Hey! This thread doesn't have as much of a point for me to make compared to usual but I recently found out something that I figured was interesting enough to share.
Every time I've played any weapons that aren't the Decavitator as of late, I've found it much more difficult than I remembered to hit my shots with them. This much might seem like a given for you. Of course so many matches on one weapon where you don't need to aim would make you more complacent with less-than-ideal aiming during a match. Naturally, I came to the pretty obvious, but funny conclusion from this - becoming a Decavitator player has made me forget how to aim. This would be by virtue of it being easier to aim with to a degree that it's technically made me out-of-practice.
Something a bit more interesting though is that I've played a bit of the vanilla Splat Roller recently and the same idea has applied to even the horizontal flicks. That's strange. If any weapon has a similar threat bubble to the Decavitator's, it'd be Roller's. Why is the issue still here? I thought about it for a while before putting the thought away for me to return to later.
Sure enough, much later I remembered I had footage of myself playing. It's pretty old, from the start of September to be exact, so my gameplay wouldn't be as refined as it is now. I had forgotten about the whole aiming conundrum by now but always find it fun to see where all and by how much I've grown as a player. This footage pretty quickly reminded me of the aiming problem and so I slowed it parts of it down for analysis. This pretty quickly ended up leading to me finding my answer and it's definitely not what I was expecting to say the least.
I see no better way to start explaining this than to give the first example from it from after the timestamp I was left on in the video. It was a minute and a half into the game and while there were definitely earlier examples in this game, none were as clear as this one.
So let's start with the scenario. Clam Blitz Flounder Heights. The Inkbrush that just died had just placed an Ink Mine's marking on me. I make a bit of an aggressive play here even for my tastes and decide to push by a balloon where I'm pretty sure someone is despite being marked.
As I should have guessed would happen, the Zimi had popped up. It wasn't exactly where I had expected to and I had just dashed and am currently about to throw out my projectile. They're at a bit of an awkward angle for me but nothing here is too difficult. Just need to react to them quickly and hit my shot against them.
This was the absolute first frame where I had any hitbox spawned. Unfortunately the opponent was just out of the range of a one-shot, but look at how my reticle's dead center with my target. My reticle's horizontal movement pretty quickly slowed after this frame too even if it didn't completely stop. This was at a moment where someone sprung out at me and I had quickly needed to react to them, AKA the moment where good aim shows the most, and I was right on it the very first frame possible.
This isn't to say I'm perfect. Nobody has absolutely flawless aim even in a game like this and literally the 40 damage hit after this was sloppy to say the least. There are definitely points where this weapon's wide hitboxes make the difference, but in rewatching this stream there were a lot of points like this as well where I show pretty strong aiming in situations where it would be hardest. The whole point of this is just to show that I absolutely didn't just spontaneously forget how to aim, just that something different is likely going on here.
So, what exactly is going on here? If I'm capable of doing this then what makes other weapons so much more difficult for me?
Because of my time on Decav, I know the exact timings with which its attacks become active. I think my brain has basically become tuned to know around when to start focusing on where my enemy is. Before a certain point with the charged shots especially it really doesn't matter where they are up until the attack's about to launch. With other weapons, there's either not this much of a pause before its attack comes out at all or it's not the exact amount of time of Decav's uncharged/charged shots. When I get on Splat Roller, I don't know when to aim, and my tracking aim isn't nearly as refined as my flick aim is. On something like a Shooter it's just "aim as fast as you can" which I don't know how fast I can so it makes me panic.
So, long story short, I did not forget how to aim. I just need to relearn how to aim with every single weapon in the game except for one if I want to hit shots with them LOL
Every time I've played any weapons that aren't the Decavitator as of late, I've found it much more difficult than I remembered to hit my shots with them. This much might seem like a given for you. Of course so many matches on one weapon where you don't need to aim would make you more complacent with less-than-ideal aiming during a match. Naturally, I came to the pretty obvious, but funny conclusion from this - becoming a Decavitator player has made me forget how to aim. This would be by virtue of it being easier to aim with to a degree that it's technically made me out-of-practice.
Something a bit more interesting though is that I've played a bit of the vanilla Splat Roller recently and the same idea has applied to even the horizontal flicks. That's strange. If any weapon has a similar threat bubble to the Decavitator's, it'd be Roller's. Why is the issue still here? I thought about it for a while before putting the thought away for me to return to later.
Sure enough, much later I remembered I had footage of myself playing. It's pretty old, from the start of September to be exact, so my gameplay wouldn't be as refined as it is now. I had forgotten about the whole aiming conundrum by now but always find it fun to see where all and by how much I've grown as a player. This footage pretty quickly reminded me of the aiming problem and so I slowed it parts of it down for analysis. This pretty quickly ended up leading to me finding my answer and it's definitely not what I was expecting to say the least.
I see no better way to start explaining this than to give the first example from it from after the timestamp I was left on in the video. It was a minute and a half into the game and while there were definitely earlier examples in this game, none were as clear as this one.
So let's start with the scenario. Clam Blitz Flounder Heights. The Inkbrush that just died had just placed an Ink Mine's marking on me. I make a bit of an aggressive play here even for my tastes and decide to push by a balloon where I'm pretty sure someone is despite being marked.
As I should have guessed would happen, the Zimi had popped up. It wasn't exactly where I had expected to and I had just dashed and am currently about to throw out my projectile. They're at a bit of an awkward angle for me but nothing here is too difficult. Just need to react to them quickly and hit my shot against them.
This was the absolute first frame where I had any hitbox spawned. Unfortunately the opponent was just out of the range of a one-shot, but look at how my reticle's dead center with my target. My reticle's horizontal movement pretty quickly slowed after this frame too even if it didn't completely stop. This was at a moment where someone sprung out at me and I had quickly needed to react to them, AKA the moment where good aim shows the most, and I was right on it the very first frame possible.
This isn't to say I'm perfect. Nobody has absolutely flawless aim even in a game like this and literally the 40 damage hit after this was sloppy to say the least. There are definitely points where this weapon's wide hitboxes make the difference, but in rewatching this stream there were a lot of points like this as well where I show pretty strong aiming in situations where it would be hardest. The whole point of this is just to show that I absolutely didn't just spontaneously forget how to aim, just that something different is likely going on here.
So, what exactly is going on here? If I'm capable of doing this then what makes other weapons so much more difficult for me?
Because of my time on Decav, I know the exact timings with which its attacks become active. I think my brain has basically become tuned to know around when to start focusing on where my enemy is. Before a certain point with the charged shots especially it really doesn't matter where they are up until the attack's about to launch. With other weapons, there's either not this much of a pause before its attack comes out at all or it's not the exact amount of time of Decav's uncharged/charged shots. When I get on Splat Roller, I don't know when to aim, and my tracking aim isn't nearly as refined as my flick aim is. On something like a Shooter it's just "aim as fast as you can" which I don't know how fast I can so it makes me panic.
So, long story short, I did not forget how to aim. I just need to relearn how to aim with every single weapon in the game except for one if I want to hit shots with them LOL
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