A dying scene, Stronghold, & Splatoon 4

All of the recent doomposts and videos about how the competitive Splatoon scene dying have stirred a lot of feelings in the community. For many, including me, these posts have begun igniting a spark to create and do more for the scene and game we all love.

Article ported from the Splatoon Stronghold website

The current problems in the scene are fixable, some more easily than others. I'm fortunate to have the resources and such an awesome team at Stronghold that shares my passion for the community. Next week we will be releasing our project roadmap for 2025, some of those projects are targeted at resolving current issues in the scene.

We've fallen into a dangerous cycle as a community. We've become reliant on a new game coming out to grow our scene. Before Splatoon 3 launched, the main topic of discussion in the scene was about how we need to prepare for the incoming players.

Very few people/orgs actually invested in setting up spaces and creating easy ways for new players to find the scene. IPL upped their production, Chara went all in on content creation, and Stronghold was founded as an entry point and crossroads for the scene with a website discord.

We as a community need to start focusing now on building up our community and establishing services before Splatoon 4 launches. I strongly believe that we as a community blew it with the launch of Splatoon 3 - we did not attract the player base we were expecting.

What we as a community CAN do:

• UPLOAD content on YouTube
• WATCH videos + streams
• SHARE services + websites
• VOLUNTEER w/ orgs

Let's focus on growing with what we have now. Make it so that the scene can be EASILY found and understood from a simple google search of "competitive splatoon". Together, we as a community can fix this. It all starts with you.

Credits
This article was written by Samino, and formatted for publication by Radha.

 

I wrote this on some of these doompost videos from Toyoben, Dude, etc.

I get the idea of content creation but here's the problem I see: numbers. I'm not saying every video anyone post should get 10K views. However, low numbers can affect any aspiring content creator regardless of goals. Then aspiring content creators quit.

Meanwhile, people are looking for top level and high level players who play their weapon and not what's meta and boring. As Grey said in a Tweet, at the top, people are fighting the same thing again and again. The same people may not even give those who aren't top level players because they're not top players. So this leaves us in a situation where people are desperate for top level players to use their weapons so they can learn when that's not always a guarantee. But a Div 9 player playing non-meta weapon may not garner the views to justify continuing content creation because people may just overlook them because "scrub."

Honestly just going into content creation to help the western scene alive alone isn't going to do anything. Either people have to give lower level player/content creator a shot or you're gonna keep expecting top players to play something non-meta and get disappointed when they don't. Top level content creators can potentially make videos using non-meta weapons. But really, who's gonna be the one to budge?

 

Meanwhile, people are looking for top level and high level players who play their weapon and not what's meta and boring. As Grey said in a Tweet, at the top, people are fighting the same thing again and again. The same people may not even give those who aren't top level players because they're not top players. So this leaves us in a situation where people are desperate for top level players to use their weapons so they can learn when that's not always a guarantee. But a Div 9 player playing non-meta weapon may not garner the views to justify continuing content creation because people may just overlook them because "scrub."

Simply making content of scrim sessions or tourneys definitely won't be enough, I agree.
It especially doesn't help that the meta doesn't change in a way that would be easily noticeable to the average player so watching top level gameplay could end up getting stale very quickly.


Personally, I think another issue is that the competitive scene isn't documented very well on Youtube.
We do have tournament vods and individual scrims that get uploaded but if I were to make a comparison, a big appeal of watching competitive Smash is for the "storylines".
It's something that's much harder to do for Splatoon, especially now with the lack of established top level teams but I don't think it's impossible. I look at Smash and remember that one of the first things that got me into the competitive scene was the Smash Documentary by Samox and I think a similar idea would be great for Splatoon.
It doesn't have to be on the same scale since Splatoon 3 has only been around for less than three years but there are plenty of older periods in S3 that would be very interesting to have videos on.
Particularly with the transition between Inkjet and Cooler meta which I see that plenty of players have either forgotten or weren't there for.

There's also the matter of getting people interested in watching upcoming tournaments which I don't believe anyone in the scene is currently doing.
For a casual Splatoon fan, tournaments may feel like they just randomly come and go.
It'd be nice if there was content that focused on stuff like "who's going to win this tournament and which comps stand out from the rest".
It would give these tournaments some buildup to potentially get people excited for.

 

I have a lot to say about this topic but I feel like this just fully doubles down on the idea that the resources available for newer players is insufficient. But our scene has done almost nothing but cater towards entry level. The idea that "we" (as in a community) failed to cultivate these newer players feels just incorrect. Splatoon 3 had a botched first year, the matchmaking systems aren't very good, The season format deeply hurt player retention. It's not that we fumbled, it's that we really didn't have an opportunity in the first place.

That being said, I think the community should look towards trying to making our game look "good", More streams, More clips, More TASL honestly. People's first impressions of the game should be Jordan swinging his camera around and murdering an entire team on slosher or Chocopero parrying kraken 3 times in a row during his grind to 5k. If we have failed at anything, it's at making our game look sick as hell.

I think a good start would be to reintroduce more frequent majors. and don't even dare to tell me we don't have those resources when we keep running 100+ team low inks every month. and LI doesn't really even have comparatively good viewership to the numbers that stuff like Superjump gets. We need more than ever to show people how hype top level play can be.

 

I felt the need to add to this thread even though I will be the first to admit I am NOT the greatest competitive Splat 3 player (If I can even claim the title at all).
One of the biggest things that appealed to me about Splatoon as a series, and still does, was the bright, artsy "fun" factor. I didn't get into Splatoon watching the high-level players absolutely DEMOLISH each other, I was pulled in because of the fact that Splatoon was a fun-looking game full of color and life. I can honestly say I don't really feel those same feelings watching tournaments, which is why I don't (not to discount the talented individuals involved).

Particularly in a game such as Splatoon, I feel like newbies who were pulled in the same way I was should feel that same feeling of "Wow, this is so bright and colorful and all over the place, it makes me feel like this is gonna be a super fun experience!" in just about every bit of content about the game they can find, ESPECIALLY the competitive scene, if their desire is to attract more people. I've found that vibe is surprisingly difficult to find.

If my perspective sounds like it's from the eyes of a noob, it's probably because it is. (And please feel free to correct me if I've said anything ignorant or uninformed.) I've been involved since the halfway point of Splatoon 2's lifespan and loved the journey, but I've never really dabbled in the 'official' competitive scene further than casual Turf Wars, because as a newcomer, I didn't really feel welcome. I felt, and still kind of feel, like because I'm not an extremely dedicated and skilled player, I didn't belong.

This is why I made a channel centered around art, funny moments and other silly, not-really-competitive related stuff outside of custom Splatfests (and those are just for fun). I wanted newcomers like me who joined for the FUN and ARTISTIC factors to realize they aren't alone, and that the game isn't ALL about which teams can dominate the most.

I hope sharing my perspective helps.

TL;DR - If the community wants more newcomers to stay, they should probably remember the fun aspect about a silly game involving squids painting like their lives depend on it.

 

As long as Splatoon 4 still has Splatfests, I’m game.

 

I think the problem is not with trying to get new players into Splatoon, but rather getting them to stay. I have several friends who have ditched the game because it's too hard to get high level and compete with others. I think We should advertise pools as a way to get into the game. Letting people of the same skill level get together, and maybe some higher-level players, helping the lower levels out. Also doing a 1V1 with the friend Is a great way to learn the mechanics without feeling the need to win or getting splattered all the time.

 

I think the problem is not with trying to get new players into Splatoon, but rather getting them to stay. I have several friends who have ditched the game because it's too hard to get high level and compete with others. I think We should advertise pools as a way to get into the game. Letting people of the same skill level get together, and maybe some higher-level players, helping the lower levels out. Also doing a 1V1 with the friend Is a great way to learn the mechanics without feeling the need to win or getting splattered all the time.

I actually think its moreso the barrier to entry, and lack of care given to mid level/high level in terms of things to strive for.

if you're not interested in anything but splatoon thats $360 at minimum to play a single game - granted thats less then a decent pc and say marvel rivals or overwatch but a pc is an all purpose tool that will get you more mileage then just esports, which is why its a more compelling offer.

When it comes to low/entry level, theres already an insane amount of catering, FTIU/LSL as long term full team reg skill cap events that cater to two sides of the scene(NA/EU specifically) then a wash of draft events(Jr Draft and Setting Sail are of particular note due to Jr Draft being the only event based around in game rank as eligibility and not anything else, while Setting Sail is a semi-draft event and steps up a bit on the requirements) then also smaller stuff run by independent smaller teams like Reach/IDTGA

Pools are an easy qol way to get people into lobbies but if they were the answer to onboard new people we would be seeing it used already. SBA had 250+ applicants for season 1, and a lot of those applicants came directly from a sponsorship in a chara vid that had a topic catered towards casual players(big swig vs nova vid)

If you make the scene appealing through strong marketing and targeting the userbase that might not even know what comp splatoon is, they will come.

 

sidenote I strongly believe this site will be critical to the scenes future success and as you can imagine with stronghold posting articles to here and the underutilized articles tab on sendou too, I'm not alone.

For a lot of people, they may be interested but don't know where to look - the info you need is spread across dozens of youtube vids, google docs, and essays in a myriad of discord channels that you can only reasonably find if you're "in the know" and even bsky while its a nice chance of pace from twitter has the critical issue that big threads tend to get buried very fast, while the forum format is timeless and easy to search due to how search engines cache its pages.