Is Splatoon fun anymore?

[Award]

Vast majority of TW players I run into are S ranked or better and are usually out to spill more blood than ink. This phenomenon would probably be alleviated if there were some way to play other game modes outside of ranked battles.

Until then, I'll be playing ranked to relax and turf war to sweat.

There's so much truth in that. I can understand the reason they didn't allow "unranked" ranked modes is largely because there were never enough players to support all the modes in all the brackets both ranked and unranked so they had to force consolidation out of it. But that does happen to be a big problem for TW, as well as for ranked, where the only way to play with certain weapons in those game modes is to completely screw your teams. I had a few losses yesterday on my A alt just about to get to A+ with chargers going 0/9, 1/7. They're jerks for trying to learn chargers in ranked, but on the other hand, how else were they going to learn how to use chargers in zones?

Also that phenomenon isn't limited to TW - I've had plenty of ranked modes, especially zones, where my team walks AROUND the enemy controlled zone(s) to go battle inside the enemy base. Someone forgot they weren't playing Halo....

As a long time level 50, I've noticed quite a few changes in turf wars in the past few months. It seems like everyone is getting more aggressive and the turf wars are getting more and more out of hand. Is that a bad thing? Well, I guess for less experienced players it certainly is (and even for other level 50's. I personally like the occasional super crazy and intense battles, but then we have the highly competitive level 50 players restarting or playingnew files as well, which can definitely make chaotic for the poor level one players who really are playing for the first time. Turf wars definitely aren't what they used to be. Sometimes squids just seriously go crazy in singular non-ranked turf wars. It's unbelievable. And unfortunately, I have to fight the crazy squids by being a little crazy myself. The turf wars before sometime earlier this year seemed to be fine. Then something just changed for me a couple months after the new year. Just... Wow. I don't even know how I go a few rounds without getting splatted at all. Sometimes the only way to describe the center of the map is just pure chaos.

In conclusion, R.I.P. the original turf wars before people started developing crazy strategies.

LOL yeah, a big part of that was the change in matchmaking in Feb or March where it did start pairing TW more based on your player skill rather than playstyle. Before they were likely to lump inkers together and killers together, so if you played TW as an inker you wouldn't see boatloads of killers and if you played as a killer you were less likely to see players wandering and painting. TBH I've been in the killer pool for most of the time since I started practicing with chargers early on and my inking plummeted. But even for me I saw the matchmaking change have an impact. Much like splatfest's new system TW plays much like ranked plays now. You do have to play "full throttle" in TW just as you would in ranked. Sometimes that can be a good thing if it doesn't get too crazy.

Also, the alts are a big deal (hypocritically stated as I have two alts ) the one thing I found when playing the madatory 10 levels of TW on my alts, is when I first started I was thrown in with absolute noobs. If I changed lobbies by lv2 or lv3 I'd be thrown in in with lv 20's and lv30's and the intensitiy got a lot harder. If I changed lobbies after that I was thrown in with all lv 50's. It seems to be tracking a lot more about our play than just our level - it knew my skill level within a few matches and matched appropriately. Unfortunately that means TW actually fares better with alts than ranked does where in the C's I was still a C (though I saw quite a few other obvious under-level alts through the B's and well into the A's) And since the new splatfests are based on ranked....that means the alts are more of a problem for both ranked and splatfest than regular TW.

 

[Captain Woomy]

That makes me

There's so much truth in that. I can understand the reason they didn't allow "unranked" ranked modes is largely because there were never enough players to support all the modes in all the brackets both ranked and unranked so they had to force consolidation out of it. But that does happen to be a big problem for TW, as well as for ranked, where the only way to play with certain weapons in those game modes is to completely screw your teams. I had a few losses yesterday on my A alt just about to get to A+ with chargers going 0/9, 1/7. They're jerks for trying to learn chargers in ranked, but on the other hand, how else were they going to learn how to use chargers in zones?

Also that phenomenon isn't limited to TW - I've had plenty of ranked modes, especially zones, where my team walks AROUND the enemy controlled zone(s) to go battle inside the enemy base. Someone forgot they weren't playing Halo....



LOL yeah, a big part of that was the change in matchmaking in Feb or March where it did start pairing TW more based on your player skill rather than playstyle. Before they were likely to lump inkers together and killers together, so if you played TW as an inker you wouldn't see boatloads of killers and if you played as a killer you were less likely to see players wandering and painting. TBH I've been in the killer pool for most of the time since I started practicing with chargers early on and my inking plummeted. But even for me I saw the matchmaking change have an impact. Much like splatfest's new system TW plays much like ranked plays now. You do have to play "full throttle" in TW just as you would in ranked. Sometimes that can be a good thing if it doesn't get too crazy.

Also, the alts are a big deal (hypocritically stated as I have two alts ) the one thing I found when playing the madatory 10 levels of TW on my alts, is when I first started I was thrown in with absolute noobs. If I changed lobbies by lv2 or lv3 I'd be thrown in in with lv 20's and lv30's and the intensitiy got a lot harder. If I changed lobbies after that I was thrown in with all lv 50's. It seems to be tracking a lot more about our play than just our level - it knew my skill level within a few matches and matched appropriately. Unfortunately that means TW actually fares better with alts than ranked does where in the C's I was still a C (though I saw quite a few other obvious under-level alts through the B's and well into the A's) And since the new splatfests are based on ranked....that means the alts are more of a problem for both ranked and splatfest than regular TW.

That makes me wonder exactly where my skill level is. Before any matchmaking updates, I won a lot of turfs with an abnormal amount of ease. Now I find myself in a lot of lobbies full of level 50 rank S+ players (despite me only being at S 20, but I don't ever play ranked so my true rank is unknown.) Now it's definitely a more fair match. I still win plenty, but lose more often too. It's definitely more of a challenge though. It's probably better that this update happened. But I have noticed one thing about my playstyle that has changed a lot. I've found that I'm no longer good at just inking tons of turf with a fast fire rate shooter. I have to be more aggressive and focus on kills, inking turf, and doing everything I can to keep myself from getting splatted. Now that I think about it, there really is a lot more to these turf wars than I originally thought.

 

[Award]

That makes me

That makes me wonder exactly where my skill level is. Before any matchmaking updates, I won a lot of turfs with an abnormal amount of ease. Now I find myself in a lot of lobbies full of level 50 rank S+ players (despite me only being at S 20, but I don't ever play ranked so my true rank is unknown.) Now it's definitely a more fair match. I still win plenty, but lose more often too. It's definitely more of a challenge though. It's probably better that tis update happened. But I have noticed one thingabout my playstyle that has changed a lot. I've found that I'm no longer good at just inking tons of turf with a fast fire rate shooter. I have to be more aggressive and focus on kills, deaths, and doing everything I can to keep myself from getting splatted. Now that I think about it, there really is a lot more to these turf wars than I originally thought.

Regarding rank, my assumption remains that there's an "invisible" rank associated with TW. I can say it doesn't use your actual rank at all (outside splatfest) based on the fact that when I took my alt to C- ranked I got paired with true noobs again despite being paired against high rank poeple in TW, so the two systems seem disconnected. But I imagine there's either a hidden letter rank or more likely something like the "splatfest power" system that is invisibly applied behind TW. So you and the S+'s, are probably all "1800" power level or something in TW. I have the same issue, most of my TW matches are loaded S+ rooms despite being S (and A on my other alt.)

It does seem like the updates have focused things toward being more kill oriented. And it does seem that sometimes the more aggressive, kill oriented players are most likely to win. But on the other hand I'm not sure at least in the ranking system that seems to be used for it determining if you're put on the "winning" team or not. This is kind of OT but in a lot of threads where we've tried to figure out how the (ranked) matchmaker works we've felt like we're not entirely in control of wins/losses, that at least some of us get consistently matched on the weaker team or the stronger team. I've found that when I used a kill oriented weapon and I'm repeatedly the best k/d on the team and do well I'm more likely to lose and get bad teams, and if I use midrange shooters and suck at them, I'm more likely to get good teams and win. Some of it is I'm sure player reactions to the different weapons, but some of it seems to be that "something" other than k/d is the primary factor in how it feels you should be matchmade/ranked. So maybe the game is actively trying to push people away from splatting?

TW seems to have different criteria behind the scenes though. But no matter the criteria, if you're being matched in S/S+ rooms, you're going to have S/S+ battles :P But watching people in the C's play, I've seen it similarly brutal there as well. Hard to say how much of that is due to alts though.

 

[Captain Woomy]

Regarding rank, my assumption remains that there's an "invisible" rank associated with TW. I can say it doesn't use your actual rank at all (outside splatfest) based on the fact that when I took my alt to C- ranked I got paired with true noobs again despite being paired against high rank poeple in TW, so the two systems seem disconnected. But I imagine there's either a hidden letter rank or more likely something like the "splatfest power" system that is invisibly applied behind TW. So you and the S+'s, are probably all "1800" power level or something in TW. I have the same issue, most of my TW matches are loaded S+ rooms despite being S (and A on my other alt.)

It does seem like the updates have focused things toward being more kill oriented. And it does seem that sometimes the more aggressive, kill oriented players are most likely to win. But on the other hand I'm not sure at least in the ranking system that seems to be used for it determining if you're put on the "winning" team or not. This is kind of OT but in a lot of threads where we've tried to figure out how the (ranked) matchmaker works we've felt like we're not entirely in control of wins/losses, that at least some of us get consistently matched on the weaker team or the stronger team. I've found that when I used a kill oriented weapon and I'm repeatedly the best k/d on the team and do well I'm more likely to lose and get bad teams, and if I use midrange shooters and suck at them, I'm more likely to get good teams and win. Some of it is I'm sure player reactions to the different weapons, but some of it seems to be that "something" other than k/d is the primary factor in how it feels you should be matchmade/ranked. So maybe the game is actively trying to push people away from splatting?

TW seems to have different criteria behind the scenes though. But no matter the criteria, if you're being matched in S/S+ rooms, you're going to have S/S+ battles :p But watching people in the C's play, I've seen it similarly brutal there as well. Hard to say how much of that is due to alts though.

I'm so glad we don't have visible turf war ranks though. That would put me under some pressure to keep the rank up and I probably wouldn't do quite as well. I know before I'd just get matched with people around my level instead of getting matched with people closer to my skill level (since levels really don't determine your actual skill at the game, especially when you have a range of level 50's at S+ 99 and others who haven't even touched ranked). Because of that, I can see why they would change the matchmaking. And the idea of them trying to discourage excessive splatting is certainly a realistic one. That's always been the main idea. Focusing on inking turf rather than kills. But I don't think that works so well for the more experience players always getting put in crazy lobbies regardless of which weapon used. The business with the equipped weapon really does depend on that player's skill... Unless they intentionally put you on or against a team that really clashes with your play style. This is definitely some interesting stuff to think about.

 

[Nero86]

No space for a carefree match would make Splatoon too tense for some people (like me), always having something to risk is not that fun.
After reaching S me and friends play carefree squads to enjoy a good time together. I like that "safe-zone" you can have fun, having different modes non-ranked would make me stay at C- for ages.

 

[Award]

I'm so glad we don't have visible turf war ranks though. That would put me under some pressure to keep the rank up and I probably wouldn't do quite as well. I know before I'd just get matched with people around my level instead of getting matched with people closer to my skill level (since levels really don't determine your actual skill at the game, especially when you have a range of level 50's at S+ 99 and others who haven't even touched ranked). Because of that, I can see why they would change the matchmaking. And the idea of them trying to discourage excessive splatting is certainly a realistic one. That's always been the main idea. Focusing on inking turf rather than kills. But I don't think that works so well for the more experience players always getting put in crazy lobbies regardless of which weapon used. The business with the equipped weapon really does depend on that player's skill... Unless they intentionally put you on or against a team that really clashes with your play style. This is definitely some interesting stuff to think about.

Oh definitely they don't want TW to actually be competitive with ranks and such. The real point is just to keep the skills separate so the matches are more fair. To a degree it does. But it also doesn't always work well. And sometimes makes things worse. The spawncamps are a lot less common now at least in the higher skills. But the overwhelming pace kind of limits the ability to play TW for hours and hours like before, which is a shame. It used to be pure addiction. Now it gets fatiguing.

Off Topic Ahead:
While ranked is still OT, I've had some various theories about the ranked matchmaking. I imagine TW is a lot more forgiving and a lot less "purposeful" in its matchmaking. But I'm fairly convinced after observing it for a long time, that the ranked system does not work the way it tries to make it look like it works. There are patterns that random chance and luck wouldn't permit for. There's an "agenda" behind how it makes teams. My two working theories are that it tries to move people around to balance out the sizes of the player pools for the limited player base (I.E. there's too many people in A+ so you get shoved down to A or A-, or there's now too few in A+ so it grants easy wins to get you to move up to where it wants you.) OR i'ts not really about winning more matches or not at all and it determines based on how you play what your rank is, invisibly, so you play for a while and the system's metrics watch how you play, what you do, how you do against other people etc, and determines "oh, you're an A-" and then it gives you favorable odds to win until you get to A-. And then when you're in danger of leaving A- it gives you unfavorable odds to win to get you back to low A-. Then gives you favorable odds again so that you're likely to stay in A- unless you severely beat the odds.

Some recent patters suggest the latter may be true. I.E. Being a given rank, say, A- doesn't mean you're good enough to have won so many games that until you got to A- you won more than you lost and in A- you break even 50/50. It means the system determined from the start that you play A- level, and it gave you good teams against weak teams until you got there, then holds you in place by giving you easier wins when you're near dropping out, and easier losses when you're close to escaping.

I have no hard evidence on that of course, but just watching some odd patterns, it seems to be fitting a possible trend. WHAT it uses to determine your real skill I don't know. But it gets frustrating because you think you keep losing in garbage matches when in fact you were SUPPOSED to lose because they're keeping you in the rank they determined is the right one for you. I had a weird one the other day. For weeks my 2nd alt has been trapped in A-. When I get to 50 or 60 I lose down to 8 or 12. When I get there I win back to 40 or 50. Not by my own skill or non-skill but because no matter the lobby I get teams that are horrible. Teams that won't touch the tower, will walk AROUND the zone, will carry the RM backward. Bad players who ignore objectives. Then the other day I switched to a midrange shooter. I did AWFUL with said midrange shooter (I use chargers and brushes/rollers normally), and I won every single game all the way to A. Why? It started giving me good teams - great teams. It was as though it decided it wanted me in A now. And now I'm in the same loop in A on that account.

There's definitely some deviousness in the matchmaking - it's not what it tries to appear to be. It might even be fair if we knew the rules. But instead it seems frustrating because it feels like you start losing all the time without any control. And we end up blaming our teams because it really IS their fault, but it's not their fault that it's their faul. Does it do this in TW too? I imagine so. But it would be less pronounced.

 

[Captain Woomy]

Oh definitely they don't want TW to actually be competitive with ranks and such. The real point is just to keep the skills separate so the matches are more fair. To a degree it does. But it also doesn't always work well. And sometimes makes things worse. The spawncamps are a lot less common now at least in the higher skills. But the overwhelming pace kind of limits the ability to play TW for hours and hours like before, which is a shame. It used to be pure addiction. Now it gets fatiguing.

Off Topic Ahead:
While ranked is still OT, I've had some various theories about the ranked matchmaking. I imagine TW is a lot more forgiving and a lot less "purposeful" in its matchmaking. But I'm fairly convinced after observing it for a long time, that the ranked system does not work the way it tries to make it look like it works. There are patterns that random chance and luck wouldn't permit for. There's an "agenda" behind how it makes teams. My two working theories are that it tries to move people around to balance out the sizes of the player pools for the limited player base (I.E. there's too many people in A+ so you get shoved down to A or A-, or there's now too few in A+ so it grants easy wins to get you to move up to where it wants you.) OR i'ts not really about winning more matches or not at all and it determines based on how you play what your rank is, invisibly, so you play for a while and the system's metrics watch how you play, what you do, how you do against other people etc, and determines "oh, you're an A-" and then it gives you favorable odds to win until you get to A-. And then when you're in danger of leaving A- it gives you unfavorable odds to win to get you back to low A-. Then gives you favorable odds again so that you're likely to stay in A- unless you severely beat the odds.

Some recent patters suggest the latter may be true. I.E. Being a given rank, say, A- doesn't mean you're good enough to have won so many games that until you got to A- you won more than you lost and in A- you break even 50/50. It means the system determined from the start that you play A- level, and it gave you good teams against weak teams until you got there, then holds you in place by giving you easier wins when you're near dropping out, and easier losses when you're close to escaping.

I have no hard evidence on that of course, but just watching some odd patterns, it seems to be fitting a possible trend. WHAT it uses to determine your real skill I don't know. But it gets frustrating because you think you keep losing in garbage matches when in fact you were SUPPOSED to lose because they're keeping you in the rank they determined is the right one for you. I had a weird one the other day. For weeks my 2nd alt has been trapped in A-. When I get to 50 or 60 I lose down to 8 or 12. When I get there I win back to 40 or 50. Not by my own skill or non-skill but because no matter the lobby I get teams that are horrible. Teams that won't touch the tower, will walk AROUND the zone, will carry the RM backward. Bad players who ignore objectives. Then the other day I switched to a midrange shooter. I did AWFUL with said midrange shooter (I use chargers and brushes/rollers normally), and I won every single game all the way to A. Why? It started giving me good teams - great teams. It was as though it decided it wanted me in A now. And now I'm in the same loop in A on that account.

There's definitely some deviousness in the matchmaking - it's not what it tries to appear to be. It might even be fair if we knew the rules. But instead it seems frustrating because it feels like you start losing all the time without any control. And we end up blaming our teams because it really IS their fault, but it's not their fault that it's their faul. Does it do this in TW too? I imagine so. But it would be less pronounced.

That's probably exactly why you sometimes have to wait a few minutes before getting into a lobby. The game wants to put certain players together. And I think I know exactly what you're talking about with the game pretty much telling you what rank you belong in. While I haven't played ranked in a while, this is my third time I've gotten to S. I lose almost every S rank match, yet I do the most or second most on my team most of the time and can maintain an A+ if I rank down. It's like the game can't make up it's mind and is basically telling me I'm somewhere between A+ and S (nonexistant rank S- player here?). I remember I was using the Heavy Splatling Deco before and would win every match then lose the next when I got to A+ in the 90's. Then I switched to a Custom Dual Squelcher (which I didn't have a lot of experience with at the time, it just seemed like a good weapon to me) and quickly got promoted to an S after three knockouts. Weapon discrimination? That's not fair. You deserve a good team and winning points if you have skill with that weapon.

 

[Award]

That's probably exactly why you sometimes have to wait a few minutes before getting into a lobby. The game wants to put certain players together. And I think I know exactly what you're talking about with the game pretty much telling you what rank you belong in. While I haven't played ranked in a while, this is my third time I've gotten to S. I lose almost every S rank match, yet I do the most or second most on my team most of the time and can maintain an A+ if I rank down. It's like the game can't make up it's mind and is basically telling me I'm somewhere between A+ and S (nonexistant rank S- player here?). I remember I was using the Heavy Splatling Deco before and would win every match then lose the next when I got to A+ in the 90's. Then I switched to a Custom Dual Squelcher (which I didn't have a lot of experience with at the time, it just seemed like a good weapon to me) and quickly got promoted to an S after three knockouts. Weapon discrimination? That's not fair. You deserve a good team and winning points if you have skill with that weapon.

Interesting story! Yeah the more people I talk to here the more people have similar experiences and the more the stories don't add up to the system working as it appears.

And that's not to say that the real system, however it ACTUALLY works, isn't a fair one. But I do think it has severe flaws that places people incorrectly, or more accurately, misjudges players skill based on something in the way they play. For me, for example I have 3 accounts. Two of them are S, one of which took FOREVER to get out of the A- through A+ loop (pre 2.6 ranked patch) one of them I moved up pretty fast, and this current one that it seemed fixated on keeping me in A- all the time. Once I got to A- it kept me there, I'd win to the 80's then lose to the teens, then win to the 80's then lose to the teens. And then the other day I had that odd win streek of every game from A-28 to A30 was a win, most by KO. After getting 2 weeks of teams that would not TOUCH objectives (5-98 type losses) that were impossible to carry. (I mean it was infuriating - I'd see a blaster on the little pedistals on Moray shoot the enemy off the tower that was right next to him and then NOT get on it....they'd just let it sit there and reset to mid! I had eliter and had to go and keep riding the tower! :P I'd go get triple kills and they'd all stand next to the zone and NOBODY would ink it! I'd have to circle around and go ink it myself, giving up the good position I'd carved out. Every round was like that! And then to suddenly win every round by KO for a full rank largely due to getting excellent teams, often higher ranked teams against lower ranked opponents, as soon as I switched weapons to one I'm worse with was a turning point in my long quest to understand how the system really works.

I do think there's some type of weapon discrimination to a degree. Or maybe different expectations based on weapons (13/4 with bamboozler just isn't good enough for a charger I guess...while 1/3 with splash-o-matic is? :P ) Or maybe it prioritizes inkage too high - I laid a lot of ink with my bamboozler on the zones....but it pales in comparison to the flood of ink a splash-o-matic unleashes everywhere. Or enemies just react more chaotically against a shooter than they do against chargers so I disoriented the enemy more just by running around shooting with bad aim at nothing than I did when I was taking them out left and right.

But yep, what you described sounds familiar. I think you're right, it can't decide where to put you. But I'd love to figure out what really determines what rank you're in and which rank it's trying to keep you in and how it decides to let you move on. I change lobbies after every round, too, so the repeated losing teams were not simply getting stuck with the same bad players, and the winning streak wasn't merely lucking out with a good group. I force a new group every match, so any pattern at all tends to stand out as being intentional, not luck.

It's also possible it gives you some easy rounds if you switch to a weapon you haven't used in a while. I know some people noticed that a while back at least in TW. But not a whole rank's worth :)

I'm not sure I'll ever figure out the pattern of how it works completely. I think they have a lot of "randomizers" in place to throw anyone off the track of finding the pattern (this is Nintendo, I shouldn't have expected they'd do simple....they changed the Hylian language after fans cracked the code after all, but every sign in a Zelda game written in Hylian ACTUALLY has translatable text! they spent amazing amounts of time on details they don't actually intend for anyone to ever find :) ) But I think my breakthrough that it's really "assigning" your rank and holding you there by arranging fixed matches is the closest I've come yet to figuring out a big piece of it. *IF* I'm right, it's not that you don't "earn" your rank, it's just that the system that gives your rank is not one of winning more than losing as it appears, the wins and losses are just consequences of being (invisibly) in the rank they've determined you're in. It's still determined on something you've done in the game - I just don't know what that something is :) And I suspect whatever calculates it isn't very good at doing so. :)

 

[blu]

The increase in competition also gets to your hands after a while. An hour is my limit if it's very fierce, but it really depends.

 

[Award]

The increase in competition also gets to your hands after a while. An hour is my limit if it's very fierce, but it really depends.

Haha yeah, that's very true. Try carrying the above hopeless teams using only an inkbrush and hope your trigger finger doesn't fall off! It's only slightly better holding charge on chargers constantly and ZR spamming too. Midrange shooters have it easy

I can say that since playing Splatoon this past month or two my fingers are stronger than ever. I should pick up guitar or something :p

 

[Akamia]

Well, while I may be new to this particular game, I do have a background in shooter games, like Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, Halo (all of them), Titanfall, and MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries (A mech simulation game that's also kind of a shooter), and I can say that the competition is itself my idea of fun. It's the reason I play Super Smash Bros. with settings similar to tournament matches, like what Anther's Ladder tends to do. It's also the reason I tried to ascend as quickly as I could to the freshness level required to get into Ranked Matches on Splatoon at all.

Now, I'm not great at any of these games, mind, but I do enjoy a good match. Even in Turf War, I like it when I am fairly even with my opponents. Of course, my rank is naturally at stake in Ranked, something I didn't really have to deal with in Smash outside of Anther's Ladder, but I've dealt with similar systems in Halo games and got by just fine; I guess the increased money and EXP payout is just one extra (and indeed, very important, especially when you're under level 20) incentive to keep my rank up in Splatoon.

At the end of the day, though, I absolutely love competitive play on any game I happen to play. I get into it whenever the option presents itself. Sure, there is always salt, and I'm a person who doesn't like to lose, but from where I stand, that's part of the fun; I'm that guy who would offer a handshake after a match well-fought, even if I lost.

 

[chrisbg99]

There are times when everything is going my way and times when it seems I can barely get anything going. Still remains fun but with various levels of frustration.

 

[kunoichi squid]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who has noticed how competitive both TW and Ranked has become; it has also come to the point of no fun for me as well. I used to be able to blow off some steam and feel a bit better after a long day at work, but now I have to have a HORRIBLE day at work and let off steam by taking out aggression playing either TW or Ranked to feel better; I feel like I've become a killing machine! :( I used to play SSBB to let off steam and do such a thing. Splatoon is now my go to whenever days at work are just unbearable or I've had a crappy day at home with all the drama that entails (I'm not going to get into THAT, but believe me it's a lot too some days)! :(

 

[Rikucchi]

Ranked gets me very salty sometimes but I still enjoy it, I just take it too seriously sometimes. I mean, if you don't like it you would't play it. TW is getting very brutal, it's harder to just mess around. But yeah, I take a break if it feels like it's not fun anymore. Still, Splatoon is probably my fav game of all time, I haven't played much video games in past few years but Splatoon got me back into video games.

 

[Jei-Cos]

Not reading through all of this because I honestly just don't have that kind of time on my hands, so I have no idea if I'm alone here, but No..it's honestly not..I'm starting to really not like the game..Why? 2 reasons, and 2 reasons alone..
1. The connection..this isn't just Splatoon, but it certainly doesn't help..I can't have fun playing a game that the damn system won't even LET me play..
2. Cheaters/Hackers. Why bother playing the game if every other person on the map is invincible or a literal GOD? I can't count how many people will kill me after I smack them multiple times with the center of the roller, then on the killcam it shows them with ZERO def+..That's a damn one hit kill regardless.i should NOT be able to hit you multiple times.So why did I say "literal GOD"? I've been hit multiple times through walls, or hit when I'm out of their range (yes, there willbe No ink surrounding me, meaning the ink never made it to me, and I'll still be killed by them)..It's just crazy..if you suck so badly at a game that you have to cheat to win, just stop, or play in private battles and cheat with your other cheat buddies there..

 

[RedML51]

One good measure of any competitive game is how well it holds up in ultra-competitive play, irrespective of how fun in can be in casual play.
Nintendo are fantastic game makers; even though they try to make games that are super fun in casual situations, they end up working quite well in ultra-competitive situations too, even though that aspect is not what they give importance to.

Case Splatoon and Smash Bros. The latter has an obviously thriving competitive scene which takes the metagame pretty far. Sakurai's feelings on all this has been revealed in interviews. He makes the game to work very well in casual play, and laments the fact that people focus so heavily on 1v1 no items. But the game is so good that it actually works quite well even in this ultra-competitive environment, despite not having been designed to.

Splatoon is an interesting case. It's new and it's unique. It stands to reason that, although the devs are clearly geniuses, even they cannot be so smart as to know how every paramater and every design in the game should be to make it all work perfectly. This doesn't matter in low-to-mid level play. It's perfect in those situations. But now that the game has been out for a year, as gamers and hardcore Nintendo fans do, they get really really good at it, and take it very seriously, ultimately playing it probably a lot more competitively than Nintendo really built the game for. As a result, flaws become more apparent.

Of course, when it comes to video games, we all wanna be really good at them, so to suggest "it'd be better if we all didn't take Splatoon so seriously" seems maybe strange. But then you realize that Splatoon wasn't really designed to be played so cutthroat like it is. So it's good to keep in mind whilst playing, "is this tactic in line with how the game was intended or designed to be played?" and if you can always answer "yes" to this question, it would probably help the game to be better in the long run.

Anyway, there are games (none of which are developed by Nintendo) which cater to ultra-competitive play. As Sakurai has said, if ultra-competitive is what you want, maybe those games would be a better fit?

(This post ended up being too long methinks... it's a little ramble-y so I'm sorry about that ^^;; .)

 

[Leronne]

Not reading through all of this because I honestly just don't have that kind of time on my hands, so I have no idea if I'm alone here, but No..it's honestly not..I'm starting to really not like the game..Why? 2 reasons, and 2 reasons alone..
1. The connection..this isn't just Splatoon, but it certainly doesn't help..I can't have fun playing a game that the damn system won't even LET me play..
2. Cheaters/Hackers. Why bother playing the game if every other person on the map is invincible or a literal GOD? I can't count how many people will kill me after I smack them multiple times with the center of the roller, then on the killcam it shows them with ZERO def+..That's a damn one hit kill regardless.i should NOT be able to hit you multiple times.So why did I say "literal GOD"? I've been hit multiple times through walls, or hit when I'm out of their range (yes, there willbe No ink surrounding me, meaning the ink never made it to me, and I'll still be killed by them)..It's just crazy..if you suck so badly at a game that you have to cheat to win, just stop, or play in private battles and cheat with your other cheat buddies there..

That's more than likely lag/latency than cheaters/hackers. Lag can do a lot of crazy things. There have been moments where i filled my opponent with shots, but he stayed alive simply because of lag. I'd suggest you try to get a lan adapter. That way your connections are more stable and won't disconnect as often. I honestly don't use lan because so far my online experience with splatoon has been nearly flawless. I almost never exprience lag and disconnect even less when playing against nothing but japanese players (which is like 90% of my matches) and disconnect happen like once every month. Not sure if it's my router or my internet provider.

 

[Kowai Yume]

Here's what I did, take a hiatus. Like after LUTI I dropped Splatoon for about a month. During that time I played other shooters like Team Fortress and Quake to keep my shooter skills up. I got back to it a month later and had fun despite its shortcomings (IE not having enough space to run around Dynamos and snipers on half the maps, movement options). I actually had fun after the break where splatoon wasn't this chore I had to do with my clan.

 

[Cyan]

Interesting story! Yeah the more people I talk to here the more people have similar experiences and the more the stories don't add up to the system working as it appears.

And that's not to say that the real system, however it ACTUALLY works, isn't a fair one. But I do think it has severe flaws that places people incorrectly, or more accurately, misjudges players skill based on something in the way they play. For me, for example I have 3 accounts. Two of them are S, one of which took FOREVER to get out of the A- through A+ loop (pre 2.6 ranked patch) one of them I moved up pretty fast, and this current one that it seemed fixated on keeping me in A- all the time. Once I got to A- it kept me there, I'd win to the 80's then lose to the teens, then win to the 80's then lose to the teens. And then the other day I had that odd win streek of every game from A-28 to A30 was a win, most by KO. After getting 2 weeks of teams that would not TOUCH objectives (5-98 type losses) that were impossible to carry. (I mean it was infuriating - I'd see a blaster on the little pedistals on Moray shoot the enemy off the tower that was right next to him and then NOT get on it....they'd just let it sit there and reset to mid! I had eliter and had to go and keep riding the tower! :p I'd go get triple kills and they'd all stand next to the zone and NOBODY would ink it! I'd have to circle around and go ink it myself, giving up the good position I'd carved out. Every round was like that! And then to suddenly win every round by KO for a full rank largely due to getting excellent teams, often higher ranked teams against lower ranked opponents, as soon as I switched weapons to one I'm worse with was a turning point in my long quest to understand how the system really works.

I do think there's some type of weapon discrimination to a degree. Or maybe different expectations based on weapons (13/4 with bamboozler just isn't good enough for a charger I guess...while 1/3 with splash-o-matic is? :p ) Or maybe it prioritizes inkage too high - I laid a lot of ink with my bamboozler on the zones....but it pales in comparison to the flood of ink a splash-o-matic unleashes everywhere. Or enemies just react more chaotically against a shooter than they do against chargers so I disoriented the enemy more just by running around shooting with bad aim at nothing than I did when I was taking them out left and right.

But yep, what you described sounds familiar. I think you're right, it can't decide where to put you. But I'd love to figure out what really determines what rank you're in and which rank it's trying to keep you in and how it decides to let you move on. I change lobbies after every round, too, so the repeated losing teams were not simply getting stuck with the same bad players, and the winning streak wasn't merely lucking out with a good group. I force a new group every match, so any pattern at all tends to stand out as being intentional, not luck.

It's also possible it gives you some easy rounds if you switch to a weapon you haven't used in a while. I know some people noticed that a while back at least in TW. But not a whole rank's worth :)

I'm not sure I'll ever figure out the pattern of how it works completely. I think they have a lot of "randomizers" in place to throw anyone off the track of finding the pattern (this is Nintendo, I shouldn't have expected they'd do simple....they changed the Hylian language after fans cracked the code after all, but every sign in a Zelda game written in Hylian ACTUALLY has translatable text! they spent amazing amounts of time on details they don't actually intend for anyone to ever find :) ) But I think my breakthrough that it's really "assigning" your rank and holding you there by arranging fixed matches is the closest I've come yet to figuring out a big piece of it. *IF* I'm right, it's not that you don't "earn" your rank, it's just that the system that gives your rank is not one of winning more than losing as it appears, the wins and losses are just consequences of being (invisibly) in the rank they've determined you're in. It's still determined on something you've done in the game - I just don't know what that something is :) And I suspect whatever calculates it isn't very good at doing so. :)

When I still did solo ranked, I stopped swapping out every match after realising that I was bumping into 2 or 3 of the same players immediately after the last match. Once I started hitting continue agree matches, I would often return to the lobby with an empty search screen, everyone else had backed out to search again whilst my lobby had a delay on before searching for players. It seems everyone backs out which throws certain players together again, often on the opposite team again and causing lose/win streaks. I now reside only in squads, because solo has no fun left in it and is awful at S+, so I squad with other S/S+ players and the win/lose ratio is often more consistent and teams are generally more balanced. I think they should add an S- rank in a new update, then throw all S players to S- 30 and all S+ players to S 30 and give S+ a 6000p bonus for wins and a 7000p bonus for knockouts.

 

[Brunosky_Inc]

Oh yeah, as a level 50 player that recently climbed his way to S+, the playerbase's average skill level has increased noticeably over time; which, well, is something to be expected on games like these.

Personally I've always prefered Turf Wars over Ranked (I'm not too fond of the looming menace of lost rank points (DUN DUN DUUUUUN!)), so I've always played with a "give it your all" focus (save the occasional Squid Party :p), meaning stuff like discovering and making use of new strategies and flanking routes.

It's weird though, despite the overall increase in skill, I've had occasional losing streaks where I swear I'm being constantly teamed up with incompetent squids. I mean, an usual thing you can expect is to have players that are better at taking turf, and that by doing so are helping out those players that are better at dealing with enemies. But I've had several streaks where I've ended up carrying a losing team with both the best coverage (like, sometimes over than double that of the second player) and the best KDR, even in lobbies full with people at or around level 50. That's not something you'd expect from an overall increase in player skill.

...Eh. Anyways, I don't let that get to me. Still have lots of fun playing this game. These really quick and oftentimes aggresive matches are the best experience I've ever had with a shooter.