Everything I was going to say has already been said here as it turns out. So I guess it's story time! Grab a drink and a sandwich if you like and get comfortable!
I, like you, started out using sticks. It was alright and I was having plenty of fun with just that. But I was also noticing that my skills with the game were stagnating. I was doing what could pass for okay, but I wanted to be better. I wanted to see more of what the game's skill ceiling had to offer for a player who wanted to get more out of it! So I started looking around to see what tips the higher ranked pros and semi-pros had to offer about the game and its quirky systems and found that two things kept coming up above all else: Advanced movement options and using motion controls.
Well I had been practicing with the more advanced movement options myself. Splatter Hopping, Splatter Dashing, Dolphin Diving...the works, really. Interestingly, I was practicing Dolphin Diving before I knew that the technique had a name! But one thing kept coming up that made me question the validity of these techniques, and that was how long it took to reposition my aim to perform them effectively. Going from aiming down to straight again with sticks was no big deal. Just press Y to reposition the camera behind you. Worked just fine for that, but for going from normal aim to aiming down was slow and a bit clunky. Often it would spell more trouble than just dealing with the fire fight and waiting to see what happened. And the less said about trying to effectively hit an opponent while Dolphin Diving with sticks, the better. I was putting myself into a rut and didn't know how to get out of it. That was when I found the second piece of advice.
Motion controls. Motion controls? Isn't that the thing that everyone was getting tired of by now? Most people weren't fans of waggling Wiimotes for gaming controls. Playstation Move had some interesting things going for it but fell into the same problems that the Wiimotes did. Kinect? What a joke! You'd have an easier time controlling a game using an Etch-a-Sketch! But this was the topic of discussion for most of the highly skilled players. They all said the same things. Using Motion Controls allows you to turn faster. Using Motion Controls allows you to aim more accurately. Using Motion Controls makes the game feel smoother and opens up more options in your game play. I thought that no one liked Motion Controls. Not in my circle anyway. We were all devoted sticks players. Have been since the days of Timesplitters and Goldeneye. But here I was hearing the opposite! So what was an aspiring squid to do with this information? Simple. Give it a try!
Well, I have to admit, going from sticks to motion damn near crippled my abilities! It didn't feel right at all! Something as simple as turning turned out to be more complicated than it was worth. My number of splats was going down. The number of times I was being splatted was going up. I was covering less turf because I was more focused on the simple act of moving. I got worse! 'That's it, back to sticks!' I said to myself. And that's exactly what I did. This whole motion control thing wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I also heard that there are pros that use sticks, even with high precision weapons like Chargers. 'I'll just be like them,' I thought. Couldn't be that hard, right? Nevertheless, I kept seeing and experiencing things that I thought were impossible. Mostly, it was people aiming at me while jumping and running. Yes, I could do that, but only if it was set up ahead of time essentially. I couldn't do it on the fly like I was seeing from the people I was playing against. I thought they were cheating! But then it dawned on me that what I was seeing was a product of what I had recently shunned. Those freakin' motion controls. It was like Witchcraft to me. Some kind of eldritch sorcery that made everything different and strange. Now I was face to face with the entity that I had already walked away from previously. So now what? I had no choice but to acknowledge the elephant in the room and give it another try.
This second round at attempts went about as well as one would expect. Things got worse for a bit as I played around with settings to try to make things work. It seemed like nothing was working and that I had hit a ceiling. But then, something happened. Something that I never expected. A swimming dash into a jump with a quick alteration in aim, and BOOM! One splatted enemy squid! It all made sense at that point. It clicked. I saw what I was doing and then I understood. It does allow for faster turning. It does allow for better accuracy. It does make the game feel smoother and opens up more options. It does all of this by actually simplifying the act of turning and looking about. The ratio of movement to action in the game was better than I had given it credit for and I was seeing a now very noticeable improvement to my game. I hadn't hit a ceiling, but rather was climbing from a plateau. There is a lot of room for growth when you make the change! It won't be an easy change, I'll be the first to admit that. But once you get it and you reach that state of Splatoon Nirvana, you will be glad you did!
My advice for making the admittedly difficult switch? Practice. Use the firing range to understand your range of movement with the motion controls. Adjust your sensitivity settings and find what feels right for you (I am currently working with motion at 0 and right stick at 1). Make sure you aren't crippling yourself with a weapon that requires harsh amounts of precision at first and work your way up to other weapons form there. Once you feel comfortable, jump into some matches and then go from there! I feel as though I could have made my transition more comfortable by using the firing range some more. I did my practice exclusively in Turf Wars. Might have been a bit of a mistake, but it worked out in the long run. Just keep at it and you will notice the improvement! Use the tools at your disposal and put in the effort. It's worth it, trust me!
