EU/OC and NA Splatfest - Spongebob vs. Patrick

[AlphaOmegaSplatter]

I know(I assume everyone's from NA unless they say so) but for this Splatfest, we played with Europe. Reason for the wonky hours.

Well, I did play about 10 hours so....

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

*shrugs* I really do like the hours that we had for this splatfest.
Also, happy past 300 posts to me

 

[Chaos_Knight]

Hey Chaos, you need to update your card :p

I'm lazy. Quit bothering me about that. It's starting to irritate me.

 

[Coleo&Idea]

Ha! At least no steamrolling win, lol.

But when I think about it... wouldn't the new system AND a lower win multiplicator cut off all of this "dont-join-the-popular-team-if-you-want-to-win" thing?

 

[Ansible]

Oh... well... *raises glass* Here's to hoping we can break the curse of the popular team always loses!

 

[Cuttleshock]

I knew it was too weird for Patrick to have more supporters, after all. Wonderful! I've just distributed 720,000 Cash worth of snails to adding new slots to any gear that has some combination of , , and (between Main and preferred Sub) and didn't already have three slots, plus a few other items.

I was a mess this Splatfest and didn't really help our cause (started at 1600 Power, ended at about 1530), but it was still doubtlessly better than Boards vs. Packs. I ascribe that to the increased S+ starting power (I take it they started at 1600 last time?). Connection tended to be worse on my second day of play, but ultimately nothing too game-ruining for the most part.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

I'm lazy. Quit bothering me about that. It's starting to irritate me.

Really? I haven't said anything about it in a bit.

Just watched the Splatfest Winner announcement! :D

 

[Mini]

I think for the next splatfest I will rank up so I start off with a higher power level.

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Well that was a fun Splatfest. GGs to everyone!

Now to petition Nintendo to do an official Splatoon anime.

 

[Mini]

Well that was a fun Splatfest. GGs to everyone!

Now to petition Nintendo to do an official Splatoon anime.

That would be awesome if they made a Splatoon anime.

 

[MrL1193]

Well, it's comforting to know that I didn't suffer for nothing. My Splatfest experience was apparently a typical one for Team Patrick--I started off at 1700 Splatfest Power and did fine at first, but then I went on a horrific losing streak. I cycled through every weapon I felt comfortable using, but not with any lasting benefit. The whole time, I was convinced that I was just playing much worse than usual for some reason (leading to shameful results like going 1-5 on the winning team with the .96 Deco), and perhaps I was, but I guess the rival teams really were tougher this time around (though most of the matches were Patrick vs. Patrick, of course). At the very least, toward the end of my session, I started getting matched up against teams with somewhat lower Splatfest Power and with the help of my trusty Carbon Roller, I managed to win enough to end at 1731. It was still an incredibly frustrating Splatfest for me overall. Thank goodness regular old Ranked will be back next time I play...

 

[LupusFreak]

Yep, predictable. It went pretty much the same as Snowman vs. Sandcastle. It seemed like Sandcastle/Patrick was more popular, only because it had more players that were in the higher Splatfest Power levels, while most of the players who chose Snowman/Spongebob (the majority being kids (i'm assuming)) were in the lower Splatfest Power levels.

I know many many people have pointed this out already, but i'm going to be lame and do it again.

It goes like this: the majority player base of Splatoon are kids. Being the main character of a kids show, kids are probably going to chose Spongebob over Patrick. Older players know this and chose Patrick over Spongebob because they don't want their team brought down by a bunch of kids. Yes, some high level players will purposely go for the popular team simply because they don't want to "follow the crowd" and purposefully go for the unpopular team, but they are minuscule when looking at the bigger population.

So we have the majority of the popular team kids, and the majority of the unpopular team older players. The old system matched everyone up with everyone. Selecting from the pool of squads, the unpopular team is more likely to have the better squad, resulting in them winning wins and the popular team winning popularity.

In the new system, it should theoretically be more balanced. It should match players that are closer in terms of skill against each other. So far, the only thing it has changed is who gets matched up against their own team. Now, the popularity is different in each Splatfest Power level. The popular team will have more of it's members in the lower levels, and the unpopular team will have more in the higher levels. This is what causes the unpopular team's higher levels (which is most of us here on Squidboards) to face against each other. I'm assuming here that Spongebob was facing against each other in the 1200- SP range, but seeing as not many players in that range are here on Squidboards, we can't get an accurate reading of that (Maybe a few people can make an alt and keep them at the lower ranks just for that? Anyone?). I'm going to take a guess and say that the middle range is what mainly decides the Splatfest. If the popularity is similar there, then the skill difference will have more of an impact.

Of course, this entire thing is an estimation/assumption. I wish Nintendo posted the number of wins/losses, number of same-team matchups, and population for both teams in each SP level. That would be a useful graph.

How to fix it? Well, they could try moving the multiplier back down to x2, but I don't think that's going to work. It might, with the new system and all, but I honestly think they should just normalize the amount of snails for both the winner and loser. If the only reason this happens is because the winning team gets 6 more snails, then why not take away that incentive to do it? It would make it so Splatfest is all about having fun and just enjoying Splatoon for a few hours, and not a ranked turf war. If wins and losses didn't really matter, then you would have no need to try so hard, thus making the atmosphere way more relaxed.

But meh, that's just my opinion. It probably wouldn't happen, because that would make changing to the new system irrelevant (or maybe the bonus snails can come from how high your Splatfest power is? Wait no, that would just make it competitive again).

 

[Squix]

How to fix it? Well, they could try moving the multiplier back down to x2, but I don't think that's going to work. It might, with the new system and all, but I honestly think they should just normalize the amount of snails for both the winner and loser. If the only reason this happens is because the winning team gets 6 more snails, then why not take away that incentive to do it? It would make it so Splatfest is all about having fun and just enjoying Splatoon for a few hours, and not a ranked turf war. If wins and losses didn't really matter, then you would have no need to try so hard, thus making the atmosphere way more relaxed.

But meh, that's just my opinion. It probably wouldn't happen, because that would make changing to the new system irrelevant (or maybe the bonus snails can come from how high your Splatfest power is? Wait no, that would just make it competitive again).

Yeah, I miss the times when I could just grab a squiffer and pwn everyone...

 

[Award]

There truly is something broken about this game and how it matches people. The new splatfests basically confirm the long rants on ranked battles not being right in the scoring by adding hard numbers to the matchmaking and showing us that there REALLY is something wrong with the numbers and ranks and how it matches you. I had 3 accounts to get to Royalty. An A- Patrick, S Patrick, and S Spongebob. Normally I wouldn't aim for all 3 in one splatfest but since this was an extended fest and 2 of my accounts had ZERO snails, why not?


Doing the A- Patrick felt kind of normal to royalty. It was normal TW, somewhat intense under the new system, but I went from 1500 to 1570 fairly fast. Got to royalty by early afternoon. Had some frustrating matches but overall not bad.

Then I did the S Patrick...again, not too bad. Some frustrating moments, Some odd dropouts. But the only really weird thing I noticed was that I was almost always getting way outmatched, by the numbers, on both teams, though still winning. I mean I'd be on fes power teams of 1590 or 1620 and have opponents with powers of 1970 - that would be Top 100 class opponents against a team of A+/S players. And we were WINNING. I also saw a lot of Patrick vs Patrick, and very long waits between matches which dragged the whole affair out longer than it should have been. In fact I almost never played against Spongebob at ALL on my S Patrick account I only saw pink v yellow a handful of times. I think I finished with a Fes Power of 1640 or so....basically treaded water.

I did the first account with Soda Slosher (for giggles) and Refurb (I really like it) - I did the second account entirely with CHydra.

Then Spongebob. It started ok, a little so-so but ok. Then it was close to 10:00pm ET. And it changed. I started losing. Then losing more. I tried every weapon....hydra, dynamo, refurb, even nzaps. Every round the enemy seemed to move 2x faster than any of us could move. They moved fast, turned fast, shot fast, popped up and were gone in a flash....I could hardly leave spawn, I'd be dead before I could even pull the trigger; often before I even saw an enemy. They were killing me while firing in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION. I started going 0/4, 1/8, 5/17 a lot of rounds....I was the worst on my team suddenly after being the best in the lobby for most of the rest of the day. And get this: the fes powers were 1520 vs 1520...1ven 1540 vs 1520.....as opposed to the earlier 1590 vs 1970. How was this suddenly massively HARDER???? To the point of being impossible. Over the entire next day and the rest of that night I inched my way to royalty 1-2 points at a time. I played 80 rounds and won 7. My S Bob account's fest power went from starting 1600 to 1510 or 1520 by the end. And I was still getting MASSIVELY outmatched until the very last round where I got a 1480 opponent. This was mostly vs Patrick. But this is what makes no sense at all. Why would 1590 vs 1970 Pat vs Pat be massively easier than 1540 vs 1520 Bob vs Pat? To the point that I can't even kill anyone or even get to mid? And be the worst of the entire lobby? It makes no sense at all....I suppose unless it's all lag related? I switched to 52 gal for a bit to be more lag resistant and my kills definitely improved but we still lost by large margins. Though I was at least not the worst on the team any longer.

When a 1970 team consisting of 2 or more top 100 tier players is a pushover and a 1520 of supposed A ranks is an impossible to dodge, impossible to hit nightmare, something is wrong. I checked the Plaza after that last round - the 1490 opposing round that we won. Nearly every player in the lobby was S+ with a few S's. Now how were a team of S+, S+, S, S averaging out to 1490? Were they managing to lose even MORE than me? That hardly seems possible, I basically didn't win any. Or was the system arbitrarily handing out starting fes powers that had nothing at all to do with rank? S+ should start at 1800, S at 1600. Starting power for that team should be 1700 - 1490 is a LOOOONG fall. Even I didn't fall THAT far. So where did their scores come from?

And if the team I was able to win against was S+, S+, S, S, then what on earth were those impossible to hit opponents earlier? Super S++ tournament leaders? With powers at 1520?

Edit: S+ starts at 1700 not 1800 so the team starting power should have been 1650 not 1700, but to 1490 is still a VERY long fall for them to lose THAT much.

 

[Rabite]

Then Spongebob. It started ok, a little so-so but ok. Then it was close to 10:00pm ET. And it changed. I started losing. Then losing more. I tried every weapon....hydra, dynamo, refurb, even nzaps. Every round the enemy seemed to move 2x faster than any of us could move. They moved fast, turned fast, shot fast, popped up and were gone in a flash....I could hardly leave spawn, I'd be dead before I could even pull the trigger; often before I even saw an enemy. They were killing me while firing in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

Toward the end of Splatfest, particularly when there should have been more EU players active, the connections were terrible. Death from players firing in the opposite direction, rollers suddenly blinking into existence, and instagib splattershots left and right. Peer to peer hosting is kind of terrible for any kind of competitive play, but that is an issue entirely different from matchmaking.

 

[Award]

Toward the end of Splatfest, particularly when there should have been more EU players active, the connections were terrible. Death from players firing in the opposite direction, rollers suddenly blinking into existence, and instagib splattershots left and right. Peer to peer hosting is kind of terrible for any kind of competitive play, but that is an issue entirely different from matchmaking.

Yeah that's the big question - how much of it is matchmaking against wildly superior players and how much of it is lag induced? I've never been able to tell the difference, or specifically identify lag unless I see distance teleporting (which I see often) or see ink out of sync with actions (and the firing in opposite directions etc.)

I'm starting to have a hard time determining if I just massively suck at the game compared to all these amazing super-players I often face off against, or if the game is most of the time purely unplayable at the speeds they foolishly designed it to play at in relation to how the internet works. Instagib splattershots are pretty much universal now, as are instagib jet squelchers. Pretty much all weapons are ohko now. For the other team, anyway.... So identifying "more lag than usual" is troublesome.

FWIW I experienced the same situation last splatfest after 9:30 or 10:00ET, so it's not Europe and the ME that's causing said lag issues, and obviously it's not Japan, it's someone else in the NoA region, be it just bad US connections (but why worse at night?) or S. America & Caribbean connections (@Rockenberg, @Leronne, and @Nero86 are in those areas and could probably help identify what they saw during their play time) and I recently found out that most of Asia Pacific outside Japan is also NoA territory (not sure about S. Korea) so that could be a part of it as well, I've heard the opposite direction was true - lag over there was awful so it might be related). We might just be fighting laggy Koreans instead of laggy Japanese when we're "NoA only" - And Korean competitive game intensity is (in)famous :)

I know that my ping normally is between 30-70 to google so it should be very stable for online gaming. But my ping in the best of times to niconico is 250 and can spike to 720 (almost 3/4 second.) Technically there's scarcely a reason to play a game this fast when you're 3/4 second behind the action- you could have been killed twice before you even saw an enemy.

Yet I always perceive it as just exceptionally good players that can avoid you, always be out of your range, and do not ever miss a shot - ever, with perfect tracking.

I get salty about bad matchmaking throwing me against these super players, but I'd be utterly p****d if the problem was that I was basically never playing the game at all half the time!

That said, 1490....from an S+, S+, S, S team leads me to believe more than lag is going on with the matchmaking. or a lot of people are getting massively screwed by the lag even worse than I am, which is unfathomable.

 

[Flareth]

I'm sorely tempted to call bullsquid here. How is it that Team Spongebob was more popular if I ended up fighting my fellow Patrick Teams more often? What, were all the Spongebob squiddos confined to the lower ranks?

At least Marie's slowly making up for her NA deficit, I guess.

 

[Award]

I'm sorely tempted to call bullsquid here. How is it that Team Spongebob was more popular if I ended up fighting my fellow Patrick Teams more often? What, were all the Spongebob squiddos confined to the lower ranks?

At least Marie's slowly making up for her NA deficit, I guess.

My theory is that that's what it was. On Patrick I didn't have much problem finding Spongebob teams on my account in the A's, but it was almost IMPOSSIBLE to find teams on my account at S. But my S Spongebob team had no problem finding teams to fight. Meanwhile a C+ friend on Patrick had no problems finding Spongebob teams having zero mirror matches. So my guess has been that Spongebob was flooded with low rank players but had a scarce few high rankers, while Patrick was flooded with most of the high rankers, so high rank battles usually were patrick v patrick. No doubt that was intended to help the "least popular team" thing - as was pulling Europe in, but in the end this was a bad one to try it with because the contrarian that runs in every 1337 gamer will say "go with the B side character"

 

[Leronne]

Yeah that's the big question - how much of it is matchmaking against wildly superior players and how much of it is lag induced? I've never been able to tell the difference, or specifically identify lag unless I see distance teleporting (which I see often) or see ink out of sync with actions (and the firing in opposite directions etc.)

I'm starting to have a hard time determining if I just massively suck at the game compared to all these amazing super-players I often face off against, or if the game is most of the time purely unplayable at the speeds they foolishly designed it to play at in relation to how the internet works. Instagib splattershots are pretty much universal now, as are instagib jet squelchers. Pretty much all weapons are ohko now. For the other team, anyway.... So identifying "more lag than usual" is troublesome.

FWIW I experienced the same situation last splatfest after 9:30 or 10:00ET, so it's not Europe and the ME that's causing said lag issues, and obviously it's not Japan, it's someone else in the NoA region, be it just bad US connections (but why worse at night?) or S. America & Caribbean connections (@Rockenberg, @Leronne, and @Nero86 are in those areas and could probably help identify what they saw during their play time) and I recently found out that most of Asia Pacific outside Japan is also NoA territory (not sure about S. Korea) so that could be a part of it as well, I've heard the opposite direction was true - lag over there was awful so it might be related). We might just be fighting laggy Koreans instead of laggy Japanese when we're "NoA only" - And Korean competitive game intensity is (in)famous :)

I've only experienced lag once or maybe twice this splatfest. i didn't play for very long since i have to study for finals, but it was pretty much smooth sailing for me. all of my splatfests have been pretty much lagless aside from maybe one that had a few more that normal, but not that the entire splatfest was laggy. I'm starting to wonder if maybe i'm the laggy one and i just don't know it o_O. My internet is honestly not that fast compared to other players. And when i do feel like i'm lagging, i reset my internet or take a break for a while and everything's back to normal. Not to mention the fact that i use a router that's connected to two smartphones and a computer, sitting around 13 feet from my wii u and behind a wall. So who knows.

 

[chubbypickle]

Well, it's comforting to know that I didn't suffer for nothing. My Splatfest experience was apparently a typical one for Team Patrick--I started off at 1700 Splatfest Power and did fine at first, but then I went on a horrific losing streak. I cycled through every weapon I felt comfortable using, but not with any lasting benefit. The whole time, I was convinced that I was just playing much worse than usual for some reason (leading to shameful results like going 1-5 on the winning team with the .96 Deco), and perhaps I was, but I guess the rival teams really were tougher this time around (though most of the matches were Patrick vs. Patrick, of course). At the very least, toward the end of my session, I started getting matched up against teams with somewhat lower Splatfest Power and with the help of my trusty Carbon Roller, I managed to win enough to end at 1731. It was still an incredibly frustrating Splatfest for me overall. Thank goodness regular old Ranked will be back next time I play...

word for word you described my identical splatfest experience pretty much the same power rankings also