Next Worldwide & FINAL Splatfest CALLIE VS MARIE!!!

[SyMag]

Have you heard of our Lord and Savior, Port Mackerel?

 

[Deleted Member]

Voted Kelp Dome. Would also like to see Saltspray Rig.

 

[Award]

I'm really sad and disappointed that this will be the last Splatfest. Why is Nintendo abandoning Splatfests suddenly? Splatoon has only been out for little over a year now, and is still extremely active. It's far too soon to end a major online feature like this.

Honestly though, Callie vs. Marie is the best possible final theme you could have, aside from Kid vs. Squid. By far the most heavily requested theme by players, so it appears Nintendo actually listened to us.

It's kinda fitting that the final Splatfest will be Callie vs Marie, with the Callie and Marie amiibos being released shortly after to give us an offline Splatfest performance at any time. I believe the final update (v3.0) will come shortly before or after the final Splatfest, patching in a new method of earning Super Sea Snails, balancing the meta for one last time, and adding in the rest of the Callie & Marie amiibo functionality.

IMO they're killing it for two reasons. First, they seem to be in a bizarre penny pinching mode where every $20 they save is critical. They even just eliminiated the VP of Sales & Marketing position at NoA ENTIRELY and will just have random other people in other jobs do the job. Saving a few grand on a splatfest seems like something they'd be doing now to bank it. Meanwhile they have ONE whole game on their platform to sell for the next 8 months. No clue why the investors weren't scrabbling at Kimishima like rabid zombies with that reality. They'll wait to make sure NX isn't Wii2 and sells as an exercise fad first, I suppose.

Second, I've said for a while in conversations about the state of difficulty and the player base of the game, nobody actually plays Splatoon anymore. It's mostly limited to the highly skilled most devoted players. The fact that on an average NA splatfest means you run into a lot of people from Squidboards tells you just how tiny the player pool really is. It's a dead game aside from the hardcore in the same way Quake 1 is a dead game expect for the hardcore loyal that keep it going to the point of still running QuakeCon. But it's not mainstream, and id spends no time on it.

In Japan, it's still reasonably vibrant. But outside Japan it's a forgotten niche. We just don't have enough players to play it effectively in the west anymore, not as a splatfest, and Japan really didn't like the worldwide fest. So the fests can't go on. If I were to guess they were not expecting to end it. I can't imagine they'd have spent the time to revamp the entire splatfest system only to hold a total of 4 more splatfests per region.

Have you heard of our Lord and Savior, Port Mackerel?

I will gut you like the spineless fish you are!

 

[swamphox]

Doubtful this will be the last one for two reasons:

1. Nintendo makes money off them both as ad vehicles and promotional materials in the US but seemingly far more prevalent in Japan.

2. There will be otger events like this mark my words.

If they are not this may be Nintendo telegraphing a crack down on scummers and hackers. Snails represent the only legitway to lessen the advantage a hacker has with similar playing abilities to your own. Eliminating the abilities to readily acquire them would be a tacit approval of illicit behavior on the part of Nintendo. In game theory there is something called prisoners dilemma that says that if the competition adopts and advantage and you dont you WILL lose out to the. In a sense they will be encouraging more of that sort of behavior if you take Game Theory into consideration

 

[Award]

Doubtful this will be the last one for two reasons:

1. Nintendo makes money off them both as ad vehicles and promotional materials in the US but seemingly far more prevalent in Japan.

2. There will be otger events like this mark my words.

If they are not this may be Nintendo telegraphing a crack down on scummers and hackers. Snails represent the only legitway to lessen the advantage a hacker has with similar playing abilities to your own. Eliminating the abilities to readily acquire them would be a tacit approval of illicit behavior on the part of Nintendo. In game theory there is something called prisoners dilemma that says that if the competition adopts and advantage and you dont you WILL lose out to the. In a sense they will be encouraging more of that sort of behavior if you take Game Theory into consideration

I'm pretty sure them stating it's the last one means it's the last one. Granted, they don't have any real reason to end them in Japan other than that it sends a very bad message for future products to the world outside Japan, so they're kind of in a bind that if they end it outside Japan they can't really still run them in Japan either without possibly affecting their brand image elsewhere. that said, they're so home market focused part of me wouldn't be surprised to see a few "special" splatfests pop up in Japan-only. But I think for us, it's safe to say it's over.

Now other events that replace splatfest? It's a nice thought, I'll hold onto it for hope. I want you to be right. But I'm not too hopeful they'll seriously spend a dime on a game they consider obsolete, despite they have to push through a holiday season with it.

If they seriously were doing all this to introduce a better system to kill off the scumming/hacking as viable/desirable, this would be an epic game management move worthy of editorials for decades. That would be inkredible. Call me callous, but I suspect they don't really care all that much about the scumming/hacking. They don't LIKE it, but they don't see it as affecting their business results and therefore won't commit finances to deal with it. I would HOPE they would see that ending the snail economy promotes cheating. Then again I would have hoped they'd see that making splatfests ranked would yield unfun gaming.

 

[yokokazuo]

I would love if we could keep the shirts as sort of a novelty after this since there won't be anymore splatfests... Please Nintendo!

 

[Award]

I would love if we could keep the shirts as sort of a novelty after this since there won't be anymore splatfests... Please Nintendo!

Splatfest Amiibo Collection confirmed!!!1!

Only $9.99, each high quality figurine of the Inkling Boy and Inkling Girl (same mold as the original two) will be wearing shirts to commemorate each splat fest team. Each Amiibo will unlock the Splatfest shirt in-game that he or she is wearing.

</sarc> in case anyone's to the point of cynicism with Nintendo now they thought I was serious :P

 

[swamphox]

I'm pretty sure them stating it's the last one means it's the last one. Granted, they don't have any real reason to end them in Japan other than that it sends a very bad message for future products to the world outside Japan, so they're kind of in a bind that if they end it outside Japan they can't really still run them in Japan either without possibly affecting their brand image elsewhere. that said, they're so home market focused part of me wouldn't be surprised to see a few "special" splatfests pop up in Japan-only. But I think for us, it's safe to say it's over.

Now other events that replace splatfest? It's a nice thought, I'll hold onto it for hope. I want you to be right. But I'm not too hopeful they'll seriously spend a dime on a game they consider obsolete, despite they have to push through a holiday season with it.

If they seriously were doing all this to introduce a better system to kill off the scumming/hacking as viable/desirable, this would be an epic game management move worthy of editorials for decades. That would be inkredible. Call me callous, but I suspect they don't really care all that much about the scumming/hacking. They don't LIKE it, but they don't see it as affecting their business results and therefore won't commit finances to deal with it. I would HOPE they would see that ending the snail economy promotes cheating. Then again I would have hoped they'd see that making splatfests ranked would yield unfun gaming.

Nintendo is VERY serious about security. Look at the playable octoling incident and their swift and decisive action toward those involved. They pay full time security teams so I doubt itd be less like "dropping coin" or spending money they wouldnt otherwise be spending and more like a reallocation of resources that they hadn't planned on. The octoling incident didnt directly effect game play experience. The gear hacking issue does in doing so it lessens the value of this product (their first new IP in years and representative of millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in research and development as well as advertising, marketing, distribution etc) and in doing so lessens the value of the company as a whole in the eyes of gamers in a fiercely competitive market with multiple formats and platforms to choose from.

If this is the last splatfest I dont see them having much of a choice aside from finding a form of gear hacker negation and enforcement.

Also i shouldve been more specific. Im meant more like it wouldnt be the last event of its kind, formats and titles could easily change.

While we are on the topic of money spent to negate the gear hacking issue it occurs to me that maybe the best thing to do would just be from Nintendo to let people purchase their gear similar to in-app purchases that you can do in a game like Candy Crush. It would probably be easy enough to roll out and would end up making the money or at least enough to pay for it while the getting the issue taken care of.

 

[swamphox]

IMO they're killing it for two reasons. First, they seem to be in a bizarre penny pinching mode where every $20 they save is critical. They even just eliminiated the VP of Sales & Marketing position at NoA ENTIRELY and will just have random other people in other jobs do the job. Saving a few grand on a splatfest seems like something they'd be doing now to bank it. Meanwhile they have ONE whole game on their platform to sell for the next 8 months. No clue why the investors weren't scrabbling at Kimishima like rabid zombies with that reality. They'll wait to make sure NX isn't Wii2 and sells as an exercise fad first, I suppose.

Second, I've said for a while in conversations about the state of difficulty and the player base of the game, nobody actually plays Splatoon anymore. It's mostly limited to the highly skilled most devoted players. The fact that on an average NA splatfest means you run into a lot of people from Squidboards tells you just how tiny the player pool really is. It's a dead game aside from the hardcore in the same way Quake 1 is a dead game expect for the hardcore loyal that keep it going to the point of still running QuakeCon. But it's not mainstream, and id spends no time on it.

In Japan, it's still reasonably vibrant. But outside Japan it's a forgotten niche. We just don't have enough players to play it effectively in the west anymore, not as a splatfest, and Japan really didn't like the worldwide fest. So the fests can't go on. If I were to guess they were not expecting to end it. I can't imagine they'd have spent the time to revamp the entire splatfest system only to hold a total of 4 more splatfests per region.





I will gut you like the spineless fish you are!

Lols at your comments re Kimishima and investors. Heavy investors over there often have very powerful friends in Hawaiian shirts if not one of those unique fellows themselves (the second largest individual stockholder in JAL is one of those guys for an example)

Interesting to look at from the biz side of things. You spoke of its rampant popularity in Japan which will be enough to save the IP as a whole I believe. I was wondering if any of you knew about any promotions they were doing in Eastern Europe or Russia though because recently I've been seeing a lot more player names with cyrillic characters that used to be entirely non representative ( maybe a random one popping up here and there) but I've been seeing them pretty reliably lately. Expansion into a new market could compensate for other shortcomings.

 

[Award]

Nintendo is VERY serious about security. Look at the playable octoling incident and their swift and decisive action toward those involved. They pay full time security teams so I doubt itd be less like "dropping coin" or spending money they wouldnt otherwise be spending and more like a reallocation of resources that they hadn't planned on. The octoling incident didnt directly effect game play experience. The gear hacking issue does in doing so it lessens the value of this product (their first new IP in years and representative of millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours in research and development as well as advertising, marketing, distribution etc) and in doing so lessens the value of the company as a whole in the eyes of gamers in a fiercely competitive market with multiple formats and platforms to choose from.

If this is the last splatfest I dont see them having much of a choice aside from finding a form of gear hacker negation and enforcement.

Also i shouldve been more specific. Im meant more like it wouldnt be the last event of its kind, formats and titles could easily change.

While we are on the topic of money spent to negate the gear hacking issue it occurs to me that maybe the best thing to do would just be from Nintendo to let people purchase their gear similar to in-app purchases that you can do in a game like Candy Crush. It would probably be easy enough to roll out and would end up making the money or at least enough to pay for it while the getting the issue taken care of.

Nintendo definitely has famous security strictness, but if you look at what they consider "retired" products, they seem to turn a blind eye to anything not directly threatening server stability. Look at even MK8 and the end of life period of WiiWare. I agree Splatoon is kind of a big property at least in Japan. I definitely want to think you're right. I'm, of course, one of the stricter anti-scumming, anti-hacking advocates on these forums and am quite dismayed by how many people justify it on grounds OTHER than the "prisoners dilemma" framework. I don't participate, and I can't fault too much those that do it on the grounds that they don't have enough snails and have to to keep up. But I'm stunned by the volume of pro-arguments that go beyond that and stick more to the "of course it's fine" line of thinking. So if they're going to flood the market with snails, or end gear stacking, or introduce a new store or whatever, I'm all for it. I just have strong doubts they're really going to do it as they seem to be scrabmling to cut any and all acknowledgement of the WiiU's existence from their corporate operations as fast as they possibly can even if it means having nothing to sell in the home console space for most of a year.

A new competition event idea would be awesome. I really really don't think they're going to do that. But it would be awesome if they did!
The logical thing for a company that knows it has no new games and no new platform until next spring would be to milk the major performers it does have like it's running an ice cream factory. Make splatoon the best thing ever to still move those remaining inventoried WiiU's. But I fear there's some politics and a civil war going on in the boardroom over there and somebody's working to scrub anything tied to WiiU, including Iwata, like it never existed and it's yielding some very confusing decision making. I think whoever's running things behind the scenes (not necessarily Kimishma) is effectively trying to reboot the company, go dormant until NX launches and "start over again." Logical decision making is ending up a casualty along the way in a lot of places. We'll see. I still hope you're right even if I"m not optimistic.

IAP....IMO they want to avoid IAP and rightfully so. They do the DLC thing and for Fire Emblem almost let it cross to IAP, but they leave it to new missions only. Maybe someday, but I think business model contamination is a risk. IAP is accepted on phones because phones are assumed to be a part of their digital store. It's a slippery slope charging $60 for a game, locking some of that behind $30 of Amiibo's and then telling you to pay real money for in-game gear. So far (thankfully) it's an either-or model. You pay the flat fee or you get the game free and pay to use features. Asking for both would be a huge turn-off on the game.

That said, I WOULD expect network membership fees on NX. Nintendo has no doubt learned what Sony and MS learned. Running an online maintained network is expensive.

For Splatoon, I think just capping stackability and/or just introducing much cheaper snail acquisitions in the absence of fests would fix most of it. Or just let the darned snails roll single slots. I mean really, if you got a snail for every game you win, you'd still need to win like 2000 games to roll a perfect on half this gear :)

 

[swamphox]

Good point on network fees. I just hope they bill annually.

I promise you all game makers are looking at IAP and DLC. Plenty of pc games that u pay to play and then purchase the gear to be competitive or accept that youll be brutally murdered. I promise the console makers have made note of this potential revenue stream and its increasing acceptance in the marketplace. If we look at wiiu and its future obsolescence froma kaizen point of view itd make sense to monetize whatever they can which probably doesnt mean IAP but would mean keeping splatfests or events like it while using sponsorship/promotional dollars with companies that nintendo has hx with in their respective markets. Think splatfests for teams based off of doritos flavors or types of mtn dew (yes i know that was an april fools day prank but it seems like a good idea for increasing user base stateside amongst current wiiu owners)

Ona final note, cheating as it stands, if left unchecked will level things out in ranked but not in a super pleasant albeit functional way: youll probably down rank a little if you refuse. Maybe rather than an a+ youll end up consistantly an a. Of theres one good thing about the rank structure is that youll eventually even out to where youre consistanly playing with and against those at similar skill levels (theoretically) Furthermore, the only way to improve in this game is to play it, realize your deficiencies, learn from it, figure out tactics to deal with common strategies and just move forward. A good player will probably rank up, just more slowly. If you can accept frustration as part of a learning curve and learn from your past games youll have a better time.

 

[Award]

Lols at your comments re Kimishima and investors. Heavy investors over there often have very powerful friends in Hawaiian shirts if not one of those unique fellows themselves (the second largest individual stockholder in JAL is one of those guys for an example)

Interesting to look at from the biz side of things. You spoke of its rampant popularity in Japan which will be enough to save the IP as a whole I believe. I was wondering if any of you knew about any promotions they were doing in Eastern Europe or Russia though because recently I've been seeing a lot more player names with cyrillic characters that used to be entirely non representative ( maybe a random one popping up here and there) but I've been seeing them pretty reliably lately. Expansion into a new market could compensate for other shortcomings.

Being in the US I can't comment for certain on any promotions and such in Russia and Eastern Europe, but I follow Nintendo fairly closely and haven't seen anything special going on promotionally in that region (or anywhere else in NoE territory for that matter...) They had a lot of shaking up of personnel at the NoE offices a while back and seem to be in the same place as NoA "Play dead until NX launches" Only NCL seems to show signs of life other than hiding :P

I'm guessing it's mostly a matter of falling prices as the system ages out penetrating that part of the market more easily. That's solidly PC gaming territory over there more than consoles in general. Either that or the Russians finally got sick of PSXBox games where they're the villains getting shot in every single game :P

Good point on network fees. I just hope they bill annually.

I promise you all game makers are looking at IAP and DLC. Plenty of pc games that u pay to play and then purchase the gear to be competitive or accept that youll be brutally murdered. I promise the console makers have made note of this potential revenue stream and its increasing acceptance in the marketplace. If we look at wiiu and its future obsolescence froma kaizen point of view itd make sense to monetize whatever they can which probably doesnt mean IAP but would mean keeping splatfests or events like it while using sponsorship/promotional dollars with companies that nintendo has hx with in their respective markets. Think splatfests for teams based off of doritos flavors or types of mtn dew (yes i know that was an april fools day prank but it seems like a good idea for increasing user base stateside amongst current wiiu owners)

Ona final note, cheating as it stands, if left unchecked will level things out in ranked but not in a super pleasant albeit functional way: youll probably down rank a little if you refuse. Maybe rather than an a+ youll end up consistantly an a. Of theres one good thing about the rank structure is that youll eventually even out to where youre consistanly playing with and against those at similar skill levels (theoretically) Furthermore, the only way to improve in this game is to play it, realize your deficiencies, learn from it, figure out tactics to deal with common strategies and just move forward. A good player will probably rank up, just more slowly. If you can accept frustration as part of a learning curve and learn from your past games youll have a better time.

If they follow the PSXbox model you can buy annually at a discount or monthly otherwise. But..it's Nintendo...

Oh I have no doubt these companies are looking into IAP, but they're also going to face backlash, and as Nintendo is aiming to be more and more mass market mainstream versus the other two going more and more "gamer" niche, I can see that as an issue. in particular, none of the major publishers are really pushing too far into that. Not even EA which says a lot. DLC abuse, yes, full scale IAP, even they're hesitant to persue. And they're one of the most horrid abusers of it on mobile. The trouble is even with F2P there's a low adoption rate of IAP. Generally it's under 20% of the player base. On a console game with a high entry fee, they can't risk fragmenting the player base too far with that. And as lucrative as IAP can be, the premium flat fee is still the holy grail of guaranteed funds. Nobody wants to upset that apple cart. Right now the push in the industry is how to exploit IAP to raise revenue, but I promise you the shift in the mobile market in the future will turn to "how can we get people to pay up front?" The solution the console game already had locked up.
Nintendo along with it's kid friendly image....I just can't see that.

LOL, "if you can accept frustration" - would any of us play ranked, ever, if we couldn't? :P

I do wonder how it works though if they DON'T introduce a snail generator, as new players do buy the game (and the christmas bundles will still sell) and they get the prompt from Spyke about snails....but will never actually SEE snails in their HUD...how bad that's going to look.

 

[Smashling79]

Piranha Pit, Skatepark, and Camp Triggerfish would be my dream rotation! Can only vote for one so I'll go with Camp my favorite map.

Speaking of voting, this thread needs a poll!

A poll huh? Might just add that in.......

 

[Zero Meddler]

R.I.P Seasnails 7/4/15 - 7/22/16
Better start save scumming, people.

.... Callie FTW though.

 

[G1ng3rGar1]

*whispers* Marie

 

[Flareth]

It's the best possible theme considering half the Miiverse posts in the Plaza even when it's not Splatfest since the beginning have been "Next Splatfest should be Callie vs Marie!" - if it were a player vote, this is the theme the player base would have overwhelmingly written in. This is Splatoon Ballot right here.

Bah, the masses never know what they want!

...no, but seriously. It's just so simple a theme; it strikes me as being a kind of copout, like they couldn't think of anything else use as the Splatfest Sendoff. Plus just about every Splatfest has been Callie vs. Marie in some respect.

Yet, I guess it makes sense. No more beating around the bush with what Callie likes vs. what Marie likes, now the little Inklings can actually rep their favorite Squid Sister. I just wish it was something with a little more substance, is all.

 

[Hero of Lime]

Wow, I only see sadness from Splatfest ending in my plazas. Lots of #SaveSplatfests being thrown around. Also seeing lots of players who are sad that they recently got the game, and already will be missing out on fests. I may dislike Fests these days, but I feel sorry for everyone that likes them.

 

[Award]

Wow, I only see sadness from Splatfest ending in my plazas. Lots of #SaveSplatfests being thrown around. Also seeing lots of players who are sad that they recently got the game, and already will be missing out on fests. I may dislike Fests these days, but I feel sorry for everyone that likes them.

Yeah that's the real tragedy. Ending splatfests makes it seem like they're not still selling the game. Let alone selling the game in HARDWARE bundles with the console. Let alone they just introduced a new one in Japan a month or so ago . Please buy our game. Please buy $300 hardware to play our game. But know that we're, like, SO totally over keeping the features advertised running on that game....

And they DO know they have to actually sell those hardware bundles as a main product in December, right? A lot of upset Christmas noobs this year will be asking "when's splatfest?"

 

[Hero of Lime]

Yeah that's the real tragedy. Ending splatfests makes it seem like they're not still selling the game. Let alone selling the game in HARDWARE bundles with the console. Let alone they just introduced a new one in Japan a month or so ago . Please buy our game. Please buy $300 hardware to play our game. But know that we're, like, SO totally over keeping the features advertised running on that game....

And they DO know they have to actually sell those hardware bundles as a main product in December, right? A lot of upset Christmas noobs this year will be asking "when's splatfest?"

Yeah, I wonder if they intend to keep pushing Splatoon as a big game to have for this last year. I don't envy the teams at Nintendo who have to try and sell games this year, there isn't much to really push, at least on the Wii U side. They can't expect everyone to go for Smash, Splatoon, and Zelda ports anymore. Everyone who wants those games has them by now. This is just like the last few years of the Wii all over again.

 

[Lonely_Dolphin]

A poll huh? Might just add that in.......

I meant for the Splatfest topic, if you're gonna pick Callie or Marie. :3