Join The Fight for Regional Mode!

[MrL1193]

The significant benefit is not having to play with 250ms+ ping (EU players). The potential of there being lag in regional doesn't undermine the benefit I'm pushing.

I'm pushing

Potentially some lag on occasions

VS

250ms+ against Japanese players, 100% of the time.

Your basically saying "if you can't eliminate lag 100%", then you may as well not bother trying at all.

You don't seem to be grasping my argument. I'll try to explain it again, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself after this.


Your argument in favor of regional matchmaking is: "Reduced lag."

My response to that is: "Splatfest history shows that lag isn't reduced by that much."


Now consider the drawback that comes with the reduced lag (and please don't ignore it this time): Worse worldwide player pool, particularly should the Japanese players stick to their own regional matches.

This leads to a simple question: "Is regional matchmaking worth it?"

And here's my answer to that question:


Ideal scenario: Completely or mostly lag-free regional matches vs. Worse worldwide player pool = Potentially worth it

Actual scenario: Only slightly less laggy regional matches vs. Worse worldwide player pool = Not worth it

 

[Fish_Goes_Moo]

You don't seem to be grasping my argument. I'll try to explain it again, but I'd rather not have to repeat myself after this.


Your argument in favor of regional matchmaking is: "Reduced lag."

My response to that is: "Splatfest history shows that lag isn't reduced by that much."


Now consider the drawback that comes with the reduced lag (and please don't ignore it this time): Worse worldwide player pool, particularly should the Japanese players stick to their own regional matches.

This leads to a simple question: "Is regional matchmaking worth it?"

And here's my answer to that question:


Ideal scenario: Completely or mostly lag-free regional matches vs. Worse worldwide player pool = Potentially worth it

Actual scenario: Only slightly less laggy regional matches vs. Worse worldwide player pool = Not worth it

I grasp your arguement, I just disagree with it.

I disagree with splatfest history showing it isn't reduced that much. As an EU player the EU ones are generally amazing compared to worldwide, with minimal lag. And are night and day difference between being in the worldwide pool.

I also disagree with your "actual scenario".

We "EU" have had that. Being completely seperate from NA/JP in ranked (when you guys are both locked in splatfest at the same time) and both times, it was the ideal scenario. It certainly was not only "slightly less laggy".


But the pool doesn't have to be split anyway. We don't need a sepearate worldwide pool, just better mm, that actually takes ping into account.

 

[MrL1193]

I grasp your arguement, I just disagree with it.

I disagree with splatfest history showing it isn't reduced that much. As an EU player the EU ones are generally amazing compared to worldwide, with minimal lag. And are night and day difference between being in the worldwide pool.

I also disagree with your "actual scenario".

We "EU" have had that. Being completely seperate from NA/JP in ranked (when you guys are both locked in splatfest at the same time) and both times, it was the ideal scenario. It certainly was not only "slightly less laggy".

Even if we do assume that you're right about Europe's regional matchmaking actually being good, that would just bring us back to the whole issue of being "self-centered" and the clash of interests between regions. You'd essentially be telling all the American players to just suck it up and deal with the bad tradeoff I mentioned earlier so that you Europeans could enjoy your less laggy regional matches. Call me a self-centered American, but if we're going to have regional matchmaking, I'd like to enjoy a worthwhile benefit too, you know (or at the very least break even on the trade).

But the pool doesn't have to be split anyway. We don't need a sepearate worldwide pool, just better mm, that actually takes ping into account.

Well sure, that sounds like it could work, but like you already said, it's probably not something Nintendo is willing to do.

 

[Magix]

As much as I'd love regional matchmaking - and have been saying so since the release of the game - it is a concept that is better in theory than in practice. If there were enough players of every rank in every region, and everyone had great internet connections, it would be fantastic. But that just isn't what we have. Experiences during Splatfests probably aren't good examples, considering that the servers always seem to have more issues than usual at those times(which shouldn't be acceptable, but might explain the problems at least), but we have all experienced players from your own region that have been very laggy, even outside of Splatfests.

So the first con of regional matchmaking is that it wouldn't solve as much as we wish it would, as regions is only one link in the chain of issues that lead to laggy games.

The second con is that it would likely affect the pool of players a lot, which could be a huge problem for European and Oceanic players in particular.

We all feel like 9/10 players are Japanese, and from what I've heard, around 8/10 of the remaining players are American. I don't know how accurate that second number is, but as a European myself, it certainly doesn't seem unrealistic, if judged based on how much fewer European and Oceanic players are seen on these forums. And just how much truth there was to this, was first experienced two Splatfests ago, when Nintendo had their second worst idea in Splatoon's history: scheduling the Japanese and American Splatfests simultaneously. (The worst idea being to NOT change that concept for the next Splatfest.)

EU playerbase at least has enough to support it. Since the splafest dates got changed, EU has had 2 days without either Japanese or NA players and it's been fine. There hasn't been excessive waiting, sometimes a little longer, but nothing excessive. That's S/S+ solo, can't speak for squad ranked.

My friend also had a quick S/S+ solo queue, but guess what? Before he queued for ranked, I queued for Turf War. He had time to queue for ranked, find a game, play the game, quit, idle for a minute and then join my Turf War game before we had found eight players. And that's not all, we also tried to play squads. Twin, tri and quad, for between four and five hours. In that time, we got to play less than ten games. We had long periods of having nothing but queue timeouts.
Our region is fine during our own Splatfest because everyone is forced into the same game mode, and a lot of people want to play the event and get rewards. But otherwise, we're not fine ... Now imagine if our numbers were spread even thinner because we also got to choose betwen regional and worldwide matchmaking. My guess is that most people - in order to get faster queues - would opt for worldwide matchmaking, which would mean that regional queues would be veeeeery slow(compared to what we're used to)due to the low numbers. In EU/OC. In Japan, it would of course be a different story. They certainly have enough players to maintained regional matchmaking for themselves, so why should they queue worldwide? I'm sure "a lot" still would do it, but obviously the numbers would be lower than they are now, which means that EU/OC would have an undercrowded regional matchmaking and a worldwide matchmaking with a much smaller player base than we have now. That's not a situation I would like to see happen.

So as much as I would love the option of regional matchmaking, if it worked, I don't think it's a good idea right now. The game needs more players first. Making queues longer could potentially deter people from playing the game, and fewer players is the opposite of what we need to make regional matchmaking a good idea!

 

[dapperlace]

Against. Japanese players have never lagged more for me than anyone else, and I like that there are people from different time zones playing when I'm having trouble sleeping. Those matches actually go really smoothly.

 

[Fish_Goes_Moo]

The second con is that it would likely affect the pool of players a lot, which could be a huge problem for European and Oceanic players in particular.

We all feel like 9/10 players are Japanese, and from what I've heard, around 8/10 of the remaining players are American. I don't know how accurate that second number is, but as a European myself, it certainly doesn't seem unrealistic, if judged based on how much fewer European and Oceanic players are seen on these forums.

I wouldn't base the population on how many are on this forum. International English language forums always tend to be dominated by people from NA. A huge amount of the EU population doesn't speak English, so wouldn't be here.

My friend also had a quick S/S+ solo queue, but guess what? Before he queued for ranked, I queued for Turf War. He had time to queue for ranked, find a game, play the game, quit, idle for a minute and then join my Turf War game before we had found eight players. And that's not all, we also tried to play squads. Twin, tri and quad, for between four and five hours. In that time, we got to play less than ten games. We had long periods of having nothing but queue timeouts.

Well I did say I only tried solo ranked (both times we've been split) and couldn't speak for the other modes. I mean personally I would prefer to wait to for a lower latency game than jump into an instant game with garanteed high latency, but that's just me. I frequently queue on pc games to get onto a specific sever, rather than just jumping on a higher latency one.

So as much as I would love the option of regional matchmaking, if it worked, I don't think it's a good idea right now. The game needs more players first. Making queues longer could potentially deter people from playing the game, and fewer players is the opposite of what we need to make regional matchmaking a good idea!

Regional could be what gets the player base up though. I've stopped playing the game plenty of times out of fustration and gone to play something else, due to being fed up with playing with 250+ ping and nonsense like

frequently happening due to the latency between EU/Japan and I'm sure I'm not alone.


Really though, the topic is on regional, but that's a lazy fix. I would much prefer the mm to simply take ping into account. That gets rid of all concerns (splitting the playerbase/lack of players in X region etc). Game should be trying to match you to players with lower latency before branching out, if it can't find any. It's absurd to make a fast paced game like this and completely disregard latency.

 

[«◆Johηηγ◆»]

(Connection Problems)

I used to get connection errors all the time when I had a wireless connection, but when I switched over to a wired connection all of my connection problems vanished. Also you cannot deny that if you live in America/Europe that Japan is extremely far away, thus connection issues are a valid reason that there should be a Regional Mode available.

So if you're going to complain about the connection, then switch over to wired internet or stop complaining, but trust me it's worth it.

(Regional Problems with Japan)

It is proven that the Japanese Splatoon community is way more competitive than the western Splatoon community, they take the game in a more serious way than people in the west do. There is even an organized group that plays splatoon competitively in Japan and they're VERY GOOD at what they do.

So the argument that people want a Regional Mode is very relevant and makes total sense all things considered