🌌☾ᏉᎬᎶᎪ☽⭐
Inkling
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2024
- Messages
- 8
- Pronouns
- He/Him But Any Is Fine
- Switch Friend Code
- SW-4725-2886-6488
Hello. I've been thinking of something lately.
Points For Special. A mechanic introduced in Splatoon 2 and something which I think was a good change overall. While the concept of Points For Special being tied to a special only sounds good on paper, there is inevitably going to be a time where it clashes with a weapon and screws it over. Take the CoroCoro Splat Roller for instance. A weapon which was stuck with a sub that couldn't aid in painting, and Inkzooka, which was 220p for its cost. Y'know the deal; good luck getting it.
But as of Splatoon 3, looking back at it and its Point For Special changes, particularly Carbon Roller getting buffed to 160p for Zipcaster, I began to wonder if removing 10 points has actually made weapons significantly better, if at all. So join me in this thread that'll probably be a bit short, as I attempt to wrap my head around the dubious balance changes Nintendo has to offer.
While I did get Splatoon 2 early on in its life, I was never fully around it until everything was said and done, and stuff had largely cooled down. I was, a much more innocent octopi back then. Not much care in the world in terms of weapons and what their Points For Special had to offer, but they were there. Splatoon 2 definitely had a problem with this. There wasn't an exact baseline as to what Points For Special could be, so often a lot of weapons could be as low as 160p, or as high as 220p, but aside from that, there are four weapons I wanna look at. Two down in the dumps, the other 2 meta-defining for a time. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way; the infamous Inkbrush and Undercover Brella. One that got robbed of a good Splat Bomb kit, the other doomed from the start. Their endgoal by Nintendo standards? Break the mold and give them 150p. Keep in mind this is the only time this has happened, for both weapons and specials alike. Inkbrush originally started at 170p, and as time went on, got buffed down to 160p, and eventually 150p. Keep in mind Inkbrush was nothing but buffed throughout the lifespan of Splatoon 2, but the main question is did 150p save the weapon? The answer is a very astounding no, and that's because I neglected to mention that this kit was charging Splashdown. This isn't Triple Splashdown where its flaws were actually fixed; we're talking single fist, rise into the air, and drop Splashdown. The one infamous for being easy to be shot down from and get nothing out of it. Keep in mind that Nintendo decided that instead of helping Splashdown as a special be good, they gave a weapon shackled with it the ability to spam it. As is Splashdown was already a noobstomping special, and it certainly still is today, but they never adjusted it like Triple Splashdown, merely adjust it to say you can use it more often. While the idea of a weaker special that you can use more often sounds good, a change like this made it so that it'd stomp people not familiar with the special more often, and also made it a suicide button if you're playing against people who actually knew what they were doing. Definitely didn't help that you retained 75% of your special if you died midair making you spam it more. As for the Undercover though, it's largely the same case, just with a main weapon and sub weapon that were seriously undertuned, even by Splatoon 3 standards.
Seriously Undercover with Reefslider is leagues better than the Splashdown one and this one is 180p.
So from the looks of it, we're not helping special weapons get better with this change; merely making them used more often. Even if you can spam the same special, it doesn't matter how many times you do it if it doesn't get value with its weapon, which sucks because many of these specials could be salvaged.
So let's look at the other side of the coin. Splatoon 2's Tentatek Splattershot and Ballpoint Splatling Nouveau. Both very oppressive weapons for their time, especially Ballpoint, but the one nerf that did them in was taking it higher and slapping not 220p, but 230p on these weapons. The crazy part about both of these weapons was that both of them skipped 220p entirely. TTek going from 210p to 230p and Ballpoint from 200p to 230p. Even with both of these being crazy options in their prime days, this change killed both of them. Not even Ballpoint was broken enough to save itself from 230p. I have to give a metric on this one. Let's just say that you as an average player with a shooter or whatever on average paints about 1000p per match. That number is pretty generous to many, but to TTek and Ballpoint, they were only allowed 4 specials, and that's excluding the fights and the inevitable splatting of each one of them sending them back a mile to get their special. Splatoon 2 as is punished you hard for messing up and dying. 230p however absolutely guaranteed that you'd likely only get one or two chances to use your special. Three if you were lucky. Eventually, there came a time where Nintendo realized that 230p was an absolutely bad idea, and buffed TTek and Ballpoint back, reverting TTek to 210p, and Ballpoint getting the Points for Special it should've gotten in the first place, which was 220p. I'm not sure if TTek was ever the same after that, but if I do recall Ballpoint did make it back into higher levels of play. So then lets round back to our original question. Have Points For Special Changes Ever Saved Weapons? I can now answer yes with some confidence.
In the future, please let this be some sort of lesson as to why the idea of giving a weapon 230p is a very terrible idea, no matter how broken they may be.
So with the exposition of past roots out of the way, how does Splatoon 3 hold up in this regard? Well from the start, we made nothing extreme. Every weapon in the game started off in the medium of 180p to 200p, a baseline which I think should be followed. In my humble opinion, 180p - 200p is the goldilocks zone for Points For Special, though 180p - 210p could also fit this standard. I don't think weapons should be any higher or lower than that, but that's just me. Anyway, onwards to our first Points For Special buffs, which was 2.0.0. At the moment, there's nothing too notable for each weapon buffed. Aerospray MG, N-ZAP '85, Splattershot Pro, Jet Squelcher, and the H3 all got 10 points knocked off of them, making them all 190p. In case you're wondering why Zap is here, keep in mind that Tacticooler wasn't the monster we all know it as today. Cracking a cold one with the boys did not save you from the military grade assault weapon that was Crab Tank. So overall, nothing notable yet. This buff did not save any of the weapons yet, particularly Splattershot Pro because even though it had Crab Tank, it was also stuck with Line Marker, which at the time still only did 30 damage and was seriously underpowered compared to today. Another jump, to 2.1.0. This time Splattershot, .52, .96, Splattershot Pro, Splattershot Nova, and Dualies got buffed. Aside from my congrats to Splattershot Pro for being the first weapon to be buffed from 200p to 180p, it still did not save the weapon, even if Line Marker also got buffed to deal 35 damage in the same update. As for the others, it's important to note that Trizooka was not great at this point, largely due to its AoE doing a pitiful 40 damage. .96 Gal was also just not great. So our outliers are the .52 Gal and Splat Dualies, which at this point could be considered really good weapons. Pretty sure at this time Splat Dualies were beginning to rival the Splash-O-Matic for best Crab Weapon. As for the .52 Gal though, it's certainly the .52 Gal. It's still pretty great and this just makes it slightly better. At the moment, we're not seeing any changes that have truly brought weapons out of the dumps, but these changes to already good weapons have also been making them slightly better. No significant jumps. Rather than narrating every single balance change to dig, let's skip a few steps as to not waste more of your time listening to me ramble.
Patch 4.1.0 is where we start to go downhill for this question. Our first weapons to receive 170p are here, and to no one's fanfare, it's the Clash Blaster Neo and Carbon Roller. Now Clash Blaster Neo and Carbon Roller are an interesting case because their other kits are the god kits they could've wanted. Splat Bomb Trizooka for Clash Blaster is a godsend for this weapon, and the fact that even that couldn't save the weapon should probably clue you in on the fact that the Clash Blaster Neo was absolutely doomed from the very start. It absolutely does not want Curling Bomb, though Chumps is alright (keep in mind Super Chump was seriously undertuned at the time it was 1/4th of the special it is today.) Though 170p on a weapon that can't paint and has a worse kit sounds good on paper, we're ignoring the fact that you could be improving the special instead. As for Carbon Roller though, the problem wasn't the special (even if Zipcaster was a bit weak at the time), but rather Autobomb. I think it's been largely agreed upon that Carbon as a main weapon cannot function without Burst Bomb, and anything else will instantly knock it down multiple pegs. Keep in mind it also does not paint that well and Carbon as is takes a while to even get it. Overall it's just unfortunate for both of these weapons.
While this is all looking pretty doom and gloom for these buffed weapons I do want to stop for a moment and take a look at a hopeful balance patch for this philosophy, which is Patch 6.1.0. There is definitely more to focus on but I wanna mainly focus on the winner for this patch, which is the Forge Splattershot Pro. Forge in general is a very good kit, and has a niche already carved for it in that it's the only midline shooter that has Booyah Bomb on it. This already set it up to be a very good weapon, and that was all shut down when we got it, and the fine print told us it was a 210p weapon. Even for a weapon like the Splattershot Pro, this was an insane ask. It basically forced you to use a main of Special Charge Up to even have Booyah Bomb available, and keep in mind that up to this point, the Splattershot Pro has lacked any sort of identity to carve for itself, so the one time it finally gets a chance to have one, it was swiped away by a simple 10 points. Patch 6.1.0 however finally gave it a chance, buffing it to 200p. Now even if these 10 points I've been talking about for the past thousand words or so seem like they don't do much, this was a big deal, because it meant Forge finally had a chance to rise up and prove itself, and while it's still working on that and still needs a bit more fine tuning (5% range buff on Splattershot Pro please Nintendo), it's gotten a lot better to the point where I think the introductory weapon to midlines has finally started to see more praise and want put into it. The recent 45 damage buff helps a lot too. Might be me, but I'm seeing a lot more of both Splattershot Pros running around.
(Oh and I guess Neo Sploosh got lonely and decided to join the fun so welcome to the 170p club.)
So, what about today? What about our most recent patch of the game. 7.1.0. We got some, interesting stuff to say the least. Dapples joined the 170p club alongside the N-ZAP '89 of all weapons. This one still confuses me to no end, but the real stinker here is of course, the Carbon Roller, being the weapon to not only be crowned the first weapon to get 170p, but also 160p as well. Has this saved the kit and made it viable over the Carbon Roller Deco? Of course not. It still cannot function without Burst Bomb unfortunately. For two years we've come pretty far.
Alas, our conclusion. Have Points For Special Changes Ever Saved Weapons? Yes they have, but very rarely. The only three that have come to mind are Splatoon 2's Tentatek Splattershot and Ballpoint Nouveau, and Splatoon 3's Forge Splattershot Pro. The idea around adjusting these things are a good thing don't get me wrong, but they don't mean much if a special isn't good in the first place, or if a weapon is just undertuned or can't function without a component which it doesn't have. Someday, I hope Nintendo realizes that the solution is to make the special weapons of bad weapons better or make bad weapons better instead of removing 10 points from their possible playmaker. If we can see something like Reefslider actually be good for instance, there'll be no need to make Reefslider weapons 170p and lower, even if that hasn't happened yet.
So that's what I've been thinking about. I hope you've enjoyed this little rambling and I hope to see your thoughts on it.
Points For Special. A mechanic introduced in Splatoon 2 and something which I think was a good change overall. While the concept of Points For Special being tied to a special only sounds good on paper, there is inevitably going to be a time where it clashes with a weapon and screws it over. Take the CoroCoro Splat Roller for instance. A weapon which was stuck with a sub that couldn't aid in painting, and Inkzooka, which was 220p for its cost. Y'know the deal; good luck getting it.
But as of Splatoon 3, looking back at it and its Point For Special changes, particularly Carbon Roller getting buffed to 160p for Zipcaster, I began to wonder if removing 10 points has actually made weapons significantly better, if at all. So join me in this thread that'll probably be a bit short, as I attempt to wrap my head around the dubious balance changes Nintendo has to offer.
While I did get Splatoon 2 early on in its life, I was never fully around it until everything was said and done, and stuff had largely cooled down. I was, a much more innocent octopi back then. Not much care in the world in terms of weapons and what their Points For Special had to offer, but they were there. Splatoon 2 definitely had a problem with this. There wasn't an exact baseline as to what Points For Special could be, so often a lot of weapons could be as low as 160p, or as high as 220p, but aside from that, there are four weapons I wanna look at. Two down in the dumps, the other 2 meta-defining for a time. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way; the infamous Inkbrush and Undercover Brella. One that got robbed of a good Splat Bomb kit, the other doomed from the start. Their endgoal by Nintendo standards? Break the mold and give them 150p. Keep in mind this is the only time this has happened, for both weapons and specials alike. Inkbrush originally started at 170p, and as time went on, got buffed down to 160p, and eventually 150p. Keep in mind Inkbrush was nothing but buffed throughout the lifespan of Splatoon 2, but the main question is did 150p save the weapon? The answer is a very astounding no, and that's because I neglected to mention that this kit was charging Splashdown. This isn't Triple Splashdown where its flaws were actually fixed; we're talking single fist, rise into the air, and drop Splashdown. The one infamous for being easy to be shot down from and get nothing out of it. Keep in mind that Nintendo decided that instead of helping Splashdown as a special be good, they gave a weapon shackled with it the ability to spam it. As is Splashdown was already a noobstomping special, and it certainly still is today, but they never adjusted it like Triple Splashdown, merely adjust it to say you can use it more often. While the idea of a weaker special that you can use more often sounds good, a change like this made it so that it'd stomp people not familiar with the special more often, and also made it a suicide button if you're playing against people who actually knew what they were doing. Definitely didn't help that you retained 75% of your special if you died midair making you spam it more. As for the Undercover though, it's largely the same case, just with a main weapon and sub weapon that were seriously undertuned, even by Splatoon 3 standards.
Seriously Undercover with Reefslider is leagues better than the Splashdown one and this one is 180p.
So from the looks of it, we're not helping special weapons get better with this change; merely making them used more often. Even if you can spam the same special, it doesn't matter how many times you do it if it doesn't get value with its weapon, which sucks because many of these specials could be salvaged.
So let's look at the other side of the coin. Splatoon 2's Tentatek Splattershot and Ballpoint Splatling Nouveau. Both very oppressive weapons for their time, especially Ballpoint, but the one nerf that did them in was taking it higher and slapping not 220p, but 230p on these weapons. The crazy part about both of these weapons was that both of them skipped 220p entirely. TTek going from 210p to 230p and Ballpoint from 200p to 230p. Even with both of these being crazy options in their prime days, this change killed both of them. Not even Ballpoint was broken enough to save itself from 230p. I have to give a metric on this one. Let's just say that you as an average player with a shooter or whatever on average paints about 1000p per match. That number is pretty generous to many, but to TTek and Ballpoint, they were only allowed 4 specials, and that's excluding the fights and the inevitable splatting of each one of them sending them back a mile to get their special. Splatoon 2 as is punished you hard for messing up and dying. 230p however absolutely guaranteed that you'd likely only get one or two chances to use your special. Three if you were lucky. Eventually, there came a time where Nintendo realized that 230p was an absolutely bad idea, and buffed TTek and Ballpoint back, reverting TTek to 210p, and Ballpoint getting the Points for Special it should've gotten in the first place, which was 220p. I'm not sure if TTek was ever the same after that, but if I do recall Ballpoint did make it back into higher levels of play. So then lets round back to our original question. Have Points For Special Changes Ever Saved Weapons? I can now answer yes with some confidence.
In the future, please let this be some sort of lesson as to why the idea of giving a weapon 230p is a very terrible idea, no matter how broken they may be.
So with the exposition of past roots out of the way, how does Splatoon 3 hold up in this regard? Well from the start, we made nothing extreme. Every weapon in the game started off in the medium of 180p to 200p, a baseline which I think should be followed. In my humble opinion, 180p - 200p is the goldilocks zone for Points For Special, though 180p - 210p could also fit this standard. I don't think weapons should be any higher or lower than that, but that's just me. Anyway, onwards to our first Points For Special buffs, which was 2.0.0. At the moment, there's nothing too notable for each weapon buffed. Aerospray MG, N-ZAP '85, Splattershot Pro, Jet Squelcher, and the H3 all got 10 points knocked off of them, making them all 190p. In case you're wondering why Zap is here, keep in mind that Tacticooler wasn't the monster we all know it as today. Cracking a cold one with the boys did not save you from the military grade assault weapon that was Crab Tank. So overall, nothing notable yet. This buff did not save any of the weapons yet, particularly Splattershot Pro because even though it had Crab Tank, it was also stuck with Line Marker, which at the time still only did 30 damage and was seriously underpowered compared to today. Another jump, to 2.1.0. This time Splattershot, .52, .96, Splattershot Pro, Splattershot Nova, and Dualies got buffed. Aside from my congrats to Splattershot Pro for being the first weapon to be buffed from 200p to 180p, it still did not save the weapon, even if Line Marker also got buffed to deal 35 damage in the same update. As for the others, it's important to note that Trizooka was not great at this point, largely due to its AoE doing a pitiful 40 damage. .96 Gal was also just not great. So our outliers are the .52 Gal and Splat Dualies, which at this point could be considered really good weapons. Pretty sure at this time Splat Dualies were beginning to rival the Splash-O-Matic for best Crab Weapon. As for the .52 Gal though, it's certainly the .52 Gal. It's still pretty great and this just makes it slightly better. At the moment, we're not seeing any changes that have truly brought weapons out of the dumps, but these changes to already good weapons have also been making them slightly better. No significant jumps. Rather than narrating every single balance change to dig, let's skip a few steps as to not waste more of your time listening to me ramble.
Patch 4.1.0 is where we start to go downhill for this question. Our first weapons to receive 170p are here, and to no one's fanfare, it's the Clash Blaster Neo and Carbon Roller. Now Clash Blaster Neo and Carbon Roller are an interesting case because their other kits are the god kits they could've wanted. Splat Bomb Trizooka for Clash Blaster is a godsend for this weapon, and the fact that even that couldn't save the weapon should probably clue you in on the fact that the Clash Blaster Neo was absolutely doomed from the very start. It absolutely does not want Curling Bomb, though Chumps is alright (keep in mind Super Chump was seriously undertuned at the time it was 1/4th of the special it is today.) Though 170p on a weapon that can't paint and has a worse kit sounds good on paper, we're ignoring the fact that you could be improving the special instead. As for Carbon Roller though, the problem wasn't the special (even if Zipcaster was a bit weak at the time), but rather Autobomb. I think it's been largely agreed upon that Carbon as a main weapon cannot function without Burst Bomb, and anything else will instantly knock it down multiple pegs. Keep in mind it also does not paint that well and Carbon as is takes a while to even get it. Overall it's just unfortunate for both of these weapons.
While this is all looking pretty doom and gloom for these buffed weapons I do want to stop for a moment and take a look at a hopeful balance patch for this philosophy, which is Patch 6.1.0. There is definitely more to focus on but I wanna mainly focus on the winner for this patch, which is the Forge Splattershot Pro. Forge in general is a very good kit, and has a niche already carved for it in that it's the only midline shooter that has Booyah Bomb on it. This already set it up to be a very good weapon, and that was all shut down when we got it, and the fine print told us it was a 210p weapon. Even for a weapon like the Splattershot Pro, this was an insane ask. It basically forced you to use a main of Special Charge Up to even have Booyah Bomb available, and keep in mind that up to this point, the Splattershot Pro has lacked any sort of identity to carve for itself, so the one time it finally gets a chance to have one, it was swiped away by a simple 10 points. Patch 6.1.0 however finally gave it a chance, buffing it to 200p. Now even if these 10 points I've been talking about for the past thousand words or so seem like they don't do much, this was a big deal, because it meant Forge finally had a chance to rise up and prove itself, and while it's still working on that and still needs a bit more fine tuning (5% range buff on Splattershot Pro please Nintendo), it's gotten a lot better to the point where I think the introductory weapon to midlines has finally started to see more praise and want put into it. The recent 45 damage buff helps a lot too. Might be me, but I'm seeing a lot more of both Splattershot Pros running around.
(Oh and I guess Neo Sploosh got lonely and decided to join the fun so welcome to the 170p club.)
So, what about today? What about our most recent patch of the game. 7.1.0. We got some, interesting stuff to say the least. Dapples joined the 170p club alongside the N-ZAP '89 of all weapons. This one still confuses me to no end, but the real stinker here is of course, the Carbon Roller, being the weapon to not only be crowned the first weapon to get 170p, but also 160p as well. Has this saved the kit and made it viable over the Carbon Roller Deco? Of course not. It still cannot function without Burst Bomb unfortunately. For two years we've come pretty far.
Alas, our conclusion. Have Points For Special Changes Ever Saved Weapons? Yes they have, but very rarely. The only three that have come to mind are Splatoon 2's Tentatek Splattershot and Ballpoint Nouveau, and Splatoon 3's Forge Splattershot Pro. The idea around adjusting these things are a good thing don't get me wrong, but they don't mean much if a special isn't good in the first place, or if a weapon is just undertuned or can't function without a component which it doesn't have. Someday, I hope Nintendo realizes that the solution is to make the special weapons of bad weapons better or make bad weapons better instead of removing 10 points from their possible playmaker. If we can see something like Reefslider actually be good for instance, there'll be no need to make Reefslider weapons 170p and lower, even if that hasn't happened yet.
So that's what I've been thinking about. I hope you've enjoyed this little rambling and I hope to see your thoughts on it.
