[North America] NEW SPLATFEST: Team Past Travel vs. Team Future Travel!

[aceofscarabs]

Personally I feel that the US Splatfests are determined by the skilled minority, since the greater majority of the playerbase is less-skilled in comparison.

 

[Gameboy224]

Okay let's be honest here... TEAM FUTURE HAD REAAAAALLY BAD TEAMS. LIKE DON'T EVEN LIE ABOUT THE "oh the whole x6 is BS"
HAHAHAHAH LISTEN... YOUR TEAM WAS REALLY BAD. GOING ON A WIN STREAK UP TO KING/QUEEN PAST WITH BARELY ANY PROBLEMS!
Like what... less than 10 losses through the entire Splatfest even when at King/Queen and continue to play?!
I wasn't surprised that Team Past because ALMOST EVERY MATCH WE HAD TEAM FUTURE CORNED TO THE POINT THEY CAN'T EVEN LEAVE AND HAVE ONLY 10.6-7.2%.

Future didn't had a chance... it's just that with all those bad teammates and you all going against each other as I think Past didn't have to fight each other. Barely did. I know I didn't fight any. ;D

So... I know people are salty over the results BUT I'M SURE EVEN WITH A x4 we still would've won.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here's the argument, the 6x multiplier acts as a catalyst in inducing the self fulfilling prophecy that is minority team always has the higher win score. Most serious players or the people that are in any way serious about attaining Sea Snails will always pick the team with less people. Team Future was bad because most of the good players chose Past for no other reason cause they are the minority and therefore are creating their self fulfilling prophecy.

As ace above said, NA's Splatfests seem to determined by a concentrated skilled minority.

 

[LupusFreak]

I had this assumption after my first splatfest, but what if both sides got the same amount of snails? It's not like it would take away the incentive to play, you still have to level up to royalty. That way, winning wouldn't really matter; It IS a game catered towards kids, after all.

...On second thought, it's ONLY a SIX SNAIL DIFFERENCE! Get over it!

 

[aceofscarabs]

Plus all the Turfing helps you farm coinage if you're GOOD at Inkbrush turfing.

 

[LimitCrown]

Okay let's be honest here... TEAM FUTURE HAD REAAAAALLY BAD TEAMS. LIKE DON'T EVEN LIE ABOUT THE "oh the whole x6 is BS"
HAHAHAHAH LISTEN... YOUR TEAM WAS REALLY BAD. GOING ON A WIN STREAK UP TO KING/QUEEN PAST WITH BARELY ANY PROBLEMS!
Like what... less than 10 losses through the entire Splatfest even when at King/Queen and continue to play?!
I wasn't surprised that Team Past because ALMOST EVERY MATCH WE HAD TEAM FUTURE CORNED TO THE POINT THEY CAN'T EVEN LEAVE AND HAVE ONLY 10.6-7.2%.

Future didn't had a chance... it's just that with all those bad teammates and you all going against each other as I think Past didn't have to fight each other. Barely did. I know I didn't fight any. ;D

So... I know people are salty over the results BUT I'M SURE EVEN WITH A x4 we still would've won.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Individual experiences in the Splatfest are unreliable for determining how both teams performed, and you're making a faulty generalized claim about Team Future's performance based on your anecdote. I'm sure that there is someone on Team Future who won almost all of their matches, which would contradict your claims. Explain to me how a 55%/45% win percentage difference showed that "Team Future was cornered."

Also, my opinion about the multipliers is that 2x is the best one and people who prefer 4x do so mainly because people complained about the first multiplier for reportedly putting too much emphasis on popularity even though there weren't as many Splatfests as there are now.

 

[MrL1193]

You're conflating the Splatfests in which the most popular team also had more wins with the Splatfests in which the team that won had less wins. The latter occurred only once in Europe and twice in Japan. Those two Splatfests in Japan had the same win percentage differences and nearly the same popularity differences.

No, he didn't get anything mixed up. The post he was replying to only said this:

Lol, why am I not surprised Callie won again? You ought to know by now the less popular team will win.

That's it. There was no mention of any of the additional distinctions you're trying to throw in there. And as it turns out, that claim about the less popular team winning the entire Splatfest is indeed exclusive to NA, since in other regions, the more popular team has often enjoyed an advantage in wins as well.



As for WHY it keeps happening here in NA, there's a very simple reason for that. The driving force behind the success of the less popular teams is that the skilled players generally try to band together and pick the same team in order to raise its skill concentration. It is easier to accomplish this goal by joining the smaller team. (Quick analogy: Adding a sugar cube to your cup of coffee may noticeably sweeten it, but adding that sugar cube to the full coffee pot will have less of an effect on the flavor.) Thus, there's more incentive for the skilled players to keep this trend going if they want to keep getting easy Splatfest wins.

 

[LimitCrown]

No, he didn't get anything mixed up. The post he was replying to only said this:



That's it. There was no mention of any of the additional distinctions you're trying to throw in there. And as it turns out, that claim about the less popular team winning the entire Splatfest is indeed exclusive to NA, since in other regions, the more popular team has often enjoyed an advantage in wins as well.



As for WHY it keeps happening here in NA, there's a very simple reason for that. The driving force behind the success of the less popular teams is that the skilled players generally try to band together and pick the same team in order to raise its skill concentration. It is easier to accomplish this goal by joining the smaller team. (Quick analogy: Adding a sugar cube to your cup of coffee may noticeably sweeten it, but adding that sugar cube to the full coffee pot will have less of an effect on the flavor.) Thus, there's more incentive for the skilled players to keep this trend going if they want to keep getting easy Splatfest wins.

The post that he made was this:

5 out of 9 european splatfests were won by the popular team and 7 out of 9 japanese splatfests were won by the popular team. Like i said, this is only a north american splatfest problem.

As I said before, he conflated those two types of Splatfest results. The multiplier practically has no effect on the Splatfests in which the most popular team had more wins because they would certainly win, so those shouldn't even be regarded.

 

[Flareth]

@MrL1193, your logic makes sense, but why doesn't it happen in Europe/Oceania and Japan? Shouldn't it be the same for them?

EDIT: @LimitCrown
The point is that popularity does win Splatfests overseas in spite of the 6x multiplier. That some of them were won in spite of having less wins doesn't really matter. What does is that North America is the only place where that's the exception rather than the norm.

 

[LimitCrown]

@LimitCrown
The point is that popularity does win Splatfests overseas in spite of the 6x multiplier. That some of them were won in spite of having less wins doesn't really matter. What does is that North America is the only place where that's the exception rather than the norm.

People are arguing that whenever the more popular team has less wins, then they tend to lose, but I think that you knew that already. Also, if you shift your viewpoint from "the more popular team that also won more" to "the team that won more that also had more popularity", then you could come to a different conclusion. I'll point out that if Japan had the 6x multiplier for those two Splatfests that I mentioned, then the less popular teams would have won.

 

[The ΩS]

@MrL1193, your logic makes sense, but why doesn't it happen in Europe/Oceania and Japan? Shouldn't it be the same for them?

EDIT: @LimitCrown
The point is that popularity does win Splatfests overseas in spite of the 6x multiplier. That some of them were won in spite of having less wins doesn't really matter. What does is that North America is the only place where that's the exception rather than the norm.

It's in most games like these and someone said it best here, but it's a cultural difference. It reminds me of FFXIV for it's raiding scene. In Japan, the connections are a lot closer, concentrated, and easier to build up upon. And in MMOs like FFXIV, they worked together to get better. So if you think with that like Splatoon, it's easier to get better with each other and connections rarely drops or at all in Splatfests. Europe tends to generally have adults and teens playing it more due to their slightly, stricter audience rating for games. So they tend to have it somewhat better than NA for quality players and connections. North America...is kill or be killed too competitive to help people get better and much easier to exploit the system. Doesn't help that Internet connections in this country is a joke (reminds me of Brawl times in terms of stability), so Splatfests is almost unplayable for some players (especially on the more popular side).

 

[Award]

I'm still confused about all the "the darn x6 multipler" issue. Team Nice would have been defeated even with an x1.5 multipler. I'm not sure why anyone thinks popularity should count in a TOURNAMENT. Why is there even a popularity score? Delete it. Bring it out only for tie breakers. If they did not show you who was more popular and ONLY showed the battle results - no popularity, no multiplier, just Team Mushroom won 52% of battles, this argument would not even be going on.

Both teams played an identical number of battles against the other team. 4 from each are required for each battle. Out of X number total battles one team won Y amount. Thus they get more snails. Why are we arguing about which was more popular and should have been offset because the more popular team always loses? There's no statistical reason the more popular team loses. They didn't play less battles or anything. they just lost more of their battles. If they didn't tell you which was "more popular" at all it would be a non-issue.

It's only an issue because this odd meta has developed where the "in the know" (skilled players") now actively check which team will be "least popular" before the fest and sign up with that one. So you end up with the "least popular" containing the majority of the high skill players and the other team consisting of everyone else. The "least popular team" is the genuinely more skillful team that is going to win not "because it's less popular" but because all the skilled players have taken betting positions on chosing the smaller team due to the assumption it will win, and is therefore a self fulfiling prophecy. Even if that team became the "most popular" it would still likely win because all the skilled players are on that team because they believed it would be the winning side before they voted.

We have a bigger problem with that in NA, partly because of the Autobots fallout, but largely because Nintendo's image here is more "Kids games" than in Japan for example, so there's more young kids who are REALLY bad who are going to play here compared to the percentage of adults experienced in competitive games and shooters playing, with relatively few teen & tween "core gamer" demographic who are squarely PSBox. In Japan there's not as wide a demographic gap. EU falls in between.

This self fulfilling prophecy can't be fixed because it is now a meta for competition just as "Tentatek and Gals" are metas in competitive play. You will only have a handful of competition players that will actually show up with a Squiffer, and you'll only have a handful of skilled splatfest players that will chose "the popular team" in NA, because that's just the game's meta now. You can't fix it by changing Marie to be unpopular, and you can't use the popularity multiplier to worm your way out of it. You can only fix it by making skilled players stop their groupthink and ignore the meta. Given the internet and the amount of Splatoon devotion, everyone will try to collectively assess the "right side" and pick accordingly. It will be different in Japan since there are more players, more skilled players, and they've already established split loyalties in different fan groups there so there's not a central group guiding all the skilled players one way.

It's unfortunate, but I don't see the problem ending, because it only ends if everyone here, and on /r/splatoon, etc STOPS trying to find out which team everyone else is going with. Naughty/Burger/Past etc actually IS the most popular team. It's the most popular among the dedicated skilled players that hang out on Splatoon internet communities. The most popular by far. The other team consists of the less skilled, less dedicated, players that don't hang out on Splatoon internet communities. There's more of them so they're "more popular" in-game, but not online.

If the popularity were not revealed, we'd still have the same problem because the communities would establish their own guidelines for "which team will probably win" and all the skilled players will go that route, same as now.

Imagine two armies facing each other in war. In this scenario, the players would like a soldier in one of armies. Alone, a soldier can't win a war by himself. In general, a superior army with better soldiers will win end up winning the war, but there are exceptions.

If the difference in skill between the two armies is small, then the army with more soldiers will win. And even an army's soldiers are better equipped and trained, there's little that army can do if they're completely out numbered. Say, a 1:10 ratio in the number soldiers.

Maybe, but if those armies only meet in skirmishes of individual units, the superior squads will win the skirmishes, regardless of the number of units in reserve. It doesn't matter if the 10,000 reserve troops are clones of Gohmer Pyle and only 4 are part of the operation at a time. ;)

If this were Turf Wars: Splatterfront or Splatterfield: Inkline with the full armies on the map at the same time, yeah, the popular team would have high chances of winning since 20% more fire, even blindly at the hillside would likely hit "something".

 

[PrinceOfKoopas]

I'm still confused about all the "the darn x6 multipler" issue. Team Nice would have been defeated even with an x1.5 multipler. I'm not sure why anyone thinks popularity should count in a TOURNAMENT. Why is there even a popularity score? Delete it. Bring it out only for tie breakers. If they did not show you who was more popular and ONLY showed the battle results - no popularity, no multiplier, just Team Mushroom won 52% of battles, this argument would not even be going on.

Not reporting the statistic wouldn't solve anything.
So don't do it.
We should have more statistics given to us, not less!

 

[LimitCrown]

I'm still confused about all the "the darn x6 multipler" issue. Team Nice would have been defeated even with an x1.5 multipler. I'm not sure why anyone thinks popularity should count in a TOURNAMENT. Why is there even a popularity score? Delete it. Bring it out only for tie breakers. If they did not show you who was more popular and ONLY showed the battle results - no popularity, no multiplier, just Team Mushroom won 52% of battles, this argument would not even be going on.

Removing the popularity score would just make it easier for people to game the system. It would also destroy the point of Splatfests because they're partially ballots.

 

[Of Moose & Men]

Removing the popularity score would just make it easier for people to game the system. It would also destroy the point of Splatfests because they're partially ballots.

People would "game the system" regardless. You're not going to stop the community from exploiting whatever system they get. They drop it to x4, everyone just goes for the popular team to guarantee the win rate is high and Popularity pushes them over, it's x6 everyone chooses the least popular team so wins guarantees it, x2 Popularity wins, so people choose the more popular team.

You're fighting a losing battle, just stop. It's about as good as it ever will be. There will always be a way to exploit these Splatfests, sorry.

 

[ShinyGirafarig]

People would "game the system" regardless. You're not going to stop the community from exploiting whatever system they get. They drop it to x4, everyone just goes for the popular team to guarantee the win rate is high and Popularity pushes them over, it's x6 everyone chooses the least popular team so wins guarantees it, x2 Popularity wins, so people choose the more popular team.

You're fighting a losing battle, just stop. It's about as good as it ever will be. There will always be a way to exploit these Splatfests, sorry.

It's almost like NA (well maybe just U.S., not sure about Canada) lives up to the stereotype of being lazy and just want easy wins.

 

[LimitCrown]

People would "game the system" regardless. You're not going to stop the community from exploiting whatever system they get. They drop it to x4, everyone just goes for the popular team to guarantee the win rate is high and Popularity pushes them over, it's x6 everyone chooses the least popular team so wins guarantees it, x2 Popularity wins, so people choose the more popular team.

You're fighting a losing battle, just stop. It's about as good as it ever will be. There will always be a way to exploit these Splatfests, sorry.

If the problem can't be fully resolved and there is a way to make gaming the system much more difficult (lowering the multiplier), then there isn't any valid reason to do nothing. Tell me how the 2x multiplier actually made Splatfests determined solely by popularity. There weren't as many Splatfests as there are now and some people were angry about Team Cats losing because they reportedly "deserved" to win because they had a marginally higher 51% win rate.

 

[Award]

If the problem can't be fully resolved and there is a way to make gaming the system much more difficult (lowering the multiplier), then there isn't any valid reason to do nothing. Tell me how the 2x multiplier actually made Splatfests determined solely by popularity. There weren't as many Splatfests as there are now and some people were angry about Team Cats losing because they reportedly "deserved" to win because they had a marginally higher 51% win rate.

But why should popularity factor in? The game never suggests that the popularity of a team is part of the winning. I was shocked with the first time I saw popularity totals go into the final score. It never made sense that it would be based on anything but what team won the battles. You're not the only person that's said it's also a ballot/popularity contest but I'm not sure where that line of thinking came from since the game never said so. The game is very clear that you're signing up for what team you want to support (what cause/flavor/activity you want to champion - by fighting and winning for that side.)

I could understand it if popularity could affect the way the battles go, meaning more players or more battles to be played on one side, but it doesn't, it's the same number. I don't like a "predictable win" any more than anyone else, but I also don't like arbitrary scoring of a competition based on which team had more people that wanted to play for it. To use real sports examples we'll use baseball: Ii'm pretty sure there's more farm league players that want to play for the Yankees than the Mariners. They're by far more popular to want to play for. But how should that affect their wins? They didn't play more games or with more players than the Mariners, it wouldn't make sense to include the number of player prospects they have.

My question for you is this: Right now for Past/Future you have a competition in which Team Past won greater than 50% of battles against Team Future. You propose the tea that had more people that wanted to play for it should have the percentage of popularity applied to help them win. Why? Did they lose because they are more popular? no, they lost because they didn't win as many matches. So why augment their amount of wins based on how many players they had?

IMO you're trying to fix the wrong problem. The problem is not related to the popularity of the teams determining how many battles they win. I think a lot of people are stuck on how it LOOKS rather than what it IS. What it LOOKS like is that the team popularities are causing them to win what they win. The reality is that it's internet groupthink among the upper tier of players that has most of the upper tier all pick one team. It doesn't matter if it's the popular team or the unpopular team, whichever team the internet groupthink of competitive, squadding, high rank, or clan players determines is likely to win, that's the team they play for. And since there's not a huge number of players in NoA territory, those dedicated internet players tend to all associate in the same places and the same larger community, so it's a one-way vote. Even if you got the multiplier down to x1.2, that groupthink would then just shift to the popular team and thus fulfill that team always winning.

It's almost like NA (well maybe just U.S., not sure about Canada) lives up to the stereotype of being lazy and just want easy wins.

And you don't think the Japanese players do it too? That's what all competitors look for. It's just that in Japan there's more players and a broader skill base, so different player communities end up backing the two sides as "the one that will win" so the good players from the different communities balance each other out. Here we have one great big communitiy that senses the direction of the win together because it's about 75% smaller.

 

[LimitCrown]

But why should popularity factor in? The game never suggests that the popularity of a team is part of the winning. I was shocked with the first time I saw popularity totals go into the final score. It never made sense that it would be based on anything but what team won the battles. You're not the only person that's said it's also a ballot/popularity contest but I'm not sure where that line of thinking came from since the game never said so. The game is very clear that you're signing up for what team you want to support (what cause/flavor/activity you want to champion - by fighting and winning for that side.)

I could understand it if popularity could affect the way the battles go, meaning more players or more battles to be played on one side, but it doesn't, it's the same number. I don't like a "predictable win" any more than anyone else, but I also don't like arbitrary scoring of a competition based on which team had more people that wanted to play for it. To use real sports examples we'll use baseball: Ii'm pretty sure there's more farm league players that want to play for the Yankees than the Mariners. They're by far more popular to want to play for. But how should that affect their wins? They didn't play more games or with more players than the Mariners, it wouldn't make sense to include the number of player prospects they have.

My question for you is this: Right now for Past/Future you have a competition in which Team Past won greater than 50% of battles against Team Future. You propose the tea that had more people that wanted to play for it should have the percentage of popularity applied to help them win. Why? Did they lose because they are more popular? no, they lost because they didn't win as many matches. So why augment their amount of wins based on how many players they had?

IMO you're trying to fix the wrong problem. The problem is not related to the popularity of the teams determining how many battles they win. I think a lot of people are stuck on how it LOOKS rather than what it IS. What it LOOKS like is that the team popularities are causing them to win what they win. The reality is that it's internet groupthink among the upper tier of players that has most of the upper tier all pick one team. It doesn't matter if it's the popular team or the unpopular team, whichever team the internet groupthink of competitive, squadding, high rank, or clan players determines is likely to win, that's the team they play for. And since there's not a huge number of players in NoA territory, those dedicated internet players tend to all associate in the same places and the same larger community, so it's a one-way vote. Even if you got the multiplier down to x1.2, that groupthink would then just shift to the popular team and thus fulfill that team always winning.



And you don't think the Japanese players do it too? That's what all competitors look for. It's just that in Japan there's more players and a broader skill base, so different player communities end up backing the two sides as "the one that will win" so the good players from the different communities balance each other out. Here we have one great big communitiy that senses the direction of the win together because it's about 75% smaller.

In response to your first question, my answer is the following: there wouldn't be any actual incentive to join the team with the subject that you truly prefer unless it is the one that gives you a greater chance of winning by it being the less popular one. In Splatfests, you're supposed to choose the team that you like the most and its popularity is factored into the final score, so it certainly was partially a ballot. The amount of wins were always given a greater weight, but not as much as it is now. As it is now for the North America Splatfests, being on the popular team puts you at a clear disadvantage.

If they didn't want popularity to have any slightly significant role in Splatfests, then they shouldn't have designed the rules of Splatfests to be the way that they were and are. Also, the spectators in a baseball match and the players in Splatoon who choose their favorite Splatfest team are clearly dissimilar; in the latter, the players tend to be actively participating in Splatfests by trying to win Turf War Matches.

My reasoning for why the multiplier should be lowered back to 2x is based mainly on how the score is calculated. Hypothetically, if Team A with 55% popularity lost to Team B with a 51% win rate because of the 6x multiplier, do you think that Team A should have lost or "deserved" to lose? For all that we would know, the win rates could have been moderately close, but the win rate was rounded in Team B's favor. I haven't seen the win percentage for both teams in any Splatfest be 50% yet. Also, I doubt that the difference in any future teams' popularity will be as large as the difference between Team Pirates and Team Ninjas' popularity. Assuming that the popularity difference between any pair of teams doesn't become larger than that and the same multiplier is used, then a team needs only a 54% win rate in order to guarantee getting more points than the other. In the latest Splatfest, Team Past vs Team Future, Team Past needed only 52% of the wins in order to overcome the 39%/61% popularity difference. My argument is that it is too easy to overcome moderately large differences in popularity whenever the more popular team doesn't have a higher win rate, which has been the case in all but one of the NA Splatfests.

 

[Sqwiddles]

Individual experiences in the Splatfest are unreliable for determining how both teams performed, and you're making a faulty generalized claim about Team Future's performance based on your anecdote. I'm sure that there is someone on Team Future who won almost all of their matches, which would contradict your claims. Explain to me how a 55%/45% win percentage difference showed that "Team Future was cornered."

Also, my opinion about the multipliers is that 2x is the best one and people who prefer 4x do so mainly because people complained about the first multiplier for reportedly putting too much emphasis on popularity even though there weren't as many Splatfests as there are now.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know I can't really speak for all but I'm just gonna say this was one of the most easiest Splatfest for me for some time.
I mean I get cha point. I just like being an *******. ;D
Sure I can't explain it but at least this is not as bad as Pirate vs Ninjas.

 

[BlackZero]

My question for you is this: Right now for Past/Future you have a competition in which Team Past won greater than 50% of battles against Team Future. You propose the tea that had more people that wanted to play for it should have the percentage of popularity applied to help them win. Why? Did they lose because they are more popular? no, they lost because they didn't win as many matches. So why augment their amount of wins based on how many players they had?

Right now, we have what amounts to collusion between the better players to all join one team because they know other people who are serious about winning will be on that team. That's not really fun or fair to people who join a team because they actually like that team better when one team is pretty much loaded with top-tier players that are going to beat the other. So how exactly does one fix a problem like this so that the other team wins some? You can't force people to not play for the same team two Splatfests in a row, or else you'll get the same situation with all the serious player bouncing from one team to another. The easiest way to do this is to factor in popularity, so that the odds slant in favor of the team that is expected to lose if it has the popular vote.

There really is no other way to break this chain other than to start some type of campaign to convince the serious players to not default to one team. People who have maxed out their sea snails don't have any real incentive to join the winning team other than to win the Splatfest. These people might consider joining the losing team to balance the odds, but that's entirely up to each player. That's basically asking people to volunteer to lose a Splatfest with the hopes that they break a chain of an almost guaranteed winning team. Honestly, people may not want to change this predictable winning trend. If you are trying to farm snails, you'd probably want to know what team would maximize your snail award.

It's really quite depressing that the US Splatfests have become a case study in collusion while the others are more of an actual competition. It really says a lot about US society and psychology that such practices emerge in what is supposed to be a lighthearted contest.