i think these devs are just more interested in making singleplayer

[chaotik0]

what the flyin fish man.... (no swears in this post despite extreme disappointment)

(just scroll down to final paragraph if you don't want the massive amount of explaining, but i have also bolded and underlined general main points)
real talk, what are these devs doing??
every season they add less and less kits, and those few kits getting worse and worse in quality. the balance changes have also been getting worse and worse. on top of that, the map reworks have been pretty mid, mahi only got slightly better (at least zones became playable) and mincemeat had comically few changes. we have also been getting fewer and fewer new and returning gear. are there only like 5 people in the multiplayer dev team? and 1 of them doesn't work on the game their entire job is messing up the twitter posts. and we are probably getting only 1 stage this season.

but also think about this:
splatoon 3's story mode has been the best main story mode in the series, and side order looks like it's going to be as good as octo expansion. why do these developers even make a multiplayer game if they are so much better at, and given that everything about the game is getting worse in both quantity and quality, probably more interested in making singleplayer experiences.

this game has always been mid, you can't deny that. terrible stages, terrible online (that we have to pay for), so many weapons being cursed with no attention in the balance changes, balance changes that do nothing, or a terrible kit that they have to wait over a year for just to get another terrible kit. we only kept continue playing it because we just wanted to see this game get better and better but exactly the opposite has happened. I only kept playing this game because of how fun stamper is to play.

with the potential this series has, splatoon 3 has wasted it. this entire game is wasted potential. they added so many things that we all got excited for in the beginning, like new movement, squid rolling and surging, returning maps getting reworked, returning specials that got reworked to be more healthy for the game, and new specials that are extremely interesting, and a new splatfest mode. but all of that got wasted.
squid rolling barely blocks anything and is not a fast movement tool, squid surge also barely blocks anything and it makes you extremely vulnerable because you are falling in a very predictable way and have bad air accuracy. all of the splatoon 1 stages that came back have only received negative changes, most of them being the worst stages in the game. even returning splat 2 stages also got some negative changes.and the new splatfest mode has had massive debate every single time there has been a splatfest, whether it's because of so many mirror matches or the mode just sucking on that particular stage, and the fact that it is only active for half the fest. as for specials: returning specials that got reworked: trizooka: everybody complains how annoying it is. bubble: it sucks. wave breaker: it sucks. tri strikes: very mid. reefslider: its terrible besides zones cheese which is not good for the game. the best changes we have had to specials is missiles, they finally learned how they should work, and are finally not broken or that annoying. ultra stamp: barely works so they just buffed it to have a stupid hitbox. kraken: sucks besides kraken cheese which single handedly ruined clam blitz. triple splashdown: oh hey they actually didn't do a bad job with this one!... oh wait its like the 13th special in the game that they don't have a lot of kits left to add and every kit with it was anticipated to have a better special, if it wasn't absolutely ruined by it (explo) and there was already a spashdown rework in this game. new specials: ink vac: wow this special looks so col oh wait it sucks. crab tank: this special also looks so cool oh wait it was way too broken on these terrible maps and it took extremely long for anything to change. zipcaster: also a really cool special, but it is a bit undertuned and only works well with a few weapons, and those weapons got terrible kits with it (slosher + tetra). tacticooler: this is the only one they did right, excepth for the fact that they don't know how to balance this game so the best weapon with it dominates every single other one that could have taken the same role.

to sum it up because that was a lot of explaining, only read that part if you want to know specifics of what im talking about.
so yeah this game has been pretty mid so far already, we wanted to see it succeed but all these devs do is make this game worse and worse. there has been so much wasted potential with what we were shown in the beginning and with how cool this series is. i am honestly glad that we wont be getting any more content after the final season, because maybe that will give these devs an opportunity to get their act together and learn how to actually make a multiplayer game ("well why don't you do it, hot shot?". yeah i can smell you thinking that from here. get back to me in a year). they need to get a new team just for multiplayer, since this whole game has been a mess besides the singleplayer stuff, they need to get people who not only know how to make a multiplayer game, but actually want to. the people we were stuck with this game really seem like they do. sure, there were some good changes, like having an actual lobby to wait in, a new game mode tableturf, lockers, bigger and cooler city. that's al i could think of that were changed that didn't have their potential for greatness ruined. if splatoon 4 comes out in like a year and a half from now this series is dead. it needs a lot of time for things to be fixed. and when it does come out, if it doesn'y show that anything has changed from splat 3 philosophy wise, it will not be worth buying.

this game is just sad, man.

 

[Kephonia]

yeah, to be honest, you're right. the game's multiplayer updates have started to slowly decline, especially with the new update only adding three new weapons and ONE map (with previous updates having one new, and one reused from my understanding). it's not looking good

 

[missingno]

I don't think this is a fair assessment at all. I'm looking forward to Side Order as much as the next person, but the single-player content really hasn't been special enough to say it outweighs the multiplayer that is clearly the heart and soul of Splatoon.

Yes, they dropped a few bad kits this season, but that is not nearly significant enough of a nitpick to be this doom and gloom. Splatoon is still an amazingly brilliant and innovative multiplayer game, and the things it does right far outweigh a handful of nitpicks.

When it comes to balance, no competitive game has ever had 100+ perfectly balanced weapons/characters/whatever. It's just an inevitability that when you put that many options in the game, some of them are going to be stronger than others. If you look at what is viable rather than what isn't, S3 has a pretty healthy variety of options right now. Yeah, Tacticooler is still a mess and Pencil needs to die, but besides that it's doing a lot right, especially compared to S1 and S2.

Maps have been getting notably better as of late. Shipshape was excellent and Robo ROM-en is one of the absolute best. If this trend continues, I will happily give credit where credit is due.

Squid Rolls are in the perfect spot, and it almost sounds like you're just complaining that they aren't broken. No, they aren't the fastest way to move and no they don't make you entirely invincible, but that's how they should be. They give you a way to move while defending, and that's quite strong without needing to be overtuned. When they were first shown, I remember a lot of concern that we'd lose sub-strafing, but not only was sub-strafing kept, both techniques retained distinct use cases so that neither one obsoletes the other. Excellent design.

Surges are honestly whatever. They're a situational way to get up a partially inked wall. I don't think they need to be more important, and I don't know what you would expect out of them that would make them so.

 

[chaotik0]

I don't think this is a fair assessment at all. I'm looking forward to Side Order as much as the next person, but the single-player content really hasn't been special enough to say it outweighs the multiplayer that is clearly the heart and soul of Splatoon.

Yes, they dropped a few bad kits this season, but that is not nearly significant enough of a nitpick to be this doom and gloom. Splatoon is still an amazingly brilliant and innovative multiplayer game, and the things it does right far outweigh a handful of nitpicks.

When it comes to balance, no competitive game has ever had 100+ perfectly balanced weapons/characters/whatever. It's just an inevitability that when you put that many options in the game, some of them are going to be stronger than others. If you look at what is viable rather than what isn't, S3 has a pretty healthy variety of options right now. Yeah, Tacticooler is still a mess and Pencil needs to die, but besides that it's doing a lot right, especially compared to S1 and S2.

Maps have been getting notably better as of late. Shipshape was excellent and Robo ROM-en is one of the absolute best. If this trend continues, I will happily give credit where credit is due.

Squid Rolls are in the perfect spot, and it almost sounds like you're just complaining that they aren't broken. No, they aren't the fastest way to move and no they don't make you entirely invincible, but that's how they should be. They give you a way to move while defending, and that's quite strong without needing to be overtuned. When they were first shown, I remember a lot of concern that we'd lose sub-strafing, but not only was sub-strafing kept, both techniques retained distinct use cases so that neither one obsoletes the other. Excellent design.

Surges are honestly whatever. They're a situational way to get up a partially inked wall. I don't think they need to be more important, and I don't know what you would expect out of them that would make them so.

it's not just this season it has been happening throughout the entire lifespan of the game. and yes, it is difficult to balance a game that has a lot of options, but these people barely try. that's why i said it feel like they only left a few people for multiplayer stuff, the changes only change a few things and the changes are rarely ever significant. it feels like a small indie team new to making multiplayer games, not a team that has made 2 other games in the series and have been doing this for a decade.

yes, the new maps that they add are getting better, like yeah crableg and robo-ramen are genuinely good stages, even compared to past games (shipshape is good on zones and tower but not clams or rainmaker imo). but the rest of these maps are significantly worse than every single other stage in the entire series, even out of the 2 reworks, only mahi was decent. even past maps like moray towers, and that one where everybody could take the funny crane to stall rainmaker on in splat 1 all had very unique identities. even kelp dome did despite how absolutely horrendous that stage was. and all the returning stages that were added got butchered besides a lot of the splat 2 stages.

as for squid rolls, they don't need to be overtuned i don't know what i said that made it sound like i want them to be broken, but i definitely did not explain why they suck, sorry for that. basically, 90% weapons do not care if you squid roll, and the internet on this game makes that even worse. all shooters, splatanas, chargers, splatlings, dualies do not care if you squid roll, you just get hit anyway or they shoot fast enough for it to never matter. and lag usually makes parries that would normally work not, so the other weapons don't care that much either. the weapons that it does affect, notably dynamo although it's a bit better since its recent buff, are already terrible. and if you parry a bomb, sure you are alive still but you can't fight, and you are probably in an area where you aren't engaged so you likely could have just gotten out of the way. if you do parry a bomb in a fight, you die because you spent time parrying instead of shooting and you get low once you successfully parry. they also make you very visible and are not faster than just swimming (that should stay the same if the parry part was actually usable) and they don't give much reward. they are only good for blocking chip damage that you could have probably just avoided anyway in most cases. the only time is was cool was that clip of that wiper player (i am so sorry i forgot who it was it was a while ago) parrying consecutive inkjet shots i think in a tournament? but even then they could have just moved forward instead of wasting time there because the inkjet was in there base while objective was somewhere else and they would not be able to catch them. i'm not saying it needs to be broken, i just want cool mechanics to be cool

 

[vitellary]

i think it's less that they aren't interested in making a multiplayer game (after all, the franchise wouldn't exist if nintendo didn't have the idea to make an online shooter game, that's definitively the concept behind splatoon), it's just that nintendo has been making single player games for almost 40 years now, and they've been working on this franchise for less than 10. it's safe to say nintendo has single-player campaigns down to a science, but they're still experimenting constantly with splatoon

i also don't think it's fair to say that they aren't trying to make it better either, they're just clearly wanting to be conservative with how they change the game. it's an approach that frustrates active players, yeah, but the game has improved over time, i think that's undeniable. we like to be all high-and-mighty about how, if us fans, who clearly know the game better than its own devs, got to make balance changes, the game would be perfect in a week. but there's only so much we can predict about this game, and besides that, what us fans want are likely not even what the devs want the game to be. they want everything to be fun, in their own unique ways, and despite all us comp players being disappointed that a ton of stuff isn't viable in a coordinated top-level setting, i genuinely think they haven't added any kits to the game that fail to provide that. yeah custom explo isn't going to get used in anything other than solo queue, but i'd be lying if i said it didn't seem like a fun weapon to try out, just for the stupid plays you could get away with with it

so, on that note, i think you almost have a point. i don't think the devs are that interested in making a game that has an incredibly diverse meta (though it's also worth saying some balance changes are definitely done for the sake of helping that). however, i do think they're interested in making a fun, balanced multiplayer game for anyone to pick up, and i personally think they do succeed at that

 

[missingno]

Sorry, you lost me as soon as you invoked Moray, Saltspray, and Kelp Dome. Bad maps aren't a new problem to S3, and I'm a little tired of the way people talk up old maps that were just as bad.

 

[chaotik0]

i think it's less that they aren't interested in making a multiplayer game (after all, the franchise wouldn't exist if nintendo didn't have the idea to make an online shooter game, that's definitively the concept behind splatoon), it's just that nintendo has been making single player games for almost 40 years now, and they've been working on this franchise for less than 10. it's safe to say nintendo has single-player campaigns down to a science, but they're still experimenting constantly with splatoon

i also don't think it's fair to say that they aren't trying to make it better either, they're just clearly wanting to be conservative with how they change the game. it's an approach that frustrates active players, yeah, but the game has improved over time, i think that's undeniable. we like to be all high-and-mighty about how, if us fans, who clearly know the game better than its own devs, got to make balance changes, the game would be perfect in a week. but there's only so much we can predict about this game, and besides that, what us fans want are likely not even what the devs want the game to be. they want everything to be fun, in their own unique ways, and despite all us comp players being disappointed that a ton of stuff isn't viable in a coordinated top-level setting, i genuinely think they haven't added any kits to the game that fail to provide that. yeah custom explo isn't going to get used in anything other than solo queue, but i'd be lying if i said it didn't seem like a fun weapon to try out, just for the stupid plays you could get away with with it

so, on that note, i think you almost have a point. i don't think the devs are that interested in making a game that has an incredibly diverse meta (though it's also worth saying some balance changes are definitely done for the sake of helping that). however, i do think they're interested in making a fun, balanced multiplayer game for anyone to pick up, and i personally think they do succeed at that

this is actually such a good way to put it. also i didn't include much of what they have been doing better because it would make the post twice as long

 

[chaotik0]

Sorry, you lost me as soon as you invoked Moray, Saltspray, and Kelp Dome. Bad maps aren't a new problem to S3, and I'm a little tired of the way people talk up old maps that were just as bad.

they were terrible that's what i said
but they were unique
absolutely terrible but at least fun casually (besides KELP DOME!!!!!!!!!!!)

 

[Cephalobro]

The problem is that Splatoon 3 hasn't received enough development time. Sure development means adding content, but it also means there needs to be enough testing and fixing the major issues. To be honest, we really didn't need Splatoon 3 on the same system as Splatoon 2, because Splatoon 2 could've really stood on its own until the Switch's successor releases.

This is why I don't even want to see a tease for Splatoon 4 in the first year of the Switch's successor at all, and instead, I want the devs to actually take as much time as possible to develop it, that means extensive testing to iron out bugs before the game is released. While it is inevitable that some bugs will slip through the cracks, the fewer bugs there are from release, the better the game will turn out.

 

[missingno]

Delays don't solve everything. If Nintendo had a team of 100 dedicated playtesters grind Splatoon 4 24/7 for five years before releasing it to the public, it would take less than a week before the worldwide playerbase has put more collective man-hours into it than they did. And we'll have better players pushing the meta far beyond what testers could've anticipated. At some point you just gotta release it out into the world and let the players rip it to pieces in order to gather data from them.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Where the devs are focusing their attention is less of a concern to me than what we’re actually getting in the updates. Frankly, some of the design choices Nintendo is making just make so little sense that they’re inexcusable. Why are we getting one fewer weapon kit each season? Why are we only getting one map this season? Why is Bonerattle Arena the final Salmon Run stage when there are still S2 stages that could easily be ported? It’s not like making additions to the game is getting any harder, yet we’re still receiving fewer changes per update as the game progresses.
I’m worried that Nintendo prioritized the creation of the Fizzbang over a second map for this coming season.

The quality of weapon kits and balance patches being low is something that we naturally have to contend with, but it’d be severely mitigated if every weapon had three kits and we received patches at least once a month. Nintendo was only able to give one weapon three bad kits in S2, that being Dapples.

To summarize, I‘m much more worried about the amount of content we’re getting each update than the game’s current flaws.
Anything can be fixed, but we’re not getting many fixes around here.

 

[WhatTheDevin]

[...]
I’m worried that Nintendo prioritized the creation of the Fizzbang over a second map for this coming season.
[...]

The addition of Fizzbang is absolutely baffling to me. When I saw the trailer I thought they were gonna put that particular mechanic out just in time for this fest and that it only made the season trailer because they were already announcing a bunch of stuff. But after the weekend fest, they only have what? 4 left in the scheduled lifespan of the game? Why did they wait this long?

 

[vitellary]

Why are we getting one fewer weapon kit each season?

they're paced in a way that'll make every weapon have exactly 2 kits once the planned content stops

Why are we only getting one map this season?

there's only two slots left on the stage selection UI; i assume they felt it was better to leave it off at a clean 24 maps rather than have an extra page that only shows 2 maps, so they're going to have 1 more map each in the next 2 seasons

Why is Bonerattle Arena the final Salmon Run stage when there are still S2 stages that could easily be ported?

frankly i assume they just don't like the remaining s2 stages enough to bring them back. i get the feeling the new map is supposed to have the same kind of vibe as ark polaris while being better for s3's salmon run map design (which i think we can agree has generally been better than s2's all around)

like, i get the complaints, but these do all have pretty logical answers to them, and beside the problem with the lack of kits, i actually kinda agree with the choices they've made. both the decisions with the remaining pvp maps and the salmon run maps feel like acceptable choices to me personally. the kit thing would also be fine, and a reasonable choice too, IF they extend content to give 3rd kits. if not then yeah that's really absurd they almost definitely could have sped that up more to give at least some 3rd kits before content ends, i don't disagree with that

 

[Cephalobro]

Delays don't solve everything. If Nintendo had a team of 100 dedicated playtesters grind Splatoon 4 24/7 for five years before releasing it to the public, it would take less than a week before the worldwide playerbase has put more collective man-hours into it than they did. And we'll have better players pushing the meta far beyond what testers could've anticipated. At some point you just gotta release it out into the world and let the players rip it to pieces in order to gather data from them.

Still, delaying a game is much better in the long run than rushing it, it was clearly seen that Splatoon 3 was rushed, the constant disconnections at the beginning of the game's life cycle combined with errors related to being forcefully disconnected while waiting for a Salmon Run match to happen really highlighted the need for them to take their time to iron out the multiplayer bugs, glitches, and errors.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Still, delaying a game is much better in the long run than rushing it, it was clearly seen that Splatoon 3 was rushed, the constant disconnections at the beginning of the game's life cycle combined with errors related to being forcefully disconnected while waiting for a Salmon Run match to happen really highlighted the need for them to take their time to iron out the multiplayer bugs, glitches, and errors.

I know it’s bonkers to say it, but perhaps Nintendo should start Early Accessing their online multiplayer games.
Quite clearly the bugginess and lack of content that should have been there from the start (gear adjustment, multiple king salmonids) will exist anyway. As far as games go, S3 didn’t seem very rushed.

 

[Cephalobro]

I know it’s bonkers to say it, but perhaps Nintendo should start Early Accessing their online multiplayer games.
Quite clearly the bugginess and lack of content that should have been there from the start (gear adjustment, multiple king salmonids) will exist anyway. As far as games go, S3 didn’t seem very rushed.

It's not about the content, it's about making sure the game is in working order from the start by fixing much of the major bugs and issues before release.

This is why there needs to be more than one Test Fire so at least the player base can help out in finding at least some of the bugs and issues that might have slipped through.

 

[Reefsnappr]

From what I can tell is that the publicity of the game may have stunted the growth of it ( ironically ) because the devs wanted to take less risks sense this game is a strong part of Nintendos IP. Why did the maps look so good in the trailers?

 

[ragingpluto]

what the flyin fish man.... (no swears in this post despite extreme disappointment)

(just scroll down to final paragraph if you don't want the massive amount of explaining, but i have also bolded and underlined general main points)
real talk, what are these devs doing??
every season they add less and less kits, and those few kits getting worse and worse in quality. the balance changes have also been getting worse and worse. on top of that, the map reworks have been pretty mid, mahi only got slightly better (at least zones became playable) and mincemeat had comically few changes. we have also been getting fewer and fewer new and returning gear. are there only like 5 people in the multiplayer dev team? and 1 of them doesn't work on the game their entire job is messing up the twitter posts. and we are probably getting only 1 stage this season.

but also think about this:
splatoon 3's story mode has been the best main story mode in the series, and side order looks like it's going to be as good as octo expansion. why do these developers even make a multiplayer game if they are so much better at, and given that everything about the game is getting worse in both quantity and quality, probably more interested in making singleplayer experiences.

this game has always been mid, you can't deny that. terrible stages, terrible online (that we have to pay for), so many weapons being cursed with no attention in the balance changes, balance changes that do nothing, or a terrible kit that they have to wait over a year for just to get another terrible kit. we only kept continue playing it because we just wanted to see this game get better and better but exactly the opposite has happened. I only kept playing this game because of how fun stamper is to play.

with the potential this series has, splatoon 3 has wasted it. this entire game is wasted potential. they added so many things that we all got excited for in the beginning, like new movement, squid rolling and surging, returning maps getting reworked, returning specials that got reworked to be more healthy for the game, and new specials that are extremely interesting, and a new splatfest mode. but all of that got wasted.
squid rolling barely blocks anything and is not a fast movement tool, squid surge also barely blocks anything and it makes you extremely vulnerable because you are falling in a very predictable way and have bad air accuracy. all of the splatoon 1 stages that came back have only received negative changes, most of them being the worst stages in the game. even returning splat 2 stages also got some negative changes.and the new splatfest mode has had massive debate every single time there has been a splatfest, whether it's because of so many mirror matches or the mode just sucking on that particular stage, and the fact that it is only active for half the fest. as for specials: returning specials that got reworked: trizooka: everybody complains how annoying it is. bubble: it sucks. wave breaker: it sucks. tri strikes: very mid. reefslider: its terrible besides zones cheese which is not good for the game. the best changes we have had to specials is missiles, they finally learned how they should work, and are finally not broken or that annoying. ultra stamp: barely works so they just buffed it to have a stupid hitbox. kraken: sucks besides kraken cheese which single handedly ruined clam blitz. triple splashdown: oh hey they actually didn't do a bad job with this one!... oh wait its like the 13th special in the game that they don't have a lot of kits left to add and every kit with it was anticipated to have a better special, if it wasn't absolutely ruined by it (explo) and there was already a spashdown rework in this game. new specials: ink vac: wow this special looks so col oh wait it sucks. crab tank: this special also looks so cool oh wait it was way too broken on these terrible maps and it took extremely long for anything to change. zipcaster: also a really cool special, but it is a bit undertuned and only works well with a few weapons, and those weapons got terrible kits with it (slosher + tetra). tacticooler: this is the only one they did right, excepth for the fact that they don't know how to balance this game so the best weapon with it dominates every single other one that could have taken the same role.

to sum it up because that was a lot of explaining, only read that part if you want to know specifics of what im talking about.
so yeah this game has been pretty mid so far already, we wanted to see it succeed but all these devs do is make this game worse and worse. there has been so much wasted potential with what we were shown in the beginning and with how cool this series is. i am honestly glad that we wont be getting any more content after the final season, because maybe that will give these devs an opportunity to get their act together and learn how to actually make a multiplayer game ("well why don't you do it, hot shot?". yeah i can smell you thinking that from here. get back to me in a year). they need to get a new team just for multiplayer, since this whole game has been a mess besides the singleplayer stuff, they need to get people who not only know how to make a multiplayer game, but actually want to. the people we were stuck with this game really seem like they do. sure, there were some good changes, like having an actual lobby to wait in, a new game mode tableturf, lockers, bigger and cooler city. that's al i could think of that were changed that didn't have their potential for greatness ruined. if splatoon 4 comes out in like a year and a half from now this series is dead. it needs a lot of time for things to be fixed. and when it does come out, if it doesn'y show that anything has changed from splat 3 philosophy wise, it will not be worth buying.

this game is just sad, man.

i agree with most of what u said but mahi got WAYYYYY better i used to despise playing it so much id actually refuse to if it was on rotation lmfao, now i love it