NA Splatfest: Are you an Early Bird or a Night Owl?

[Dual]

Also, getting only 5 snails on the losing team at the third Splatfest rank (I always forget if it's defender or fiend) just ain't right! :(

I'm going to stick up for nintendo here and say that it is pretty easy to get to atleast champoin here, especially since you get 8 or 9 points for each win, or is that just ne? Either way, it's still a lot better than the old ways before sandcastle vs snowman. Although, it does still feel like a chore sometimes, I will admit that. I do think that would be nice though. Maybe get a sea snail every 8 wins, and in ranked every 4.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

I would not mind another way to earn snails since Splatfest is kinda bland these days. Maybe you get one or two for every thirty matches (turf or ranked) you play? That would still make it hard to grind for them, but allow for another way to get snails.

Also, getting only 5 snails on the losing team at the third Splatfest rank (I always forget if it's defender or fiend) just ain't right! :(

It's Defender.

 

[Cuttleshock]

Uh, this is pretty unrelated to the Splatfest itself, I'm realising, but it's on the subject of recent conversation, so...

I'm just always concerned by suggestions of new ways to obtain Snails due to their equivalent monetary value (30,000 Cash). That's, depending on your rank, 5~10 Ranked Battles, and probably about 40 Turf Wars on average. So getting extra ones for playing a lot of TW just compounds the reward value of that mode (ignoring the admittedly important factor of levelling up gear), which feels like... getting a gift card for your birthday. I'm not a fan.

However, I would be all for that if the function of Snails were altered to be something that necessitates them - that is, you can no longer do precisely the same thing with a Snail as with 30,000 Cash. Simple but effective suggestion, not my original idea, would be to let 30,000 Coins do the same as before for rerolling gear and a Snail to allow you to reroll a single slot of choice (not sure about unlocking slots). Then yes, have a TW counter that gives you a Snail every 20 games* or get a Snail every 10 Ranked victories**.

*You have to ink at least 400p for a game to count, to prevent exploitation of a potentially free reward.
**I considered a reward for a win streak, but that is, again, more open to exploitation and unfairly punishes players who are average or below-average within their usual Rank.

 

[EBJustin]

http://splatoonus.tumblr.com/post/146558918839/congrats-to-team-night-owl Top 100 here. I managed to get 4th on team Night Owl. :P

 

[WeirdChillFever]

The complaint about brutal splatfests is based off several factors:

-snails. We all want em and some of us are willing to splat for them. Maybe nintendo could get us another option to get snails. My personal suggestion is defeat dj octavio and get a snail. It requires skill and time and isnt dependent on team mates

-frequency. Splatfest feels like less and less of a fun event and more and more like a contrived sales tool. Less splatfests makes them become more valuable as an event.

-length. 24 hrs is too short imo. Do it from midnight friday night til midnight monday. Time constraints make people play in a more goal oriented manner.

- perhaps everyone is dying to show their ranked prowess and therby feels the need to upgrade their gear to a state of optimization. Why not add a metric or two to ranked matches that allows you to move up if your team loses? Tc: time on tower and number of splats of opponents on the tower rm: time carrying the rainmaker and times splatting the carrier. Sz: pixels inked in zone and "swaps" aka how many times did u cause a zone to go from control to neutral or from neutral to control.

Those metrics represent individual effort towards a goal. While there are support roles that can win games ( protecting your hydra team mate in splatzones comes to mind) those are dependent upon team mates.

Heck, what abt a separate ranked tier where those are the ONLY things that cause u to move up and down

Snails: I don't think massive grinding should be the way to get snails, especially not if it's not the main mode.

Lenght: Yes! Especially since people can't play for the full twentyfour hours because that little thing called sleep.
The lenght of the international Splatfest was ideal, though stretching the times too long could cause annoyance among the people who want to play Ranked.

Metric: The idea is nice, but the examples are pretty bad, as they are geared to only one style of playing.
None of it is geared toward ink control and it puts too much emphasis on the objective itself.

In TC, you can get the key picks when another one sits on the tower, gain ink control or be "that guy" that is alive after your team was wiped and sits on the tower for three seconds to victory and of course kill enemies that aren't on the tower, but are a massive threat.

The current metrics discourage teamplay and brings Ranked tactics back to C-, since everybody would want to sit on the tower even though it's strategically the worst thing to do.

Same for RM, but with an added emphasis on the lack of reward for escorting (Since every point counts, ink control, even if it's just a droplet, becomes a matter of win or lose. You can also be that guy that pops Kraken at the right moment and win, same for Bubbler on TC)

Heck, you can be the support guy that throws Disruptors, Echoes and Beakons in everyone's faces for somebody else to do the push.

In Splat Zones, there aren't any metrics to think of other than the current ones, but these metrics royally screw over defensive players om two-zoned zones and favor Ink Strikes and Sprinkler a LOT.
The former protect the native zone, and if they do it right, they don't have to swap it, because they kill the push before it even started.
The Tentakteks in the opponents zone though keep bum rushing the other zone and fail, though they painted a bit so it swaps and get extra points for the pixels.
While the defensive player that stops pushes consistently gets no reward, the bum rushing Tentateks reap rewards for their failure.

Ink Strike and Sprinklers are going to have an extra field day, as they can ink an enormous amount of pixels and stop the counter, while the team wiping Inkzooka gets nothing if a teammate "steals" the swap.

Tldr: There are an astronomical amount of ways to contribute to the team and metrics can never show them all.
Things like "amount of zones swapped" and "Distance Tower pushed" are neat and should be visible (Kinda like the menu you always skip in Smash Bros.), but they don't show everything about how much you contributed to the win (Basically the same as K/D ratio)

 

[Award]

I would not mind another way to earn snails since Splatfest is kinda bland these days. Maybe you get one or two for every thirty matches (turf or ranked) you play? That would still make it hard to grind for them, but allow for another way to get snails.

Also, getting only 5 snails on the losing team at the third Splatfest rank (I always forget if it's defender or fiend) just ain't right! :(

I'm going to stick up for nintendo here and say that it is pretty easy to get to atleast champoin here, especially since you get 8 or 9 points for each win, or is that just ne? Either way, it's still a lot better than the old ways before sandcastle vs snowman. Although, it does still feel like a chore sometimes, I will admit that. I do think that would be nice though. Maybe get a sea snail every 8 wins, and in ranked every 4.

Uh, this is pretty unrelated to the Splatfest itself, I'm realising, but it's on the subject of recent conversation, so...

I'm just always concerned by suggestions of new ways to obtain Snails due to their equivalent monetary value (30,000 Cash). That's, depending on your rank, 5~10 Ranked Battles, and probably about 40 Turf Wars on average. So getting extra ones for playing a lot of TW just compounds the reward value of that mode (ignoring the admittedly important factor of levelling up gear), which feels like... getting a gift card for your birthday. I'm not a fan.

However, I would be all for that if the function of Snails were altered to be something that necessitates them - that is, you can no longer do precisely the same thing with a Snail as with 30,000 Cash. Simple but effective suggestion, not my original idea, would be to let 30,000 Coins do the same as before for rerolling gear and a Snail to allow you to reroll a single slot of choice (not sure about unlocking slots). Then yes, have a TW counter that gives you a Snail every 20 games* or get a Snail every 10 Ranked victories**.

*You have to ink at least 400p for a game to count, to prevent exploitation of a potentially free reward.
**I considered a reward for a win streak, but that is, again, more open to exploitation and unfairly punishes players who are average or below-average within their usual Rank.

The elephant in the room is scumming and hacking. At this point I'd venture to say at least 80% of S/S+ players are all scumming/hacking, and therefore have "infinite" snails already, leaving those of us who do not practice this at a disadvantage for not cheating the system. At this point the snail/money distribution system is a joke from the start. The hyper competitive just bypass it and those who don't have to grind relentlessly during this once a month currency fest that's no longer even fun to play due to being brutally competitive in a short window of time.

I'd welcome a "gift card for my birthday" considering my opponents just reached into the register and took what they wanted.

Nintendo can either fix the scumming/hacking (impossible now I imagine) or they can even the playing field by making it as easy for the non-scummers to get their rerolls as the scummers have it and reduce the importance of snails/money. Or fix the stinkin' ability stacking so the perfect rerolls don't have much value anyway (which I still say needs to be done for many reasons.)

I do like @Cuttleshock 's idea however. Changing snails to reroll a specific slot would be a great bridge between all these solutions including countering, slightly, the scummers.

The problem with the current splatfest is I've had period in the past two fests where on one or more of my accounts I lost nearly every single match. That means grinding to champion or king 2p at a time. I was winning at most 15% of rounds, and plunging 100 or more points in fest power. Combined with matchmaking delays, If you're keeping track that's a 5-8 hour grind fest, at intense s/s+ level competition tormenting your gamepad sticks and playing in hyper "hear the plastic stress cracking in your hands" levels of intensity for the bulk of an entire day. That's not fun. It's borderline sadistic.

Snails: I don't think massive grinding should be the way to get snails, especially not if it's not the main mode.

Lenght: Yes! Especially since people can't play for the full twentyfour hours because that little thing called sleep.
The lenght of the international Splatfest was ideal, though stretching the times too long could cause annoyance among the people who want to play Ranked.

Metric: The idea is nice, but the examples are pretty bad, as they are geared to only one style of playing.
None of it is geared toward ink control and it puts too much emphasis on the objective itself.

In TC, you can get the key picks when another one sits on the tower, gain ink control or be "that guy" that is alive after your team was wiped and sits on the tower for three seconds to victory and of course kill enemies that aren't on the tower, but are a massive threat.

The current metrics discourage teamplay and brings Ranked tactics back to C-, since everybody would want to sit on the tower even though it's strategically the worst thing to do.

Same for RM, but with an added emphasis on the lack of reward for escorting (Since every point counts, ink control, even if it's just a droplet, becomes a matter of win or lose. You can also be that guy that pops Kraken at the right moment and win, same for Bubbler on TC)

Heck, you can be the support guy that throws Disruptors, Echoes and Beakons in everyone's faces for somebody else to do the push.

In Splat Zones, there aren't any metrics to think of other than the current ones, but these metrics royally screw over defensive players om two-zoned zones and favor Ink Strikes and Sprinkler a LOT.
The former protect the native zone, and if they do it right, they don't have to swap it, because they kill the push before it even started.
The Tentakteks in the opponents zone though keep bum rushing the other zone and fail, though they painted a bit so it swaps and get extra points for the pixels.
While the defensive player that stops pushes consistently gets no reward, the bum rushing Tentateks reap rewards for their failure.

Ink Strike and Sprinklers are going to have an extra field day, as they can ink an enormous amount of pixels and stop the counter, while the team wiping Inkzooka gets nothing if a teammate "steals" the swap.

Tldr: There are an astronomical amount of ways to contribute to the team and metrics can never show them all.
Things like "amount of zones swapped" and "Distance Tower pushed" are neat and should be visible (Kinda like the menu you always skip in Smash Bros.), but they don't show everything about how much you contributed to the win (Basically the same as K/D ratio)

Yeah it always gets sticky when it gets down too figuring out different metrics to track. There have been many prior discussions on the topic. Ultimately it needs SOMETHING though, because right now there's too much that really gets affected by bad teammates. The argument that then players would abuse the system is unfortunately valid. On the other hand we have too many teammates that are ALREADY focusing on their metrics and ignoring objectives to focus on ratios. The players playing the objective should have a way to be rewarded over their meathead hunter-killer companions. The examples might fall short, but the idea still is important.

Also I play many weapons, in many play styles, from defensive sniping, aggressive sniping, sprinkler driven CHydra, etc. I still seem to be the only one turning around zones in some matches. Sometimes while my allies are standing RIGHT NEXT to the zone and refuse to ink it - at all. There's more merit to that metric than you think :p





Also, Contrats @Lonely_Dolphin, is that you in #2? :)

 

[WeirdChillFever]

The elephant in the room is scumming and hacking. At this point I'd venture to say at least 80% of S/S+ players are all scumming/hacking, and therefore have "infinite" snails already, leaving those of us who do not practice this at a disadvantage for not cheating the system. At this point the snail/money distribution system is a joke from the start. The hyper competitive just bypass it and those who don't have to grind relentlessly during this once a month currency fest that's no longer even fun to play due to being brutally competitive in a short window of time.

I'd welcome a "gift card for my birthday" considering my opponents just reached into the register and took what they wanted.

Nintendo can either fix the scumming/hacking (impossible now I imagine) or they can even the playing field by making it as easy for the non-scummers to get their rerolls as the scummers have it and reduce the importance of snails/money. Or fix the stinkin' ability stacking so the perfect rerolls don't have much value anyway (which I still say needs to be done for many reasons.)

I do like @Cuttleshock 's idea however. Changing snails to reroll a specific slot would be a great bridge between all these solutions including countering, slightly, the scummers.

The problem with the current splatfest is I've had period in the past two fests where on one or more of my accounts I lost nearly every single match. That means grinding to champion or king 2p at a time. I was winning at most 15% of rounds, and plunging 100 or more points in fest power. Combined with matchmaking delays, If you're keeping track that's a 5-8 hour grind fest, at intense s/s+ level competition tormenting your gamepad sticks and playing in hyper "hear the plastic stress cracking in your hands" levels of intensity for the bulk of an entire day. That's not fun. It's borderline sadistic.




Yeah it always gets sticky when it gets down too figuring out different metrics to track. There have been many prior discussions on the topic. Ultimately it needs SOMETHING though, because right now there's too much that really gets affected by bad teammates. The argument that then players would abuse the system is unfortunately valid. On the other hand we have too many teammates that are ALREADY focusing on their metrics and ignoring objectives to focus on ratios. The players playing the objective should have a way to be rewarded over their meathead hunter-killer companions. The examples might fall short, but the idea still is important.

Also I play many weapons, in many play styles, from defensive sniping, aggressive sniping, sprinkler driven CHydra, etc. I still seem to be the only one turning around zones in some matches. Sometimes while my allies are standing RIGHT NEXT to the zone and refuse to ink it - at all. There's more merit to that metric than you think :p





Also, Contrats @Lonely_Dolphin, is that you in #2? :)

I had Port Mackerel Zones in mind when I said defense would be screwed over, since the acces to the zone is one big choke point if in the enemies color and only swift weapons can break those choke points and ink the zones and while 96 Gals and Heavy Splatlings can get this ink control, they can't get to the zone since its so small and infested with Tentertechs and Zappos.

I don't think it's good to entirely ignore kills as a way to help the team.
Most pushes succeed because of a numbers advantage and a team wipe is a guaranteed way to push up in TC and especially RM.
Breaking into a choke point like the area with the RM-pedestal in Camp requires kills, so all in all the right picks can turn a game around.
All in all, a successful push requires meathead hunter killers to create a numbers advantage, and if people don't feel like "picking up" the objective (Tower or Rainmaker), because they're not good at it, that's completely fine and it might even be strategically savvy to let the right person sit on the tower/pick up the Rainmaker.

Zones is both less driven by kills and there's no reason not to ink a zone, but again, two-zoned stages need a home zone defender in case of a push but you don't ink zones in that time and a good defender won't let it come to a swap.
Then there's the problem of swap stealing, you can have inked the zone with an Inkstrike just to have a lost Hydra droplet cap the zone.

Weapon types that can't ink well will probably be screwed over as well since I figure the amount of points inked will be a huge part of The Metrics..

The problem of Ranked can't be fixed with metrics and I don't think Nintendo wants to either and even then I'd rather have it to be based on win rate (Points you lose get lower if you've won a lot, but the system also gets gradually milder in a losing streak) instead of metrics that don't encompass everything you can do in a match and might lessen the amount of strategy because people want to sit on the metric-filled objective in case of loss.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

If only it could analyze your playable and know what's a good run and what's not

 

[Award]

I had Port Mackerel Zones in mind when I said defense would be screwed over, since the acces to the zone is one big choke point if in the enemies color and only swift weapons can break those choke points and ink the zones and while 96 Gals and Heavy Splatlings can get this ink control, they can't get to the zone since its so small and infested with Tentertechs and Zappos.

I don't think it's good to entirely ignore kills as a way to help the team.
Most pushes succeed because of a numbers advantage and a team wipe is a guaranteed way to push up in TC and especially RM.
Breaking into a choke point like the area with the RM-pedestal in Camp requires kills, so all in all the right picks can turn a game around.
All in all, a successful push requires meathead hunter killers to create a numbers advantage, and if people don't feel like "picking up" the objective (Tower or Rainmaker), because they're not good at it, that's completely fine and it might even be strategically savvy to let the right person sit on the tower/pick up the Rainmaker.

Zones is both less driven by kills and there's no reason not to ink a zone, but again, two-zoned stages need a home zone defender in case of a push but you don't ink zones in that time and a good defender won't let it come to a swap.
Then there's the problem of swap stealing, you can have inked the zone with an Inkstrike just to have a lost Hydra droplet cap the zone.

Weapon types that can't ink well will probably be screwed over as well since I figure the amount of points inked will be a huge part of The Metrics..

The problem of Ranked can't be fixed with metrics and I don't think Nintendo wants to either and even then I'd rather have it to be based on win rate (Points you lose get lower if you've won a lot, but the system also gets gradually milder in a losing streak) instead of metrics that don't encompass everything you can do in a match and might lessen the amount of strategy because people want to sit on the metric-filled objective in case of loss.

If only it could analyze your playable and know what's a good run and what's not

Those of you who have followed some of my theories on how the matchmaking system works (a.k.a. the rigged matches and rigged losing/winning streaks) might recall that what you guys propose in ranked here is exactly how I think a part of it already works. I believe it DOES analyze your playable and "know" a good run. And I think it DOES have us sitting on a metric filled objective but keeps the criteria of such as tightly sealed as the mystery of the form of the NX.

Without recapping too much of what is dozens of printable pages of text walls in other threads, the short of it is following the patterns of the system of myself and a number of other participants in these discussions the working theory is that in fact your rank is not based on wins/losses, but that you get assigned your rank based on that analyzed playable, as determined by the meeting of unknown-to-us objective criteria and arranged in likely-to-win and likely-to-lose matchups (and 50/50 when we're "within our bracket") to redirect us to our assigned rank.

On the surface that's a good thing, it means that "bad teammates" are in fact not holding us back (and that the system is intentionally giving us the "bad teammates" because we're all marked to move downward. But I believe that's the source of a lot of problems because, since we don't actually know what objectives are being measured, we might get artificially estimated too low or too high and sent to the "wrong" rank due to not meeting the objectives properly. I.E. the measurements are not as accurate for all play styles as they should be, and the very problems @WeirdChillFever brings up with using a metrics based system might in fact already be affecting us, simply without knowing what said metrics are.


Of course that's a theory, and this thread isn't the right place to re-hash the merits or non-merits of that theory, that's just the summary of what have been longer threads and experiments between some of us on that topic in the past, in relation to what you guys are talking about.

 

[swamphox]

Im not saying team wins or losses are bad btw. Its just that the metrocs i described would still reward invidual effort maybe to the point where u either dont down rank or even gain a small number of points.

Imo the supportive play argument while a valid point is going would be manifested as a team victory in the event supportive actions were more quantifiable.

Once again it could even be a separate div of ranked.

Obviously hypothetical or something for spla2n

Also imo The grind out-time consumption argument for getting a snail for defeating dj octavio should consider a: not everyone can attend splatfests due to their lives and the hrs they keep. Especially true in my case cuz i work shifts of 24-48 hrs in lengh.

And b: while its is a pain and time consuming, many people appear to feel that way abt splatfests. Furthermore if u look at a 30k cash equivalent for playing time in ranked vs the 20 min or so time investment for beating octavio would still be the fastest way to earn a snail. Perhaps octavio could get more and more difficult and less and less difficult based off your "streak" of victories against him with payouts adjusted accordingly based off difficulty

 

[WeirdChillFever]

Im not saying team wins or losses are bad btw. Its just that the metrocs i described would still reward invidual effort maybe to the point where u either dont down rank or even gain a small number of points.

Imo the supportive play argument while a valid point is going would be manifested as a team victory in the event supportive actions were more quantifiable.

Once again it could even be a separate div of ranked.

Obviously hypothetical or something for spla2n

Also imo The grind out-time consumption argument for getting a snail for defeating dj octavio should consider a: not everyone can attend splatfests due to their lives and the hrs they keep. Especially true in my case cuz i work shifts of 24-48 hrs in lengh.

And b: while its is a pain and time consuming, many people appear to feel that way abt splatfests.

No, if a team can't capitalise on (ink) support, then the support was in vain.
Same with insane K/D ratios, same with objective based play.

You need good teammates to succeed and there's no playstyle that doesn't rely on the teammates
What support does, is giving the team room to push, but if a team doesn't, the support was for nothing.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but there will always be flaws in the system because this game is so deep,

As for Octavio, I think that if it was a once-a-day deal, it'd be a good way to gain snails, otherwise it's a really unnatural way of grinding.
A more natural way to earn snails would be through playing TW/Ranked
It'd be as grindy as beating Octavio, but since you play the game for TW/Ranked, it'd be a more natural way.

 

[Award]

Im not saying team wins or losses are bad btw. Its just that the metrocs i described would still reward invidual effort maybe to the point where u either dont down rank or even gain a small number of points.

Imo the supportive play argument while a valid point is going would be manifested as a team victory in the event supportive actions were more quantifiable.

Once again it could even be a separate div of ranked.

Obviously hypothetical or something for spla2n

Also imo The grind out-time consumption argument for getting a snail for defeating dj octavio should consider a: not everyone can attend splatfests due to their lives and the hrs they keep. Especially true in my case cuz i work shifts of 24-48 hrs in lengh.

And b: while its is a pain and time consuming, many people appear to feel that way abt splatfests. Furthermore if u look at a 30k cash equivalent for playing time in ranked the 20 min or so time investment for beating octavio would still be the fastest way to earn a snail. Perhaps octavio could get more and more difficult and less and less difficult based off your "streak" of victories against him with payouts adjusted accordingly based off difficulty

Well the good news is that Nintendo has heard your pleas and solved the splatfest grinding problem No more splatfests, and given the 2.9 patch notes, no replacement system. We can grind for snails 30,000 at a time forever more....


Octavio's fun comes as a surprise. It's a big theatrical battle with surprise events and a visual spectacle that catches you off guard. It's epic the first time. Kinda fun the second time. IMO it's not designed to be all that replayable after that.