 - just using DP&W’s T-66! At half of Furiosa’s T-4 sales here in the past ten minutes in just two of the theaters PLF shows (May 20). 42 showings for previews across four SE Wisconsin theaters I track. ~20% more showings than IO2 and about the same amount of PLFs spread. Likely 3-4 screens a theater for THU previews, but has SuperScreen + 2 UltraScreen screens in Majestic Cinema. Seems to be a 3D push with North Shore having primetime showings in 3D UltraScreen (May 19).)
  

Domestic Calendar Dates (last updated May 16):
MAY

• (May 23) Presales Start [Summer Camp]
  
• (May 23) THU Previews [Furiosa + Hit Man + Garfield + Sight]
  
• (May 26) Presales Start [Bikeriders]
  
• (May 27) Opening Day [MON: Spider-Man Far From Home Re-Release]
  
• (May 28) Presales Start [The Forge]
  
• (May 30) Presales Start [A Quiet Place: Day One]
  
• (May 30) THU Previews [Ezra + Haikyu!! + Summer Camp + Robot Dreams]
  

JUNE

• (June 3) Opening Day [MON: Spider-Man No Way Home Re-Release]
  
• (June 5) Presales Start [Despicable Me 4]
  
• (June 6) Presales Start [Twisters]
  
• (June 6) THU Previews [Bad Boys: Ride or Die + Watchers]
  
• (June 8) 1-SAT Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 9) 1-SUN Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 10) 1-MON Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 13) THU Previews [Inside Out 2]
  
• (June 15) 1-SAT Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 16) 1-SUN Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 17) 1-MON Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 20) THU Previews [Bikeriders + Janet Planet]
  
• (June 27) THU Previews [Blue Lock + Horizon: Chapter 1 + A Quiet Place: Day One]
  

JULY

• (July 1) Presales Start [Longlegs]
  
• (July 2) Opening Day [WED: Despicable Me 4]
  
• (July 4) Opening Day [THU: Possum Trot]
  
• (July 4) THU Previews [MaXXXine]
  
• (July 11) THU Previews [Fly Me to the Moon + Untitled New Line Horror movie]
  
• (July 17) EA [Twisters]
  
• (July 18) THU Previews [Twisters]
  
• (July 25) THU Previews [Deadpool and Wolverine (including 1 PLF fan show at 3 PM) + Didi + Fabulous Four]
  
• (July 29) Presales Start [Alien: Romulus]
  

AUGUST

• (August 1) THU Previews [Harold and the Purple Crayon]
  
• (August 8) THU Previews [Borderlands + It Ends With Us + Cuckoo + The Fire Inside + Trap]
  
• (August 15) THU Previews [Alien: Romulus + Horizon: Chapter 2 + Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure]
  
• (August 22) THU Previews [Blink Twice + The Crow + The Forge + Slingshot]
  
• (August 29) THU Previews [City of Dreams + Reagan + They Listen]
  

Presale Tracking Posts:
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 30
May 2
May 4
May 7
May 9
May 11
May 14
May 16
May 18
May 21
Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.

BoxOfficeTheory Presale Tracking
USA Showtimes As of May 17
Presales Data (Google Sheets Link)
BoxOfficeReport Previews
DOMESTIC PRESALES
Furiosa Average Thursday Comp/Prediction assuming $3.5M for crazymoviekid, $5M for el sid, $4.4M for keysersoze123, and $4M for YM!: $3.99M/$4.09M

• abracadabra1998 (Comp: $4.59M THU. Removed Apes as a comp because I didn't track EA on its T-0 and also because it seems walk-ups will be the opposite story. So while the average doesn't tell the whole story, it still dropped significantly against every comp. The MTC1 over-index is crazy too. Based on pace, I will go with a final prediction of $4.3 Million, +/- 0.3 (May 22). Down against every comp. Highly overindexing in MTC1 and Alamo (only 28% sold in other chains is pretty low). Most comparable to... BoSS, which is (not) coincidentally the lowest comp value I have. Right now with this pace and thinking about those variables I think $4.5-5 Million is a good target, but I will be looking closest at that comp moving forward (May 21). Still kickin it (May 20). Still doing quite well here (May 19). GxK really propping the average up but for now I could see that settling at around $5 Million, still good pace! (May 12). Really good stuff in this market (May 9).)
  
• AniNate (Might be copium but Saturday presales being significantly higher than Friday gives me hope of a certain casual interest (May 22). Encouraging to see the weekend fill out a bit. Been seeing a lot of promotion during the basketball playoffs so general awareness has to be getting there now. (May 15). Skimmed through ThuFri and Valley View (Cleveland vicinity) has sold roughly 60 Furiosa tix so far while Tinseltown (Canton) has sold 40. I'm guessing the upfront audience does lean more toward the urban/cosmopolitan sensibilities (May 9).)
  
• Charlie Jatinder (Comp: $2.76M THU $5.96M FRI $6.15M FRI 3-Day Pace. I think Furiosa gonna end well below 4. Something like 3.75M. Awful trending and MTC1 overindexing (May 22). Will underindex here but MEH sales. No improvement either with comps dropping (May 22).)
  
• crazymoviekid (Comp: $2.80M THU $4.61M FRI. Pretty steep drop, looking more like $3M-$4M Thursday. Somehow still very mute for Friday. No way, but these FRI comps are giving $5M (May 22). Decent day for THU since comps either ticked up or are level. Feeling $4M-$5.5M THU. Rather mute start for FRI (May 21). Best between $3.5M-$5M for now (May 20).)
  
• el sid (Comp: $8.3M THU. On MON it was still doing really fine in my theaters but be prepared that this number will go down because for the comparison films with less than 1k tickets it was way easier to have good jumps percentage-wise. Still, Apes and GxK comps can't go below 5M because Furiosa IS already in front. Overall I doubt that Furiosa's average numbers will be below 5M in my theaters tomorrow, its presales are already too high for that (May 22). Furiosa continues its strong performance in "my" theaters. The movie yesterday had already 1.310 sold tickets (for THU, May 23). Up 15% in ca. 24 hours which isn't bad at all after the first rush. Already comfortably in front of The Fall Guy's final sales (it had 1.071 counted on THU for THU) and almost on par with Civil War's final sales (1.357) and also the Apes finally had not more than 1.657 sold tickets in my theaters (May 11). I also can't complain about Furiosa's presales in my theaters, not at all. Already 1,138 sold tickets (in all of "my" 7 theaters) for May 23. 14 days left. Promising start. Civil War on THU of the release week for THU had 1,357 sold tickets and The Fall Guy finally had 1,071 sold tickets (May 9).)
  
• Inceptionzq (Denver Comp: $3.40M THU. Drafthouse THU/FRI/SAT/SUN comp: $4.53M/$6.17M/$6.40M/$4.76M. Emagine THU/FRI/SAT/SUN comp: $2.19M/$2.64M/$2.92M/$1.75M.)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Comp: $3.94M THU.)
  
• keysersoze123 (Thinking 4.3/4.5m for Furiosa (May 22). Meh acceleration again. Furiosa looking finishing in 4.x at this point (May 21). Really meh increase. Could be the impact of Wolverine PS (May 20). Accelerating at the right time (May 19). Definitely chugging along. I am feeling good about 5m+ previews (May 15). It has way stronger sales than Garfield and that is expected. I am thinking of 5m previews for now (May 14). I think this is a solid OD presales. With a short PS window its probably looking at 5m+ previews (May 9).)
  
• Porthos (Comp: $3.39M THU. WHELP! Never a good sign when showtimes start disappearing the night before release (Only three, but still...). My RotB and Fall Guy comps both got boosted by EA, so keep that in mind. Still, none of the other comps improved all that much, so.... Yeah. Sacto might just be under-performing. But if not, 3.75m or so might be in the cards (May 23). If I had to bet, I'd bet on it doing over 4m, as I do think Sacto is either underperforming or I'm very likely using the wrong comps. Meh (May 22). Not exactly blasting down the doors here. Could be late arriving crowd (see The Fall Guy comp with $4.41M), could be bad comps, could be under-performing here (May 21).)
  
• Rorschach (Comp: $3.97M THU $9.21M FRI. Not an amazing finish, but not horrible either. Still believe it can reach $4 mil, but given the pessimistic turn-around on this film in the past couple days, I'm really not so sure anymore (May 23). THU is still holding strong. FRI collapsed a little bit against Apes, which enjoyed a huge bump the Wednesday before. A tad concerning (May 22). Holding up okay against Apes comps. Comps crept up just a bit from yesterday (May 21).)
  
• TalismanRing (Comp: $4.10M THU. NYC.)
  
• TheFlatLannister (Comp: $4.00M. Thinking it just barely gets to $4M previews. Going with $4M +/- $0.2M. Pretty solid recovery all things considering. Let's see how walkups go this evening (May 23). Just yikes. Not sure if this gets to $4M for Thursday (May 22). Yeah, idk this had a great pace up until Deadpool just sucked the air out of the room. Don't really know if $5M previews is happening anymore (May 21). Not impressed with pace to be honest (May 20). Does look like it's heading to maybe $5M (May 19). Second straight day of weak growth. Not a great sign (May 18). First meh day since presales started (May 17). Keeps climbing at a strong pace (May 11). This continues to grow at an excellent rate (May 10). Really strong day 2. The short presales is for sure a factor (May 9).)
  
• TwoMisfits (Final sets for Garfield and Furiosa were the same at my PLF and reg theater - 3 screens (with 1 PLF each) at the PLF and 3 screens at the non-PLF. Plenty of room to do well this weekend if either can. PS - And they have acres of showings today. The new Cinemark 2024 policy seems to be the clear out Thursday nights for openers, so they have almost as many showings today as Friday (May 23).)
  
• vafrow (Comp: $3.5M THU. This is a very weak finish. It didn't maintain pace with POTA, which I was hoping it might follow. At this stage, it's extremely IMAX heavy, but no showings over the course of the weekend are more than a third full, so there's zero rush factor to buy tickets. I don't think we're looking at bigger than normal walk ups or anything (May 23). Isn't bad for a property that should be more front loaded. I still think the POTA comp ($5.7M) is probably the best, and it's looking strong (May 22). Decent growth and slight bump up (May 21). Slipped slightly. Nothing too eventful. But we're still in holiday weekend more in Canada right now. Tomorrow might see a better bump (May 20). Losing pace. It might be the long weekend effect though, with this being a holiday weekend (May 19). A bit of a step back today (May 18). It's starting to heat up (May 17). Comps are showing as steady since the last update, but it dipped quite a bit this week before rebounding today. Advance ticket buying has been so off in this market recently for some reason. Holding pace with Apes is a good sign (May 16). It had a good day (May 12). Mediocre day 2 (May 10). Not the hottest start. IMAX is the format of choice so ATP will be high (May 9).)
  
• YM! (Southeast Wisconsin: Furiosa’s T-6 hours is 197 tickets across four theaters. Should match Napoleon’s 272 tickets that NS/MF had thirty minutes before showtime. Thinking around 3.5m-4.5m previews. Thinking Furiosa should do around 35m OW (May 23). Solid growth shown within the past two days although I do think Deadpool tickets slowed its sails. Currently at 68.4% (or 30% if we use just NS+MF) of Napoleon’s T-30 minutes before previews at North Shore and Menomonee Falls. Feeling a bit less optimistic considering the muted jumps and this is likely going to be last post on it due to work but thinking around 3.5-4.5m previews prediction (May 22). Solid growth shown within the past two days although I do think Deadpool tickets slowed its sails. Currently at 53.7% (or 21.7% if we use just NS+MF) of Napoleon’s T-30 minutes before previews at North Shore and Menomonee Falls. Not much has changed from my 4-5m previews prediction (May 21). Furiosa looking healthy from a quick and dirty glance. They’re trying a Parking Lot Cinema Drive In at Majestic in addition to 2 of the 3 PLFs. Healthy at Majestic and North Shore with 30-ish at primetime, very soft at Menominee and Brookfield Square with PLFs around 10-15 at primetime. The PLFs are slowly inching ground but should have a solid idea TUES. Still thinking 4-5M previews (May 20). Not much has changed. Pace is solid and growth is normal. Feel about right for the 4-5M previews range (May 19). Pretty solid I guess. Seems that most of it's business is in the Marcus Theaters in Mequon/Waukesha so not really expecting much a diverse showing but there seems to be a fanbase around it. Feel good in 4.5-5M previews range (May 17).)
  

Hit Man

• vafrow (For THU previews, only 2/5 theatres are playing it for previews (an additional is picking it up starting FRI), with only two tickets sold across the four showtimes. Taking a wider 50km radius (captures most of the Greater Toronto Area) gets 35 total tickets sold, with most being in the downtown locations (which also happens to be theatres where it probably played during TIFF). Playing in 11/26 theatres, with 26 showtimes. Not getting any marketing that I can see and really playing to cinephiles that have heard the word of mouth (hence the TIFF theatres doing better) (May 22). Getting a theatrical release up here in Canada, and early signs are that it might get a pretty decent screen count. Not super wide or anything, but a pretty decent amount for a weekend that has a lot of other releases (May 14).)

The Garfield Movie EA Estimate: $0.57M
The Garfield Movie Thursday Comp/Prediction assuming $1.55M for keysersoze123: $1.23M/$1.38M

• abracadabra1998 (Comp: $1.13M THU. Rose against a few comps and kinda converging a little bit. I'll go with $1.2 Million, +/- 0.2. Maybe this will have stellar walk-ups, I sure hope it does, but I am not seeing it from pre-sales sadly (May 22). Gonna keep sounding the alarm bells. HORRIBLE update for this so close to release (May 21). I think people that are expecting this to break out like it seems like it is doing so overseas are in for a rude awakening come this weekend (May 20). This could have a good late surge since EA has been sucking away some pre-sales up until this morning, so let's see if this bounces up a little. Not impressed at all at this stage though, not seeing the break-out some are anticipating (May 19). The two comps that are most helpful, Wish and Trolls (not PLF, EA on a weekend, family movies) are both pointing to a lot lower than average, so I'm inclined to give those a lot more weight. I'm thinking $500-600k for EA (May 18). Still not really accelerating, and the EA is falling against comps (May 12). Good EA numbers, but many of these comps were PLF-only EA, which this is not, so I think the ATP will be quite lower and that should be adjusted for (May 9).)
  
• AniNate (IF seems to be holding its own in presales, 42 Friday compared to Garfield's 75. Imagine it's pulling a significant audience away (May 23). I am surprised presales have been so low in the suburban red county theater I've been looking at compared to IF (May 21). EA screenings are pretty filled to the brim here now for what that's worth. Maybe a surge in family demand will present itself later next week (May 17). EA sales look decent now, but this does feel rather weak compared to the IF presales. Not 100% certain what's going on here but based on this I buy the trades' opening estimates over the forum vibes (May 15). I definitely haven't seen as much of a rush here with Garfield as with IF (May 11).)
  
• AnthonyJPHer (Let me hop onto the doom train. It’s… not looking good. I’m very much considering a sub 30m opening weekend. From all the theaters I have tracked, this movie has sold a whopping… 246 tickets for Thursday previews. Compare that to the well over 750 tickets for Inside Out 2, and it’s pitiful. I hope the weekend proves me wrong and walkups are strong, but it’s not looking good (May 22).)
  
• Charlie Jatinder (Comp: $2.09M THU $4.53M FRI. Decent THU sales but FRI remains POOR (May 23). Decent to Okay THU sales, Poor FRI sales (May 22). Would guess $500K EA based on MTC 2 (May 19).)
  
• crazymoviekid (Comp: $1.04M THU $2.63M FRI. Fine day of sales, for THU but still not recovering. Looking between $1M-$1.5M THU. Much needed recovery day for FRI, still a long way to go. $3M-$4M FRI right now. (May 22). Pretty bad THU and FRI is pretty dreadful (May 21). Looking around $1.5M-$1.75M. Not stellar, but it's kid -driven animated. THU isn't a real rush (May 20).)
  
• el sid (Comp: $0.8M THU. The $0.8M comp is too low but I had no better and more comps. By the way, Garfield's Friday looked (way) better with 240 sold tickets compared to 173 on THU (IF had 421 sold tickets on Thursday for Thursday last week, Dolittle 395 back then). I don't think Garfield can reach these numbers but at least it will be a closer battle. I think it's still too early to panic because IF had also very muted sales and the acceleration did not start until early THU , at least in my theaters (May 22). Not much to see yet. There is some acceleration. So far I don't worry because things didn't start to look better for IF till early THU plus Garfield had EA shows and it is/was a holiday weekend (May 20).)
  
• katnisscinnaplex (Comp: $1.11M THU. Lightyear probably the best comp here size-wise for EA, probably ends around 750-800k (May 18).)
  
• keysersoze123 (Thinking 1.5/1.6m for Garfield (May 22). Meh acceleration again. Looks like finish 1.5m minus early shows (May 21). Really meh increase. Could be the impact of Deadpool (May 20). Still pacing similar to what I saw 2 days ago. Just awful number. Around what Trolls did late last year and that burned way more through its early shows which was like 12 days before its release (May 19). With it being just 1PM regular show on a SUN, it wont over index on MTC1 like early PLF shows for big movies. Probably around 400k ish for early shows. $500k possible if early shows are everywhere (May 19). 4 days later. Almost no pace so far. SUN shows are near sellout and so limited growth. Previews are like 35% of Panda 4 and FRI is under 1/3rd. That said this will under index in MTC1 as Panda also did that. Still struggling to see this as a breakout. Looking at the current state, it looks like half of IF as well !!! Of course that had Reynolds and did not finish that great (May 17). Its definitely weaker than even Elemental. That said these movies tend to finish strong and so I am not writing it off so early. Just that the long PS window is irrelevant for them. They could start presales a week before release and it would be the same. Meh. Wait until next week to gauge where its going to finish. Has very low ATP as well and actual would be even lower as its going to see tons of kids tickets (May 14). Early shows are regular digital shows at 1PM this SUN. So ATP will be very low. I think 500k ish at best. Previews let us see how things go in the final week. Presales are almost non existent (May 13).)
  
• Rorschach (Comp: $0.86M THU $3.71M FRI. At this point, better hope for some big walk-up turnout (May 23). Bleh (May 21).)
  
• TheFlatLannister (Comp: $1.82M THU. Based on trend, I'll take under $1.8M for Thursday and think previews will be reported around $2M with EA (May 23). This is so bad. Sold 1/3 of what it did yesterday (May 22). oof steep drop today (May 21). Well, there's at least some sign of life (May 20). Pace is actually terrible (May 19). Not much movement at all in the past week. Probably heading to $2M+ (May 17).)
  
• TwoMisfits (Final sets for Garfield and Furiosa were the same at my PLF and reg theater - 3 screens (with 1 PLF each) at the PLF and 3 screens at the non-PLF. Plenty of room to do well this weekend if either can. PS - And they have acres of showings today. The new Cinemark 2024 policy seems to be the clear out Thursday nights for openers, so they have almost as many showings today as Friday (May 23).)
  
• vafrow (Comp: $0.7M THU. I did a quick count on Friday sales. While Thursday sales don't seem to have moved much from my morning count of 30, Friday sales are at 238. That's a pretty ridiculous ratio that we don't see often. There's maybe more potential here over the weekend. That's a weak finish for something with a really low baseline. Last week, at least IF saw a good final surge. This failed to match that pace (May 23). Good news is that it's not far off from IF which had strong enough walk ups to be decent. But it's still not great. 20.2% of Paw Patrol 2. Canada was the only market with previews. I had to take an estimate of the data as I captured a bigger radius. If Paw Patrol could do well in September, there's really no excuse here (May 22). Even with a slight jump, this is miles behind a decent total (May 21). EA sales aren't bad, but previews are still extremely slow. This is clearly going to be a family weekend type film, but I'm surprised we're not seeing anything for previews yet (May 19). Comps don't paint a pretty picture though. EA shows are doing okay (May 11). May holiday in Canada is weekend of May 17-20th, not the weekend after with Memorial Day. I can see families prioritizing getting out the holiday weekend when they have more time (May 4).)
  
• YM! (Garfield feels like about 1.5-2M with EA for previews. Thinking Garfield around 25m OW (May 23). T-6 hours is at 39 tickets sold for Thursday and 89 including EA, therefore Garfield is at 34.5% of IF without EA, with EA it’s at 78.7% at about the same point in time. Friday and Saturday looks weak so it’ll need good walkups. So yeah 1.8M-2M with EA is my guess (May 23). Amazing, Garfield sprinted from 35 tickets to a whopping 36 tickets. Still not that strong without EA but is at 75% of IF (T-6.5 hours until previews) and 34.4% of Wish’s North Shore+Menominee Total (T-30 minutes until previews) when you factor EA (26.3% of Wish, if we use the same theaters and include EA). Thinking about 1.5-2M Thursday previews including EA but am thinking 25m might be hit or miss with a good chance at O/U 20m (May 22). Finally moves tickets. Still not that strong without EA but at 75% of IF (T-6.5 hours until previews) and 34.4% of Wish’s North Shore+Menominee Total (T-30 minutes until previews) when you factor EA (26.3% of Wish, if we use the same theaters and include EA). Thinking 1.5-2.25m THU previews including EA but losing confidence in an OW above 30m (May 21). With EA, currently at 72 tickets (only 22 tickets are for THU). Not seeing any movement at any of the theaters, feels like it’s dead. Should get to a total similar to IF T-6 hours before opening but that’s mainly because of EA (May 20). Returns are common but apart from a decent EA showing, it feels really muted. Feels like with IF doing solid, it took some air out of Garfield. Thinking 1.8-2.25M THU previews range with EA. With less than twenty minutes to go, 50 tickets sold for EA. Thinking 500-600K for EA, so 2M previews total (May 18). Combined previews total for Garfield is 35 tickets with 23 tickets coming from EA, which is pretty solid. Still thinking 2-2.75m previews with EA as while not as widespread, the showings seem like they’re filling up nicely. Think it does about the same as IF though OW as due to the likely lower ATP and seemingly little screen space with no PLFs. Meh, kids animation doesn't really make much notion until the MON for release and Garfield seems indicative of that. Thinking the 1.5-2M THU previews range folks were spitting out makes sense. Nothing screams breakout though and the fact it's getting one screen, maybe two at most for previews makes me feel like OW might be similar to IF (May 17).)
  

Domestic Calendar Dates (last updated May 16):
MAY

• (May 23) Presales Start [Summer Camp]
  
• (May 23) THU Previews [Furiosa + Hit Man + Garfield + Sight]
  
• (May 26) Presales Start [Bikeriders]
  
• (May 27) Opening Day [MON: Spider-Man Far From Home Re-Release]
  
• (May 28) Presales Start [The Forge]
  
• (May 30) Presales Start [A Quiet Place: Day One]
  
• (May 30) THU Previews [Ezra + Haikyu!! + Summer Camp + Robot Dreams]
  

JUNE

• (June 3) Opening Day [MON: Spider-Man No Way Home Re-Release]
  
• (June 5) Presales Start [Despicable Me 4]
  
• (June 6) Presales Start [Twisters]
  
• (June 6) THU Previews [Bad Boys: Ride or Die + Watchers]
  
• (June 8) 1-SAT Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 9) 1-SUN Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 10) 1-MON Re-Release (1st day) [LotR: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 13) THU Previews [Inside Out 2]
  
• (June 15) 1-SAT Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition]
  
• (June 16) 1-SUN Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Two Towers Extended Edition]
  
• (June 17) 1-MON Re-Release (2nd day) [LotR: Return of the King Extended Edition]
  
• (June 20) THU Previews [Bikeriders + Janet Planet]
  
• (June 27) THU Previews [Blue Lock + Horizon: Chapter 1 + A Quiet Place: Day One]
  

JULY

• (July 1) Presales Start [Longlegs]
  
• (July 2) Opening Day [WED: Despicable Me 4]
  
• (July 4) Opening Day [THU: Possum Trot]
  
• (July 4) THU Previews [MaXXXine]
  
• (July 11) THU Previews [Fly Me to the Moon + Untitled New Line Horror movie]
  
• (July 17) EA [Twisters]
  
• (July 18) THU Previews [Twisters]
  
• (July 25) THU Previews [Deadpool and Wolverine (including 1 PLF fan show at 3 PM) + Didi + Fabulous Four]
  
• (July 29) Presales Start [Alien: Romulus]
  

AUGUST

• (August 1) THU Previews [Harold and the Purple Crayon]
  
• (August 8) THU Previews [Borderlands + It Ends With Us + Cuckoo + The Fire Inside + Trap]
  
• (August 15) THU Previews [Alien: Romulus + Horizon: Chapter 2 + Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure]
  
• (August 22) THU Previews [Blink Twice + The Crow + The Forge + Slingshot]
  
• (August 29) THU Previews [City of Dreams + Reagan + They Listen]
  

Presale Tracking Posts:
April 23
April 25
April 27
April 30
May 2
May 4
May 7
May 9
May 11
May 14
May 16
May 18
May 21
Note: I have removed most tracking data that has not been updated for 2 weeks. I think there is value in keeping data for a week or two but at a certain point they start to lose their value and should not be treated the same as more recent tracking data.

i was hoping somebody allready asked this or i would find something anywhere, but it seems not many care about this, but i really like the preview pictures on the right side when you scroll through the roms. it seems only the cards have them, that came bundled with the system. really would hope for some bundle full of media files :D.. sometimes the media is bigger then the rom, but thats ok for me =) any help would be great, thx

Who Am I?

Let’s start with who I am. I’m a software engineer in Columbus, Ohio. I got my start in programming in college back in 2007. Back then, I was exposed to three different programming languages: C for embedded systems, C++ for business processes, and Java for desktop/web apps. I began my IT career doing Ruby and Java development in 2012, added Angular development in 2014, and transitioned to full-stack JavaScript on AWS in 2016. Well...sort of. Even though I was doing full-stack JS at that time, I still had to support the Ruby and Java apps we created before.

That’s Great Boomer, but It Doesn’t Work Like That Today

You’re right. Let’s look at a typical person starting in software development in 2024. You’re a recent high school graduate excited to start your career in IT. You scour the job boards and see a ton of well-paying software engineering jobs, but which ones should you target, and what training do you need? You go onto YouTube, self-learn whatever the new hotness is, and think you’re set. Not quite.
In this day and age, the barrier to entry for programming jobs has never been lower. Gone are the days when you had to worry about state management, memory management, and deep knowledge of operating systems, networking, and TCP/UDP stacks just to get your foot in the door. What used to require a 4-year degree and a master's in system design has evolved into 6-week “boot camps.” You’re taught just enough to “make it work” and sent off to your first software engineering job.
Congratulations! You probably know something about MERN or MEAN. You’ve built a few simple web applications and are now thrust into the world of corporate software engineering. But what’s this? Java? Where did this come from?

Pets vs. Cattle

You’ve maybe heard this phrase before, but for those new to the industry, it boils down to this: pets you care for until they’re no longer able to continue living; cattle you care for until they’ve served their purpose and then you “delete” them. In programming, this translates to code that goes on to live for decades and code that serves a specific purpose that you throw away when your needs change. As much as we would like to write code as cattle, the truth is there’s little financial benefit in most industries to do that.

What is Your Company's Purpose?

While some companies compete on technical competency, most programmers end up in well-established companies whose primary business is in insurance, banking, wholesale, retail, hospitality, etc., not companies whose sole existence rests on their ability to provide the best technical solution. In such companies, it’s very hard to convince the decision-makers to update anything. They loathe the day their software architects say, “we need to stop working on your project for 2 weeks to do a framework version upgrade.” To them, that’s throwing money away because they don’t see any value in it. They will let defects and bugs exist in systems and just work around them if it means they can have you work on something else. This leads us back to something I’ve mentioned a few times now: Java.

Java, C#, and Legacy Software

Looking at the 2023 Stack Overflow developer survey, about 60% of professional developers use C# or Java. Realistically, the only things that beat these out are web development and Python (primarily for machine learning). Looking through job boards, this is a common theme, and most web jobs include either needing Java, C#, or Python skills in addition to web development. In this article, I’m going to speak specifically to Java because I know it best, but the same principles apply to C# and legacy software in general.

The History of Why Java is Everywhere

Java was written in the early 90s and widely adopted around the turn of the century. When many companies were looking for software solutions that weren’t tied to the mainframe and were more feature-complete than Bash, the options at the time were basically Java and C++. I realize there were other options, but let’s admit it, no one was going to write their software using OCaml. It really was a language ahead of its time, with a promise to “run anywhere,” including on websites, and without the complexities of writing C++ code. While it had its challenges, its requirement to define everything meant it was so structured that it reduced the risk of bugs, making Java the go-to language in the early 2000s.

Modern Day Java

There’s no way around it: from a developer experience standpoint, Java sucks. To be fair, the language has come a long way. At the time of writing, Java 22 is out, with a roadmap planned out to Java 26, including releasing Java 25 as a Long Term Support version in about 15 months. Java has incorporated many improvements from the community, and modern IDEs help automate much of its verbosity. So it sounds like Java is at least attempting to keep up with modern languages, right? So why does it feel so cumbersome?
Remember when companies adopted Java around the turn of the century? Fortunately for those companies, many of Java’s promises held true. The safety Java provided meant that core business functions could be written in it and often were. Now, 20+ years later, those businesses are still run by that same software. While Java 22 is the current version, Java 8 from 2014 still has to be supported because many companies cannot upgrade without breaking things, and they can pay Oracle to support it through 2030 and beyond.

So Why Is That So Challenging?

Well, software engineering practices have evolved. We’re better at defining and designing software, and our practices have updated because of it. We’re no longer writing abstraction for abstraction’s sake because the overly complex inheritance hierarchies of the early 2000s (like Creature -> Animal -> Amphibian -> Bipedal -> Primate -> Human -> Customer) made things unnecessarily hard to manage. What version of the “move” function are we using again? Where do I need to define “wave”? Guess I better make a “WithArms” abstraction and add it to the chain. But as we have evolved as an industry, we still have to support 20+ year-old software, which is why from a developer experience standpoint, Java sucks.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Unfortunately, this leaves us in a world of really cool things that we won’t really be able to use in our day-to-day job. If we look at the current landscape of things, everything works “well enough,” and there isn’t much incentive to change anything, and there’s usually more incentive not to adopt anything new.

New Languages

Newer languages like Go, Rust, and Zig likely won’t be coming to many companies anytime soon. While they are better technological evolutions of earlier languages, that means your development team needs to have more skills. I have problems hiring Angular + Node + Java developers, and as much as I would love to use the newer technologies to improve my own skills, hiring people who know Angular + Node + Java + Go + Rust would be nigh impossible. Not to mention those developers are $150K/year employees with 10+ years of experience, not $50K/year employees out of a boot camp.

New Frameworks

So okay, new languages are out of the question, but what about adopting new frameworks or technologies within those frameworks? SSR in Angular / React / Vue is beneficial, right? Well...yes, but it’s not quite that simple. If you’re using one of the big three in production today, chances are you have a build pipeline that builds your HTML/JS/CSS files, and you host them on an NGINX server or upload them to something like S3. So you have to convince your company to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars setting things up to be able to deploy, host, performance test, and scale a NodeJS application, and incur the recurring cost of additional processing power to render the applications server-side on every request. And the question is, for what benefit? To take ½ a second off load time and to have a preview thumbnail pop up when someone links your website on Facebook? If you’re in retail, maybe. Anywhere else? Probably not.

You Will Have to Support Legacy Code, and You’re Not Going to Like It

This brings us back to our good old enemy, legacy code. Unlike the days of COBOL when the industry wanted to get off proprietary mainframe computers, there really isn’t a need to rewrite things. Things generally work “good enough,” and a vast majority of us are just going to continue to build on top of what’s already built wherever we work. I’m not happy about it, and the only people I know who are happy about it are those just trying to cruise through to retirement, but from a business sense, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Thank you for your time. Learn OOP, read Clean Code, learn Java. Even though we agree there are better ways to do it, this is the world we all live in.

Just finished LIS 2 and it was a wild ride, laughing and crying. So there's what I got up to.
I explored more and tried to be a great big bro to Daniel. My favourite character hands down is Mushroom ( RIP). I did chose to be firm with Daniel but not mean. After going to the grandparent's house I set a good example by doing the chores and sketched Claire but Daniel wanted to be in the sketch ( which was adorable). Made friends with Chris and he told me how his dad gets angry when he drink, at first I was thinking child abuse but glad he didn't hit Chris. At the market I bought Daniel a polar bear toy and listened to Cassidy's song and met Finn ( I did prank that guy who yelled at them ), and I did end up calling Lyla both times in chapter one and two. Oh and forgot to mention, Daniel didn't beg ( felt wrong to ask him that ) and was kind to Brody ( didn't know if he'd help or not ). Ended seeing Arcadia Bay. In the end Chris was saved by Daniel and did talk to his dad about getting help.
My favourite was seeing Cassidy and her friends. Got to know all of them, Sean got his haircut and lost his virginity to Cassidy, was shocking to learn that Sean lost his eye, but in the hospital Joey did help me escape and run into Finn there and forgave him ( said the heist was everyone's idea). I made peace with Karen and got Daniel away from the cult and I did spare Lisbeth's life and gave Jake my cash for Sarah-Lee.
Now I'm at AWAY and screamed when I saw the cardboard from Chole's yard and them saw David. I was hurt to find out Joyce passed and realising that Warren and Kate probably died too but got to see a picture of Chole and Max in his trailer ( she looks better with green hair in my opinion ) and glad him and Chole are close. After listening in on his phone call with her too, not sure if her and Max started a romantic relationship by the sounds of it. ( Thank you to u/WanHohenheim for telling me there is in fact a Chole and Max cameo )
In the detention centre I feared Diego might get hurt if he yelled at the "vigilantes" so I stopped him. I did free the couple and the "vigilantes" ( was more like a " fuck you, you got saved by ME" type deal ). In the end I surrendered because I was scared if Daniel used his powers there was a possibility that the cops would shoot and kill Daniel, Sean, both would die or even if we fail the police would pin any dead cop deaths on us. Daniel lived a great life with our grandparents and even though Sean was in prison for 15 years, he sacrificed himself for his brother's happiness and well being and after I was released from prison I met Daniel, Karen and Lyla before Daniel and Sean went their separate ways, I'm hoping Sean goes to Colorado to track down Cassidy.
In the end it was a great game as usual and gonna start before the storm next. I know what your thinking but I was half way done with LIS 2 before I got before the storm free on PS plus ( just hoping it's the full game and not a preview 😂)
Thank you for reading and joining me on my LIS journey, wish me luck on my next play through❤️

Can someone explain to me how i should be filling this out? I’m married, we both work and have no children. I think allowance refers to dependents, so 0?

Apply Here
ChillZone is a newly releasing Semi-Vanilla server. We're dedicated to providing a great vanilla experience, with small additions that help enhance the multiplayer aspect. We value the community aspect greatly, on ChillZone all players have a say as to what goes on, what gets added, and so on.
We've existed as a community for around 4 years now, starting out with a similar server, inspired by Hermitcraft. This means we're experienced in creating and hosting a community, providing a great experience with great server performance & well developed features. However, we're always looking to add to our tight-knit, welcoming community and share :)
Quick Links

• 🌐 Website
• 🗺️ Dynmap
• 📷 Gallery
• 📊 Player Statistics

Our Values

Community - In ChillZone all players get a say in what happens, all suggestions and feedback are taken seriously. We're transparent with all decisions made, asking the community for their input and giving our reasoning for everything.
Welcoming - We're committed to creating a diverse environment where all players can feel welcomed, included and accepted. We welcome everyone, from people who are more interested in Redstone, Farming to Builders or people more focused on Community, such as setting up towns.
Stability - We use top of the line, dedicated hardware to ensure your experience is stable. The owner is an experienced sys admin, managing multiple nodes across the network.
Updates - We release frequent updates, keeping the experience fresh. We're also committed to updating to the latest version of Minecraft as soon as possible.

Some of Our Features

- We have a simple, user friendly claims plugin allowing you to easily claim & protect your land, and also provide access to your friends.
- Vanilla Tweaks, including Armor Stands, Mob Heads, Double Shulker Shells, etc.
- Discord Linking, you can talk to your friends ingame from our Discord server!
- Dynmap, allowing you to preview our whole world & some great builds from players.
- Player Shops, including a central shopping district. We do have an economy plugin, however our economy is based around the value of a diamond. The economy is completely player controlled.
- Friendly, experienced and helpful staff, who respect players and use their permissions fairly.

Our Rules

We try to be fairly relaxed, as we aim to build a mature community where staff don't need to parent players. However, obviously any exploiting, griefing, stealing & any sort of abuse to other players will not be accepted. We're a safe place for all, and anyone who doesn't share that interest won't be tolerated.

That was a lot of words, however to summarise we're a great community looking for some new members! We're committed to creating a great player experience, from frequent seasonal events, to our high performing dedicated server with great uptime. If we've hopefully captured your attention in this post - Apply Today! Our application process isn't very complex, we just have a couple simple questions to weed out any unserious players :)

Source: https://www.bungie.net/7/en/News/Article/twid-05-23-24
This Week in Destiny, we are showing the way. Only two more weeks until The Final Shape launches, and we still have plenty of news to share with you all. How about a preview of a new world system and a quality-of-life UI update? These topics and more, right below.

• We have a new ViDoc!
• Season of the Wish is closing—have you played the new mission?
• Be part of the Twitch Rivals World First race streams.
• Extra BRAVE weapons for all!
• Read our abilities and armor tuning articles.
• Find out how Pathfinder works.
• Updates to the Quests tab.
• Reminder about Legendary shards.
• The Pantheon’s last two gods are here.
• And so is our poster inspired by The Pantheon bosses.
• Check our new collab with SteelSeries.
• The Final Shape downtime notice. ##Confronting Oblivion in Our First ViDoc

Less than two weeks until The Final Shape is here, Guardians! We want to make the wait easier for you, so how about we share two amazing ViDocs with you all? In our first one, live this very morning, we talk about emotional scripts, the surreal landscapes we'll visit, and believe it or not, how you could learn the language used by the Dread if you really want to.
Video Link
The second ViDoc will be live tomorrow at 9 AM PT with more insights delivered directly by the Destiny 2 dev team.
Video Link

A Hunter Goes into The Traveler...

Remember when Crow crossed the portal that was opened as part of our bargain with Riven during the events of Season of the Wish? That really wasn't the end. On Tuesday, we launched Closer to the Heart, the mission that closes Year 6 of Destiny 2 and unlocks a mind-blowing cinematic that serves as a bridge between Season of the Wish and The Final Shape. So, let this serve as a reminder: go play it if you haven't already. Osiris will give you the mission if you visit the HELM.
And for those of you who have completed it, do you want to shed a tear again?
Video Link

Follow the World First Race on Twitch Rivals

The new raid coming with The Final Shape will take the fight to the Witness and prevent its calamitous plans to end the world as we know it. The stakes are at their highest, and fireteams across the globe will compete and test their might to be the first group that completes the raid to take home the coveted World First belt.
We wanted to celebrate such an occasion properly, so in partnership with Twitch Rivals, we'll have a World First race broadcast covering some of the streamers participating in the race, with commentary conducted by returning host Professor Broman and Reck1568.
If you are a creator looking to be part of the event, sign-ups begin today and will be open until June 3 at 5 PM PT. Registered and approved creators will be provided with the following exclusive Twitch Drops while the World First race is taking place:
Stand in Salvation Emblem: Watch at least 2 hours of any Destiny 2 streamer.

• Active between 9:30 AM PT on June 7 and 9:30 AM PT on June 9.

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Roots Remain Emblem: Watch at least 2 hours of Destiny 2 Twitch Rivals stream or any participating Twitch Rivals creator.

• Active between 9:30 AM PT on June 7 and 9:30 AM PT on June 9.

Image Link^imgur
Global Twitch Badge:

• Ghost Chat Badge: Watch 15 minutes of The Final Shape raid. ##Get Your Pretty Guns

Image Link^imgur
Earlier this week, we increased the drop rates for BRAVE weapons and Trophies of Bravery as well as increased the reputation gains with Shaxx. These increases will remain until Destiny 2: Into the Light ends on June 3.
We know you are swimming in loot now and we want to up the ante one more time before the limited-edition versions of the BRAVE weapons are no longer available. Starting on May 28 at 10 AM PT, we will be doubling the drop chance of limited-edition versions of BRAVE weapons. So that, combined with the increases we made to weapon and token drops, will give you a lot of opportunities to grab a few more pretty guns with pretty rolls.
Happy hunting, Guardians!

Abilities and Armor Tuning

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As we did last week with weapons, this week we had a two-part abilities and Exotic armor tuning preview for you all. The first part was published on Wednesday and focused on how Light and Darkness subclasses are changing. We went over a lot of impactful changes, like Stasis getting the new Frost Armor, Supressor grenades getting a buff, and some Supers getting an adjustment or two. You can read all about it here.
The second part was focused on armor tuning. Some Exotics will now have the Frost Armor as part of their set, while some oldies like Sixth Coyote and Ursa Furiosa learned some new tricks. And let's not forget about the option to include an Artifice slot on all Exotic pieces. You can find all the information here.
After you're done reading this TWID, we recommend you take some time to read those articles. They will help you jump into The Final Shape with the best possible understanding of how the sandbox will work.

Introducing Pathfinder

The World Systems Team has a very important update to share, one we have teased in the past. Let's talk about Pathfinder.

What is Pathfinder?

Pathfinder is a brand-new pursuit system we’re introducing in Destiny 2 that consolidates bounties, patrols, and weekly vendor challenges into one streamlined system you can access anytime, anywhere, via the Director. Different Pathfinders can be accessed from relevant screens of the Director by selecting the Pathfinder node or using a hotkey for quick and easy access to the system.
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When you open a Pathfinder, you will be presented with 20 objectives divided into 5 tiers, leading to every Guardians favorite thing: big shiny loot. To reach said loot you must complete objectives and claim them to form a path from the left-most tier to the right. While you can progress through all objectives on a Pathfinder without restriction, you will need to claim at least one objective in each tier before you can claim an objective in the following tier. Every time you claim an objective you will receive rewards, progressing your path towards the final reward and opening new potential paths. Building a path to the final reward allows you to claim it, and claiming the final reward opens a new opportunity: resetting your Pathfinder.
Resetting your Pathfinder costs Glimmer, but it will give you a new set of objectives to complete and a new final reward to pursue. These new cards are built using a mixture of authorial control and procedural generation, so once you start resetting, your cards will diverge from those of other Guardians. As long as you still have the Glimmer to do so, you can continue to reset Pathfinder cards after claiming final rewards as many times as you’d like each week, but the value of the final reward will diminish with resets of your card, to a point. However, with every weekly reset the value of final rewards will also reset, your objective progress will be lost, and every Guardian will start the week with the same, fresh card.

Where is Pathfinder?

The Final Shape will launch with two Pathfinders: one available to all Guardians that replaces the bounty systems and Weekly Challenges for our core ritual activities and one that you will unlock in The Pale Heart as part of the expansion’s campaign.
The Rituals Pathfinder provides you with a set of objectives that span all our ritual activities: Vanguard Strikes, Nightfalls, Onslaught, Gambit, and Crucible. Some of these objectives can be completed in any of these activities, while others will require you to dive into a specific ritual or mode. An update later in the year of The Final Shape will make it even easier to get to these ritual screens while you are in their activities as well as make it easier to access the Rituals Pathfinder.
While we don’t want to reveal too much about the new destination, you can expect the kinds of objectives on The Pale Heart Pathfinder to roughly align with what you’d expect to see from destination bounties, with the addition of some new location-based objectives called Field Assignments. When Field Assignments are featured on your Pathfinder, you can expect to see them marked directly on the destination map, where you can track them to take advantage of our waypoint system to help navigate to their location.

Why is Pathfinder?

When we set out to build Pathfinder, we had four core goals. The first goal was consolidation. Destiny 2 is an enormous game that has evolved constantly over the last decade. Many pursuit systems have been added to the game over time, and these systems are accessed in a myriad of different ways that make it difficult for Guardians—experienced or not—to understand what they can be doing at any given point in time. We set out to build one system that has the capability of aligning all of these into one cohesive UI you can always access from wherever you are.
Our second goal was to give players more agency. Bounty systems in Destiny 2 typically let Guardians pick from a handful of fixed bounties that reset each day and provide repeatable bounties for those who wish to further engage with the system. These limited choices result in a system that feels prescriptive about how you should play, instead of putting you in control. We want Guardians to feel ownership over their engagement with these systems, with the ability to chart a course that matches the goals of their play session.
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With that in mind, our third goal was making decisions matter a bit more. Our existing pursuit systems consist largely of disconnected, individual objectives that have no effect on each other. In many cases, a Guardian’s decisions regarding these objectives are limited to doing (or not doing) a particular objective or spending Glimmer to reroll repeatable bounties they don’t like. Pathfinder’s path-based system incentivizes Guardians to complete objectives that may otherwise be out of their comfort zone to achieve a more direct path to their final reward. It also allows Guardians to forge a more elongated path around objectives that don’t call out to them. As their options diminish closer to the final reward, Guardians will be challenged to engage with a particular activity, mode, or playstyle to acquire more rewards.
And finally, our fourth goal was to reduce barriers because, let’s face it, much of our time as Guardians is spent zipping between destinations to prepare to play the game. Flying to the Tower, flying to the H.E.L.M., flying to Europa... it all takes time that we could be spending fending off the Witness and thwarting its universe-threatening plan to enact The Final Shape. With Pathfinder, you already have your objectives, and they’re always progressing as you play, whether they are locked or unlocked. There's no need to visit a vendor or use the Destiny app to grab bounties, no need to balance your inventory of quests and bounties, and no need to travel to vendors to claim your reward for a Weekly Challenge.

About Destination Pathfinder

The rewards are designed to encourage completing many paths over many objectives in each Pathfinder. If you want to maximize your weekly rewards, your best bet is to plan your optimal path!

Rewards

Objective Reward		* 25 Vendor Reputation * 4000 XP
Path Completion Reward	1st Path	* [Redacted] Exotic * Powerful Tier 3 engram (The Pale Heart gear) * 1 Rank of vendor reputation * 25,000 XP
Path Completion Reward	2nd Path	* [Redacted] Exotic * The Pale Heart engram (Focusable) * 375 vendor reputation * 25,000 XP
Path Completion Rewards (1 through 3)	3rd Path	* The Pale Heart engram (Focusable) * 375 vendor reputation * 25,000 XP
Path Completion Rewards (1 through 3)	Repeatable	* World Legendary engram * 150 Vendor Reputation * 4000 XP

Objectives

Category
Description
Example Objectives

Calibrations
Field Assignments
Ventures

About Rituals Pathfinder

Now let's talk about ritual activities. Crucible, Gambit, and Vanguard vendor bounties will be replaced by a unified Rituals Pathfinder. A single instance of Pathfinder will contain objectives specific to each ritual activity as well as generic objectives that can be completed in any of the three ritual activities.
Additionally, on weeks when there is an active reputation booster, the first three instances of Pathfinder will contain more objectives associated that ritual activity. So, if the Crucible reputation booster is active, Pathfinder will contain more Crucible-specific objectives until after the third reset.
Completing an objective node awards experience, like individual bounty completion. Completing a path is designed to be akin to completing a weekly vendor bounty challenge. i.e., completion rewards include Prime Engrams, Bright Dust, and experience.
However, where vendor challenges are limited to three per week per character, Pathfinder progress is shared across all characters and is infinitely repeatable. Due to these differences, the reward amounts have been redistributed accordingly.

First Three Completions:

• Prime Engram
• Enhancement Prism
• 150 Bright Dust
• 25000 XP
  

  Next Seven Completions:

• Enhancement Prism
  
• 150 Bright Dust
  
• 4000 XP
  

  Subsequent Completions:

• Enhancement Core
  
• 30 Bright Dust
  
• 4000 XP
  

We hope you now have a better understanding of what Pathfinder is and how it will change how you play ritual activities and explore the new destination. We can't wait for you all to experience it in just a few days! And as always, feel free to give us your feedback when you have tried it.

Updating the Quests Tab

We have already shed some light on the UI and UX changes coming with The Final Shape, particularly how the on-screen information channels have been updated to show buffs, debuffs, and weapon perks in a more organized way. Let's talk about some other quality-of-life updates we have introduced in the Quests tab.
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Starting on June 4, players will be able to set any quest category on the left column as the default when you enter the Quests tab. At the same time, all milestones will now show up on the Quests tab, although they will not count against the total amount of quests and bounties that a player can hold in their inventory and will still be able to hold up to 63 in total.
For players who want to keep everything more organized, we have also updated the Quests tab so that tracking quests in individual categories will now bring them to the front of the sort order in the Quests tab. And last but not least, if you hover over a quest in the Quests tab, it will let you know when you can launch it directly from the details screen, so now it's more straightforward to get from checking it to playing it.
These changes to the Quests tab are not the only quality-of-life changes we've made to our menus. We have also integrated reputation boosts into the ritual activities nodes at the top of the Director screen, so when those are active throughout an Episode , players will get that information at a glance.
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And speaking of ritual activities, we have also redesigned the Private Match screen for both Crucible and Gambit, to allow for greater ease of use and more customizable options that will give players some rewards. We hope you like them!

Use Your Legendary Shards!

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Remember when we told you Legendary Shards would go away for good at the end of Season of the Wish? Guess what... that's less than two weeks away. It's time to put those shards to good use because you won't be able to use them once The Final Shape has launched. Our recommendations? Buy raid banners for a lifetime or exchange them for some resources at Rahool's—but please use them before it's too late.

The Final Pantheon Bosses Are Here

This week, we released the final bosses in The Pantheon. We started with four of our greatest enemies, and this week we have to face an eight. It's nothing Guardians can't achieve, of course. We have some intel to share to facilitate your task. Read carefully.
DEFENDERS OF THE CITY,
You are tasked with the elimination of the following two targets:

- Riven of a Thousand Voices -

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Classification

• Ahamkara, aka “wish dragon”
• Summoned Spirit, temporarily
• Reef-born, in captivity
• Blood of Oryx and Taken, temporarily
  

  Hazards

• Reality manipulation: paracausal wishes, metaphysical bleeds, and Ascendant atrophy
  
• Highly intelligent, constantly attempting to entrap prey
  
• Blistering Soulfire
  
• Tentacle quakes
  
• Axion Dart
  
• Corrosion in close proximity
  
• Riven’s Gaze
  

  Intel

• Riven is an Ahamkara, known colloquially as “wish dragons.” She wasoriginally believed to be the last living Ahamkara until a clutch of her eggs was discovered within the Confluence of the Dreaming City. Ahamkara feed off the gulf between reality and desire by granting wishes to unsuspecting prey. Then they twist those wishes into devious schemes to satiate their hunger and boredom alike.
  
• Long ago, Ahamkara were hunted to near extinction by the Vanguard during the Great Hunt.
  
• Once the Dreaming City opened, Guardians stormed it to chase down Uldren Sov and assaulted the Keep of Voices to slay Riven. But they themselves caught within her schemes. By inadvertently wishing to save the Dreaming City, the heroic fireteam found themselves executing Riven’s Last Wish and pulling the Dreaming City into a cursed cycle of Taken corruption that remains to this day.
  
• Years after her death, Riven was reconstituted in spiritual form by the Awoken Techeuns of Reef in a bid to use her wish magic to follow the Witness into the Traveler and stop The Final Shape. In return, Riven struck a bargain with the Guardians to find and return the hidden eggs that held her progeny. Both parties held to their word, leading to a renewed future for the Ahamkara and one final opportunity to strike at the Witness.
  

  Of Note

• It is speculated by Cryptarchy scholars of the Reef that the Wall of Wishes Mara Sov constructed to protect the Dreaming City from Riven’s harmful schemes still retains unknown sequences. If so, the Queen has locked these behind her own personal ciphers.
  
• It was recently learned that Riven had a mate, named Taranis, who was responsible for cloistering away her last clutch of eggs to protect them. Taranis did this by granting his own wish. In the process, he sacrificed his own life to ensure the continuation of his progeny and the safety of his love’s last remnants.
  
• Riven was found by Uldren Sov (reborn as Crow) and brought to his sister, Mara Sov, Queen of the Reef. They used Riven’s power to construct the Dreaming City, a hidden bastion of Awoken power in the Reef. Many years passed, during which the Dreaming City was breached by Oryx, Riven became Taken, and the Dreaming City was opened to Guardians due to the actions of the maddened Uldren Sov.
  

- Nezarec, Final God of Pain -

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CLASSIFICATION

• Disciple of the Witness
• Dread
• Prime Tormentor
• Resonant
• Unknown origin species
• Other names: (The) Purest Light, Darkest Hour, Whispering Nightmare
  

  HAZARDS

• Induced nightmares and haunts
  
• Tormentor Plating
  
• Nightmare scythe
  
• Nezarec’s Hatred
  
• Overwhelming Energy
  
• Null Paroxysm
  
• Suppression
  
• Abyssal Cleave
  
• Psionic Entropy
  

  INTEL

• Created from Rhulk’s blueprint, Nezarec was the first Tormentor from which all others owe their lineage. Nezarec relishes in sowing fear and pain, feeding off the terror of sentient beings. He can induce nightmares across entire worlds.
  
• Nezarec—in possession of the Veil—lead the Black Fleet as it assaulted Earth during the Collapse but was betrayed and killed by Savathûn. She separated, cursed, and entombed his Lunar Pyramid within the Moon and stole away the Veil. Guardians uncovered the Lunar Pyramid when the Vanguard mobilized to assault the Scarlet Keep, and they uncovered the Veil when they made contact with Neomuna on Neptune.
  
• For centuries, Nezarec remained buried. Then his disembodied head, held aboard the Witness’s Pyramid, was struck by a terraforming beam fired by the Traveler. It revitalized him as it reshaped the Pyramid, where an undaunted fireteam cut him down once more.
  
• Much that is known about Nezarec is derived from anecdotal experiences, engaged fireteam raids, and a tome recovered from the Golden Age that was entitled "Of Hated Nezarec.”
  

  OF NOTE

• An old Psion Exotic relic known colloquially as “Nezarec’s Sin” has long found its home among Warlock operatives. The helmet has known many owners throughout the years, all of whom have perished under mysterious circumstances, been rendered comatose, or have since relinquished their possession of the helm to another owner. This helm is currently believed to be in possession of the Guardian, [NAME REDACTED], a hero of few words.
  
• Mithrax, Kell of House Light, is currently afflicted with Nezarec’s curse despite Nezarec being destroyed. This occurred when the Kell led an effort to recover Nezarec’s scattered remains. He wants todistill Nexarec's essence into a mentally revivifying elixir while siphoning the corruptive elements into himself. Attempts to dispel or cure this curse are ongoing. CHA-319 was assigned to monitor it and report back any changes.
  
• Legends from the Dark Age speak of Lightbearers and non-bearers alike suffering night terrors when the Moon is at perigee. The legends detail rituals with the nearly extinct Earth-plant lavender, long thought to hold protective, calming, and cleansing properties. Furthermore, there are later legends detailing victims of these night terrors smelling lavender after waking, as if the nightmare mocked their attempts at protection. This led to a subsequent switch to a myriad of other panaceas.
  

Eight Gods in One Amazing Poster

We have prepared something very special to celebrate the glorious reveal of the last bosses of The Pantheon. We partnered with Gabriel Flauzino—an amazing Brazilian artist whose work around raid bosses you probably are already familiar with—to create an amazing piece of art featuring the eight enemies you were asked to defeat.
Behold, The Pantheon in all its glory.
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://images.contentstack.io/v3/assets/blte410e3b15535c144/bltb6b816c790b081fc/664ee7e655b397d7e66069bb/Pantheon_art_-_Raid_logo.jpg)}
And that's not all. We also collaborated with our wonderful friends at Displate to make this into a metal poster, so you can display this incredible piece of art on your wall. Starting tomorrow, May 24, Displate will have The Pantheon poster available at their store, including a format with their new 3D-enhanced Textra finish.
The Destiny 2 community is filled with incredibly talented artists, and we love partnering with them, so if you want to know more about Gabriel and his work on The Pantheon poster, we'll have a Community Focus with him next week.

Your Favorite Killer Robot

So, did you have a nice time with TR3-VR, the overzealous robotic vacuum cleaner? We asked the community to share some of their favorite TR3-VR moments now that the Zero Hour Exotic mission is available and, oh, our dear Guardians, did you deliver. Your screams submissions really made our day.
Lego TR3-VR is coming for you.
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://twitter.com/NIGHTFURY_21/status/1789996276869673304)}
Wellskating is not allowed in The Last City.
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://twitter.com/Jeddi__/status/1790926898932896110 )}
What's this, TR3VR running away? Impossible.
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://twitter.com/PobrelokoPSN/status/1788959664576589908 )}
With friends like these...
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://www.reddit.com/destiny2/comments/1cwfr3c/tr3vr_is_my_friend_but_is_it/)}
Almost!
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://x.com/iamjonaaa_/status/1792133627024732227 )}
No room for everyone.
[
Image Link^{imgur](https://www.reddit.com/destiny2/comments/1cuqowl/we_love_trevor )}

Our Latest Collaboration Is Here!

Destiny 2 and SteelSeries are back with a new collection of limited-edition gaming accessories inspired by the themes of Light and Darkness within The Final Shape.
We have five different accessories this time: the Arctis Nova 7 Wireless Headset, the Nova Booster Pack, the QcK Heavy XXL Mousepad, a Ghost-themed SteelSeries Artisan Keycap, and the KontrolFreek Performance Thumbsticks.
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Customers who purchase the collection will receive exclusive in-game cosmetics for Destiny 2, such as the Viral Celebration emote and the Gear Head emblem. The Destiny 2: The Final Shape x SteelSeries collection is available at SteelSeries.com, KontrolFreek.com, and BungieStore.com.

The Final Shape 24-Hour Downtime

Just before The Final Shape launches, Destiny 2 will be brought offline for 24 hours starting at 9 AM PST on June 3, 2024. (Check your local time here.) Players will be reminded of the downtime in the game and via our social media channels before it begins, and all players will be able to pre-download The Final Shape during this time, no matter what platform. Be advised that it will be a large file to download and install.
When the game is brought back online and The Final Shape has launched, we expect there will be sign-in queues during the first hours and during peak play times at different places in the world. Keep an eye on @BungieHelp and @Destiny2Team for more information. And don't forget to do everything you need to do before Season of the Wish closes on June 3!

Player Support Report

We’ve had one Rhulk, yes. What about a second Rhulk?
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Known Issues List Help Forums Bungie Help Twitter

PONY Error Codes

We've been investigating an issue where players can receive invites that result in a PONY error code.
While we work on a permanent fix, we recommend turning off Friend and Clan requests in your Settings under the Social area and setting Fireteam Invites to Friends Only (or whatever you prefer).
We're working to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Claim Your Seasonal Rewards

Season of the Wish and Into the Light end soon. Make sure to claim any expiring rewards before they’re gone, including:

• Seasonal Seals and rewards
• Season Pass items
• Season vendor rewards
• Shaxx, Zavala, Drifter, and Saint-14 rewards
• Banshee-44 reputation items
• Bungie Rewards ###Destiny Content Vault Updates

With the start of Year 7 in Destiny 2 on June 4, 2024, certain items will be deprecated from player inventories that correspond with vaulted activities and Seasonal campaigns. They will be moved into the Destiny Content Vault.
We have updated the Destiny Content Vault article to reflect these changes. We've also created a new article fully outlining Items Being Deprecated at the Start of Year 7 for players to reference.

Known Issues

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• Capturing a zone in the Collision PvP game mode while having full Super energy will slightly reduce Super energy.
• Tormentors can push turrets away in Onslaught with their slam or grab attacks.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, review our Known Issues article. If you observe other issues, please report them to our #Help forum.

Tormator, Imprint of Gazpacho

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It's a Tormentor. But it's also a tomato. It's a Tormator. That's it. That's all we need.
Tormator, by Hannako. Via X/Twitter
Image Link^imgur

Army of One

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Watching someone complete a six-man activity all alone is hypnotic. Congratulations to Dabs for conquering Atraks Sovereign (Week 1 of The Pantheon) all by himself.
Video Link
Remember to include your BungieIDs in your #Destiny2AOTW and #Destiny2MOTW submissions so we can more easily grant the corresponding emblem!
And we are done here. There's only 12 more days until The Final Shape is here, so be sure you have everything you need to be ready. Check that you have the weapons patterns you want (remember: you can get one red border weapon per day), go complete a few more runs of Onslaught, and take on the challenge of The Pantheon with your friends for glory (and for that Godslayer title, of course).
You can do it all, Guardian! We have faith in you!:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/295668493_418356233610412_1346361379093055660_n-2000-fffca2f9314e48e0a6b956d3e95c47f5.jpg)

Destiny 2 Community Team

Just finished LIS 2 and it was a wild ride, laughing and crying. So there's what I got up to.
I explored more and tried to be a great big bro to Daniel. My favourite character hands down is Mushroom ( RIP). I did chose to be firm with Daniel but not mean. After going to the grandparent's house I set a good example by doing the chores and sketched Claire but Daniel wanted to be in the sketch ( which was adorable). Made friends with Chris and he told me how his dad gets angry when he drink, at first I was thinking child abuse but glad he didn't hit Chris. At the market I bought Daniel a polar bear toy and listened to Cassidy's song and met Finn ( I did prank that guy who yelled at them ), and I did end up calling Lyla both times in chapter one and two. Oh and forgot to mention, Daniel didn't beg ( felt wrong to ask him that ) and was kind to Brody ( didn't know if he'd help or not ). Ended seeing Arcadia Bay. In the end Chris was saved by Daniel and did talk to his dad about getting help.
My favourite was seeing Cassidy and her friends. Got to know all of them, Sean got his haircut and lost his virginity to Cassidy, was shocking to learn that Sean lost his eye, but in the hospital Joey did help me escape and run into Finn there and forgave him ( said the heist was everyone's idea). I made peace with Karen and got Daniel away from the cult and I did spare Lisbeth's life and gave Jake my cash for Sarah-Lee.
Now I'm at AWAY and screamed when I saw the cardboard from Chole's yard and them saw David. I was hurt to find out Joyce passed and realising that Warren and Kate probably died too but got to see a picture of Chole and Max in his trailer ( she looks better with green hair in my opinion ) and glad him and Chole are close. After listening in on his phone call with her too, not sure if her and Max started a romantic relationship by the sounds of it. ( Thank you to u/WanHohenheim for telling me there is in fact a Chole and Max cameo )
In the detention centre I feared Diego might get hurt is he yelled at the "vigilantes" so I stopped him. I did free the couple and the "vigilantes" ( was more like a " fuck you, you got saved by ME" type deal ). In the end I surrendered because I was scared if Daniel used his powers there was a possibily that the cops would shoot and kill Daniel, Sean or even if we fail they pin those deaths on us. Daniel lived a great life with our grandparents and after I was released from prison I met Daniel, Karen and Lyla before Daniel and Sean went their separate ways, I'm hoping Sean goes to Colorado to track down Cassidy.
In the end it was a great game as usual and gonna start before the storm next. I know what your thinking but I was half way done with LIS 2 before I got before the storm free on PS plus ( just hoping it's the full game and not a preview 😂)
Thank you for reading and joining me on my LIS journey, wish me luck on my next play through❤️

You have to make a copy of the spreadsheet to work with it.

Overview

I made a Google sheet tool for Prismatic Build Planning before this stuff is added to the game. Buildcrafting is fun and with the tight time between launch and raid race this might help. I've also evaluated existing exotics for how compatible they are with Prismatic and created some builds that look solid. Today I am adding updates for the Ability Update article and the Exotic Article.

Prismatic Build Planner

Prismatic is quite cool and has a lot of opportunities for buildcrafting. If you are like me you might be impatient and want to get started now. I published this about a week ago but have made a lot of updates since.
Here is the google sheet Prismatic Build Planner to plan out your subclasses: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zKOc0WErE0jfoMwtxraPTqXEWfiOHkQP3popHPbIrw0/edit?usp=sharing

• You have to make a copy of this spreadsheet to make changes to subclass selections. Go to File > Make a Copy
• You may get an error about accessing external sites; these are the ability pictures that pull straight from Bungie's site.
• Go to the tab of your class.
• Pick all your options using the dropdowns. Subclass verbs provided by your abilities, aspects and fragments will autofill and be color coded to match the relevant element.
• I have left 6 fragment slots. Some may end up with 4 fragments depending on Aspect fragment slots. 6 is possible but I think it'll be rare.
• You can select your exotic. If you select Exotic Class Item it will undarken the following rows so you can select your two class perks.
• If you need a quick reference of fragment descriptions go to the Facets tab.
• If you want to plan multiple Builds per class, create copies of the class tab. If you are careful you can copy the rows of the build planner and paste it in the next row below.

Exotic Armor Compatibility

On the exotic tab in the spreadsheet I have taken a stab at trying to estimate what exotic armors are compatible with Prismatic. I have broken these into 4 categories which are color-coded:

• Yes: This is obviously compatible.
• Maybe: This is almost compatible but the current exotic requires you to be on a specific subclass. If these requirements are softened, then it will work. Very few are left in this category but there are still many not touched in the exotic article. Today's article was vague on compatibility of a lot of exotics. Most that require a subclass should require a specific element super.
• Neutral: these do stuff that don't touch subclasses much or at all. Usually generic weapon buffs or neutral benefits.
• None: Either the ability is not relevant to Prismatic or it cannot work with Prismatic currently.

I also list verbs from the exotics updated with the most articles. For more detailed perk descriptions consult the Destiny Data Compendium here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1WaxvbLx7UoSZaBqdFr1u32F2uWVLo-CJunJB4nlGUE4/edit?usp=sharing

Exotic Class Items (only available after Raid World First)

Also in the exotic tab I have entered in all the exotic class item perks. These are taken straight from the 5/9 TWID. I have also included verbs that these exotic perks will provide. Hopefully this table helps you think up builds.
I included some combos I will be searching for. Hopefully it gives you ideas but feel free to change them in your copy. Here is an album of my Exotic Class Item Perk Combo Wishlist as well. If you have other combos you think are spicy, let me know.
https://imgur.com/a/nbBHfQL

Prismatic Builds

I have created 5 or so builds for each class that I think should be decently strong. I am currently only working with existing exotic armor that look to be fully compatible. Exotic class items are a big unknown still.
Here is an album of My Prismatic Builds as images if the spreadsheet doesn't work for you. https://imgur.com/a/Ke38FUI
In each character builder tab you will also find these builds. Hit the + sign to the left of the label to expand it. I have tried to pick fragments but we only have 12 out of 21 known and we don't know any number values so it is hard to know the value.
Let me know if you have comments or questions or cool build ideas. I like tinkering with tools like this and with buildcrafting so any feedback is cool.
As we are less than 2 weeks from launch and seem to know everything we will know, this is likely the last update! I think the only bit I may add are fragments if we learn those soon. Thanks for all the feedback and cool build ideas. Hope you have fun in The Final Shape.

AE stopped playing my previews at full resolution today. Even when I am just trying to watch footage with no effects on it or or anything, it's playing at 1/4 quality. This is happening across all my projects.
The paused resolution works fine, it's only the playback. (Yes, they're both set to full, I promise.)
I have cleared all my caches multiple times, freed up a ton of space on my hard drive, restarted my computer, updated it....I have no idea what's going on.
When I start in safe mode, it works fine! And even importing an older project into safe mode, it still works fine. I've tried turning off all my effects & plugin's but unless I'm in safe mode, it doesn't help
Does anyone have any insight?
SOLVED (KINDA): I reset my preferences & that fixed the issue! But I still don't know which preference setting was causing the issue