Force me out of my comfort zone.

[Hokuto]

I want to improve my Splatoon gameplay beyond "practice a lot;" when I practice without giving it further thought, I've been finding lately that I reinforce many of my bad habits instead of building good ones. For example, I'm relatively good at getting lots of splats. This has led to me getting reckless and taking every fight regardless of whether I can splat without going down myself.

So far, I've reached out to DzNutsKong of Squidboards fame for advice, and he says I play well for my in-game rank. The problem with this feedback, as much as I appreciate it, is that I have so little game awareness that he can compliment, say, my positioning without me consciously understanding how or why I'm picking the right places to go. With my main(s) of choice, I don't think when I play, I just do.

How can I shake my complacency and make myself think about what I'm doing? I'm open to suggestions, anything as simple as "turn off your laptop before an Opens session" to something major like "[suggested weapon] has an awful time to splat, how about learning to utilize its good turfing to corner an enemy who can't paint an easy escape route?" All suggestions are welcome; not all suggestions are helpful. Proper positioning (for example) for a Splash-o-Matic looks way different from that of a Snipewriter; I benefit far more from practicing one than the other.

Other potentially useful information:

• I am comfortable, if not complacent, with Tri-Slosher Nouveau and Dread Wringer. All of my other weapons (Splat Dualies, N-ZAP '85, the Range Blasters) are rusty.
• My current Anarchy rank is B, teetering just below B+.
• I should do more movement drills. The bar is barely above the floor. My aim is inconsistent (combo motion/sticks). I can't sub strafe or do that thing when you assume run form for a split second before swimming all the way up a wall to sink into the floor faster.

 

[QuagSass]

Normally I would suggest picking up a shorter ranged backline because I think that they do a good job of teaching people how to position and make use of terrain regardless of range value. Plus I think that learning at least one backline at some point generally gives a better understanding of the game as a whole.
But if that's a bit too much, then how about picking up Dualies again? Any Dualies really, but since you already have some experience with vDualies you could go with that. Dualies as a whole gotta roll in and out of cover a lot and generally prefer fighting with teammates. So you'd learn how to utilise terrain and your teammates. Dualies would probably help with your aim as well since they're not an AOE weapon and adjusting your aim after dodge rolling requires a bit of skill. Plus with vDualies specifically you could learn a thing or two about positioning since you can't exactly pop Crab Tank deep in enemy territory and expect it to go well.

 

[OCTöHEAD]

When I'm up for it and I noticed someone I played with/against playing good then I like to rewatch the map to see how they did it.

Another thing that gets my brainworms crawling is when I stumble upon videos where someone talks over a match and explains the decisions done. like this one:

it gets me thinking more

 

[solz]

ASk @Agame he mains ntri

 

[briank913]

you should try the H3. I promise it's the best weapon ever

 

[Aiko.Octo]

[...] without me consciously understanding how or why I'm picking the right places to go. With my main(s) of choice, I don't think when I play, I just do.

If you're trying to play more consciously instead of automatically, what helped me a lot in the beginning was to, while playing, narrate what you are doing out loud (and maybe why you're doing it). It sounds silly but in my experience it kind of forces your brain to process what's going on differently and you become more aware of the choices you are making. It's not something that will necessarily immediately improve gameplay, but by doing it a lot you can eventually build the mental habit of being more actively conscious of what you are doing when you're playing and in my experience that's foundational for learning everything else.

also, (unrelated and I might have mentioned this before somewhere but) one of my favorite practices/drills is recon mode clam blitz. Try to keep the basket open for as long as you can while using sub-strafing to grab clams and quickly flicking your map open and closed to see where the nearest clams are. Both of those are really useful skills that I find are hard to practice practically in-game so this exercise helped me a lot. Just be sure to try it on a bunch of different maps. This will also get you really familiar with all the spots that the clams spawn and if you're generally uncomfortable in clam blitz (as many people are) the before-and-after difference is really noticeable (at least it was for me).

 

[🌌☾ᏉᎬᎶᎪ☽⭐]

My aim is inconsistent (combo motion/sticks).

There's a piece of advice that has been ironed into my brain when it comes to this.

The world is your aim drill.

Don't get me wrong, you can definitely hit up the dummies and practice your weapons like that but if you've got time to kill while waiting in the lobby, look for other things you can set your sights on. Wanna practice shutting someone down from climbing a wall? The lobby is littered with stickers, something you can definitely try aiming at. Wanna try counter attacking with a bomb in the way? Try the copy machine. It might not move but it gives you something to parry and then shoot at. Get out of a Turf War or Anarchy Series game and are waiting for the next match? Use people's holograms to shoot at. While they're busy messing with the dummies you can fire at them to simulate someone unprepared, or someone shooting at you. Ultimately it's unpredictable unlike the moving dummies so if they're really fidgeting you also get something to practice movement while also practicing your aiming, tracking, strafing, whatever it is you desire. Dummies are always gonna have the most feedback but if you give things new perspective, you'll gain more target dummies than Nintendo even thought possible.

 

[OCTöHEAD]

If you're trying to play more consciously instead of automatically, what helped me a lot in the beginning was to, while playing, narrate what you are doing out loud (and maybe why you're doing it). It sounds silly but in my experience it kind of forces your brain to process what's going on differently and you become more aware of the choices you are making. It's not something that will necessarily immediately improve gameplay, but by doing it a lot you can eventually build the mental habit of being more actively conscious of what you are doing when you're playing and in my experience that's foundational for learning everything else.

that makes so much sense though!

 

[DzNutsKong]

I meant to respond to this a lot sooner but the day this thread was active was a pretty busy one for me iirc. My bad.

This is a pretty tough issue to break. I mean, whether or not you're focusing on a game at a given point is basically a yes-or-no kinda deal. Either you are able to focus during at least some parts of a game or you aren't at all. I didn't really have to deal with this issue as a Splatoon player since my time in Smash 4 / Ultimate helped me basically skip re-implementing it for Splatoon.

What helped me a lot as a starting point for Smash was using my time holding a ledge to think. This was kind of perfect for me since it was something that happened several times, occasionally back-to-back, in practically every game, you are safe until you've made some kind of choice, and the game slows down a lot here. The single most helpful part of it here was that grabbing the ledge is such a distinct part of the game and I could physically look at my character and say "okay, I'm on the ledge, now's my time to think" rather than expecting to be focused over an entire three minute game.

If anyone reading is unfamiliar with Smash then I'll tell you that the options a player has while holding ledge are very limited, and as such the opponent's game plan is a lot more limited as well. Simply put, on the ledge you can choose between any of the following - normal getup, jump with or without an attack, dodge roll, getup attack, or drop from the ledge. You can choose when you want to do any of these as well and this is important since your opponent's attacks will mostly have some form of cooldown you can abuse for safety. If you don't care about more of the specifics with this or find it too complicated then you can skip over the next paragraph where I will have an example.

Spoiler: Example

Let's say I'm playing Mewtwo, holding ledge against a Mario that's over me. Mewtwo's ledge jump and roll are pretty bad but he does have some great attacks from a jump. In this scenario, Mario has quite a few options since he's on stage. He usually will be turned away from you where he can try to time an Up Smash if he wants a kill, but Mewtwo's getup attack and some jumping attacks can hit him out of this, especially if the Mewtwo sees it coming and waits. He can try to throw out back airs instead for a safer option that applies pressure on Mewtwo, but the Mewtwo can ledge roll to make this spacing a bit trickier and use different timings, especially with a regular jump, to make timing a bit trickier. Also, doing a normal getup and immeidately holding shield can make both of these options a lot tougher to hit, but gives Mario a completely free hit if they predict this by grabbing you.

The point is that grabbing a ledge would give me several moments during a game to evaluate my opponent's options and respond with what I think is best. Not everything is going to work, especially since the ledge situation favors the opponent pretty greatly, but there are things to learn from every exchange as long as I can keep in mind that I should "start to focus after grabbing the ledge."

Now, that's how I did it in Smash. This is a Splatoon forum. How would someone try and translate this to Splatoon? There aren't any perfect translations but three reasonably close examples come to mind here. All of these are spots where you're relatively safe though. Remind yourself before a game that during a game, when you hit one or both of these spots, you should use that time to pause for a second, practically take your thumbs off of the controller, look at the HUD and around the screen for enemies, and use that to determine your next course of action. All of that before making your next choice.

First off, you can use any time you find yourself behind cover as a cue for this. You're usually safe here but I'm sure not every player gets to a point where they're behind cover often.

Second, you can also use any time you die as a cue. This is very easy to notice no matter what, but doesn't usually help with direct engagements since it'll take too long to get to where the enemies are. The game state could have changed a lot by then but it's always a great point to look at the UI and map to see where you should go, how many players down you are and whether or not you might want to get your special gauge filled quickly for defense.

The end goal is for you to be able to think about your next course of action in more situations than just those two. Next after this might be thinking about what to do when nobody's around you, while you're painting, or the ultimate goal of while starting a fight with someone. There will never be a point in the game where you won't have to autopilot to at least some degree but being able to adapt to the state of the game is a huge deal.

All of this ignores the possibility that you might not know what a good course of action is. The fact that you acknowledge what a bad fight looks like makes me think that you probably do, but you've also said to me that you think your gameplan is a bit more one-dimensional than it should be. If you want me to elaborate more on this then I absolutely can, but if you just want more general pointers then take this flowchart...

You might notice those big ugly blocks of text on the right that take a bit more game sense to follow fully. Some readers might also have noticed that this doesn't take the state of the game into account. Those are the big things that I would elaborate on if you wanted me to say more. Again, I'm absolutely down to talk about that, but this post is getting pretty lengthy as is and I'm not sure exactly how much you do and don't know about all that.

Hope this helps either way! Let me know if you want me to say more about anything here.

 

[SAMICOM]

I want to improve my Splatoon gameplay beyond "practice a lot;" when I practice without giving it further thought, I've been finding lately that I reinforce many of my bad habits instead of building good ones. For example, I'm relatively good at getting lots of splats. This has led to me getting reckless and taking every fight regardless of whether I can splat without going down myself.

So far, I've reached out to DzNutsKong of Squidboards fame for advice, and he says I play well for my in-game rank. The problem with this feedback, as much as I appreciate it, is that I have so little game awareness that he can compliment, say, my positioning without me consciously understanding how or why I'm picking the right places to go. With my main(s) of choice, I don't think when I play, I just do.

How can I shake my complacency and make myself think about what I'm doing? I'm open to suggestions, anything as simple as "turn off your laptop before an Opens session" to something major like "[suggested weapon] has an awful time to splat, how about learning to utilize its good turfing to corner an enemy who can't paint an easy escape route?" All suggestions are welcome; not all suggestions are helpful. Proper positioning (for example) for a Splash-o-Matic looks way different from that of a Snipewriter; I benefit far more from practicing one than the other.

Other potentially useful information:

• I am comfortable, if not complacent, with Tri-Slosher Nouveau and Dread Wringer. All of my other weapons (Splat Dualies, N-ZAP '85, the Range Blasters) are rusty.
• My current Anarchy rank is B, teetering just below B+.
• I should do more movement drills. The bar is barely above the floor. My aim is inconsistent (combo motion/sticks). I can't sub strafe or do that thing when you assume run form for a split second before swimming all the way up a wall to sink into the floor faster.

Play with something I call "Respawn Punisher Therapy"

Play with RP and learn to take less risks. works like a charm

 

[miso!]

Play with something I call "Respawn Punisher Therapy"

Play with RP and learn to take less risks. works like a charm

Oh my gosh that sounds like a nightmare lol. Anyways, also, if you’re not too worried about rank, you could try to just make plays that you wouldn’t normally go for, of course within reason, but take risks and learn from your failures, and remember your successes.

 

[SAMICOM]

Oh my gosh that sounds like a nightmare lol. Anyways, also, if you’re not too worried about rank, you could try to just make plays that you wouldn’t normally go for, of course within reason, but take risks and learn from your failures, and remember your successes.

its not fun but it works

 

[Alphine_Agnitio]

Heres tried and true advice I personally follow to the letter -

soloq is for practice only. Don't worry about your rank, don't worry about your x power, don't worry about the other team or your teammates, hell, don't worry about if you win or lose. the only way you "win" is if you tangible improve each session.

what I do is pretty simple; whenever I que by myself, I set a tiny, relatively accomplishable goal. "I want to get cooler in 15 seconds on X map in this rotation", "I want to conciously watch the other team and avoid dying by giving up space", "I want to trust my teammates more and focus on my individual role instead of doing everything" etc etc

During the game(s), I'll focus on doing that exact one thing, nothing more, nothing less. Sub Strafing only took me a week or two to pick up as a habit using this method for example(I held down R at all times during gameplay until I had it down to a habit and that became unnecessary.)