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

[Award]

The thing is that these serious players are voting to get those extra Super Sea Snails--even 1 bonus Super Sea Snail for winning will cause the exact same phenomenon we're seeing. That's why I figured the best alternative is to remove the incentive altogether and make winning Splatfest strictly about bragging rights.

As for bonus Super Sea Snails for continuing to play upon reaching King or Queen, I personally think the points system should continue unchanged (1 point for 200p inked, 2 points for 400p inked, 3 extra points for winning), with one Super Sea Snail given out after the Splatfest for every X points you've earned post-Royalty. This will encourage these serious players to keep playing and attempt to win, but you'll still be progressing towards more Super Sea Snails even when you lose.

By the way, the reason I refer to them as "serious players" is because, well, they're serious about their re-rolls. They might not necessarily be good players, and on the other hand, there are probably at least a few highly skilled players who don't care about re-rolls at all. But what the people who choose Splatfest teams based on which one they think will win have in common is that they want those Super Sea Snails, and that desire overrides any personal preference towards a team. Hence, "serious players."

Agreed on "serious players"! I also like the additional snails post-royalty. As someone who loves Splatfest and plays at Midnight when it starts on Friday night, then plays almost non-stop until Midnight on Saturday, it's like a holiday for me. Since I plan to play the whole time anyway, might as well keep getting more snails! Sounds fun!

Besides, who doesn't love to hear Callie & Marie's singing during every match for a whole 24h? :D

Yeah, the "ZOT" tag is most definitely a clan: The Zot Clan, the official Splatoon clan for students and alumni of the University of California, Irvine. (UCI's mascot is the anteater, and the word "Zot" comes from how an anteater character in the comic strip BC frequently utters it.) It's a pretty skilled clan, all of them better than me at least (they can all pretty consistently beat Japanese players in Turf War), and most of its members chose Team Future, so I guess there you go.

I perfectly understand the Aerospray RG's popularity. It is the perfect weapon for people who want to stay away from the action and strictly ink. Its firing pattern, its fire rate, its sub-weapon, and its special weapon all help with that. (Ink Mines are a bit less obvious than the others--they're great for retreating.)

The reason I stated that her rank is unusually low for her level is because some people seem to assume that such a pattern must mean it's an alt account, or if a player displays an abnormally high skill level for the rank. And I would say that it may just be someone who dislikes Ranked but will play it every now and then. (The reason she dislikes Ranked is mostly due to uncooperative teammates. She likes Splat Zones more than the others because it requires the least amount of cooperation. As she is a splat-based player, she gets splat-oriented teammates, and in Tower Control and Rainmaker, she frequently finds teammates who go wandering off looking for opponents to splat regardless of if they're somewhere important or not, which causes her to lose Tower Control and Rainmaker matches frequently. She also finds glory hounds a lot, people who hide some small distance from the tower or the Rainmaker when her team has control, ready to jump in and try to take the credit for the win.)

That's pretty neat! Also neat that UCI would have an "official Splatoon clan" at all! :) And that makes the fact that I actually survived so well against her twice as neat! :D

RE: Aerospray RG, yeah, it makes sense for your little inkers I suppose. But I always read about how the RG is so great for noobs, and makes even scrubby noobs play decently, and I keep thinking "who would use this thing, it's awful, and it's ugly to boot!" I've always greatly preferred the MG. I'd read about how RG was so easy, etc, back a while ago, bought it (back before so many other things came out) tried and and it confirmed it's as terrible as it seems on paper and went back to MG. I hadn't actually played aero in a while. I think Burgers v. Pizza was the last time I even touched it. But it was an old standby so I figured I'd save it for Splatfest and take it out since it's a great one for it. Especially after I found myself splatted by one a few times at ranges I didn't think they could hit me recently. I kind of rediscovered it while using it the other day and it's actually a really good killer, which I hadn't realized about it before. Seekers aren't as awful as I'd remembered, there's a lot of good uses for them, and the range can be surprising with the mobility. The skill ceiling on the MG goes WAY higher than I'd given it credit for. The RG....yeah, not so much. I will say an RG is handy for disposing of snipers. It charges inkstrikes fast.

You're right, despite BEING one of those people who's rank is lower than it probably could be because I seldom play ranked, I still assume that someone with an abnormally high skill level but low rank must be an alt. That said, clan affiliation kind of overrides rank, so I kind of just assume S/S+ there regardless :) Her experience sounds exceedingly similar to mine. I do tend to prefer SZ over TC/RM and the terrible, terrible teammates are generally the reason. And the ones I've dubbed "my little suicidal maniacs" are exactly like that. They'll wander off in different directions, look for splats (usually get splatted), or simply vanish all together. Heck in TC, I wish they WOULD go out to splat more. How can they NOT find something useful to splat in Mahi? But they manage... Maybe because I already splatted 3/4 enemies from the tower, so they're looking in vain for someone to splat (other than the one standing at the goal who's going to get me.

Actually the Glory Hounds come in handy . The rounds I won in TC were because of the glory hound. AFTER I rode the tower all the way, splatted most of the enemies, only to get splatted off the tower at the end, the glory hound managed to hop on and sink it as I respawned. They're the least of my worries of bad teammates in TC! In fact they're among the few who did something useful at all! ;)

When I go back to ranked, I'm going to let my rank tank into the C's if it must. I just want to play all the modes with all the playstyles. With the teams I get, I doubt running Hydra will be helpful to my rank, but I want to do it anyway. And Custom Eliter. And carbon. I like TW best of all, but I don't want to miss out on playing my favorite weapons in all the modes :)

That definitely true: With so many Japanese players, there's not going to be a consensus on what team to go for.

That being said, I think the Japanese players, the REALLY good ones, have a fearsome reputation because they prefer to play against each other. Nothing develops skill better and faster than playing against the best all the time. Why do American basketball players stomp all over most other countries' basketball players? Because North America has the NBA (and the WNBA). They're constantly playing against each other, keeping their skills sharp by competing against similarly sharp people. In contrast, the United States' men's soccer team performs averagely in the World Cup and cannot compete with the likes of Brazil or Germany because there isn't some organized national soccer league to the scale or popularity of the NBA, or NHL, or MLB, or NFL, the way most countries in Europe and South America do. The American soccer players don't get to play against other best players quite as much, and the entirety of CONCACAF is seen as something of a joke to Europeans and South Americans.

Hence, I think it's very important to play against other really good players to be really good yourself. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those untouchable Japanese Splatoon players purposely pick the more popular team to get more opportunities to play against each other.

(Playing against each other constantly and honing their skills is how the rather small Japanese Halo and Call of Duty players got so good too, by the way. Despite their massively smaller numbers, Japanese players can consistently outdo even the American best, such that American players coined a new term, "Japwned," after such beatings.)

All true, but would that be no different from ranked where you're pitted against other players in the same rank, including S+, and in particular, playing Japanese players (possibly mostly)? Even in TW I'm usually up against Japanese S & S+ players. And in Splatfest, I don't know that choosing the popular team gives them more chances to play other best players by playing the popular them than by playing the opposite team.

Anecdotally, as an eliter, I've found my most fun rounds were going up against a Japanese eliter. Sometimes they're better than me, a number of times worse, obviously learning eliters. But we'd each spend the whole round taking shots at each other and they became these 1v1 sniper wars. Over the series of TW rounds we'd learn each other's techniques a little more. Eventually we ended up on the same team which was a ton of fun because we knew each other's play with it. I knew I was the better sniper, but I knew the other was competent enough to be a deterrent, so on Hammerhed I booyeah'd a bunch when we were at spawn and on the same team, gave the JEliter the perch and I roamed around knowing I had the cover from above and picked off from below - we dominated that round with the eliter pair. How often do 2 eliters on a team win let alone dominate? ;)

I don't often get that kind of experience with western players. Sadly, I wish I could read/remember the names, since if I see these people again, I wouldn't recognize them :(

In your example, woudln't the JP COD/halow players have improved by playing the best American players rather than the other Japanese players that at the time weren't as good?

That said, with the Japanese Splatoon players, I think there's a few weapons where the fearsome reputations come in specifically. Eliters, Sploosh, Gals. I haven't seen too much of the amazing/unbeatable Japanese players that were not using one of these.

A lot of Nintendo fans in the UK too. All four regions of it. Germany's culture is very sensitive about violence, so Nintendo remains popular there too because of its family-friendly image.

In any case, Nintendo IS actually pretty popular in Europe as a whole. Take a look at Mario Kart 8's loading screens. It will identify the country of every player in the room. More often than not, European players outnumber any other continent. These sessions were from the last time I played Mario Kart 8, which was last month:

Well Germany is kind of split between the above/below ground gaming. Back in my Quake/Unreal days I'd have a LOT of German players around, and we'd always joke about "isn't this game illegal in your country??" (which it was...) :) And Nintendo does HORRIBLY in the UK. I mean they rarely even crack into the top 10. NoE is definitely a distant third market for Nintendo. It's depressing how low a market share they have in UK. It's not that there aren't strong fanbases there, it's just that the fanbases are pretty small in contrast to the competition. I think the "evergreen" bundled games do ok there,MK8, Splatoon, Smash, SMM to some extent, but the problem is they have a lot of customers there that will buy the console with the bundle, and....that's it. The software attach rate is pretty terrible.

One thing about Europe, though, is PC gaming has a generally wider swath than console gaming compared to the US, so the multiplat gamers don't show up on the console charts at all. Which I'll never understand since I see PC gaming as $$$. Others argue it's cheaper. I think I'm biased because I was in on the early days of "modern" PC gaming where just to keep up with with the games you needed another $400 video card every 10 months, but the new one needed a bigger PSU, and then every other one needed a new motherboard architecture, and then the conversion to SATA, so you ended up replacing everything every year and a half. (PCI, then PCI2, then AGP, then AGPPro, AGP2, then PCIe, then Pc...ugh! ) Consoles were such a value in contrast to that world! I think the newer crowd who game in after the dust settled and never lived through the "the entire architecture changes every 18 months because the last spec was actually a stopgap spec until the real spec came out!" era doesn't have the same terror of expenses. ;)

 

[Zero Meddler]

Not if 30% of Team A consistently perform on an S+ level while only 10% of Team B does. Team A has 20% more high performance players in its pool to put into matches than Team B, hence the need to compensate for this with weighted scores. If it was closer to an even distribution, there wouldn't be a problem and we probably wouldn't be having this discussion. When one team has a higher concentration of serious players, it's a simple numbers game.

If we could guarantee close to an even distribution of competitive/serious players on both teams, there wouldn't be a need for weighted scores. I don't know of any way to do that if you let people pick their teams. So, we can either leave it alone and have predictable results, take away people's ability to choose teams to guarantee both teams are as close to balanced as possible, or use weighted scores to compensate for one team having fewer skilled players. There may be other options, but those are the only ones that come to mind at the moment.

Something just occurred to me...

In the case of having more skilled players on one team, the game could just match them with players similar in skill that's part of the same team. Splatoon already has a system in place where it will match you with your own team if the search for the opposing team takes too long. With this, the difference in the number of skilled players really wouldn't matter.

 

[BlackZero]

Using Tatsunoko vs. Capcom as something that comes to mind (which keeps track of your playstyle based on a lot of stats), in addition to aggressive and defensive, there's also the evasive playstyle. (The game doesn't indicate it directly, but it classifies you as Fire, Ice or Lightning. Fire means you're aggressive, ice means you're defensive, and Lightning means you're evasive.)

Maybe the game can keep track of first strikes to determine that: Someone who often takes the first stike--that is, someone who will frequently shoot at an opponent who is not yet fighting back, or does a lot of ambushes, would be aggressive. Someone who mainly attacks only opponents who are already shooting back at them would be defensive. And someone who chooses to retreat without shooting back when shot at would be evasive.

That's more in line with what I have in mind and I think the end product will be a far better matchmaker. K/D by itself doesn't say much about a players skill, even when compared to other players. Someone who uses a high-risk weapon like a brush will have a much higher D count than someone using a charger, yet they may have similar K counts. In an oversimplistic system, the game may consider the charger more skilled simply because they die less with no consideration for the different risk factors of getting killed with either weapon. I don't think people understand how incredibly complicated and delicate a balancing act good matchmaking algorithms perform for hundreds of matches going on simultaneously.

At any rate, the more factors the matchmaker can consider to build a skill and play style profile the better so long as the devs have the time and resources to fine tune it. I hope they create something more sophisticated now that Splatoon has proven itself.

But then you're almost enforcing ranked play as a requirement for Splatfest. What about those of us who don't play a lot of ranked? Our scores would either count way over what they should or way under. If we're getting into using ranks for Splatfest balancing, then we have to talk adding in the ranked modes into Splatfest. And that would be a mess.

For people who don't play ranked at all(<10), the game can use a simple Turf Wars W/L ratio to assign a rank. People who don't play Ranked very much will still have a rank the game can use as a reference. They would be outliers instead of the norm, thus no different from people who play alts with a much lower rank than their mains.

Yeah, you missed BZ and I having epic diatribes in a few threads on the ranked scoring and matchmaking systems. ;) You probably don't want us to revisit that here :p Bottom line is Splatoon's matchmaking is....not like Tatsunoko v. Capcom. Or Halo. It's better than flipping a coin. But not by much. I think we can all agree we'd love to have a system more like you describe.

Yeah, the matchmaker is, for lack of a better word, oversimplified. It doesn't consider enough factors when determining skill, so there's a lot of variation in how people perform even within a narrow range of player values.

 

[BlackZero]

Something just occurred to me...

In the case of having more skilled players on one team, the game could just match them with players similar in skill that's part of the same team. Splatoon already has a system in place where it will match you with your own team if the search for the opposing team takes too long. With this, the difference in the number of skilled players really wouldn't matter.

As far as I know, they cancel each other out since the same team is both winning and losing at the same time. In that case, it doesn't impact scoring.

 

[LimitCrown]

Well, of course people will try to game the system. People are bastards like that, it's in our blood. But that's neither here nor there, because people will do this sort of thing for anything that can be manipulated (which is everything).

Okay, I see we're thinking different things here. I'm not worried about the multiplier, honestly; is it a bit much, perhaps, but that's for another time. I keep raving about the overseas Splatfests for a different reason—that popularity has the opposite "effect" over there that it does over here.

Well, yes. In most of Japan and Europe's Splatfests in which the winning team was more popular, it also had a higher win rate. However, is this actually due to popularity, in spite of it, or is this mainly due to other factors? Regardless of this, if the ones who made the Splatfest rules were trying to alleviate this problem by increasing the win rate multiplier, then it was a wasted effort. I stress that the two situations with the teams with the most points having higher popularity shouldn't be conflated because it creates a false impression by focusing solely on the popularity variable, excluding the possibility of other factors. In both this community and the Reddit community, there are those who try to refute others' complaints about the 6x multiplier by conflating those two types of Splatfest results, and they're easily believed.

...right, I get what you're saying on the multiplier front. Still, an advantage is an advantage, no matter how minor. I'm not a fan of this idea of handing out Splatfest victories to any given team just because more people wanted that team to win. Raider Nation is huge, but should they be given a free win each weekend for that reason? No, they play the game, and if they want to win they have to earn it by out-competing their opponent. I realize it's not a perfect analogy, but the point is that, I feel at least, any victory must be earned. That's why I'm big on wins over popularity.

And Pirates vs. Ninjas isn't a very good example. Had they not raised the multiplier from 4x, the ninjas still would've lost that one. And isn't 4x supposed to be the ideal multiplier?

I don't really believe that the 4x multiplier is ideal. With the 4x multiplier, the win rate that Team Pirates would have needed in order to overcome Team Ninjas' popularity would be 56%. It isn't as low as 54%, but the because the win rates have reached up to 59% percent, I think that this is still too much leeway. I personally believe that 2x and 3x are better multipliers. I would prefer to have a win multiplier that is between those two values, but the possibility of them using any other values besides whole numbers is very slim.

Keep in mind the multiplier is not region specific. It's part of the engine, and there are no separate regional rules, just separate regional text data and theme text/artwork/color values. They don't have different scoring systems by region, so if they changed it, it would be worldwide.
The need to add region specific scoring would imply there's something unique about the contest in a given region, but there really isn't. If you were a "serious" player looking for the most likely team to win on in the other regions, you'd simply pick the team that'll probably be more popular. It won't guarantee a win, but it makes it more likely. Here the inverse is true, but still, choosing Callie does NOT guarantee a win, an upset can happen at any time where Marie is least popular, or where the most popular wins. It's not set in stone, it's just a preferred outcome. Just the same as betting on a winning team in any game. Sometimes Seabiscuit steps on a rock, or Hank Aaron throws a ligament, and it's all over. Players play and try to pick a winning team. They may not care about themes and only care about winning. Or maybe they like the minigame of betting on the winning team. Or they like both themes and go with the one they think will win (Coasters v Waterslides....Hot Dogs v. Marshmallows....Burgers v Pizza....Pirates v Ninjas how can you even CHOOSE between these? It's like "which adorable kitten should make sausage from?" :)) Even I picked the winner in Burgers v Pizza because I had no affinity to one team or the other, I liked both. I had to go with Nice and Past on principal though, no contest. And how could you not pick Ninjas as a Nintendo fan (Although...Tetra...?) o_O

I know that the multiplier isn't region-specific. I was stating that changing the multiplier in order to fix the issue with Japan and Europe's Splatfests wouldn't have accomplished much if this was their intention. I choose the team that I actually like the most, but it becomes less fun when I can predict which team is more likely to lose.

 

[Award]

Well, yes. In most of Japan and Europe's Splatfests in which the winning team was more popular, it also had a higher win rate. However, is this actually due to popularity, in spite of it, or is this mainly due to other factors? Regardless of this, if the ones who made the Splatfest rules were trying to alleviate this problem by increasing the win rate multiplier, then it was a wasted effort. I stress that the two situations with the teams with the most points having higher popularity shouldn't be conflated because it creates a false impression by focusing solely on the popularity variable, excluding the possibility of other factors. In both this community and the Reddit community, there are those who try to refute others' complaints about the 6x multiplier by conflating those two types of Splatfest results, and they're easily believed.

Due to Japan's large player base and multiple "schools of thought" among player communities, I don't think Japan can fairly be compared. The same problems are unlikely to occur there simply because there's too many people playing for it to influence anything.

Hoever you may have accidentally hit upon the most viable solution there is: Worldwide Splatfest. Splatoon is worldwide, not regional every other day of the year. Why is Splatfest regional? Just make a Splatfest topic that isn't related to udon v tempura that can apply equally to Japan and the rest of the world, end the regional topics and make the splatfest worldwide. Keep the Miiverse posts regional, like they do every other day of the year, and wham, problem solved if the whole player pool of Splatoon runs at once.

Then instead of "which side are the kids on" the Redditors will pick "which side are the Japanese on?" ;)

Besides, I miss fighting my Japanese S+'s during Splatfest. It feels wrong. :p And the worldwide unity in support of the controversial cause of marshmallows would be fun.

I don't really believe that the 4x multiplier is ideal. With the 4x multiplier, the win rate that Team Pirates would have needed in order to overcome Team Ninjas' popularity would be 56%. It isn't as low as 54%, but the because the win rates have reached up to 59% percent, I think that this is still too much leeway. I personally believe that 2x and 3x are better multipliers. I would prefer to have a win multiplier that is between those two values, but the possibility of them using any other values besides whole numbers is very slim.

If you do that, or even scrap the multiplier all together though it just reverses the problem. The people that pick "unpopular" now because they believe they have better odds there will just switch to "popular" - and they they have popularity AND wins locked up.

How about if they split the reward? One reward for wins, one for popularity? that would be more fair - two separate contests, you win either way. But then, again, you'll just see "popular " be the predictable battle winner and they'll get ALL the rewards.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Yeah, you missed BZ and I having epic diatribes in a few threads on the ranked scoring and matchmaking systems. ;) You probably don't want us to revisit that here :p Bottom line is Splatoon's matchmaking is....not like Tatsunoko v. Capcom. Or Halo. It's better than flipping a coin. But not by much. I think we can all agree we'd love to have a system more like you describe. But we're not going to get it in this version of Splatoon. We get a new map today, with no mention of a major update, and only 1 week to go before they cut off all major updates short of tweaks & fixes. It does track killer/inker best as we can tell, but that's probably about it.

One problem with what you describe, though, (and is probably an issue with killer/inker too) is eliters & blasters. They're naturally awful at inking and built around killing, but that doesn't mean someone using them is actually a killer either. An eliter that doesn't get a shot at an opponent before they fight back is probably a splatted eliter, but it's not really an aggressive style by nature. if you choose one, you're inherently going for defensive/evasive. So weapon would have to factor in.

Actual matchmaking in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is comparing apples and oranges, due to Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's nature as a 1-vs-1 game. It's based on the player's win-loss ratio over their entire history, displayed as a win percentage (which the opponent can also see before a match begins). Personally, I don't think showing your opponents your win percentages is good for bringing beginners in, but that's neither here nor there. What I'm talking about is the player classification system, where it determines if your playstyle is aggressive, defensive, or evasive (which is also displayed to your opponents in a little box that reads "Fire," "Ice," or "Lightning"). THAT is something that can apply to Splatoon. (Though thinking about it, a splatter would be aggressive, an inker would be defensive, and support would be evasive. When I say an inker is defensive, they're defensive in that they're defending their team's ink percentages without actualy hindering their opposing team's efforts in any way.)

But yes, different weapons lend towards different styles, which don't necessarily easily fall into any of those three categories. However, I would say that if your goal was to splat with an E-liter, you'd be classified as aggressive or evasive, depending on how you react if an opponent detects your location and is coming for you. Do you continue to fight back and hope you splat the enemy? You're an aggressive player. Do you make a run for it and hope you can get away? You're an evasive player. As for inking, that CAN be done with E-liters, but it's easier on some stages than others. I can contribute my fair share of ground inked on Kelp Dome or Blackbelly Skatepark, for instance, but on Piranha Pit or Walleye Warehouse? That's a lot harder.

RE: Aerospray RG, yeah, it makes sense for your little inkers I suppose. But I always read about how the RG is so great for noobs, and makes even scrubby noobs play decently, and I keep thinking "who would use this thing, it's awful, and it's ugly to boot!" I've always greatly preferred the MG. I'd read about how RG was so easy, etc, back a while ago, bought it (back before so many other things came out) tried and and it confirmed it's as terrible as it seems on paper and went back to MG. I hadn't actually played aero in a while. I think Burgers v. Pizza was the last time I even touched it. But it was an old standby so I figured I'd save it for Splatfest and take it out since it's a great one for it. Especially after I found myself splatted by one a few times at ranges I didn't think they could hit me recently. I kind of rediscovered it while using it the other day and it's actually a really good killer, which I hadn't realized about it before. Seekers aren't as awful as I'd remembered, there's a lot of good uses for them, and the range can be surprising with the mobility. The skill ceiling on the MG goes WAY higher than I'd given it credit for. The RG....yeah, not so much. I will say an RG is handy for disposing of snipers. It charges inkstrikes fast.

The Aerospray MG suits your aggressive playstyle better. It has Seekers and Inkzooka, which are both meant to be deployed out on the front lines. The Aerospray RG has a reputation of being easy to use because it inks well and you can contribute without being near any of your teammates, or more importantly, any of your opponents, and you move quite quickly with it. It clashes with your playstyle. It's more meant for those aforementioned "evasive" players.

Note that these Aerospray RG users HAVE saved my hide on more than a few occasions though, launching an Inkstrike at the very end of a match, which was enough to tip the balance in our favor. Because it can ink so well, the RG is the weapon most likely to have a fully-charged Inkstrike at the last moments of a match. I see so many of them that it is sometimes used defensively, to counter the other team's Inkstrikes.

For similar reasons, the N-Zap '89 is ridiculously popular too. It can't ink as well as an Aerospray RG, but it still inks reliably, shoots farther, and has Sprinlers. Even those "little inkers" know of good places to put Sprinklers.

You're right, despite BEING one of those people who's rank is lower than it probably could be because I seldom play ranked, I still assume that someone with an abnormally high skill level but low rank must be an alt. That said, clan affiliation kind of overrides rank, so I kind of just assume S/S+ there regardless :) Her experience sounds exceedingly similar to mine. I do tend to prefer SZ over TC/RM and the terrible, terrible teammates are generally the reason. And the ones I've dubbed "my little suicidal maniacs" are exactly like that. They'll wander off in different directions, look for splats (usually get splatted), or simply vanish all together. Heck in TC, I wish they WOULD go out to splat more. How can they NOT find something useful to splat in Mahi? But they manage... Maybe because I already splatted 3/4 enemies from the tower, so they're looking in vain for someone to splat (other than the one standing at the goal who's going to get me.

Actually the Glory Hounds come in handy . The rounds I won in TC were because of the glory hound. AFTER I rode the tower all the way, splatted most of the enemies, only to get splatted off the tower at the end, the glory hound managed to hop on and sink it as I respawned. They're the least of my worries of bad teammates in TC! In fact they're among the few who did something useful at all! ;)

For those people who seemingly vanish, I looked at my map sometimes to figure out where they are. Usually, they're nowhere near anyone. When I play, since I'm apparently an inker, I see them covering uninked ground madly (almost always an Inkstrike user). Since you're a splatter, I'm guessing they're futilely wandering around looking for opponents, not being where they expected them to be.

As for glory hounds, the reason they're annoying (or at least, they annoy my sister) is because they don't really help out until the final moments. They effectively remove themselves from the match until then. They definitely help in securing knockouts, but they make getting to the situation where you can inflict a knockout harder.

In your example, woudln't the JP COD/halow players have improved by playing the best American players rather than the other Japanese players that at the time weren't as good?

They don't play against American players that much. If I recall correctly, most players for Call of Duty and for Halo are regional. The Japanese got as good as they are by being more committed than the Americans. Americans have a reputation of finding weaker players because they want to win; the Japanese prefer to avoid weaker players and seek out the strongest opponents they can (but will help a weaker player if asked).

Well Germany is kind of split between the above/below ground gaming. Back in my Quake/Unreal days I'd have a LOT of German players around, and we'd always joke about "isn't this game illegal in your country??" (which it was...) :) And Nintendo does HORRIBLY in the UK. I mean they rarely even crack into the top 10. NoE is definitely a distant third market for Nintendo. It's depressing how low a market share they have in UK. It's not that there aren't strong fanbases there, it's just that the fanbases are pretty small in contrast to the competition. I think the "evergreen" bundled games do ok there,MK8, Splatoon, Smash, SMM to some extent, but the problem is they have a lot of customers there that will buy the console with the bundle, and....that's it. The software attach rate is pretty terrible.

One thing about Europe, though, is PC gaming has a generally wider swath than console gaming compared to the US, so the multiplat gamers don't show up on the console charts at all. Which I'll never understand since I see PC gaming as $$$. Others argue it's cheaper. I think I'm biased because I was in on the early days of "modern" PC gaming where just to keep up with with the games you needed another $400 video card every 10 months, but the new one needed a bigger PSU, and then every other one needed a new motherboard architecture, and then the conversion to SATA, so you ended up replacing everything every year and a half. (PCI, then PCI2, then AGP, then AGPPro, AGP2, then PCIe, then Pc...ugh! ) Consoles were such a value in contrast to that world! I think the newer crowd who game in after the dust settled and never lived through the "the entire architecture changes every 18 months because the last spec was actually a stopgap spec until the real spec came out!" era doesn't have the same terror of expenses. ;)

Maybe my sources are outdated, or it's because I used to hang out in a general Nintendo forum founded by a British person and populated mainly by British people. Certainly though, in the days between the Super Nintendo and the Gamecube, you had the British Rareware making Nintendo games, which would always sell well.

As for PC gaming, it is definitely quite expensive, especially if you do what the PC gamers insist and building your machine from scratch. You have to put together a new one about once every two years too (sometimes less), and each time, you'll be spending about $2,000. In addition, you have to commit yourself ot knowledge of how a computer is put together, as well as understanding the brands to make sure you don't get a bad one or even bootlegs. All in all, the Console vs. PC feud is basically the same as the downstream vs. upstream clash that exists with fans of most markets. I see the same arguments echoed among foodies between fans of fast food and fans of fine dining. I see it among fans of automobiles between people who drive Hondas and Fords versus those who drive BMWs and Mercedes. And thanks to Macklemore stoking the flames, I see it in fashion between low-cost DIY fashion and upper-end name-brand fashion.

By the way, PC gaming may be expensive, but I'll tell you, as a pinball fan, that is even more expensive than PC gaming. Shelling out $2,000 every other year to keep up sounds like pocket change when devoted fans will purchase a $6,000 to $9,000 machine every year for home use. 4 to 6 new machines, all within that price range, come out every year. The REALLY dedicated, like Todd McCulloch, will buy them all. (He's a retired NBA player, so he can afford it.) Me, I have one single Jolly Park machine I got for $5,000 and I have no intention of getting another one, at least until I can get a better job. But Jolly Park is a very rare machine. Like, museum-level rare.

For people who don't play ranked at all(<10), the game can use a simple Turf Wars W/L ratio to assign a rank. People who don't play Ranked very much will still have a rank the game can use as a reference. They would be outliers instead of the norm, thus no different from people who play alts with a much lower rank than their mains.

Couldn't the system be gamed by having people refuse to play Ranked enough to escape from C-, or purposely lose games to lower their rank?

Personally, I don't like the idea of picking on weaker players to get some wins, but I know there will be people who get off on that sort of thing.

 

[Award]

Actual matchmaking in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is comparing apples and oranges, due to Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's nature as a 1-vs-1 game. It's based on the player's win-loss ratio over their entire history, displayed as a win percentage (which the opponent can also see before a match begins). Personally, I don't think showing your opponents your win percentages is good for bringing beginners in, but that's neither here nor there. What I'm talking about is the player classification system, where it determines if your playstyle is aggressive, defensive, or evasive (which is also displayed to your opponents in a little box that reads "Fire," "Ice," or "Lightning"). THAT is something that can apply to Splatoon. (Though thinking about it, a splatter would be aggressive, an inker would be defensive, and support would be evasive. When I say an inker is defensive, they're defensive in that they're defending their team's ink percentages without actualy hindering their opposing team's efforts in any way.)

But yes, different weapons lend towards different styles, which don't necessarily easily fall into any of those three categories. However, I would say that if your goal was to splat with an E-liter, you'd be classified as aggressive or evasive, depending on how you react if an opponent detects your location and is coming for you. Do you continue to fight back and hope you splat the enemy? You're an aggressive player. Do you make a run for it and hope you can get away? You're an evasive player. As for inking, that CAN be done with E-liters, but it's easier on some stages than others. I can contribute my fair share of ground inked on Kelp Dome or Blackbelly Skatepark, for instance, but on Piranha Pit or Walleye Warehouse? That's a lot harder.

Supposedly Splatton has (invisibly) such a system between inkers and killers at least, and possibly including other elements. They discussed how it matches based on playstyle. But I think the issue is people invented many more complex playstyles in this game than the devs imagined, and so the system gets confused easily (or ping pongs you back and forth.) Just from your description above, there's a lot of gaps. An eliter user that retreats but continues to entrench and get the shot, going as far as acrobatics to dodge and attack at once. Is it aggressive? Evasive? It's both! It would need a very complicated system to manage that!

The Aerospray MG suits your aggressive playstyle better. It has Seekers and Inkzooka, which are both meant to be deployed out on the front lines. The Aerospray RG has a reputation of being easy to use because it inks well and you can contribute without being near any of your teammates, or more importantly, any of your opponents, and you move quite quickly with it. It clashes with your playstyle. It's more meant for those aforementioned "evasive" players.

Note that these Aerospray RG users HAVE saved my hide on more than a few occasions though, launching an Inkstrike at the very end of a match, which was enough to tip the balance in our favor. Because it can ink so well, the RG is the weapon most likely to have a fully-charged Inkstrike at the last moments of a match. I see so many of them that it is sometimes used defensively, to counter the other team's Inkstrikes.

For similar reasons, the N-Zap '89 is ridiculously popular too. It can't ink as well as an Aerospray RG, but it still inks reliably, shoots farther, and has Sprinlers. Even those "little inkers" know of good places to put Sprinklers.

The thing with Splatoon is, I'm not sure "inkers" is really even a valid playstyle (for winning.) These maps are not large, except Piranha - EVERYTHING is the front lines - if you're not near the enemy you're probably not really anywhere at all. You can't be successful in inking if you avoid combat since even if everyone is inkers, the combat will come to them (unless they all just ignore each other which I wouldn't doubt from your descriptions!) I've seen a lot of RG's though the inkstrikes are used offensively to cover forward assaults and create distractions/chaos, but the inkmines, even for an inker, just seem so awful when the alternative is seekers. Yeah, inkzooka won't work for them. I suspect they pick it for inkstrike and ignore the mines almost entirely. But people act as though the RG inks differently than the MG

For similar reasons, the N-Zap '89 is ridiculously popular too. It can't ink as well as an Aerospray RG, but it still inks reliably, shoots farther, and has Sprinlers. Even those "little inkers" know of good places to put Sprinklers.

And similarly I like the NZap'85 better ;) Which stinks because I would rather use the '89 since I physically own the real thing :)
(That Duck Hunt dog had it coming! That's what you get when you laugh at my aim, dog!) :p

I need tips from your inkers on the sprinkler placement though. It could help with Custom Hydra :D

For those people who seemingly vanish, I looked at my map sometimes to figure out where they are. Usually, they're nowhere near anyone. When I play, since I'm apparently an inker, I see them covering uninked ground madly (almost always an Inkstrike user). Since you're a splatter, I'm guessing they're futilely wandering around looking for opponents, not being where they expected them to be.

As for glory hounds, the reason they're annoying (or at least, they annoy my sister) is because they don't really help out until the final moments. They effectively remove themselves from the match until then. They definitely help in securing knockouts, but they make getting to the situation where you can inflict a knockout harder.

Yep, I've been watching the map too, and see at least one, sometimes two DEEP within enemy territory, surrounded by enemy ink on all sides, cut off from the rest of the map. Clearly they're not doing much inking there.... (And of course the enemy is BEHIND them, not in front...)

The glory hounds, I can see how they could irritate her, but the thing for me is, they can be genuinely useful. In TC it's about getting the win more than who does it - nobody gets individual credit for winning. If I get shot off the tower and a team mate happened to be invisibly stalking the tower from below and can manage to sink it, they actually did contribute to the match by being in the right place right when they were most useful. Sure they didn't contribute to the rest, which sucks, but their role was sort of that of a "closing pitcher" in baseball: They do nothing but warm the bench every single game while the other guy pitches 8 innings to a lead, and the highly paid closer has no other job but to simply "not screw it up and finish the job." If they do it right and finish it after I got thrown off, then they still played with the team in a crucial moment. They might not be doing it "for glory" but because they feel genuinely helpful in "camping" near the goal to take it home. The people who are simply MISSING the entire round are a bigger problem.

They don't play against American players that much. If I recall correctly, most players for Call of Duty and for Halo are regional. The Japanese got as good as they are by being more committed than the Americans. Americans have a reputation of finding weaker players because they want to win; the Japanese prefer to avoid weaker players and seek out the strongest opponents they can (but will help a weaker player if asked).

Well, COD was possibly a bad example. American COD players are pretty much the lowest common denominator in gaming this side of Madden. Halo is a little better but not by much. I'm not surprised that crowd likes picking on weak players for easy wins. You'll find this type of gamer in Japan, too, but there they are more likely to be playing RPGs with tons of crafting and the like. Highly competitive players in the US are more likely to play PC derivative games than console games, so all of the Quakes are still very much in competitive play in the US, plus MOBAs, and I can't even think of the PC exclusive shooters, but yeah, it's split into a different audience here. I'm not sure it's fair to say that Americans prefer weak opponents for easy wins while Japanese players seek strong opponents to competitively improve, outside Splatoon, but simply that US console gamers are more casual, while US competitive gamers are more likely to be playing PC games.

Maybe my sources are outdated, or it's because I used to hang out in a general Nintendo forum founded by a British person and populated mainly by British people. Certainly though, in the days between the Super Nintendo and the Gamecube, you had the British Rareware making Nintendo games, which would always sell well.

As for PC gaming, it is definitely quite expensive, especially if you do what the PC gamers insist and building your machine from scratch. You have to put together a new one about once every two years too (sometimes less), and each time, you'll be spending about $2,000. In addition, you have to commit yourself ot knowledge of how a computer is put together, as well as understanding the brands to make sure you don't get a bad one or even bootlegs. All in all, the Console vs. PC feud is basically the same as the downstream vs. upstream clash that exists with fans of most markets. I see the same arguments echoed among foodies between fans of fast food and fans of fine dining. I see it among fans of automobiles between people who drive Hondas and Fords versus those who drive BMWs and Mercedes. And thanks to Macklemore stoking the flames, I see it in fashion between low-cost DIY fashion and upper-end name-brand fashion.

By the way, PC gaming may be expensive, but I'll tell you, as a pinball fan, that is even more expensive than PC gaming. Shelling out $2,000 every other year to keep up sounds like pocket change when devoted fans will purchase a $6,000 to $9,000 machine every year for home use. 4 to 6 new machines, all within that price range, come out every year. The REALLY dedicated, like Todd McCulloch, will buy them all. (He's a retired NBA player, so he can afford it.) Me, I have one single Jolly Park machine I got for $5,000 and I have no intention of getting another one, at least until I can get a better job. But Jolly Park is a very rare machine. Like, museum-level rare.

Which forum is that, MNN or NL or neither? One of those is a cesspool, the other is not - BUT I lurk there, so I've probably read your posts there! If one of those I'll have to try to guess which you are if you go by a different name. I pay attention to the lengthier more informed posts ;)

In either case, both are skewed (but acknowledge how minimal Nintendo's presence is there.) You're seeing the concentration of British Nintendo gamers there, but the problem is: That's all of them! :p

PC - yeah... or, yes and no. Yes I was one of those PC gamers for quite a while, yes it was absurdly expensive, and yes I built my own machines. However, I keep hearing from current PC gamers how PC is so much less expensive once you subtract the price difference in games. Their numbers work out - but I can't manage to do it for close to their numbers. And frankly I don't have the time to muck about with drivers to get it all running right. Again, I have a bias, I did this in the 90's and early 2000's. The architecture kept changing rapidly, high performance anything was expensive, incompatibility between EVERYTHING was a nightmare, and then it would all break itself down. And win95/98 didn't help matters. It probably IS better now, but I have enough nightmare memories not to have an interest in returning to it. Ever. I spent as much time trying to fix the problems find out why x game causes the system to hang at y spot every time I run it and would go on the 10 hour quest of patching/flashing/testing/reinstalling - ugh! What you describe is the way *I* remember it, but there are many who will point out that based on their purchases it was cheaper to build the PC than to buy a Wii and all the required peripherals for all control options and "essential" games. In fact they found the Wii (original) with all the control options was more expensive than PC, PS3, or X360. For me? It's always that $2000 every 2 years route.... No thanks. They apparently do it differently. I, personally am done with $400 video cards with monthly driver updates that may or may not render the machine unbootable while the cart itself fails in 18 months with hardly any use because "oh yeah there was an issue with the silicon dies that year, almost all of them will fail."

Oooohh, a pinball machine! Now that's exciting! :) I don't think I've even seen a Jolly Park machine, ever. Any pics?

Couldn't the system be gamed by having people refuse to play Ranked enough to escape from C-, or purposely lose games to lower their rank?

Personally, I don't like the idea of picking on weaker players to get some wins, but I know there will be people who get off on that sort of thing

Yes, BUT the people who most want the snails are the people who need to reroll their gearsets for their high rank accounts so they'd have to play with their real rank even if they ALSO play with a low rank alt.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Supposedly Splatton has (invisibly) such a system between inkers and killers at least, and possibly including other elements. They discussed how it matches based on playstyle. But I think the issue is people invented many more complex playstyles in this game than the devs imagined, and so the system gets confused easily (or ping pongs you back and forth.) Just from your description above, there's a lot of gaps. An eliter user that retreats but continues to entrench and get the shot, going as far as acrobatics to dodge and attack at once. Is it aggressive? Evasive? It's both! It would need a very complicated system to manage that!

I will say that the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom system can get confused too. There were a lot of online players for whom the game kept switching between two elements and sometimes even all three. Also, for a rushdown-oriented fighting game, Lightning players outnumbered Fire and Ice combined,so the criteria for classification remained something few people outside of Capcom knew.

The thing with Splatoon is, I'm not sure "inkers" is really even a valid playstyle (for winning.) These maps are not large, except Piranha - EVERYTHING is the front lines - if you're not near the enemy you're probably not really anywhere at all. You can't be successful in inking if you avoid combat since even if everyone is inkers, the combat will come to them (unless they all just ignore each other which I wouldn't doubt from your descriptions!) I've seen a lot of RG's though the inkstrikes are used offensively to cover forward assaults and create distractions/chaos, but the inkmines, even for an inker, just seem so awful when the alternative is seekers. Yeah, inkzooka won't work for them. I suspect they pick it for inkstrike and ignore the mines almost entirely. But people act as though the RG inks differently than the MG

The optimum playstyle, as far as a whole team goes, is variety. Every competent team needs at least one player who mainly inks and one player who mainly splats. That's what I've determined playing the game. The inker pushes the goal directly while the splatter defends him or her and prevents opponents from doing the same. When I find myself teamedwith three pacifists, I become the one who has to do the splatting, though it rarely works as I get outnumbered quickly.

Do you see a lot of Inkstrikes aimed deep within enemy territory? That is by far the most common place I find Inkstrikes. I prefer putting Inkstrikes on the front lines or where I've determined a sniper is located, but I understand that, in a pinch, it might not be easy to determine. That being said, you're right: Most of the Aerospray RG usage I've seen ignores Ink Mines entirely.

The glory hounds, I can see how they could irritate her, but the thing for me is, they can be genuinely useful. In TC it's about getting the win more than who does it - nobody gets individual credit for winning. If I get shot off the tower and a team mate happened to be invisibly stalking the tower from below and can manage to sink it, they actually did contribute to the match by being in the right place right when they were most useful. Sure they didn't contribute to the rest, which sucks, but their role was sort of that of a "closing pitcher" in baseball: They do nothing but warm the bench every single game while the other guy pitches 8 innings to a lead, and the highly paid closer has no other job but to simply "not screw it up and finish the job." If they do it right and finish it after I got thrown off, then they still played with the team in a crucial moment. They might not be doing it "for glory" but because they feel genuinely helpful in "camping" near the goal to take it home. The people who are simply MISSING the entire round are a bigger problem.

Do you think that they are useful even when they don't get on the Tower or take the Rainmaker until the countdown is 20 or less? I don't mean people who will wait for someone to get splatted, following closely behind. When I say they remove themselves from the match until their team is close to winning, that's what I mean. It's as if these people would rather lose a match than let a teammate bring the tower or the Rainmaker to the goal.

Which forum is that, MNN or NL or neither? One of those is a cesspool, the other is not - BUT I lurk there, so I've probably read your posts there! If one of those I'll have to try to guess which you are if you go by a different name. I pay attention to the lengthier more informed posts ;)

In either case, both are skewed (but acknowledge how minimal Nintendo's presence is there.) You're seeing the concentration of British Nintendo gamers there, but the problem is: That's all of them! :p

Mario-Kart.net, which is now defunct. During the earlier days of Nintendo fan forums, it was actually pretty reasonably popular. It popped up shortly before Mario Kart: Double Dash!! was released and got allsorts of strange visitors.

Serebii is also a Nintendo site run by a British person and gets a lot of British forum usage as a result. It seems to have rubbed off onto PokéBeach too, despite it being American in origin.

PC - yeah... or, yes and no. Yes I was one of those PC gamers for quite a while, yes it was absurdly expensive, and yes I built my own machines. However, I keep hearing from current PC gamers how PC is so much less expensive once you subtract the price difference in games. Their numbers work out - but I can't manage to do it for close to their numbers.

Sounds like you have to buy a lot of games to make up the price difference though. On my first three years owning a Gamecube, I only had 5 games: Super Monkey Ball 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, and Mario Party5. In a way, I'm still like that: I don't buy a lot of games, but I play the heck out of what few games I have.

Oooohh, a pinball machine! Now that's exciting! :) I don't think I've even seen a Jolly Park machine, ever. Any pics?

My machine is located in a dark garage, so it's hard to get good pictures of it. It looks like every other Jolly Park machine (the 90 other ones that still exist anyhow). Here's the Internet Pinball Database profile for Jolly Park. Or if you prefer, here's a direct link to the front page of the flyer:

You may notice the flyer is in Spanish. This is because Spinball was a company located in Spain. (In fact, my machine's coin door only takes Euro coins.) Jolly Park was made when the company was having major financial troubles due to its inability to market properly. They decided to make the best machine they could. They made about 150 of them through 1995, then went out of business, and remains Spain's last non-remake pinball design. (This is a big deal, as Spain was once the 2nd largest producer of pinball machines behind the United States, and a major supplier for Europe.) It currently stands at 105th overall on the Internet Pinball Database's Top 300; due to its reputation as a quality but seldom-seen machine, whenever Jolly Park appears in public, usually at conventions (it's too rare and valuable to just be put out in public), it gathers sizable crowds (provided it's not broken).

I seeked out and obtained Jolly Park not only because of its rarity and appeal to those who know about it, but because of its history: The machine marked the end of an era for what was once a continent's industry leader, and this swan song is by far the most critically acclaimed European machine.

It is a fussy machine though, due to it being European. It requires a transformer, and all of the instructions and setup menus are in Spanish. It also doesn't always fully boot. But the visitors who come and play it do like it. It's easy to understand and is very straightforward.

 

[Award]

The optimum playstyle, as far as a whole team goes, is variety. Every competent team needs at least one player who mainly inks and one player who mainly splats. That's what I've determined playing the game. The inker pushes the goal directly while the splatter defends him or her and prevents opponents from doing the same. When I find myself teamedwith three pacifists, I become the one who has to do the splatting, though it rarely works as I get outnumbered quickly.

Do you see a lot of Inkstrikes aimed deep within enemy territory? That is by far the most common place I find Inkstrikes. I prefer putting Inkstrikes on the front lines or where I've determined a sniper is located, but I understand that, in a pinch, it might not be easy to determine. That being said, you're right: Most of the Aerospray RG usage I've seen ignores Ink Mines entirely.

What's interesting is that the game DOES connect you with the pacifists in that case though. It would seem like by default you'd be a killer if you have to always cover your pacificts.

Inkstrikes, hmm, I often play eliter/hydra so inkstrikes usually come down either directly on me, or, more times than not, on my beacons (custom eliter), so they're very much targeted for effect. Often they're at the front lines just inside the base covering an attack. When it's deep inside the base, it's usually a chokepoint that will cause chaos (or a distraction.) I can't say I NEVER see one just inking the base though. When I (rarely) use a weapon that has one, I'll usually just target an area to paint that I know I won't be physically painting just to harass/delay the enemy, so mine probably resemble that of your inkers, except I do it not to paint, but to buy a few seconds to fortify a forward position or stall an enemy advance.

I do love inkstrikers though, as an eliter when they stop to launch it in plain view of me as though I WON'T take the shot. My kills get artificially boosted that way sometimes. :p

Do you think that they are useful even when they don't get on the Tower or take the Rainmaker until the countdown is 20 or less? I don't mean people who will wait for someone to get splatted, following closely behind. When I say they remove themselves from the match until their team is close to winning, that's what I mean. It's as if these people would rather lose a match than let a teammate bring the tower or the Rainmaker to the goal.

Well, in my TC experience no other team mate will get on the tower unless the timer is 20s or less anyway. Not the score/distance countdown. The timer, so I'm not sure I'd be able to differentiate it :p Ultimately I don't care when or how they did it, if they landed the goal while I was unable, if I've already brought the tower forward, they helped in a big way. If they let the enemy land the goal while I was unable to defend, then I'm not so happy.
But I presume they're "camping" near the goal for that very purpose. What you're describing sounds downright pathological. They don't get credit for the win, what do they care who wins it?

Mario-Kart.net, which is now defunct. During the earlier days of Nintendo fan forums, it was actually pretty reasonably popular. It popped up shortly before Mario Kart: Double Dash!! was released and got allsorts of strange visitors.

Serebii is also a Nintendo site run by a British person and gets a lot of British forum usage as a result. It seems to have rubbed off onto PokéBeach too, despite it being American in origin.

Ahh, no, MK wasn't my thing. I loved the SNES original, but then never touched it again until MK Wii and 8. I still have 7...in shrinkwrap. I'm really more of an RPG/Adventure fan versus multiplayer. Splatoon's a first in a looong time that got my attention.

Sounds like you have to buy a lot of games to make up the price difference though. On my first three years owning a Gamecube, I only had 5 games: Super Monkey Ball 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, and Mario Party5. In a way, I'm still like that: I don't buy a lot of games, but I play the heck out of what few games I have.

Probably. My 3DS backlog is immense. I never thought any system would EVER top the SNES as my favorite of all time, but I think the 3DS managed to do just that. Just so many good games, and all of them are huge. Wii U has few games by contrast, but the ones like Splatoon just consume so much time it doesn't matter. SOMEHOW I have to get to XBCX and then Starfox (I can't miss Starfox, I loved the original! And Z:TP:HD - I never played through the Wii one. The motion controls drove me crazy, and I swore when WWHD came out if TP ever came out on Wii U I'd get it!)

PC is just weird now. Everyone buys 50 games for $3 each on the once a year Steam sale - all digital, and I think that's where "cheap" comes from. Hardware's still expensive and still has rapid life cycles. But then, I ended up with more than one 3DS so the costs probably broke even. :p And my right analog on my gamepad just broke so there's a cost (but a full Wii U is still cheaper than a new video card!) But the real killer with PC is the troubleshooting. NOTHING ever works right when you want it to. NOTHING.

My machine is located in a dark garage, so it's hard to get good pictures of it. It looks like every other Jolly Park machine (the 90 other ones that still exist anyhow). Here's the Internet Pinball Database profile for Jolly Park. Or if you prefer, here's a direct link to the front page of the flyer:

That's pretty nice looking....and I love the font! I don't have a specific machine I have an attachment to. I kind of have vague memories of a bunch of machines piecemeal in my head from pizza shops and delis back in the day. Somehow in the arcade I never paid attention to pinball. (What I wouldn't give for the Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid cabinets though!! I don't think many people remember coin-op NES games.)

Looking at the machine though makes me very nostalgic for the old arcade...

 

[PrinceOfKoopas]

@Zombie Aladdin

I will say, there were British people who joined the Nintendo NSider Forums (open to the areas that Nintendo of America operates — so they lied to get in) because whatever European Nintendo presence wasn't good enough or existent.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

What's interesting is that the game DOES connect you with the pacifists in that case though. It would seem like by default you'd be a killer if you have to always cover your pacificts.

Based on the way you play, I am definirely an inker. I will splat if I have to, but I'd rather not. You can't achieve victory with splatting alone. Inking not only drives you to your goal directly, at least in Turf War, but inking also helps you maneuver against opponents better.

That I am the top inker of my team about 75% of the time convinces me that I am of the inking category. Remember that those scared kids playing don't splat opponents, but they don't ink that much either. They'll only stay where they think it's safe, which is surrounded by their own team's ink. Thatmeans they're not really inking that much.

Inkstrikes, hmm, I often play eliter/hydra so inkstrikes usually come down either directly on me, or, more times than not, on my beacons (custom eliter), so they're very much targeted for effect. Often they're at the front lines just inside the base covering an attack. When it's deep inside the base, it's usually a chokepoint that will cause chaos (or a distraction.) I can't say I NEVER see one just inking the base though. When I (rarely) use a weapon that has one, I'll usually just target an area to paint that I know I won't be physically painting just to harass/delay the enemy, so mine probably resemble that of your inkers, except I do it not to paint, but to buy a few seconds to fortify a forward position or stall an enemy advance.

I do love inkstrikers though, as an eliter when they stop to launch it in plain view of me as though I WON'T take the shot. My kills get artificially boosted that way sometimes. :p

I don't mean at the enemy spawn or anything like that (but I do see a lot of those), but rather, something like right in front of it. I use Inkstrikes about half-and-half between distraction/harassment and pure inking, but most of the time, I see other people using Inkstrikes as essentially a free 48p or so from a distance.

Well, in my TC experience no other team mate will get on the tower unless the timer is 20s or less anyway. Not the score/distance countdown. The timer, so I'm not sure I'd be able to differentiate it :p Ultimately I don't care when or how they did it, if they landed the goal while I was unable, if I've already brought the tower forward, they helped in a big way. If they let the enemy land the goal while I was unable to defend, then I'm not so happy.
But I presume they're "camping" near the goal for that very purpose. What you're describing sounds downright pathological. They don't get credit for the win, what do they care who wins it?

Having found such people myself, they're not. They follow behind the Tower or the Rainmaker. If the enemy gets possession of it and it's far from the goal, they'll retreat, but if a teammate has possession, they will follow behind.

By the way, when I mean "countdown," I mean distance.

Ahh, no, MK wasn't my thing. I loved the SNES original, but then never touched it again until MK Wii and 8. I still have 7...in shrinkwrap. I'm really more of an RPG/Adventure fan versus multiplayer. Splatoon's a first in a looong time that got my attention.

All right then. I am a kart racer and Pokémon kind of person. I didn't get into Mario Kart until Mario Kart 64 though, and I had since then become an item specialist. I thought I could do well with E-liters and such in this game, as I can snipe pretty well with Green Shells in all Mario Kart games, but it's different when your target's not going in the same direction as you.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has the ultimate sniping weapon though: It's called "Ice" and consists of three VERY fast but weak shots. I applied my Green Shell sniping skills to that game, and I can even shoot down opponents when we're both in planes. (There is, in fact, an Achievement/Trophy for shooting someone with Ice from a distance of 500 meters or more). SASRT is a game played mainly by people who don't like kart racers because they don't care much about items, and as a result, most players have zero strategy and zero skill with them: They'll use up items as soon as they get them and don't ever bother to aim. It seems when an item specialist like me enters the room, who doesn't drive as well as they can but can shoot them seven or eight times per race, it invokes them to ragequit.

That's pretty nice looking....and I love the font! I don't have a specific machine I have an attachment to. I kind of have vague memories of a bunch of machines piecemeal in my head from pizza shops and delis back in the day. Somehow in the arcade I never paid attention to pinball. (What I wouldn't give for the Super Mario Bros. 3 and Metroid cabinets though!! I don't think many people remember coin-op NES games.)

Looking at the machine though makes me very nostalgic for the old arcade...

They're still being made, by the way. The most recent release, for example, is Game of Thrones.

I didn't know Super Mario Bros. 3 was released for the arcade. I thought it was just the NES. However, in 1992, Gottlieb did release two pinball machines themed on Super Mario: Super Mario Bros: Mushroom World (themed specifically on Super Mario Bros. 3, as it features the Koopalings, the SMB3 worlds, remixed SMB3 music, and the item box roulettes) and another simply called Super Mario Bros. (themed on Super Mario World, using Yoshi, redesigned Koopalings, SMW music, SMW powerups, and a Martinet-esque high-pitched voice for Mario). Both machines are divisive at best among pinball fans, but they are both very hot items for Super Mario collectors and well-liked by those otherwise not into pinball due to their straightforwardness, low difficulty, and dedication to the theme.

At least, I think this machine's really cool.

 

[BlackZero]

PC is just weird now. Everyone buys 50 games for $3 each on the once a year Steam sale - all digital, and I think that's where "cheap" comes from. Hardware's still expensive and still has rapid life cycles.

Computers are cheaper if you aren't buying the absolute top of the line hardware, which you don't actually need to run games anyway. If you want to keep up with next gen games, the GPU is probably the only thing you'll have to replace and you shouldn't spend more than $500 on one ($300 will get you a pretty solid one, and GPUs last about as long as the life of home consoles or longer). SSDs/HDDs, cooling system,s and power supplies can last for a lot longer if you spend money on decent ones when you first put your machine together. There's also no reason to spend money on 16 GB ram unless you want to play demanding game, watch Netflix, and stream You Tube at the same time. 8 GB is enough for modern games. The CPU will probably be the most expensive thing; but again, there's no reason it can't last for a very long time (definitely longer than a home console's lifespan). Granted, it may not be absolute maxed out settings, but you don't need that to enjoy a game.

The real benefit (and cheapness) of PCs comes with mods and UCC. There are two overhaul kits for both FO3 and NV. That means that, after you play through the game as it was made, you can run through it two more times and have a dramatically different experience each time, essentially giving you three fresh playthroughs of the same game. Other mods add new areas, quests, enemies, etc. to radically extend the life of a game without having the same experience each playthrough.

It also opens the door to fan-made games, many of which are actually very good. Sonic World is a fan game that many have said is actually superior to SEGA released Sonic games and may have actually come the closest to building a Sonic game that satisfies the many factions of the Sonic Fanbase. Not all of them are winners, but some of them are.

There's also emulation, which opens up a whole other world of retro gaming which also contains its own modding/romhack scene. There are many Pokemon romhacks that have original stories and mechanics behind them. On top of that, there's the Pokemon Universal Randomizer that changes the starter Pokemon, catch locations, and evolution requirements for roms of the legit games. This means that, if you've got Pokemon Yellow, Gold, or Ruby committed to memory, you can use this to give yourself a completely fresh experience by changing up where pokemon appear, how they evolve, and which ones you start with.

So, PCs may be an investment with regards to hardware, but the value you get for spending money on one is magnitudes beyond what you get for spending money on a console. If you take up modding (which is not difficult at all), you can personalize games to suit your particular tastes. Unless you want the absolute cutting edge hardware in your machine (which you don't actually need), a decent GPU will run you about $200-$400, give you access to an enormous library of games, both new and retro, open up the world of fan games, romhacks, and modding to get more mileage out of games you already enjoy, and you also have a PC to do actual work with.

Don't mean to proselytize, but I don't think many people really appreciate what PCs can offer gamers. A console can't begin to offer what a PC does; so even if hardware can be a bit pricey when you're first building or buying, most of it will last a long time.

Based on the way you play, I am definirely an inker. I will splat if I have to, but I'd rather not. You can't achieve victory with splatting alone. Inking not only drives you to your goal directly, at least in Turf War, but inking also helps you maneuver against opponents better.

Inking Master Race FTW. Inking gives you control over the map in ways that nothing else can. The enemy literally has no where to go.

 

[Award]

Based on the way you play, I am definirely an inker. I will splat if I have to, but I'd rather not. You can't achieve victory with splatting alone. Inking not only drives you to your goal directly, at least in Turf War, but inking also helps you maneuver against opponents better.

That I am the top inker of my team about 75% of the time convinces me that I am of the inking category. Remember that those scared kids playing don't splat opponents, but they don't ink that much either. They'll only stay where they think it's safe, which is surrounded by their own team's ink. Thatmeans they're not really inking that much.

LOL, I kind of switch to whatever needs to be done and whatever the weapon allows. Eliters are just killers through and through. Yeah, some maps can be inked by them, but those maps are few, and generally it's so inefficient to keep covering ink, and worse, a moment you're not on the perch is a moment the enemy can sneak by so there's seldom time to ink. Custom Hydra isn't a great inker but with sprinklers, it CAN be on the right map. I'd rather not have to ink with it on most maps, but sometimes it excells. Carbon - you'd think that was a great inker, and I spend a lot of time inking with it, but rarely am I a top inker with that. Aero, of course, is ink + kills because it's aero. The more I play eliter the less I end up inking though just because that's how the weapon works. I have to play other weapons, even hydra, just to keep the money flowing in TW :)

I can understand the inkers (well TC is really all about the splats - ink is only good for moving and nothing else. Even RM has more value in flanking than TC.) but what I don't get is your scaredysquids. Maybe I have them and don't notice them because I'm not really paying attention to what's going on behind, but generally by their death counts, I assume they were only near spawn because they were spatted.

I don't mean at the enemy spawn or anything like that (but I do see a lot of those), but rather, something like right in front of it. I use Inkstrikes about half-and-half between distraction/harassment and pure inking, but most of the time, I see other people using Inkstrikes as essentially a free 48p or so from a distance.

It's probably hard to discern "free inking" from "good place for distraction" since the maps are relatively small. Or Piranha it's a good way to paint the bottoms while pressuring. I always assume the missed inkstrikes near my sniping perches are just squids with bad screen tapping aim (to be fair it can be hard to get the right spot in a hurry) But it could be that it was never aimed at me and was just inking.

All right then. I am a kart racer and Pokémon kind of person. I didn't get into Mario Kart until Mario Kart 64 though, and I had since then become an item specialist. I thought I could do well with E-liters and such in this game, as I can snipe pretty well with Green Shells in all Mario Kart games, but it's different when your target's not going in the same direction as you.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed has the ultimate sniping weapon though: It's called "Ice" and consists of three VERY fast but weak shots. I applied my Green Shell sniping skills to that game, and I can even shoot down opponents when we're both in planes. (There is, in fact, an Achievement/Trophy for shooting someone with Ice from a distance of 500 meters or more). SASRT is a game played mainly by people who don't like kart racers because they don't care much about items, and as a result, most players have zero strategy and zero skill with them: They'll use up items as soon as they get them and don't ever bother to aim. It seems when an item specialist like me enters the room, who doesn't drive as well as they can but can shoot them seven or eight times per race, it invokes them to ragequit.

For me MK has always been about single player and local multiplayer. I played MK8 online a little, and it was fun, but I never got really addicted to it. I know it's such a beloved game, and #1 in sales, but I guess I've been playing it since, what, 1994? So it doesn't feel "fresh" to me as much as I'd like :) Not that it's not a blast of a game though, I really enjoyed MK8, but I didn't get the DLC map packs and such (Star Road was terrible though...) . SASRT was a blast. I really got it since launch year of Wii U was so barren for good games and was shocked to hear good things about it. It really didn't disappoint and brought back a lot of Sega nostalgia. The items just never felt as tight as MK, but I never really focused on items as much in either game. I was amazed by the map variety in it. Some of them were quite brutal.

I'd never given much thought to "item specialists" and such in the game...I didn't even realize there was an online meta to it until 8!

They're still being made, by the way. The most recent release, for example, is Game of Thrones.

I didn't know Super Mario Bros. 3 was released for the arcade. I thought it was just the NES. However, in 1992, Gottlieb did release two pinball machines themed on Super Mario: Super Mario Bros: Mushroom World (themed specifically on Super Mario Bros. 3, as it features the Koopalings, the SMB3 worlds, remixed SMB3 music, and the item box roulettes) and another simply called Super Mario Bros. (themed on Super Mario World, using Yoshi, redesigned Koopalings, SMW music, SMW powerups, and a Martinet-esque high-pitched voice for Mario). Both machines are divisive at best among pinball fans, but they are both very hot items for Super Mario collectors and well-liked by those otherwise not into pinball due to their straightforwardness, low difficulty, and dedication to the theme.

SMB3 was actually released to the arcade briefly in the US BEFORE it was released on NES. OR at least right about the time of launch. I think it was a promo thing to tie it in with The Wizard unveiling it. I was sooo into Mario at the time, I remember begging to go to Pizza Hut where they had the machine before I could get it for NES. So I got to go, and wasted a bunch of quarters and kept getting killed with the goomba-spawning pipe on the slope of 1-2! :p I think I was both nervous to be playing it on the "big screen" like that, and the controls on the box were a BAD shoehorn. I think it was probably just a DK machine repainted. So it had the big clunky joystick and the big round buttons. But I'll always remember playing Mario 3 in a Pizza chain before ANYONE ELSE could play it! :D

 

[Award]

Computers are cheaper if you aren't buying the absolute top of the line hardware, which you don't actually need to run games anyway. If you want to keep up with next gen games, the GPU is probably the only thing you'll have to replace and you shouldn't spend more than $500 on one ($300 will get you a pretty solid one, and GPUs last about as long as the life of home consoles or longer). SSDs/HDDs, cooling system,s and power supplies can last for a lot longer if you spend money on decent ones when you first put your machine together. There's also no reason to spend money on 16 GB ram unless you want to play demanding game, watch Netflix, and stream You Tube at the same time. 8 GB is enough for modern games. The CPU will probably be the most expensive thing; but again, there's no reason it can't last for a very long time (definitely longer than a home console's lifespan). Granted, it may not be absolute maxed out settings, but you don't need that to enjoy a game.

The real benefit (and cheapness) of PCs comes with mods and UCC. There are two overhaul kits for both FO3 and NV. That means that, after you play through the game as it was made, you can run through it two more times and have a dramatically different experience each time, essentially giving you three fresh playthroughs of the same game. Other mods add new areas, quests, enemies, etc. to radically extend the life of a game without having the same experience each playthrough.

It also opens the door to fan-made games, many of which are actually very good. Sonic World is a fan game that many have said is actually superior to SEGA released Sonic games and may have actually come the closest to building a Sonic game that satisfies the many factions of the Sonic Fanbase. Not all of them are winners, but some of them are.

There's also emulation, which opens up a whole other world of retro gaming which also contains its own modding/romhack scene. There are many Pokemon romhacks that have original stories and mechanics behind them. On top of that, there's the Pokemon Universal Randomizer that changes the starter Pokemon, catch locations, and evolution requirements for roms of the legit games. This means that, if you've got Pokemon Yellow, Gold, or Ruby committed to memory, you can use this to give yourself a completely fresh experience by changing up where pokemon appear, how they evolve, and which ones you start with.

So, PCs may be an investment with regards to hardware, but the value you get for spending money on one is magnitudes beyond what you get for spending money on a console. If you take up modding (which is not difficult at all), you can personalize games to suit your particular tastes. Unless you want the absolute cutting edge hardware in your machine (which you don't actually need), a decent GPU will run you about $200-$400, give you access to an enormous library of games, both new and retro, open up the world of fan games, romhacks, and modding to get more mileage out of games you already enjoy, and you also have a PC to do actual work with.

Don't mean to proselytize, but I don't think many people really appreciate what PCs can offer gamers. A console can't begin to offer what a PC does; so even if hardware can be a bit pricey when you're first building or buying, most of it will last a long time.



Inking Master Race FTW. Inking gives you control over the map in ways that nothing else can. The enemy literally has no where to go.

Well, again, back in the era of the late 90's early 2000's it wasn't so simple. A new game would come out that needed the latest DirectX, and a new GPU was needed to run the latest DX, but then your old GPU was AGP/AGPPro/AGP2/PCIe and the new ones were AGP2/PCIe/PCIe2, so you then needed a new mobo, and then that's all new architecture so a new CPU too, and then well the OS won't cleanly transfer to the new board without issues, so you might as well get new HDDs too, and of course a new PSU will be needed to power it all. So then you're down to everything. And this would happen every 18-24 months. It's possible that today's market is different now that it's more stable, but going through that era and the constant "now I'm set for a while....wait, now I have to start over from scratch" turns you off it forever. And if you don't remember broken win95/win98 drivers you haven't lived. I'm talking "oh, nvidia has an update. Oh shoot, now the PC won't boot and the registry is corrupt - time to reinstall Windows. And all drivers in sequence. From discs. AGAIN." It got old. Losing entire days to redoing everything again got old. PC gamers today got used to an era where Windows drivers are NOT highly likely to render the OS unbootable, where every few years doesn't change the version of DX which requires a new GPU, and annual complete architecture overhauls that require all new architecture for every new GPU. But the dark days leave a lasting impression. If your PC vocabulary doesn't include the letters "AGP" and you don't remember the "leaf blower" (or "dustbuster" if you prefer) GeForce FX series your wallet (and ears) doesn't know what being a PC gamer is. :p

And I've found that you can't really spend your way to reliability. The last machine I built was 5 or so years ago. All absolute top tier top grade hardware. The machine doesn't even get much use since I went mostly console....very little in fact. It ate through TWO GPUs (doing what, sitting idle??) one of which was from an era where it was almost a given they were all going to fail due to known defects with the silicon. Recently the PSU went in a weird way (top tier modular PSU, Active PFC, the whole works.) It lost 2 HDDs. I wouldn't bank on reliability for any price point. And it's worth noting that the $300 pretty decent GPU still costs as much as a WiiU ALONE.

But it depends, there's lots of people I've known that have never had much in the way of failures with it. For me, it fails just sitting on the desk. Bad luck, but very expensive, frequent bad luck.

But beyond cost it's the time thing. Fidgeting and fussing with everything to get it to work right, or with mods to get it set up right etc. I spend enough time at the keyboard every single day with problems - I don't want that to be my entertainment time too. And that's what it would become. For me the "fan made game/mod" scene just isn't my cup of tea. I had my fun with it long ago - I'm looking for polished products now. I can see what's popular about it, but it's definitely it's own thing. And IMO you need a whooole lot of free time to really appreciate that scene. And there's something somewhat sad about where the mod scene has gone where studios rely on the customers to provide the rest of the product for free. Back in the day mods were about adding modes and such, rule changes, not complete map/texture/model packs.)

I went from console, to "PC master race" for a good 10 years (and 4-5 systems), then back to console not out of ignorance, but out of measured choice and tons of experience with both.

I will admit that awful era had some amazing games that will never be duplicated on console, but that was PC's golden age, and those games just don't get made anymore.

 

[BlackZero]

Well, again, back in the era of the late 90's early 2000's it wasn't so simple. A new game would come out that needed the latest DirectX, and a new GPU was needed to run the latest DX, but then your old GPU was AGP/AGPPro/AGP2/PCIe and the new ones were AGP2/PCIe/PCIe2, so you then needed a new mobo, and then that's all new architecture so a new CPU too, and then well the OS won't cleanly transfer to the new board without issues, so you might as well get new HDDs too, and of course a new PSU will be needed to power it all. So then you're down to everything. And this would happen every 18-24 months. It's possible that today's market is different now that it's more stable, but going through that era and the constant "now I'm set for a while....wait, now I have to start over from scratch" turns you off it forever. And if you don't remember broken win95/win98 drivers you haven't lived. I'm talking "oh, nvidia has an update. Oh shoot, now the PC won't boot and the registry is corrupt - time to reinstall Windows. And all drivers in sequence. From discs. AGAIN." It got old. Losing entire days to redoing everything again got old. PC gamers today got used to an era where Windows drivers are NOT highly likely to render the OS unbootable, where every few years doesn't change the version of DX which requires a new GPU, and annual complete architecture overhauls that require all new architecture for every new GPU. But the dark days leave a lasting impression. If your PC vocabulary doesn't include the letters "AGP" and you don't remember the "leaf blower" (or "dustbuster" if you prefer) GeForce FX series your wallet (and ears) doesn't know what being a PC gamer is. :p

Doing anything on Windows 3.1 or 95 was a project in and of itself. Then again, that's also probably why so many people of our generation are tech savvy: you had to learn how to deal with this stuff and you're parents sure as **** couldn't fix it. Well, some could but mine couldn't. Still, a lot of things have changed in the past 15 years. Most of these things aren't an issue anymore now that things have become more universal and industry standard. You can't use PC problems from a time when household computers were still someone young and untested as a reason to avoid PCs now.

But beyond cost it's the time thing. Fidgeting and fussing with everything to get it to work right, or with mods to get it set up right etc. I spend enough time at the keyboard every single day with problems - I don't want that to be my entertainment time too. And that's what it would become. For me the "fan made game/mod" scene just isn't my cup of tea. I had my fun with it long ago - I'm looking for polished products now. I can see what's popular about it, but it's definitely it's own thing. And IMO you need a whooole lot of free time to really appreciate that scene. And there's something somewhat sad about where the mod scene has gone where studios rely on the customers to provide the rest of the product for free. Back in the day mods were about adding modes and such, rule changes, not complete map/texture/model packs.)

Modding has come a long way in 15 years. Steam and Nexus have done a lot to make mods very easy to "plug & play." Of course, I still recommend people learn how to install mods the more tedious way so that they aren't completely lost if things don't work right, but the modding scene has made great strides towards making mods more accessible to those who are just starting out. Such people shouldn't mess with more advanced mods that require backyard mechanicking to run, but there's a ton of resources out there for people who are interested in taking that step. At the end of the day, you can always wipe the slate clean and start over with a new install.

Personally, I'm fine with things that are a little rough around the edges so long as the game is fun. Considering that a lot of people make these in their spare time without actual investors to give them funding, it's really very impressive what they're capable of. Sonic Worlds could almost be a legit release.

 

[Award]

Doing anything on Windows 3.1 or 95 was a project in and of itself. Then again, that's also probably why so many people of our generation are tech savvy: you had to learn how to deal with this stuff and you're parents sure as **** couldn't fix it. Well, some could but mine couldn't. Still, a lot of things have changed in the past 15 years. Most of these things aren't an issue anymore now that things have become more universal and industry standard. You can't use PC problems from a time when household computers were still someone young and untested as a reason to avoid PCs now.

LOL, all true, though if there's one thing that remains industry standard it's that there remains no industry standard. And guaranteed, said standard well change again in 4 years. I'm kind of amazed that PCIe2 has been static for so long. That's the first length of time I can recall at all where the entire bus architecture wasn't deleted and rewritten. Which of course means that will change soon. Drivers may not be a guaranteed bust anymore, but you never shake the stress of the screen flicking black and never coming back to life after you've dealt with it enough times.

There's also the focus on digital distribution on PC. I hate digital. I want my physical media (granted I own Splatoon BOTH physical AND digital, but that's neither here nor there ;)) Splatoon isn't an 80gig download.

Modding has come a long way in 15 years. Steam and Nexus have done a lot to make mods very easy to "plug & play." Of course, I still recommend people learn how to install mods the more tedious way so that they aren't completely lost if things don't work right, but the modding scene has made great strides towards making mods more accessible to those who are just starting out. Such people shouldn't mess with more advanced mods that require backyard mechanicking to run, but there's a ton of resources out there for people who are interested in taking that step. At the end of the day, you can always wipe the slate clean and start over with a new install.

I think "if things don't work out right" is the key phrase that embodies all I hate about gaming on PCs. I want "It can't not work out right."

Personally, I'm fine with things that are a little rough around the edges so long as the game is fun. Considering that a lot of people make these in their spare time without actual investors to give them funding, it's really very impressive what they're capable of. Sonic Worlds could almost be a legit release.

Yeah I don't want to waste time trying alphas and betas of things that will never be finished, and always incomplete. That's why I don't buy Bethesda games anymore either. ;) It may be impressive, but it's still a garage project - who has time to play with people's garage projects? Or patience?

Sonic, well it wouldn't take much to seem like a legit release given the "rough around the edges" (to put it mildly) state of most Sonic games for the past 15 years, except Generations, which was only good because it WAS the 20+ year old games.

 

[BlackZero]

I think "if things don't work out right" is the key phrase that embodies all I hate about gaming on PCs. I want "It can't not work out right."

That's still entirely possible with consoles. Have you forgotten the RRoD epidemic the 360 went through? Or perhaps the disk read errors the Wii had when reading the dual layered disk for SSBB? PC gaming has become far more stable and reliable. There's always a chance things won't work properly in any gaming field. I had a copy of Assassin's Creed II for 360 that was bugged to hell and back. I ran in to just about every crash and softlock in that game, while other people I knew didn't have a problem. Consoles aren't immune to software or hardware failures either.

Yeah I don't want to waste time trying alphas and betas of things that will never be finished, and always incomplete. That's why I don't buy Bethesda games anymore either. ;) It may be impressive, but it's still a garage project - who has time to play with people's garage projects? Or patience?

Despite complaining about all the bugs, I honestly enjoyed FO3, NV, and Skyrim. I still do enjoy them. The only requirement I have for a game is whether or not it keeps me amused. I love the old school RE games, for example. They have campy voice acting, a ridiculous plot, and dated graphics. On top of that, You can beat the games in a few hours. I still get a kick out of playing them, and am ecstatic that the HD remake of my favorite RE (RE0) finally came out. Granted, I think actual software dev companies should be held to a higher standard, but I have a high tolerance for errors in indy and fan projects. If you pass up a game just because it isn't made by a major developer or isn't perfectly refined, you're missing out on a lot of hidden gems. The original Star Wars Battlefront was very amateurish for a shooter at that time (graphics weren't great, tons of graphics and audio glitches, very limited game modes and repetitive story mode battles), yet I had more fun with it than any other shooter I owned.

 

[Award]

That's still entirely possible with consoles. Have you forgotten the RRoD epidemic the 360 went through? Or perhaps the disk read errors the Wii had when reading the dual layered disk for SSBB? PC gaming has become far more stable and reliable. There's always a chance things won't work properly in any gaming field. I had a copy of Assassin's Creed II for 360 that was bugged to hell and back. I ran in to just about every crash and softlock in that game, while other people I knew didn't have a problem. Consoles aren't immune to software or hardware failures either.

LOL, well the RRoD was a horrible horrible issue stemming from Microsoft getting the new lead-free solder issue very wrong AND choosing a surface mount CPU soldered at too cool a temperature. But it's Microsoft....I expect that from them. Seriously, who ever thought it was a good idea to buy a Microsoft console? Other than the whole 600 people in Japan that bought one or so :p (I kid, I kid, I have a 360, but waited until after the RRoD fix.) PS3 had YLOD, yeah stuff goes wrong. But these issues are a single hardware unit that goes wrong - it either works right or doesn't, and the whole kit costs less than just the GPU for a PC. I've spent so much time troubleshooting issues on that last PC. I spent 3 months up till 4:00am trying to figure out why it was randomly freezing - not test revealed the issue. Eventually I replaced the GPU and it worked after trying almost EVERYTHING and having no consistent results. Then later it spent a year on and off randomly powering down randomly. Turned out to be a bad PSU ,ultimately. But that's a weird way for that to happen (and as it turns out there's a lot of complaints about that across a lot of PSUs.) The hassle is just awful. But again, other people never have the terrible luck I've had. I tried buying cheap. blamed that, went to buy flagship, same problems. I just have awful luck I guess.

Wii U froze all the time when I first got it as well, had to pull the power. THough that was software the "stability updates" eventually did make it stable! They'd better get the firmware right on NX rather than that ridiculous 1.5gb patch on day one. Wii U had.

Anything Ubisoft is expected to be buggy. ACII fared better than most of their trash, and it's not Bethesda bad, but still.

espite complaining about all the bugs, I honestly enjoyed FO3, NV, and Skyrim. I still do enjoy them. The only requirement I have for a game is whether or not it keeps me amused. I love the old school RE games, for example. They have campy voice acting, a ridiculous plot, and dated graphics. On top of that, You can beat the games in a few hours. I still get a kick out of playing them, and am ecstatic that the HD remake of my favorite RE (RE0) finally came out. Granted, I think actual software dev companies should be held to a higher standard, but I have a high tolerance for errors in indy and fan projects.

Bethesda is shameful. I mean they've always been kind of buggy but back in the day they were a distant third tier publisher. You didn't hold them to the standards you'd hold Activision or EA because they were kind of low budget. Even back with Morrowind, they were always on a shoestring. Now they do E3 conventions in the Microsoft Theater. They need to get their act together. Fast.

FO3...I couldn't even tolerate it. I was a Morrowind fan, I was a huge Oblivion fan. I was a huge Fallout/2 fan. I loved those games. FO3 was simply not Fallout. It was not Fallout 2. They missed the whole point. Fallout was never about the apocalypse, it was about the pools of civilization rebuilding afterward and a huge tongue in cheek jab at 1950's Cold War culture . It was SATIRE. Fallout3 went hard the other way. It was about the dreary depressive world of an apocalypse. And the map design was AWFUL. And the humor and satire was all but absent. It spat on everything that made the first two good, and I'll never forgive them for the disgrace to Black Isles legacy. I know NV was made by Obsidian who is made mostly of key people from Black Isle, but it still didn't have Chris Taylor who was really the guiding force behind it. Kind of like how Quake 2 was nothing like Quake 1 because Romero left and Carmack wanted his sci-fi game.

Skyrim. Ugh. As someone who LOVED Oblivion, I'll never understand the popularity of Skyrim. It took all the wrong lessons from Oblivion and created a huge empty world with little to do, but kept the awful controls and plasticine faces of it's predecessor. I haven't started XCX yet (curse you, Splatoon addiction!), but I'm hoping it's everything Skyrim was not. Here's to hoping the next TES game is better.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Computers are cheaper if you aren't buying the absolute top of the line hardware, which you don't actually need to run games anyway. If you want to keep up with next gen games, the GPU is probably the only thing you'll have to replace and you shouldn't spend more than $500 on one ($300 will get you a pretty solid one, and GPUs last about as long as the life of home consoles or longer). SSDs/HDDs, cooling system,s and power supplies can last for a lot longer if you spend money on decent ones when you first put your machine together. There's also no reason to spend money on 16 GB ram unless you want to play demanding game, watch Netflix, and stream You Tube at the same time. 8 GB is enough for modern games. The CPU will probably be the most expensive thing; but again, there's no reason it can't last for a very long time (definitely longer than a home console's lifespan). Granted, it may not be absolute maxed out settings, but you don't need that to enjoy a game.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of poorly-programmed ads online (including this very site) that can slow your computer down to a snail's pace, no matter how fast it is. I always wonder how fast the computers are for the people who make these ads if they see no problem in it.

If it concerns you (and personally, I think it should), you should also watch for suppliers who use conflict minerals. Currently, Sony and Microsoft have made statements to wean off of conflict minerals suppliers (Nintendo has not said anything about the issue and has ignored any outside groups asking about it). Conflict minerals are raw goods supplied from countries in civil war (and sometimes other kinds of war). One side in the war (or sometimes both sides) will seize local and other 3rd-party mines and force the miners to give them the minerals, often at gunpoint, so they can sell them to large companies. Essentially, these minerals are funding violence in a similar way to how drugs fund gangs. Right now, the biggest issue is tantalum, which is necessary for CPUs, and every major supplier of CPUs is currently getting tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is having exactly this issue from within. Tantalum is also fifteen times rarer than gold, so other sources are very hard to find. There are major deposits in Australia too, but those are more expensive.

LOL, I kind of switch to whatever needs to be done and whatever the weapon allows. Eliters are just killers through and through. Yeah, some maps can be inked by them, but those maps are few, and generally it's so inefficient to keep covering ink, and worse, a moment you're not on the perch is a moment the enemy can sneak by so there's seldom time to ink. Custom Hydra isn't a great inker but with sprinklers, it CAN be on the right map. I'd rather not have to ink with it on most maps, but sometimes it excells. Carbon - you'd think that was a great inker, and I spend a lot of time inking with it, but rarely am I a top inker with that. Aero, of course, is ink + kills because it's aero. The more I play eliter the less I end up inking though just because that's how the weapon works. I have to play other weapons, even hydra, just to keep the money flowing in TW :)

The E-liter can definitely be used to ink. Its insane range means you can ink areas without even being in that area. I mentioned I use chargers to ink in stages like Kelp Dome and Blackbelly Skatepark. That being said, I am rarely the top inker when I'm using a charger or a Hydra Splatling.

Needless to say, when I'm teamed up with people too scared to venture too far, coming in with a charger is useless. They depend on me to create space to move, and that simply cannot be done with a charger. They're too slow and the area they ink is too narrow. Usually, what they'll do is fill in areas behind me, but it also means I am going to have to deal with the opponents all by myself.

I can understand the inkers (well TC is really all about the splats - ink is only good for moving and nothing else. Even RM has more value in flanking than TC.) but what I don't get is your scaredysquids. Maybe I have them and don't notice them because I'm not really paying attention to what's going on behind, but generally by their death counts, I assume they were only near spawn because they were spatted.

I actually never noticed them either until I chose Team Planes for the Cars vs. Planes Splatfest. When I had terrible losing streaks, I decided to look atmy map more often to see what was going on, as well as traveling by my teammates to see what they're doing after I got splatted. That's when I noticed these Inklings looking at their feet shooting at little uninked areas. It REALLY didn't come to the forefront until a match in Kelp Dome where I saw someone use a Carbon Roller coming from behind me. He went all the way up to the border line between our ink and enemy ink, and immediately turned back around.

Since then, I've kept finding these people, and I had to give some thought about why they behave in that way.

It's probably hard to discern "free inking" from "good place for distraction" since the maps are relatively small. Or Piranha it's a good way to paint the bottoms while pressuring. I always assume the missed inkstrikes near my sniping perches are just squids with bad screen tapping aim (to be fair it can be hard to get the right spot in a hurry) But it could be that it was never aimed at me and was just inking.

Most commonly, I see Inkstrikes aimed dead-center in enemy ink. That is, most matches will have the near side covered in our team's ink and the far side in the opponent's ink. They look at the enemy ink side and aim the Inkstrike where as much of it will land on enemy ink as possible. To that end, that's why I think the predominant use of Inkstrike is free territory.

For me MK has always been about single player and local multiplayer. I played MK8 online a little, and it was fun, but I never got really addicted to it. I know it's such a beloved game, and #1 in sales, but I guess I've been playing it since, what, 1994? So it doesn't feel "fresh" to me as much as I'd like :) Not that it's not a blast of a game though, I really enjoyed MK8, but I didn't get the DLC map packs and such (Star Road was terrible though...) . SASRT was a blast. I really got it since launch year of Wii U was so barren for good games and was shocked to hear good things about it. It really didn't disappoint and brought back a lot of Sega nostalgia. The items just never felt as tight as MK, but I never really focused on items as much in either game. I was amazed by the map variety in it. Some of them were quite brutal.

I'd never given much thought to "item specialists" and such in the game...I didn't even realize there was an online meta to it until 8!

Most people are not item specialists in Mario Kart. They do at least hold on to their items and try to use it where it's most useful, which is more than I can say for SASRT, where most players just use their items as soon as they get them with no regard for if it's actually useful or not. Sounds like you've played SASRT. You probably know, then, that smart item usage is essential to finishing the single-player mode, and it is pretty much designed as an items tutorial. Considering that, it's weird to see people throw it all away when they're playing it online. I even wrote a detailed guide for using items on the SEGA Forums, which went mostly ignored. It seems the people playing SASRT do not understand items and do not want to understand them. The fact that hitting them repeatedly with items causes a lot of them to ragequit says a lot. (Some of them tell me they play SASRT to escape Mario Kart's item-related carnage, so I assume they run away because I put the item-related carnage back into their races.)

All in all, the items system is a seriously flawed one, but the intent is there: It's supposed to reward skilled and strategic item usage, and its usefulness is limited to close races. The biggest problem is that someone who falls far behind or pulls far ahead will stay that way. Little attempt is made to make races more even, which is the intent of items in Mario Kart 7 and Mario Kart 8.

SMB3 was actually released to the arcade briefly in the US BEFORE it was released on NES. OR at least right about the time of launch. I think it was a promo thing to tie it in with The Wizard unveiling it. I was sooo into Mario at the time, I remember begging to go to Pizza Hut where they had the machine before I could get it for NES. So I got to go, and wasted a bunch of quarters and kept getting killed with the goomba-spawning pipe on the slope of 1-2! :p I think I was both nervous to be playing it on the "big screen" like that, and the controls on the box were a BAD shoehorn. I think it was probably just a DK machine repainted. So it had the big clunky joystick and the big round buttons. But I'll always remember playing Mario 3 in a Pizza chain before ANYONE ELSE could play it! :D

Interesting. I know very little about the arcade scene before I got into pinball, as my father never liked me hanging out at arcades. It's not because of the people who hang out there, but that he never saw the appeal in playing games. He just told me to watch other people play and figured it was just as good. At most, he'd give me four quarters and expected it to last the full two hours or so.

On a related note, pinball had just recently come out of the "public beta" phase as well: A lot of releases between 2006 and mid-2015 had unfinished code, which caused the games to feel somewhere between incomplete (Batman: The Dark Knight, Metallica) to near-unplayable (WWE Wrestlemania, The Walking Dead). Star Trek was literally unwinnable because nothing was programmed in past a certain point until several months later. What it took was a #WheresTheCode which went viral in a matter of weeks, and the next releases, Whoa Nellie! Big Juicy Melons, Full Throttle, and Game of Thrones, released more or less complete, the only things needing changes later on being balance patches and bug fixes.