I'm getting the Switch along with Splatoon 2. I have some questions...

[techton]

Greetings everyone,

I plan on getting the Switch in a month or so, and I have some questions and concerns regarding issues and annoyances I've had with the first game, and if they're fixed, improved, balanced, or untouched.

The imbalance of some weapons in the first game
-I had and still have a few issues with some of the weapons from the first game, such as the rollers. The rollers were always a challenge to face. I can't tell whether or not they're really overpowered, or just powerful in most cases. Did they get nerfed at all in Splatoon 2?
-I thought for a very long time that splat chargers and snipers were severely underpowered and near useless, especially in scoring. That was, until one match, where our team got crushed by 2 sniper classes, when I began to realize. Turns out I was using them terribly. For me, they're extremely hard to use correctly. So are these kinds of weapons more easier to use or handle in the second game?
The matchmaking
The matchmaking is what I disliked the most about Splatoon. There really WAS no matchmaking, at least in Turf War there wasn't. You'd see low level players with high level players, teams were scrambled and weren't sorted out in terms of level equalization between the 2 teams, blah blah blah. Is matchmaking a thing in Splatoon 2?



Thank you. Those are all the questions I have for now. If I have more, then I'll just add to this post.
Also, um... is Sheldon's dialogue, uh... skippable, by any chance?

EDIT: More concerns...

REGIONAL Matchmaking
I'd really like to know if matches are split up between regions. I usually don't have much fun at all because ridiculously skilled players from different regions who dedicate tons of time to Splatoon stomp our team, leaving us with the only thing to defend, our spawn. It's just not fun, for us and the enemy team. I think this plays a big role in the clunky matchmaking system.

The Rollers and Chargers (Getting a little salty here.)
From what I keep experiencing in the first game, I can begin to say that Rollers are overpowered, especially for an easy-to-use weapon that any player could master within 30 minutes.
Chargers on the other hand, are useless to me. Because the scoring system is calculated based on turf inked, Chargers are useless for when you want to ink the turf. The ink hitboxes were really buggy for me. Sometimes when fired, it'll phase right through the enemy harmlessly. You need very precise requirements in order for any charger to be viable. These requirements can be anything. The stage, the weapons your enemy possesses, certain game situations, the list goes on and on.
I just REALLY hope the rollers got a significant nerf, or at least a skill-requiring asset, while Chargers got somewhat of a buff or rework.

EDIT AGAIN: This is becoming more of a salty rant thread. :/

Gear with perfect stats
I don't get how some people can actually get perfect stats on their gear, despite it costing countless SSSs and millions of coins. I can't see this being possible at all in S1 without the use of 5,000+ real-time hours of straight grinding. I've seen a virtually impossible amount of perfect gear on a few accounts on YouTube, which can sometimes leave me to believe that most of it was hacked in, considering the chance of getting 3 of the same stat bonuses on one piece of gear is less than 1%. I mean, getting a set of perfect gear (with stats you want) alone would cost millions. I just see this whole thing as completely impossible.
I know getting perfect gear is much more ideal now in Splatoon 2, but does it require an absurd amount of cash or SSSs?

 

[Dessgeega]

Rollers have kind of been nerfed, to put it overly simply. They have a harder time of it these days. So do chargers, but they're mostly the same. And the matchmaking is about the same as it ever was, what you described still happens. And yes, Sheldon's dialogue is skippable.

 

[Agent Z]

The Tri-Slosher is a bucket from hell.
Use it and you are evil.

 

[Spaceswitchmars]

Greetings everyone,

I plan on getting the Switch in a month or so, and I have some questions and concerns regarding issues and annoyances I've had with the first game, and if they're fixed, improved, balanced, or untouched.

The imbalance of some weapons in the first game
-I had and still have a few issues with some of the weapons from the first game, such as the rollers. The rollers were always a challenge to face. I can't tell whether or not they're really overpowered, or just powerful in most cases. Did they get nerfed at all in Splatoon 2?
-I thought for a very long time that splat chargers and snipers were severely underpowered and near useless, especially in scoring. That was, until one match, where our team got crushed by 2 sniper classes, when I began to realize. Turns out I was using them terribly. For me, they're extremely hard to use correctly. So are these kinds of weapons more easier to use or handle in the second game?
The matchmaking
The matchmaking is what I disliked the most about Splatoon. There really WAS no matchmaking, at least in Turf War there wasn't. You'd see low level players with high level players, teams were scrambled and weren't sorted out in terms of level equalization between the 2 teams, blah blah blah. Is matchmaking a thing in Splatoon 2?


Thank you. Those are all the questions I have for now. If I have more, then I'll just add to this post.
Also, um... is Sheldon's dialogue, uh... skippable, by any chance?

I feel like it's a more balanced game in that there's not one weapon or gear set that everyone uses. It feels deeper in that way. You can approach any weapon with just about any gear and make it work (with some exceptions).

I think it's by far better than S1. The only thing is if you compare it to how many weapons and stages were available at the end of S1, you'll find it lacking. That was the final incarnation of a game compared to the first incarnation of S2. So it'll take a while to get there.

 

[Etob]

Chargers haven't really changed. They're still difficult to use, and still extremely dangerous in skilled hands.

 

[Dessgeega]

Chargers haven't really changed. They're still difficult to use, and still extremely dangerous in skilled hands.

They also lost damage up, and have far more counters. That difficulty you speak of has gone up.

 

[Ulk]

1. Rollers have been altered. Overall their viability is currently considered to be a lot lower. People need to adjust to the massive changes. As for right now, if you had problems with rollers before, you may not have as many now.

2. Quite the opposite. If anything chargers have become even harder to use after the nerfs. I believe there have been even slight changes in the travel speed of the shot.

3. The matchmaking in my personal opinion is worse than ever. I rather felt like back then in Splatoon 1 I was mostly put together with people of my own skill level. Even in Turf War. Today on the other hand I'm randomly paired with all sorts of players, be it in League or Turf War (not in Ranked of course. Ranked still strictly separates C- C C+ | B- B B+ | A- A A+ | S | S+). They even removed the system where in Splatfets, people are assigned to people of their same rank, which absolutely saved Splatfests for me back in the day and allowed me to play exclusively with and against people who were also S+. The removal of this system on the other hand brought it back to Splatfests assigning you to anything between the absolute worst imaginable players to truly talented players.

 

[Dessgeega]

1. Rollers have been altered. Overall their viability is currently considered to be a lot lower. People need to adjust to the massive changes. As for right now, if you had problems with rollers before, you may not have as many now.

2. Quite the opposite. If anything chargers have become even harder to use after the nerfs. I believe there have been even slight changes in the travel speed of the shot.

3. The matchmaking in my personal opinion is worse than ever. I rather felt like back then in Splatoon 1 I was mostly put together with people of my own skill level. Even in Turf War. Today on the other hand I'm randomly paired with all sorts of players, be it in League or Turf War (not in Ranked of course. Ranked still strictly separates C- C C+ | B- B B+ | A- A A+ | S | S+). They even removed the system where in Splatfets, people are assigned to people of their same rank, which absolutely saved Splatfests for me back in the day and allowed me to play exclusively with and against people who were also S+. The removal of this system on the other hand brought it back to Splatfests assigning you to anything between the absolute worst imaginable players to truly talented players.

Well, it's a good thing there's that giant eclipse coming up, because that explains how I'm able to agree with you for once, Ulk. To add onto your matchmaking comments which are pretty on point, Ranked may still separate people well, but the rank skipping system introduces even more chaos. Before now, you'd know someone who was A put in some level of effort to get there (unless they were squad carried, let's ignore that for a moment), now you never know if they were just kicked upstairs. Is your ally actually of a skill level according to their rank, or did they have some lucky matches and fly up the ladder? There's no way to tell before a match starts.

 

[Hero of Lime]

As far as weapon balance is concerned, this game is simultaneously well balanced and unbalanced at the same time. Chargers are for the most part easier to counter and approach with short range weapons thanks to the map design, and the lack of strength stacking really helps. I think the class was fairly balanced, they are still very good, but you gotta be inkredibly great with them. I think this was a great balance choice overall.

As for a weapon that got balanced to the point of being nearly useless, you have the Dynamo roller which does not need any mention on how powerful it was back in Splatoon 1. On one hand, I am very happy that it functions as it was originally supposed to based on its design. Having been bullied by dynamo users in 1 for so long, it feels nice that I can actually approach and splat them in this game. But it is messed up knowing a weapon is objectively iffy to use.

Then you have the current issues with ink armor weapons being an essential part of the meta. Combined with the crazy stats of the tri slosher in this game (which has the ink armor special), you will see a lot of people using that weapon in any mode and rank.

Match making has given me a lot of grief in this game, like the first one. In turf you can still have two low level players put on one team vs. a full team of higher level people. Or you will have a lobby of 20s-30s and the game just tosses in a level 4 because it just has to screw over one team, and throw the low level player to the wolves.

Ranked is pretty iffy overall, as it mixes the minus through plus players for each rank, but that isn't usually a big deal. However, the new S+ system is all kinds of screwed up. You could just have clawed your way to S+, only to have to face off against people who have a ranking of say S+ 20. And since I constantly look at the ratings of my lobbies after each match, I've had some very unfair rank match ups so far. The worst example was having a lobby with an S+ 29 and 21 on one team, vs. my team with the highest rank being S+ 2.

 

[BBGrenorange]

I think most stuff has already been said, but since I'm new to Squidboards I'll offer my opinion anyways XD.

-Rollers have had a range nerf on the horizontal flick to compensate for the addition of the vertical flick, which means that they take more skill to use.

-Chargers are still just as hard to use imo, but a good way to bridge the skill gap between chargers and other weapons is to use a blaster first, to work on accuracy without that pesky charge time (worked for me at least)

The removal of the damage up ability hit the Chargers the hardest, because they can't just stack damage up and kill with 3/4 of a charge

-Matchmaking has been changed so that it's region-specific, so lag and disconnects aren't as much as a problem, but otherwise seems unchanged as far as I can tell

 

[MindWanderer]

I can tell there's some matchmaking going on in Turf War, especially the feature they implemented late in Splatoon 1 where folks are paired with people with similar play styles. (That's why when there's 4 Aerosprays in a lobby, more likely than not they'll all be on the same team.) I ran into one lobby in Inkblot where the enemy team specialized in quickly raiding our territory via the tower. Absolutely brutal.

I think overall it will improve over time as the game gets more players, and the best players are consistently evaluated as such. For instance, I don't play a lot of ranked, but I do play Salmon Run as much as possible. The first time I got into Profreshional, I lost it quickly because I kept getting really horrible teammates who were probably carried there. A couple of weeks later when I earned my way back there, my teammates were consistently of a much higher caliber than the Overachievers I'd just left behind.

 

[techton]

Added some more stuff. Got a little salty towards the end, though. Hope it's not too much of an issue.

 

[Varonth]

There are some people who tell you that the game is better balanced than Splatoon 1.

It is at best on the same, not very balanced level than Splatoon 1.

In low rank you will see a wide variety of weapons, but once you get to A+, then S then S+ it becomes more and more apparent that there is a handfull of weapons and weapon types that outperform other types by a huge margin.

Example:

So far I saw 1 Splatling in S+. In all my S+ matches I saw exactly 1 Splatling... my last match had 6 Splattershots.

In S+ you will encounter Splattershots, Chargers, Tri-Slosher, and occasionally Splattershot Pro, Octobrush, some Dualies or a Blaster on tower control.

Chargers are used for their zoning. Anyone telling you that they are easier to handle and flank clearly never played against a charger who regulary checks the minimap. Due to the turfing mechanic, chargers get ample time to react to someone going to flank them. Everyone gets free recon in Splatoon, they just have to make use of it.

Splattershots and Tri-Sloshers are used because they just require much less mechanical skill, for the same if not superior TTK.

Just to show you what I mean with less mechanical skill, I added a screenshot showing the aim required to hit with a Splattershot.

Sub weapon balance feels like it got worse. Disruptor was changed to Toxic Mist which has less effect and only works as long as the enemy stays within it. They nerfed the Sprinkler's damage for god knows what reason (20 down from 30). Walls are only on 2.5 weapons, which makes them a rare sight, as one of them is on a charger and its scoped variant, and the other is on what might be the worst roller.

Specials range from fairly useless like Baller and Sting Ray to completly broken like Ink Armor (which gets amplified by a very low tick rate which allows it to absorb multiple hits).

Overall, the game isn't very balanced.