Wow, looks like Friday the 13th strikes again with these server failures. And here I was thinking the day would go by without a hitch...
Y'know, it's weird. I know I say this every Splatfest, but it's true: when my teammates are good, they're REALLY good, and when they're bad, they're awful. I was right about how the matches would end up, every single one being a brutal game of tug-'o-war. Bloody trench warfare is what it is.
I've had a few problems with it taking forever to connect to teammates/opponents (5 minutes I was stuck at the bloody "Searching for opponents" screen!), but oddly enough I've only been dropped mid-match once. Not that that's much consolation, since it happened just as the bell sounded. And that was the match where
I was the one bringing my team back to life! All that effort put to waste...
pardon me while I go punch out my wall...
From what y'all are saying, it doesn't sound like the connection nightmare is going away any time soon. Perhaps this is a sign that a Global Splatfest isn't such a good idea. Hopefully things will improve by morning.
Makes sense to a point, but I can honestly say I've seen plenty of that same kind of play from the non-JP splatfests as well. And quite honestly that's the kind of play that's more frustrating and annoying than it is fun - the sense that there's 10 of them versus 4 of us. But just as often the lone "4" of us are me + 3 Japanese players (and my 3 Japanese players are awful) - so I'm not sure that's the key to Japanese style play, I think that's just the key to exceptional players in general. It's just that there's more exceptional players that are Japanese than otherwise. Average Japanese players seem to be as bad or worse than the rest of us ;)
But there's still a different "something" in their style.
Y'know, I noticed that too. I'm actually glad, believe it or not.
You see, the first time I participated in a Splatfest, I was blown away by how much more serious everybody was taking things. Ordinary Turf Wars were simple mess-making sessions, but Splatfest battles? Those players were out for blood. And I loved it; it felt like the stakes were higher because the matches were tougher, if that makes any sense. It's like, the prize for winning gave me the incentive to go all-out, and it did likewise for everyone else. It's almost like you're fighting an actual war.*
Right around winter, I noticed that same mentality creeping into regular Turf Wars. In all honesty, I was a bit annoyed, since I preferred having the cutthroat playstyle limited to Splatfests and Ranked Battles. So I began to think of Splatfests as nothing more than "new" regular Turf Wars with only the nighttime setting and a special prize at the end to make it different.
So for these battles to up the ante even more, to make the fights even more vicious... it comes across as a return to the Splatfests of old. I'm all for it, even though I know I'm gonna get my rear end kicked.
