Clothing Buffs/Effects And Their Effect On Competitive Play

[Kat]

So the one thing I'm wondering about Splatoon at a competitive level is the clothing. It's been confirmed that the clothing will have unlockable buffs resulting from use, of which will advance independently of single player apparel. While the ranked matchmaking will hopefully match players up of similar skill and the resulting playtime to unlock presumably similar levels of perks for their clothing.

However at a tournament/LAN environment it's not always possible/easy to guarantee equal and balanced perks. So I'm wondering what opinions people have on the clothing and it's effect on competitive play. While in ranked play I definitely think it's great to reward more skilled players who put the effort into leveling up their gear, in a competitive environment I think it should be purely down to the skill of the players independent of gear. However what will the potential tournament mode do concerning gear? What will our own leagues and cups do about this gear difference.

The main question for me is how much of an advantage will it give, hopefully Splatoon will have the foresight to balance the gear not to give a noticeable benefit to anyone other than the person using it. However in the potential case that it gives a noticeable advantage to the better geared player what are your opinions on the course of action.

I'd personally like to see competitive play online/LAN either have all gear locked at maximum/minimum rank/unlock status or completely removed of all perks for balance purposes. However with the lack of custom options it's unlikely this will happen. However with LAN events it's likely all WiiUs will have a fresh save and as a result unleveled gear. Then we have to hope it won't level up during the course of the LAN...

Either way, I'd love to hear everyone's opinions. It's all hypothetical so feel free to speculate on stuff!

 

[FunkyLobster]

depends largely on how centralizing the perks are and how easy the are to obtain and level up

atm i think they should just be static, unleveled perks (or max, if they aren't hard to grind for and provide more depth to the game) so everyone is on an even playing field, but if players get to be more creative with their loadouts and if it's not a problematic, overpowered feature, i guess they can level them up

went with the "can't say until i've seen the perks"

 

[suavevillain]

Gotta wait for the game to drop to know. I just hope it is balanced.

 

[Lyn]

I'd prefer not having perks on gear, but since there's no option for that i'll have to wait until the game arrives.

 

[FunkyLobster]

I'd prefer not having perks on gear, but since there's no option for that i'll have to wait until the game arrives.

i agree. i kind of wish perks were just all available from the get go and weren't assigned to anything. honestly having to upgrade perks that are semirandomly assigned to equipment you have to buy from ingame shops outside of matches sounds like the least competitive thing i've ever heard of, lol

 

[Nin☆Jun]

This is really starting to sound like TF2-

I suspect that Ink Savior perk will be the most sought after, especially those with quite the trigger finger. Me.

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

So the one thing I'm wondering about Splatoon at a competitive level is the clothing. It's been confirmed that the clothing will have unlockable buffs resulting from use, of which will advance independently of single player apparel. While the ranked matchmaking will hopefully match players up of similar skill and the resulting playtime to unlock presumably similar levels of perks for their clothing.

However at a tournament/LAN environment it's not always possible/easy to guarantee equal and balanced perks. So I'm wondering what opinions people have on the clothing and it's effect on competitive play. While in ranked play I definitely think it's great to reward more skilled players who put the effort into leveling up their gear, in a competitive environment I think it should be purely down to the skill of the players independent of gear. However what will the potential tournament mode do concerning gear? What will our own leagues and cups do about this gear difference.

The main question for me is how much of an advantage will it give, hopefully Splatoon will have the foresight to balance the gear not to give a noticeable benefit to anyone other than the person using it. However in the potential case that it gives a noticeable advantage to the better geared player what are your opinions on the course of action.

I'd personally like to see competitive play online/LAN either have all gear locked at maximum/minimum rank/unlock status or completely removed of all perks for balance purposes. However with the lack of custom options it's unlikely this will happen. However with LAN events it's likely all WiiUs will have a fresh save and as a result unleveled gear. Then we have to hope it won't level up during the course of the LAN...

Either way, I'd love to hear everyone's opinions. It's all hypothetical so feel free to speculate on stuff!

This is actually a great point.
I think that the problem with having maxed gear is that, if you need to bring your gear..how would you do that in the first place? These aren't amiibos, unfortunately. Your character with those perks that you unlocked, were all on your console. So you can't bring it.
For minimally unlocked gear, I think we may have to avoid this as well (at least until we get more information), because
1) If you go to a tourney the setup may not even have all the gears, and each wii u brought could have gear all separate from each other (if all gear is unlocked at a minimal level from the start then it negates point #1)
2) If you can't bring your characters from a console, then ppl might spend too long making their characters before a match, so it increases the length of matches unecessarily.

I do hope that we can use gear tho, as it'll give me diversity and could allow ppl to specialize their characters in the way they like to play
-But having everyone at one standard (no gear for example), might be better

Online tournies could have gear, b/c you are bringing in your own character. But I feel it might not be a good idea for the offline and online community to be different, or else ppl would have to keep adapting as they go from offline to online. So a consensus would be nice. (but we need more info from Nintendo to get there)

 

[FunkyLobster]

This is actually a great point.
I think that the problem with having maxed gear is that, if you need to bring your gear..how would you do that in the first place? These aren't amiibos, unfortunately. Your character with those perks that you unlocked, were all on your console. So you can't bring it.
For minimally unlocked gear, I think we may have to avoid this as well (at least until we get more information), because
1) If you go to a tourney the setup may not even have all the gears, and each wii u brought could have gear all separate from each other (if all gear is unlocked at a minimal level from the start then it negates point #1)
2) If you can't bring your characters from a console, then ppl might spend too long making their characters before a match, so it increases the length of matches unecessarily.

I do hope that we can use gear tho, as it'll give me diversity and could allow ppl to specialize their characters in the way they like to play
-But having everyone at one standard (no gear for example), might be better

Online tournies could have gear, b/c you are bringing in your own character. But I feel it might not be a good idea for the offline and online community to be different, or else ppl would have to keep adapting as they go from offline to online. So a consensus would be nice. (but we need more info from Nintendo to get there)

yeah, this is going to be an issue with LAN tournaments. unless all the perks are immediately accessible for offline LAN play, you're probably going to be playing with perkless equipment, and players who are doing online tournaments and scrims won't be...

it would suck to have the community fractured into separated online and offline communities because of this, assuming we can't make compromises :/

-----

coming from competitive tf2 (again,) i think splatoon will only really have LANs for big events. pretty much the only notable LAN i can think of in tf2 is the international series, where the biggest teams from UGC and ETF2L compete. 99% of the competitive community just scrims with each other and plays off in their respective seasons

splatoon is very grassroots, being a game that appeals to a mostly casual audience on an underselling console. i understand that when people think of grassroots, they think back to the olden days of melee where when we got into MLG it was huge news, but it's been over a decade and times have changed. splatoon's grassroots scene is mostly going to be online with other teams, working within their limitations

ultimately, if we can never figure out how to port over equipment and weapons to a LAN without cracking the dang wii us, then lets crack them- ahem... lets compromise and save LANs for the big tournaments where we can make sure teams bring their own consoles with their own equipment beforehand

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

coming from competitive tf2 (again,) i think splatoon will only really have LANs for big events. pretty much the only notable LAN i can think of in tf2 is the international series, where the biggest teams from UGC and ETF2L compete. 99% of the competitive community just scrims with each other and plays off in their respective seasons

splatoon is very grassroots, being a game that appeals to a mostly casual audience on an underselling console. i understand that when people think of grassroots, they think back to the olden days of melee where when we got into MLG it was huge news, but it's been over a decade and times have changed. splatoon's grassroots scene is mostly going to be online with other teams, working within their limitations

ultimately, if we can never figure out how to port over equipment and weapons to a LAN without cracking the dang wii us, then lets crack them- ahem... lets compromise and save LANs for the big tournaments where we can make sure teams bring their own consoles with their own equipment beforehand

aw man, I'm not much of a fan of a grassroots online scene being the primary. But honestly, if its the only way and the game is fun then I guess it'll have to happen

 

[Solbliminal]

Didn't the Nintendo Direct drop info about the equips not making a difference in online modes? I'm pretty sure I heard something along those lines.

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

Didn't the Nintendo Direct drop info about the equips not making a difference in online modes? I'm pretty sure I heard something along those lines.

That'd be crazy if that's true

 

[WaifuRaccoonBL]

Didn't the Nintendo Direct drop info about the equips not making a difference in online modes? I'm pretty sure I heard something along those lines.

I really really doubt equipment won't be making a difference. I think that was typical Nintendo fashion of overestimating/underestimating thing. Playing online with strangers as teammates will probably make it hard to take full advantage of whatever insane thing you can do with equipment for example.

Anyway, op is right, I can see a huge problem coming out of this. Hopefully it'll be easy to get desired effects. The shop changes daily right?

If push comes to shove, maybe default outfits could work? Minimum perks being optimal. With that said, it'll probably be insanely hard to get some outfits from leveling up so we will have to pick outfits that are level 1 for example.

I wish there was a way/option of making outfits purely cosmetic though.

 

[Lyn]

Didn't the Nintendo Direct drop info about the equips not making a difference in online modes? I'm pretty sure I heard something along those lines.

I'd hope so. I haven't heard much along the lines of Splatoon specifics in a while. I'll have to go back and watch some of the videos.

 

[HaDeeZ]

it would suck to have the community fractured into separated online and offline communities because of this, assuming we can't make compromises :/

I mean if the gear is unavailable offline then it would need to banned online, (as there are no customizable rule option as yet we would have to do something like have people agree to not use things which is tricky) as you say it makes zero sense to segregate what will undoubtedly be a small community (at the start at least) plus its just dumb practicing with something online that you're not going to be able to use at a LAN event.

 

[Yaezakura]

Well, let me give some of my thoughts on the perks...

I do not believe that ranking up your gear gives better perks, simply the option for different perks. So while a pair of shoes might have (hypothetically), Faster Inkling Movement, you maybe could unlock Faster Squid Movement on that same pair of shoes, and then have to pick which one is active. In this way, it maybe makes a piece of gear you like the look of also have the perk you want to use, but maybe not right away--you have to unlock it for that piece of gear, while maybe it's the default on a different one.

I mean, looking at the stream going on yesterday (and right now), you can see 3 active perks per player... and they're positioned in such a way as to imply only 3 icons will ever be there. That tells me (though of course I could end up being wrong here) that each piece of gear can only have 1 active perk, regardless of how many total perks it can unlock.

If I'm correct in this, then the perks should be perfectly fine for use in any kind of competitive sense, as everyone playing should have access to the same perks. Maybe they'd have to change clothing to get it by default instead of an unlockable, but that shouldn't be an issue for people playing competitively instead of purely for fun.

 

[jp4464]

Well, let me give some of my thoughts on the perks...

I do not believe that ranking up your gear gives better perks, simply the option for different perks. So while a pair of shoes might have (hypothetically), Faster Inkling Movement, you maybe could unlock Faster Squid Movement on that same pair of shoes, and then have to pick which one is active. In this way, it maybe makes a piece of gear you like the look of also have the perk you want to use, but maybe not right away--you have to unlock it for that piece of gear, while maybe it's the default on a different one.

I mean, looking at the stream going on yesterday (and right now), you can see 3 active perks per player... and they're positioned in such a way as to imply only 3 icons will ever be there. That tells me (though of course I could end up being wrong here) that each piece of gear can only have 1 active perk, regardless of how many total perks it can unlock.

If I'm correct in this, then the perks should be perfectly fine for use in any kind of competitive sense, as everyone playing should have access to the same perks. Maybe they'd have to change clothing to get it by default instead of an unlockable, but that shouldn't be an issue for people playing competitively instead of purely for fun.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Tons of users have been freaking out regarding the perks, and how the people who unlock more perks will be at an inherent advantage over everyone else.
Having players choose which perks to use before battle is just like other shooters today. I'm excited to see what builds players come up with to complement their weapon loadouts.

 

[Lyn]

This is exactly what I was thinking. Tons of users have been freaking out regarding the perks, and how the people who unlock more perks will be at an inherent advantage over everyone else.
Having players choose which perks to use before battle is just like other shooters today. I'm excited to see what builds players come up with to complement their weapon loadouts.

This is true, but perks are usually only in unbalanced shooters (ie; COD, Halo 4, etc;) so that doesn't really fit in with the whole competitive legality thing. At least not yet, we really don't know enough.

 

[Xeiros]

There is no such thing as an active or inactive perk. All unlocked perks on a piece of clothing are active at all times their benefits are applicable. Wait! Why does it only show three on your HUD? Screen real estate. If you'd have put more than no thought at all into it you'd run into a number of issues with your little theory. If only three are actually active in a match what in the world is the point of spending the large amount of time and gold earning clothing with more perks on them?

There would be no actual benefit to purchasing pieces with more perk slots on them. As long as you could get the main three you wanted, the rest of wouldn't matter because the potentially 1-3 extra perks don't actually do anything. Were you aware some pieces of clothing have multiples of the same perk? In fact, I've seen sets with four+ of the same perk. They stack with themselves. When a player is splatted by another it shows them the main weapon, clothing articles along with every perk they're currently using of the one that did them in.

Better gear in Splatoon means more perks. More perks mean more of your inkling's attributes can be increased at a given time. Players could chose to a variety of areas or stack similar or identical perks to increase their individual effect's potency. I so hope I do not have to explain in detail exactly why having a 12 perk clothing set in which only three perks are active in a match is identical to using a clothing set with the same three perks you want active, but only one bonus perk for a total of six therefore destroying any value in the more expensive coolness level locked clothing articles with more than two perks. I'd have said one, but there's no such thing.

On a side note, y'all are so adorable for thinking Splatoon has LAN. It doesn't. The sooner you accept this, the better. Not once has there ever been any official confirmation of it being a console networking option in the retail build of the game. You can't just assume as game has X feature(s) until you're told it's not. It doesn't work like that.

 

[Yaezakura]

There is no such thing as an active or inactive perk. All unlocked perks on a piece of clothing are active at all times their benefits are applicable. Wait! Why does it only show three on your HUD? Screen real estate. If you'd have put more than no thought at all into it you'd run into a number of issues with your little theory. If only three are actually active in a match what in the world is the point of spending the large amount of time and gold earning clothing with more perks on them?

There would be no actual benefit to purchasing pieces with more perk slots on them. As long as you could get the main three you wanted, the rest of wouldn't matter because the potentially 1-3 extra perks don't actually do anything. Were you aware some pieces of clothing have multiples of the same perk? In fact, I've seen sets with four+ of the same perk. They stack with themselves. When a player is splatted by another it shows them the main weapon, clothing articles along with every perk they're currently using of the one that did them in.

Better gear in Splatoon means more perks. More perks mean more of your inkling's attributes can be increased at a given time. Players could chose to a variety of areas or stack similar or identical perks to increase their individual effect's potency. I so hope I do not have to explain in detail exactly why having a 12 perk clothing set in which only three perks are active in a match is identical to using a clothing set with the same three perks you want active, but only one bonus perk for a total of six therefore destroying any value in the more expensive coolness level locked clothing articles with more than two perks. I'd have said one, but there's no such thing.

Wow... rude much? I share an idea that you disagree with, and you start insulting me?

If I'm wrong, then please supply some proof. I haven't seen clothing pieces with multiple copies of the same perk. Do you have screenshots or videos with a time stamp of this? I'm more than welcome to the idea of being wrong. I even said so in my original post.

 

[Lyn]

There is no such thing as an active or inactive perk. All unlocked perks on a piece of clothing are active at all times their benefits are applicable. Wait! Why does it only show three on your HUD? Screen real estate. If you'd have put more than no thought at all into it you'd run into a number of issues with your little theory. If only three are actually active in a match what in the world is the point of spending the large amount of time and gold earning clothing with more perks on them?

There would be no actual benefit to purchasing pieces with more perk slots on them. As long as you could get the main three you wanted, the rest of wouldn't matter because the potentially 1-3 extra perks don't actually do anything. Were you aware some pieces of clothing have multiples of the same perk? In fact, I've seen sets with four+ of the same perk. They stack with themselves. When a player is splatted by another it shows them the main weapon, clothing articles along with every perk they're currently using of the one that did them in.

Better gear in Splatoon means more perks. More perks mean more of your inkling's attributes can be increased at a given time. Players could chose to a variety of areas or stack similar or identical perks to increase their individual effect's potency. I so hope I do not have to explain in detail exactly why having a 12 perk clothing set in which only three perks are active in a match is identical to using a clothing set with the same three perks you want active, but only one bonus perk for a total of six therefore destroying any value in the more expensive coolness level locked clothing articles with more than two perks. I'd have said one, but there's no such thing.

On a side note, y'all are so adorable for thinking Splatoon has LAN. It doesn't. The sooner you accept this, the better. Not once has there ever been any official confirmation of it being a console networking option in the retail build of the game. You can't just assume as game has X feature(s) until you're told it's not. It doesn't work like that.

Well.. that was pretty passive aggressive. Also, I'd like to note games have been played through LAN already at certain places. So, yeah.. It might not be in the final game but it's not insane to assume it will be in, seriously. You didn't have to be so rude, honestly...