In my opinion it's hard to really pin down players because the long term isn't very concrete. A lot of players often move around teams because they think their long term goals will be realized but most of the goals for moving around in the first place is winning. But that goal is relatively short term; leaving a team to win some games or improve yourself is all fine and good but if you have no other reason to leave other than that then it's harder to keep players pinned down. Of course there's players mentioned like NSTC who all work together really well and have big goals for being strong dominators of the scene. I can think of a few others like Overlook / KUSA HUKAHI (I think I spelled that right) who are great friends and bridging a gap between western and eastern teams, strong bonds with players like TD, GK, and SRL who have outside activities to keep them entertained and happy, and plenty of others who just enjoy the game. But then we have teams like Team Nintendome and Team Paradise who've been having a lot of trouble because players simply did not mesh together. Players joined because they were the best and as a result their teams suffered when those players just sorta fell out. I don't know all the details of course but I know the scene is having a bit of trouble keeping things consistent.
Part of it is just properly defining what squads really want to do. Who they are, what they stand for, what kind of things they do, and so on. You look on a recruit page nowadays and all you see if "be good at the game and like playing" but that's not enough. What type of people are on the team? How often do they practice and for how long (if they practice at all)? Do they have other activities? What are their true goals? And I'm not talking about just "being good at the game" but rather what do you want to do for the scene as a whole? Unfortunately some people can't answer this question so they're stuck when deciding whether or not to stay on teams.
I think I agree, I think some teams are playing the wrong meta. Players overrate or underrate themselves and end up on teams that don't clearly define who they are and what they're about while other teams just have it down. Some teams know that Splatoon is what they want to focus on while others are totally cool with some other antics here and there. But part of the reason why you don't see many upsets in Splatoon is because no one's really aiming for them as a whole. Members certainly have the idea, but their entire team isn't on the same page. And as a result, members go to and fro, looking for a place to meet their expectations when they don't know what they're getting into until it's too late.
