Splatoon 3 needs custom kits. Here's why

[StarDusk]

I think we can all agree the current kit system is terrible. Nobody wants to wait a year and a half for a second kit only for it to be complete garbage. The whole system needs an overhaul, but a lot of people have been apprehensive to fully customizable kits. Well, I'm here to argue that custom kits are the best option we can get, and hopefully dispel a lot of the fears around them.

But before I get to custom kits, I need to address the inherent problem with the current system. Even if every weapon got around 5 kits and their quality ranged from at least all right to god kit, the system would still be flawed. What if someone wants a specific sub on their weapon? Or special? Or both? They would have to hope and pray their weapon gets the right kit. And the problem is even bigger than that. Take my main weapon, Flingza. It has a ton of potential to have a really unique aggro playstyle, but the devs have only given it support specials. Even if it got a third, or fourth, or even fifth kit, will they even once consider giving it a good aggro special? And if it got one, the kit could easily be ruined if it got a bad sub. It’s impossible to give everyone what they want, the current system can't make everyone happy.

Conversely, with custom kits, someone can go “I want to try this combination” and then just, try it. Nobody would have to imagine their dream kit, or play the boring kit they're stuck with, or be terrified of getting a horrible abomination of a kit, you could just play whatever you wanted. You wouldn't have to talk among your friends of what kits could work, instead you could just test it out for yourself and find out what does work. It is, undoubtedly, one of the best features they could implement from a casual perspective.

From a competitive perspective is where it gets more interesting, and is where more of the concern is, but I still believe it would overall benefit the game. Right now, there’s a lot of weapons that have potential to be really good, to be meta even, but just have awful kits and can’t be used at all. Or even have good, synergistic kits but just not meta ones. Simply put, with custom kits, you could see a weapon that has potential and give it its dream kit and use it in your comp. That alone has so much potential to diversify the meta.

BUT! There's one really big concern with custom kits, and it's that everyone will only use the best sub and special combinations possible. And honestly? Yeah, that will happen, 100%, but that's exactly why custom kits should be added. Currently, sprinkler is one of the subs on the most amount of weapons in the game. Sprinkler of all subs. It sucks balance wise, sucks design wise, and it’s not really fun to use. If given the option, almost no one use it because there’s just better subs out there. And so, sprinkler usage, along with every other weak sub and special, would drop considerably if custom kits were a thing. If the devs implemented a tracker to see the percentage of sub and special usage, they would see no one using sprinkler at all, and if they're competent at balancing, they will see it needs changes and give buffs to it accordingly. The opposite would happen for subs and specials getting too much usage. The balancing team would have direct access to data of which subs and specials are good, bad, fun, etc, and if they were decently competent at balancing, they could use that data to make the game the most balanced it could possibly be.

The ONLY way I can see custom kits completely failing is if the devs keep up the current update cycle, only having a significant balance patch every 3 months, but outside of that, I can't see any other major problems with custom kits.

 

[missingno]

While I have a lot of problems with how S3 has handled kits, the game is built around them in a way that I don't think can be changed now.

What I want is for Splatoon 4 to be built from the ground up around custom kits.

 

[vitellary]

yeah, as cool as custom kits could be, there's absolutely no way they're throwing away 2 years' worth of time that they spent on making second kits for this game. i don't really think splatoon 3 needs custom kits, it needs good 3rd kits; implementing them into a game not designed explicitly for them is a recipe for disaster. it would be a COMPLETELY different way to balance the game that would be way too big a change for the devs to handle properly so late into the game's development

 

[Hitzel]

We are 2/3 for good kit implementation. I'd rather Splat 4 make that 3/4, we don't need to drastically change what the game is to solve a problem that we already know has less destructive solutions.

 

[ThestralZ]

You missed two important things about custom kits; points for special and repeat kits. First about points for special. If every custom weapon has the same points for special, any weapon that struggles with painting instantly becomes worse, and they can't fix the issue by universally lowering the points for special, or else you risk making Splatoon 2 again. So, the logical step then would be to give set points for special for each weapon, but that raises another question as well. A Squeezer with Wall and Zooka doesn't paint the same as one with Burst and Crab, and it isn't really fair to give them the same points for special. So you then go down the rabbit hole of making a hierarchy of subs based on how well they paint, and at this point is it even worth it? Splatoon, like it or not, is really heavily based on special use. By making custom kits, you need to tread very carefully or else risk making special spam meta again, and in a game with Missile, Wail, Taticooler and others, we really do not want a special spam meta in this game. Range Blaster would love a Splat Bomb and Kraken, but by simply having the option for a Splattershot or a charger to have that same kit, you need to nerf that combination, which brings up my second point. Certain kits are amazing on certain weapons, but bad on others. If you nerf custom kits based on the sub and special and not the main weapon, you make an unfair system for middle of the road weapons and encourage extreme weapons to be used more. If you only nerf based on either the sub or the special, you make the game worse by discouraging unique combinations because a sub or special is better in one situation on one weapon. And if you nerf based on the entire kit (main, sub, and special), congratulations you have just made a Splatoon where every weapon has 50 kits with each their own nuance and where 3/4 of them will never be used. This is my thesis on why custom kits are a bad idea.

 

[StarDusk]

You missed two important things about custom kits; points for special and repeat kits. First about points for special. If every custom weapon has the same points for special, any weapon that struggles with painting instantly becomes worse, and they can't fix the issue by universally lowering the points for special, or else you risk making Splatoon 2 again. So, the logical step then would be to give set points for special for each weapon, but that raises another question as well. A Squeezer with Wall and Zooka doesn't paint the same as one with Burst and Crab, and it isn't really fair to give them the same points for special. So you then go down the rabbit hole of making a hierarchy of subs based on how well they paint, and at this point is it even worth it? Splatoon, like it or not, is really heavily based on special use. By making custom kits, you need to tread very carefully or else risk making special spam meta again, and in a game with Missile, Wail, Taticooler and others, we really do not want a special spam meta in this game. Range Blaster would love a Splat Bomb and Kraken, but by simply having the option for a Splattershot or a charger to have that same kit, you need to nerf that combination, which brings up my second point. Certain kits are amazing on certain weapons, but bad on others. If you nerf custom kits based on the sub and special and not the main weapon, you make an unfair system for middle of the road weapons and encourage extreme weapons to be used more. If you only nerf based on either the sub or the special, you make the game worse by discouraging unique combinations because a sub or special is better in one situation on one weapon. And if you nerf based on the entire kit (main, sub, and special), congratulations you have just made a Splatoon where every weapon has 50 kits with each their own nuance and where 3/4 of them will never be used. This is my thesis on why custom kits are a bad idea.

The solution for PFS is to calculate a unique PFS for every single kit combination, which sounds complicated but there's a really simple way they could do it. Give every weapon, sub, and special a number that I'm gonna call "Points for special value" (PFSV for short). The PFSV would be higher on weapons that can paint and are stronger, and to calculate PFS, the game would add up all the PSFVs and decide one based off of that. For example, Clash Blaster, Pointer Sensor, and Reef Slider would all have low PFSVs, so if you made them into a kit, the calculated total would be low and you'd be left with a 180p, maybe even 170p special weapon. On the other hand, Splattershot, Fizzy Bomb, and Trizooka would all have high PFSVs, so making a kit with those would yield a high PFS, somewhere around 210-220p. This also makes it really simple to balance PFS. One special is too strong now? Raise its PFSV by a bit so people get it less. One specific weapon is too strong/good at getting special? Raise its PFSV by a bit as to not affect any other weapons PFSV is a simple way to accomplish a seemingly complicated task, and it completely solves the problem.

I don't really get your second point. If you're saying not every kit will be equal for every weapon, then yeah, that's how it works. Different weapons have different strengths and weaknesses, and so they have different subs and specials that synergize well with them. Something like Splash Wall is horrible on a Sploosh, but not because either one is bad, they just don't work with each other, and that's fine. Not every kit will work on every weapon, part of the fun of custom kits is finding out which kits work on which weapons. If the devs are worried new players won't know what they should use, they can have some recommended kits for every weapon (no guarantee those will be good though). If your point is that some kits will just be objectively stronger on some weapons even though they both have similar synergy, then yeah that will totally happen, but that's the point of balancing. I mean currently Pencil is used in pretty much every comp at a high level, even though there's 5 other Tacticooler weapons. That's just because out of all of them, Pencil's just the strongest. This is a problem impossible to avoid with custom kits or not, and is the whole reason why balancing exists in the first place

 

[ThestralZ]

The solution for PFS is to calculate a unique PFS for every single kit combination, which sounds complicated but there's a really simple way they could do it. Give every weapon, sub, and special a number that I'm gonna call "Points for special value" (PFSV for short). The PFSV would be higher on weapons that can paint and are stronger, and to calculate PFS, the game would add up all the PSFVs and decide one based off of that. For example, Clash Blaster, Pointer Sensor, and Reef Slider would all have low PFSVs, so if you made them into a kit, the calculated total would be low and you'd be left with a 180p, maybe even 170p special weapon. On the other hand, Splattershot, Fizzy Bomb, and Trizooka would all have high PFSVs, so making a kit with those would yield a high PFS, somewhere around 210-220p. This also makes it really simple to balance PFS. One special is too strong now? Raise its PFSV by a bit so people get it less. One specific weapon is too strong/good at getting special? Raise its PFSV by a bit as to not affect any other weapons PFSV is a simple way to accomplish a seemingly complicated task, and it completely solves the problem.

I don't really get your second point. If you're saying not every kit will be equal for every weapon, then yeah, that's how it works. Different weapons have different strengths and weaknesses, and so they have different subs and specials that synergize well with them. Something like Splash Wall is horrible on a Sploosh, but not because either one is bad, they just don't work with each other, and that's fine. Not every kit will work on every weapon, part of the fun of custom kits is finding out which kits work on which weapons. If the devs are worried new players won't know what they should use, they can have some recommended kits for every weapon (no guarantee those will be good though). If your point is that some kits will just be objectively stronger on some weapons even though they both have similar synergy, then yeah that will totally happen, but that's the point of balancing. I mean currently Pencil is used in pretty much every comp at a high level, even though there's 5 other Tacticooler weapons. That's just because out of all of them, Pencil's just the strongest. This is a problem impossible to avoid with custom kits or not, and is the whole reason why balancing exists in the first place

Agree to disagree then

 

[missingno]

Kits worked best when there were fewer subs and specials, which meant it was a lot easier to find the subs and specials you actually want to use. Gem put it best in a recent video: "In Splatoon 2, if you liked a special, there was probably a weapon you could play that had it. I don't feel that way in this game, and I don't like that."

The biggest problem I have with the kit system is how restrictive it is towards player choice. It feels awful when the weapon you want to play is stuck with a kit you don't want to play. I understand what it's supposed to offer for balance purposes, but I am feeling more and more like that's just not worth the frustration it causes. I think we'd all be a lot happier if we could just play what we want.

If Splatoon 4 is going to keep kits, I think it would be necessary to cut back on subs and specials. But I don't see that ever happening, it would be perceived as stepping backwards. Alternatively, they could take a shotgun approach and give every weapon four kits this time around in the hopes you'll like at least one of them, but that seems equally unlikely to me.

 

[StarDusk]

Kits worked best when there were fewer subs and specials, which meant it was a lot easier to find the subs and specials you actually want to use. Gem put it best in a recent video: "In Splatoon 2, if you liked a special, there was probably a weapon you could play that had it. I don't feel that way in this game, and I don't like that."

The biggest problem I have with the kit system is how restrictive it is towards player choice. It feels awful when the weapon you want to play is stuck with a kit you don't want to play. I understand what it's supposed to offer for balance purposes, but I am feeling more and more like that's just not worth the frustration it causes. I think we'd all be a lot happier if we could just play what we want.

If Splatoon 4 is going to keep kits, I think it would be necessary to cut back on subs and specials. But I don't see that ever happening, it would be perceived as stepping backwards. Alternatively, they could take a shotgun approach and give every weapon four kits this time around in the hopes you'll like at least one of them, but that seems equally unlikely to me.

Actually, I want to elaborate on this, because it's not the amount of subs and specials but rather the amount of kits that's the problem. In Splatoon 2, if you take the total number of kits and divide it by the total number of specials, you get the amount of kits per special, which is around 8.3. Basically, if you wanted to use a specific special, you could expect it to be on 8 to 9 weapons. If you do the same with Splatoon 3 (and assume that a new stringer and splatana will be added and every weapon will get 2 kits) you get a value of around 6.9, so for any given special you can only find it on 6 but mostly 7 kits.
(Note that finding the exact number of kits is kinda annoying because there's weapons with different skins but same kit and stuff like scoped and unscoped chargers, which I'm not counting for this. The numbers I'm using are 15 special and 124 kits for Splatoon 2 and 19 specials and 132 kits for Splatoon 3)
This wouldn't be a problem if the devs would commit to adding third kits, since then there'd be 10 to 11 kits for each special.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I disagree, but only because you specified "Splatoon 3" in the title.
Custom kits would be great in Splatoon 4, but the current game is already too far progressed, with too big a gap between its good and bad weapon options and not enough time to close it.
I'd be in favor of letting weapon switch their sub/special between kits, though, since that'd significantly buff 22 main weapons.

Ultimately, I think we just need third kits and/or good buffs for low-tier subs and specials.

 

[Hitzel]

I think I will be optimistic if S4 uses a custom kit system where each weapon gets a small number of subs and specials to choose from as opposed to something completely freeform.

If most weapons get to choose between a bomb and a utility sub, then 3-4 specials that form some sort of cohesive theme or vision together, I think the transition will feel natural. As long as the system is fleshed out and the details are perfected for things like PPS, I think weapons will maintain their feelings of identity while also providing the loadout building options people clearly feel Splatoon 3 lacks.