Let's make a balance patch, BUT...

[DzNutsKong]

Alright, here's an idea I've had for a while but not felt like making until now. This is something I've done in Pokemon spaces and thought would be fun to adapt into something that makes a bit more sense for Splatoon. Discussion's been less than frequent in this forum lately so now's the best time to make a thread where discussion won't happen for a while LOL

Idea here is simple. Everyone is going to fill out a one-question (two if you count your name) form where they submit ONE balance change of their choosing. Can be to any main, sub, special, gear ability, or similar. My only real rules are to try and make it reasonably similar to something Nintendo could do, so no new kit or anything, try not to make it too extreme like boosting Undercover Brella to 100 damage per pellet, and to not mess with your main since I feel like a lot of those sorts of submission would defeat the purpose. Seems straightforward enough.

HOWEVER,

Every submission will be private, and if I find out anyone here has told anyone else what they've submitted, I will remove it. Nobody will know what everyone else has put until everything's set in stone. The whole point of this is to make it entirely possible for weapons to get overbuffed or overnerfed if they become too common of targets. Want to nerf .52 Gal? Well, a lot of people hate that weapon, so it may not be worth using your one change on something that you may well find much more tolerable after a change someone else might have made. Want to make Ultra Stamp's rush mode invincible? Well, someone else just made it twice as fast, so that special's going to be obnoxious now. These sort of mindgames might make it entirely possible that neither .52 Gal nor Ultra Stamp gets any changes as people might be scared to mess with those.

Since this concept kind of relies on everything being private, you'll need to fill out this Google form with your one change here. I'll be sharing the results in a few days and will give a 24-hour warning before we're done. Looking forward to seeing what everyone comes up with!

 

[QuagSass]

(deleted by dz)

 

[OnePotWonder]

(deleted by dz)

 

[DzNutsKong]

the whole point of this is we're not supposed to be coordinating. the result's likely going to have ridiculous stuff and or feel like something's missing and that's fine. please don't share specific stuff you want to see other people do

 

[AdphæeXD]

(splatted by dz)

 

[AdphæeXD]

what happened in the pokemon balance change?

 

[DzNutsKong]

what happened in the pokemon balance change?

Wasn't a balance change one but everyone submitted their own Pokemon to be used in its own meta. We ran it twice.

First was fascinating because there were like two good defensive Pokemon and the rest were strong offensive ones that mostly lost to the same big defensive one, but often could wear it down or help work towards breaking past it. This lead to a very unique, straightforward, and somehow very skillful game. Second one had twice as many participants and was extremely unbalanced LOL

Not the same ultimately as what this thread is trying to do but it's as close as you can get.

 

[DzNutsKong]

Will give another 24 hours until the results are posted! Will need to message a few people for clarification on something too. If you want to change what you put feel free to message me!

 

[DzNutsKong]

also someone gave me a completely blank response so uh. to make sure, if your name is not on this list then i do not see your submission -

Technobyte
How Sweet :3
Sly Snivy
Solz
LemonBoy
Quag
squib
Isaac4
AdphaeXD
Squid_Boards
Hokuto
Zonink
Videoknight
OnePotWonder

 

[DzNutsKong]

Closing this here! Will need to get clarification on some things from a few people, but otherwise the form is no longer open. I will be posting these the moment I'm ready!

 

[Forma]

I was going to make a different change than I ended up doing, but every time I went to type it up it escaped me. Is it too late to change it? No big deal if so!

 

[DzNutsKong]

I was going to make a different change than I ended up doing, but every time I went to type it up it escaped me. Is it too late to change it? No big deal if so!

You're free to DM me if you want to make a last minute change!

 

[DzNutsKong]

Final results! I will not be saying who made which change. Whether or not someone wants to disclose which one they submitted is up to them. You're free to use this thread to discuss how you feel about these changes, what you wished someone would've done, what you wished someone else hadn't done and so on. Just try to keep things civil and avoid bashing anyone's ideas here.

• Specifications for some main weapons have changed.

Weapon​	Change Details​
H-3 Nozzlenose H-3 Nozzlenose D	Decreased the ending lag after one burst by approximately 1/30th of a second, with the value now being 18 instead of 20.
Splattershot Nova Annaki Splattershot Nova	Increased the maximum damage of shots by 2.0, with the value now being 26.0 instead of 24.0. Increased the maximum damage of shots by 11.0, with the value now being 37.0. Decreased the scatter of shots by approximately 7%.
Big Swig Roller Big Swig Roller Express	Slightly expanded vertical swings’ collision detection with players to make it easier to hit opponents.
Undercover Brella Undercover Sorella Brella	Increased the durability of the shield by 85.0, with the value now being 285.0 instead of 200.0.
Recycled Brella 24 Mk. I Recycled Brella 24 Mk. II	Increased the durability of the shield by 100.0, with the value now being 200.0 instead of 100.0.
Splatana Stamper Splatana Stamper Nouveau Order Splatana Stamper	Increased the time it takes to charge a shot in midair by approximately 2/3rds of a second, with the value now being 60 frames instead of 20. The time it takes to charge a shot while on the ground remains unchanged.

• Specifications for some sub weapons have changed.

Special Weapon​	Change Details​
Squid Beakon​	The effects of the gear ability Sub Power Up will now apply the effects of the gear ability Quick Super Jump to the user in addition to their Squid Beakons.

• Specifications for some special weapons have changed.​

Special Weapon​	Change Details​
Wave Breaker	HP increased from 400 to 500. Increased the heights that Wave Breaker's waves can reach without disappearing by approximately 10%. Each wave's visual and hitbox is now shaped more similarly to the peak of a sine wave, making them both wider and taller.
Big Bubbler	Base duration decreased by approximately 3 seconds. Base duration increased by approximately 3 seconds. Functionally, these two changes cancel one another out. This special weapon remains unchanged. (Deez's note - the latter user did not specify by how much, and I thought it'd be both way funnier and it'd fit both users' combined requests a bit more if I were to just make it 3 seconds to match.)​
Reefslider	Reduced the width of the outer explosion by approximately 33%, with the value now being 10.0 instead of 14.9. Both the width of the inner explosion and the radius inked by the explosion remain unchanged.

• All super jumps will now have the hiding effect provided by Stealth Jump. In addition, the gear ability Stealth Jump has been removed. Every piece of gear to formerly have Stealth Jump has been assigned a different gear ability in its place.
• When a player is splatted, the explosion they currently release to ink the surrounding area with the enemy's color can now harm their teammates. The radius and damage values of this explosion are identical to a Splat Bomb.

 

[Forma]

Big Bubbler

Base duration decreased by approximately 3 seconds. Base duration increased by approximately 3 seconds. Functionally, these two changes cancel one another out. This special weapon remains unchanged. (Deez's note - the latter user did not specify by how much, and I thought it'd be both way funnier and it'd fit both users' combined requests a bit more if I were to just make it 3 seconds to match.)​

(Full thoughts sometime later, I am quite proud of us overall)

 

[AdphæeXD]

• All super jumps will now have the hiding effect provided by Stealth Jump. In addition, the gear ability Stealth Jump has been removed. Every piece of gear to formerly have Stealth Jump has been assigned a different gear ability in its place.

i was really hoping someone would buff/nerf SJ so this surprise would hit them T-T

 

[QuagSass]

WAVE BREAKER GIGABUFF LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!!!

Not sure how I feel about player explosions hurting teammates. Feels like you'd just get randomly hurt sometimes. But eh, that's the patch we get. Gotta see how it affects the meta lol

 

[technobyte]

Splattershot nova gets closer to becoming as good as splattershot pro each day. I would have been happy enough to get four shots to kill, but three shots to kill is a major improvement. At the same time, there's also falloff and the fact that it has more than double the shot rng of pro, even after the buff: 5.5° → 5.1° on nova compared to pro's 2.5°. Nova still keeps a bit of its unique aspects like it's faster fire rate and better paint, so its identity is still pretty separate from that of pro without it being too broken. Its identity was pretty much my main concern since I want these weapons to be able to coexist without nova being too weak to be worth picking up for many or too strong to where it creates an unbalanced monster, while maintaining its identity as a more support-oriented midrange shooter like dual squelcher. Not sure if that's too much to ask for, though.

More recycled brella shield HP is pretty nice! I'm a bit surprised there weren't any damage buffs to any of the brellas too (namely splat brella) since that's a commonly requested buff.

It would be interesting to see how vStamper players deal with the midair charge penalty, notably because of zipcaster. Horizontal slashes and the special itself definitely become a lot more vital when fighting in the air. Not as much of an impact on stamper nouveau, though.

Faster jumps to squid beacon users wearing sub power up is nice, especially in solo scenarios where there are no active beacons or beacon jumps aren't safe/useful.

Wave breaker gets a lot more influence, which is pretty nice. Easier to find good spots and harder to ignore

What? Big Bubbler is evolving!
...
Huh? Big Bubbler stopped evolving!

Reefslider nerf makes it even easier to approach and punish, but at least there won't be as many stray reefslider deaths.

With stealth jump being free, that also frees up a slot for a lot of different weapons, notably slayers. No complaints here (I wonder what could replace it, though?)

The most significant change is probably player death explosions dealing damage since this would impact just about everything. Players have to spread out a lot more to avoid getting caught in their teammates' deaths, giving soloq players like me yet another reason to be at each other's throats. It would be pretty satisfying to cause a chain reaction from taking out one enemy, though.

Overall very cool concept. Thanks for hosting this!

 

[Forma]

First, the changes I don't have much to say about. H-3 and Big Swig: sounds good, why not?
Stamper: I admittedly haven't been following competitive circles much lately but I'm a little surprised about this one. It's not exactly a thing I would have thought needed changing, but I guess somebody did? It's not terrible by any stretch. Noveau probably doesn't care as much as vanilla, which is now a lot more vulnerable while zipcasting.
Undercover: Feels a little excessive, I think. Probably makes it better in competitive circles but I could imagine this making casual player's lives hell, especially since it still has the instant recharge mechanic.
Recycled: Kinda has to happen if the above happens, which is honestly all the more impressive considering this was all anonymous. As a standalone change, I'm a little more mixed - maybe 150 would have been more reasonable? - but I'm not really displeased by it either.
Splattershot Nova: It felt inevitable that something got overtuned, and it shouldn't shock anybody that it's the Nova. I feel like the kit system is what makes these changes surprisingly balanced - in a new system where kits were interchangeable, this would just replace the Splattershot, right? Instead, we get a pretty interesting long-range weapon with a focus on support that ALSO manages to be distinct from the Jet Squelcher. Good stuff!

Beakon: It's my change! My hope for a change like this is that it encourages more players to use beakon weapons by ensuring that SOME effects are used more often than not. I specifically worded it so that SPU translates 1:1 with QSJ on yourself - there's still reason to use beakons since they both hide your location and get you there a little faster. Even if this was conditional (usable within beakon detection range or something along those lines) or even halved the QSJ effects I still think it would be a big improvement.

Wave Breaker: Puts it in a good spot, I feel. It's needed something for a while and these feel like changes that are substantial enough without becoming overwhelming, even if multiple are in play at once.
Big Bubbler: See above post
Reefslider: Another positive change, probably a needed one too. More likely to help casual players but that's far from a bad thing, especially since it's gained traction lately.

The Stealth Jump change: I'm okay with this. I feel like Stealth Jump continuing to exist as its own ability, functioning as it is, while a natural Stealth Jump effect that's less intense becomes the default would likely be the better solution but this opens up a lot of potentially interesting stuff with a free 10AP for a lot of sets.
The death explosion change: I'm... less okay with this. Some damage might even be interesting to deal with, but having to be aware of your spacing between yourself and your teammates at all times is another positioning layer I doubt would end up being enjoyable to deal with. Wouldn't this also make brellas worse since standing near them is now a liability? It's probably an indirect Ink Vac buff, so I guess there's that, but randos are going to be worse than ever with this in play.

I'm still quite happy with this overall, and I think it says a lot about not only the state of the game as it stands but on our community that we ended up with a patch I could (mostly) see as a real thing.
Of all the participants, only four picked the same stat on the same weapon. That's pretty wild! We collectively, wordlessly pinpointed a problem and somehow managed to deal with it quite well given the potential scope of the project.
...there's no doubt in my mind that this would be very different (and a hell of a lot worse) if it was taken to a bigger venue, though. I shudder to think.

 

[Zonink]

Speedrun response!

h-3-

not really anything, it's technically a minor paint/dps buff but doesn't fundamentally fix any of the issues that h-3 has. (range tier erosion and extra movement options making hitting the full burst way harder than previous games.)

nova-
broken lmao. whoever suggest to buff nova's damage by 11 is crazy it did not need that. this just turns the weapon into borderline permanent hydra charge considering the fire rate of nova and mobility. this weapon is absurd. it makes every other shooter in the game look like gootuber. easily the best fighting weapon, best support in the game.

big swig-
also a significant buff, considering this buff happened last patch as well. I'm just gonna assume the vertical is vroller sized now. this basically makes bigs a direct upgrade to vrollers main. Big swig is so close to being an excellent weapon in spite of kits and I think this puts it way over the line. It's just carbon that can outpaint reeflux now. Bigs is just a broken main weapon if you can actually hit the opponent with verticals. which basically nobody is consistent with.

undercover-
obnoxious hyper buff, It's still probably not broken since the game has a lot of weapons that have absurd shield multipliers but it's just gonna make stuff like splash, dualies, and zap be really bad and make every team run swords. also yay reef cheese is buffed.

recycle-
see undercover but even more broken. recycle doesn't need this and this ultra breaks the weapon. It's basically impossible to kill now. like I've played against really good recycles and it's already a very difficult weapon to pin down. maybe a hot take but I think this turns recycle into the best non nova weapon in the game. a lot of weapons are just going to be completely unable to outdps it before it gets shield back. so expect swords, bows, splatlings,

stamper-
why, stamper doesn't need a nerf it's a weapon that is really high skill and rewards good play. it has an expressive kit and it's the only zip top tier. why just make it unfun lol.

beakons-
potentially broken if the scaling allows for you to break the diminishing returns on QSJ and Sub Power AP. allowing for instant jumpouts without cooler. (get really for jumping cds meta)

wave-
it's a solid buff. potentially really annoying since a lot of anchors have limited jump height while charging so it just forces them to leave. making this a special that heavily benefits aggressive play.

-reef
nevermind reef cheese is dead. this probably also kills every reef weapon but i'm not really that sad about that lmao.

stealth jump passive-
should of been like this at launch. hard nerf to splash wall and other objects since shredder becomes very easy to fit on a lot of weapons now. also makes stacking more charge up easier without losing out on stealth and other abilities so some special costs should probably be pushed around a little.

player explosions-
makes tower control unplayable lmao.