Custom Kits in the next game -- how it could work and be balanced

[Press]

tl;dr: Turn Gear and Kit Selection into something that looks a bit like Tableturf War or (I assume) Side Orders chips

We all know that kits are both a blessing and a curse in Splatoon games. They give a weapon a specific identity, but it also limits you in what you can play, release windows can be 1+ year long, and you're at the mercy of the dev team and their creative musing.

With Splatoon 4 being basically a foregone conclusion, I hope they move to custom kits, and here's how I hope they do it:

1) The design fundamentals

One of the most obvious and common criticisms of the custom kit idea is that things would become one-dimensional and overpowered. Why not just slap a burst bomb and trizooka on any gun and call it a day? Well, there are two answers to that:

• Different weapons benefit from different synergies.
  • We can see this most clearly with the new S-Blast: On paper, this weapon's kit is perfect, but in practice, the burst bomb is somewhat clunky to use, doesn't combo too well with the main and overall seemingly slows it down more than it helps it.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, the Rapid Pro Deco has a pretty bad kit on paper, but the synergy between main, sub, and special is so good that it is far more than the sum of its parts.
• You can design ways to force the player to make tough, but intelligent choices.
  • Look at Fizzy Bomb vs Curling Bomb for example. They both do very similar things, but the Fizzy Bomb is clearly better since it is not only mobility, but also paints well and has really good kill potential.
  • A way to make both usable choices could be to make one much cheaper to use than the other. Or give it some extra perks that you can add yourself (basically more diverse and modular ways of doing sub power up).
  • My favorite solution is a different one, however, and I want to show this in the next "chapter".

2) Splatoon: Uprising

There exists a little 3DS game by the creator of Super Smash Bros that few people played but many people love. It's called Kid Icarus: Uprising. In it, you create a build that consists of multiple tetromino-like blocks that you need to fit into a grid. Each block corresponds to one ability.

(Pictured here: the gear screen in Kid Icarus: Uprising)

I would love it if Splatoon changes its entire gear system to one like in Kid Icarus.

Here's how it could work:

• Every gear ability in Splatoon becomes a tetromino of a different shape and size.
  • Instead of Main and Sub abilities, you have different levels of blocks that offer increasingly higher benefits at the cost of taking up more space in your grid. (e.g. a Fizzy Bomb would have a bigger block, while a curling bomb a small one that is easier to fit in).
  • Ability Chunks could be used to upgrade your existing blocks, or to buy new ones.
  • Blocks could be sold for chunks, or combined for better pieces.
  • This would also be a nice and easy way for the dev team to balance the abilities. If something is too strong/weak, change how much space it takes up in the grid.
  • Points per Special have one high-ish default value across the board (e.g. 210p), and you need to invest into Special Charge Up as needed to get it to where you want.
• Every sub and main ability would become a tetromino, too.
  • The stronger the sub or special is, the bigger the block is.
  • Weak subs and specials have smaller blocks.
  • Really weak subs and specials (e.g. Sprinkler and Slider) cost nothing and are the default -- if you do not invest sub or special blocks into your build, this is what you'll be using instead.
  • Again, this could be an additional way to balance the subs and specials without changing how they work in-game.
• You could pick a brand as a sponsor
  • Of course, we don't want to alieniate the corporate overlords and Nouveau or Deco. But instead of creating their own custom weapons, they sponsor us as players.
  • The same way gear now has different chances of giving you different abilities based on the brand, these same gear chunks now cost more or less depending on your sponsor.
  • Some brands give benefits based on weapon type (e.g. Sorella gives bigger grids if you use brellas). Others based on special type (e.g. Deco makes offensive subs/specials cheaper to use in your build, but every chunk that is utility or supportive is more expensive). And brands like Krak-On could give you a baseline of Swim Speed for free, but at the cost of lower-than-default Run Speed.
  • And again, this is another tool for the devs to tweak and balance without affecting the performance of anything directly.

3) Visuals and Customization

Splatoon is a colorful game of self-expression and style. This system would make this part of the game even better:

• Through this new system, how your inkling/octoling looks and how the gear performs are two separate things. Y
  • You could create your own fits, and tie them into the "freshest fits" loadout system.
  • Changing your shoes because they look good would not mean having to grind chunks anymore, since visuals and gameplay performance are now separate things.
• Obviously, the stickers and visual flairs of alt kits make up a good bit of a weapon's identity, even if it is purely visual. But the solution here is fairly simple:
  • You create your own weapon looks!
  • We already have stickers in the game thanks to the lockers, why not extend that to a weapon bench? Make a weapon completely your own by decorating it any way you want.

____________________________

To summarize:

1. Instead of having abilities tied to clothing, you now create a loadout through a grid.
2. This grid is filled with tetromino blocks that represent both Sub/Special abilities, and all gear abilities.
3. Depending on the strength and value of your ability, the blocks become less easy to slot into your grid.
4. Subs and Specials can now be balanced to be weak (or weaker than a similar sub/special) by design.
5. You are forced to choose between strong sub + special, good gear, or a balanced compromise.
6. Brand Sponsors would encourage certain playstyles, and discourage others.
7. Customization in basically every facet of the game would be improved.

What do you think of this idea? Would you like to play this Splatoon 4?

 

[takoyakispl]

i think this is an interesting idea but ultimately the problem comes in with gear dependent main weapons. Take something like splat brella, which likes to run a lot of mobility, cbk, some ism, stuff like that, but it still does poorly without a good kit. At that point you're gonna have weapons that just struggle unnecessarily. In addition, gear builds are really only a minor thing and for the most part a good special or sub will help infinitely more and people will just end up picking optimal kits and compromising on all the gear. It also just seems complicated and hard for newer players lol. I don't like the current system, what I had thought of in the past was that you could select a sub and special from each kit (so for example, a weapon that currently has 2 kits would have 4 possible combinations of sub and special) and give every weapon like 2-3 to choose from. As long as they balanced subs and specials properly, it would add more depth to your weapon selection and give weapons some interesting niches (for some examples, mini could compete with jr by having burst bubbler, and bucket would be able to use zipcaster while keeping its bomb combo, giving it an actual continuation special). As long as specials actually get balanced (it could very easily become a problem, for example stamper burst crab, vshot could have splat bomb zooka, etc).

 

[Press]

i think this is an interesting idea but ultimately the problem comes in with gear dependent main weapons. Take something like splat brella, which likes to run a lot of mobility, cbk, some ism, stuff like that, but it still does poorly without a good kit. At that point you're gonna have weapons that just struggle unnecessarily.

I tried to address that in the post but I can repeat it here more clearly: That's how I think gear sponsors could work well. I mentioned how Sorella could be your go-to Brella brand because it offers a larger grid if you use a brella weapon. That would offset the issue of specific weapon types having specific needs. You could go further and say that e.g. a Barazushi sponsorship gives you a baseline of Intensify Action for free, where you don't need to invest any blocks to get that benefit (which would work great for Blasters). Or that a Krak-On Sponsorship gives you a minimum of Swim Speed but a lower-than-default Run Speed.

Brands preferring certain stats over others is already a thing since Splatoon 1, and you can just make this even more of a gameplay feature.

 

[takoyakispl]

that seems fair actually, id be interested to try it out it sounds pretty fun

 

[vitellary]

that's a really cool take on the idea, and it feels like it totally fits with the colorful vibes of splatoon. i love the way this sounds

 

[Yosi Spring]

As a player, this sounds like a banger idea. As a game developer, I would shoot the idea down immediately

First of all, the tetromino idea is too complex and interconnected. Let's say you designed Beakon and Splashdown to be tetromino blocks that can't ever fit together. You'd need to document this somewhere, and then make sure the rest of the balance team never changes the shapes of those 2 blocks. It's not simple to just "change how much space something takes up on the grid", when the grid is comprised of subs, specials, and abilities at the same time. The current method the dev team uses for balance is much easier for them - they can change the ability curve formula or points for special on individual weapons, and it won't have as much of a cascading effect.

Secondly, the idea of custom kits in general is an issue for balancing no matter which way you spin it. The intended purpose of custom kits is to exponentially increase the number of weapon combinations in the game. But balancing a game is harder the more combinations you have. Introducing custom kits will make it harder to balance, regardless of the design, unless it's so overcentralized that the number of viable kits ends up being the same as in Splatoon 3. You could say "well, the majority of players don't care about balance and will like custom kits for being more fun", and I don't really have a counterpoint to that, other than that the competitive scene would be in shambles if the balance was bad, and that would eventually spill over into the casual scene.

Finally, having custom kits means the developers have to reinvent their update/hype cycle. The unfortunate reality is that lots of players these days will get bored of a game if it doesn't update at least semi-regularly. Splatoon 3's update cycle is already bad, but if they allowed custom kits then they wouldn't be able to drop reskinned weapons to pad out the updates. Imagine if you had to wait 3 months and then the update adds Heavy Edit, Dread Wringer, and nothing else. If you don't like Splatlings and Sloshers, then the update would have nothing for you. The Splatoon 3 devs use restrictions to build hype whether you like it or not, and removing those restrictions would force them to come up with another way to build hype.

So overall - I don't think your idea would make it easier for the devs to balance the game, and I think custom kits will always have certain flaws no matter how you design them.


...but this post wouldn't be complete without a cynical meta-commentary section to top it off

Despite all the reasons I listed, I actually think custom kits are a possibility for Splatoon 4 (and maybe even your tetromino idea). It's a very Nintendo thing to prioritize fun over competitiveness. And if it does happen, the balance will be much worse than in Splatoon 3. The balance team has shown that they don't know what to do even with only ~100 weapon kits, so there's no reason to expect it would get better with exponentially more kits. But I would continue to play it anyway