Only one ranked mode is available at a time

[missingno]

No regional matchmaking was stupid enough, but now entire game modes get taken offline at a time? What the hell is this? Why is Nintendo insistent on dictating what and when I can and can't play? Why can't we have some goddamn choices?

When I play TF2, I pretty much exclusively play Payload. It's my favorite mode by far, so I like going to servers where I can just keep playing that over and over. Needless to say I've been looking forward to Tower Control since the beginning. By now I'm kind of bored of the other modes, I wanna just keep playing Tower Control now that I finally can. But apparently I can't, because it's only going to be available some of the time and not others.

What's even more ridiculous is that I've actually heard people try to defend this and the lack of regional matchmaking by saying it's necessary in order to keep queues short. Really, you're telling me a game that sold over a million copies can only handle two distinct queues? And if they're that overzealous trying to keep queues as short as possible, why'd they even bother adding the gamepad minigames to play while you wait? I don't see the big deal in waiting a minute, certainly better than waiting four hours.

And is this even going to shorten queue times anyway? You're not going to increase the pool of players by forcing me into the modes I don't want to play, all that's going to do is make me put the game down and not play at all until the mode I want is back.

 

[Twinkie]

After playing Tower Control for an hour, I really don't like it. Which is strange because I exclusively played Payload on TF2 and LOVED it back when I was playing it.

Knowing Nintendo this is going to be up all week till Splatfest. Which is fine for those who enjoy the game mode, but I think I would rather save it for Splat Zones. They better allow us to have a choice on what we want to play. Otherwise this is just horrible game design by not allowing us to pick.

 

[StayPuft]

It is very surprising to me that you cannot pick what gamemode you want to play in ranked. I suppose the ultimate reason is because they want to keep queues short and sweet, to keep you playing constantly; another argument could be that they want to force a variety on players, most likely forcing weapons to be used that might get ignored otherwise.

The amount of stuff that is restricted based on what Nintendo wants us to play and when we can play it has sort of irked me ever since they announced details in the Splatoon direct. It hasn't really detracted too much enjoyment from the game for me, but it makes me wonder if Nintendo is worried the game won't last as long unless they have a good deal of control over things.

 

[DonkaFjord]

Interesting. I was worried that tower defense would divide the ranked players up (ranked has a noticeably longer matchmaking queue than turf wars because fewer players and longer matches,) but this wasn't how I expected them to deal with it. The entire game seems designed with the focus on not letting the online community die out with the on disc 'dlc' and now this. Not terribly disappointed, but it may be irritating if I start disliking a mode that is on when I play.

 

[Vexen]

Kind of disappointing that i can't choose between the two modes. maybe with custom lobbies you can chose. Don't know if i like this though, especially if I just end up struggling on a few maps just like i do on splatzone

 

[Litagano Motscoud]

Nintendo. I love them, they make great games, but goddamn, they make some really ****ing weird decisions.

 

[Marraphy]

I posted this on the splatoon reddit and i'll share it here as well:

I can definitely see this getting a ton of disappointment. My skype group was arguing over this for an hour, lol. We tried to put ourselves in the developers' shoes though, and tried to understand the reasoning behind this. The reason we came up with makes sense, I think:

Splatoon sold around 1.1 mil; really good for a new game, but not great in terms of competitive shooters. At any given time, of that 1.1 mil, let's say.. 10%-30% are online and playing at any given time? (not counting spike days, such as when a new map / weapon / mode is released, or Splatfest. This might be a low estimate, but I think it's fair - not everyone who has the game is constantly playing it) So, let's say 20% of the players are currently playing the game. That's ~22,000 players. Now, all of this is just guesses guesses and more guesses, but stay with me just for the sake of my point. Some players MIGHT be playing single player mode, or local multiplayer, or just shopping / messing around in the plaza. I'll say that's maybe only 5% of the current players. So for this scenario there are ~20k players battling online. Let's assume that half are playing turf war and half are playing ranked, so that means there's about 10k players in the two separate modes right now. In Ranked, the game tries to match you up with people based on your rank, so ideally there would be separate lobbies for C-, C, C+, B-, B, B+, A-, A, and A+, which is 9 different categories. I would divide the 10k players into 9 different groups, BUT the game DOES make exceptions and pairs other ranks together in order to facilitate matchmaking, so instead of dividing 10k by 9, I'll be generous and divide it by 3. So, generally speaking, the 10k players who are playing ranked are split into roughly three 3.3k groups* (though ideally the game wants there to be 9 groups).

*GRANTED, there are probably more C players than B and A players, and more B players than A players, but this way the math will be neater

Summarizing up to this point, of our ~22k players currently playing splatoon:

~2k in single player / local multi / shopping / in plaza reading memes
~10k playing turf war
~10k playing ranked:

~3.3k C- to C+
~3.3k B- to B+
~3.3k A- to A+​

If ranked let you choose your mode of play, the groups of players in ranked would be divided by 2, assuming the same amount of people prefer tower control to splat zone:

Splat Zone:
~1.6k C- to C+
~1.6k B- to B+
~1.6k A- to A+
Tower Control:
~1.6k C- to C+
~1.6k B- to B+
~1.6k A- to A+

And then with Rainmaker's addition it would be more like ~1,000 in each. Even less than that for A-ranked players.

"1,000 players playing the same mode at any given time? That sounds like it'd STILL be easy to find a match." It does SOUND like a lot, but consider: of those 1,000 people playing, many of them are likely /already in a 5 minute match/ or otherwise have a complete lobby. Unless a lobby frees up, you might have to wait ~5 minutes for a match, possibly longer. (Or, hopefully this wouldn't have to happen, but you might join a lobby before someone who was /already in it last match/ could join it again, and now THEY have to wait, and then someone takes YOUR spot the next match, etc).

I might have done some bad math, or made really bad assumptions, who knows, but I think this was the developers' intent with this design choice - to not split the playerbase and keep matchmaking times short. I mean, I do wish you could just choose. I think the developers wanted to do that too, honestly, but when they thought of it this way they took the more conservative route.

Edit: Looking over the reddit thread for this I think Alecat was thinking along the same lines but said it better!

Then it'll be four queues when we get rainmaker.

And within each queue the game makes an attempt to match up players of roughly the same rank, so potentially as bad as 1/36th of the playerbase.

If we get regional matchmaking like many people want, population of each region will be approx 300k.

So for each game mode, you'll have at best between 8 and 9k players that you'll be matched up against, and that's assuming that everyone in your region who bought the game is playing at once.

Come August there will be private lobbies, dunno what % of the population will be drained by that.

While 9000 players can support over 1000 games, there need to be enough rooms with vacancies for new players to be able to consistently join games. Nintendo are rightly hesitant that they're going to end up with people queuing with no game to find. (Come 2am on a weeknight it already becomes a noticably long wait to find a full lobby). I think this is a contributing factor to why custom lobbies were left out until post-launch. (Though I also suspect that they weren't complete when the discs went to print).

The solution? Tell all your friends to play Splatoon! If there are enough people playing that random matchmaking has lots of players at any one time, we might get these options opened up to us.

 

[missingno]

Unless a lobby frees up, you might have to wait ~5 minutes for a match, possibly longer.

I'm okay with that. Better than waiting 4 hours, or 8 when Rainmaker is added. Like, isn't this the whole reason why they added Squid Jump anyway?

 

[Litagano Motscoud]

I posted this on the splatoon reddit and i'll share it here as well:

I can definitely see this getting a ton of disappointment. My skype group was arguing over this for an hour, lol. We tried to put ourselves in the developers' shoes though, and tried to understand the reasoning behind this. The reason we came up with makes sense, I think:

Splatoon sold around 1.1 mil; really good for a new game, but not great in terms of competitive shooters. At any given time, of that 1.1 mil, let's say.. 10%-30% are online and playing at any given time? (not counting spike days, such as when a new map / weapon / mode is released, or Splatfest. This might be a low estimate, but I think it's fair - not everyone who has the game is constantly playing it) So, let's say 20% of the players are currently playing the game. That's ~22,000 players. Now, all of this is just guesses guesses and more guesses, but stay with me just for the sake of my point. Some players MIGHT be playing single player mode, or local multiplayer, or just shopping / messing around in the plaza. I'll say that's maybe only 5% of the current players. So for this scenario there are ~20k players battling online. Let's assume that half are playing turf war and half are playing ranked, so that means there's about 10k players in the two separate modes right now. In Ranked, the game tries to match you up with people based on your rank, so ideally there would be separate lobbies for C-, C, C+, B-, B, B+, A-, A, and A+, which is 9 different categories. I would divide the 10k players into 9 different groups, BUT the game DOES make exceptions and pairs other ranks together in order to facilitate matchmaking, so instead of dividing 10k by 9, I'll be generous and divide it by 3. So, generally speaking, the 10k players who are playing ranked are split into roughly three 3.3k groups* (though ideally the game wants there to be 9 groups).

*GRANTED, there are probably more C players than B and A players, and more B players than A players, but this way the math will be neater

Summarizing up to this point, of our ~22k players currently playing splatoon:

~2k in single player / local multi / shopping / in plaza reading memes
~10k playing turf war
~10k playing ranked:

~3.3k C- to C+
~3.3k B- to B+
~3.3k A- to A+​

If ranked let you choose your mode of play, the groups of players in ranked would be divided by 2, assuming the same amount of people prefer tower control to splat zone:

Splat Zone:
~1.6k C- to C+
~1.6k B- to B+
~1.6k A- to A+
Tower Control:
~1.6k C- to C+
~1.6k B- to B+
~1.6k A- to A+

And then with Rainmaker's addition it would be more like ~1,000 in each. Even less than that for A-ranked players.

"1,000 players playing the same mode at any given time? That sounds like it'd STILL be easy to find a match." It does SOUND like a lot, but consider: of those 1,000 people playing, many of them are likely /already in a 5 minute match/ or otherwise have a complete lobby. Unless a lobby frees up, you might have to wait ~5 minutes for a match, possibly longer. (Or, hopefully this wouldn't have to happen, but you might join a lobby before someone who was /already in it last match/ could join it again, and now THEY have to wait, and then someone takes YOUR spot the next match, etc).

I might have done some bad math, or made really bad assumptions, who knows, but I think this was the developers' intent with this design choice - to not split the playerbase and keep matchmaking times short. I mean, I do wish you could just choose. I think the developers wanted to do that too, honestly, but when they thought of it this way they took the more conservative route.

That could be true, but I honestly wouldn't mind having slightly longer wait times if it means I can choose what gamemode I'd like to play at the time. The playerbase can only get larger. I'm usually doing something else during waiting times anyway.

 

[Marraphy]

That could be true, but I honestly wouldn't mind having slightly longer wait times if it means I can choose what gamemode I'd like to play at the time. The playerbase can only get larger. I'm usually doing something else during waiting times anyway.

I can kind of agree there, I'm not usually in a hurry to start a game especially if I'm trying to chat with friends in between matches or something. Though sometimes i do find it a little dumb when someone leaves the lobby and there's a wait for it to be full when I didn't have something else to do.

Personally, I'd probably take choosing between splat zones or tower control over having a little more wait time, but I'm sure there'd be a point when the modes are so split up (multiple ranked modes, private lobbies, etc) and the waiting would just get a little ridiculous. I can see Nintendo not wanting new players to purchase the game and then be like "...what's with these waiting times??"

 

[sammich]

this is annoying. there are so many things we can't choose in this game, like weapon subs/specials (which admittedly i can understand somewhat -- it's easier to balance), what team our friends are on, what stages we can go to, and our fashion (since main abilities are permanent)...

come on! smash bros has 7 "with anyone" lobbies on wii u (and 5 on 3DS) to choose from and it works fine. it's not like splatoon has poor sales...

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

I find this really irritating. Splat Zones is my favorite mode, but Nintendo is saying I can only play it when they say I can? This is ridiculous! Lack of choice and options are the main problems with Splatoon. I don't understand how games like Mario Kart and Smash Bros can get it right, but Splatoon can't. If Ranked Battles seriously stay in this condition where you can only play certain modes depending on what the game wants you to play, I don't know how much more of this game I will be playing....

 

[MagnaX7]

Let's be honest here. Who's actually going to binge-play for four hours at a time? Yes, it's kind of annoying if you have a specific favorite game mode, but a choose yourself system would cause difficulties.

For instance, if we were to use a voting system like Kart 8 for maps, then the majority would always pick one map, which is why Splatoon doesn't do it to keep making you use different strategies.
If we were to give players the choice of what Ranked mode we would play, then the player base in each mode is incredibly small.

Honestly, a solution that I COULD see, is if they were to reduce the amount of time it would take for game mode's to switch. But even that would eventually not work anymore on a 2 hour basis, because we get 3 different play styles.

Actually, thinking about it. Roughly every option that we could have for mode rotation has some form of negative effect. Whether it's making weapon choice harder, splitting the player base, even stricter times you need to play in order to play our favorite maps in your favorite mode, or the majority choosing picking one game mode because they are equipped for that one (Mario Kart 8 voting).

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

None of this stuff was an issue for Mario Kart 8 where different modes, configurations, and lobbies were available from the start despite not knowing just how many people would be playing.

 

[Njok]

Let's be honest here. Who's actually going to binge-play for four hours at a time?

That's not the point. For me at least. On weekdays i'll be only able to play between 8 pm and 12 pm, as i'm sure is the case for many others. So this is exactly a full period of the rotation (assuming they will switch at the same times as maps). I want to be able to choose which mode i am going to play, instead of logging on to find out what Nintendo has decided i can play.

I may not be in the mood to play that mode, and decide i won't play at all. Now if this happens a few times, i might just give up and not play at all anymore (or at least a fair amount less than i would if i had a choice what to play).

I'm sure they have their reasons for this decision, but it sucks.

 

[MagnaX7]

Since I don't want to complain anymore about this topic, I'll end by saying this: (most) People will eventually take it for granted and move on. I'm personally not bothered by it, and that's what matters.

But seeing a lack of other defenders on this topic shows that I don't need to defend this, because the attackers are the ones wasting time, because try as you may, the big N will not hear your opinion within the first hours. MAybe a change will come down the line, but we will see.

 

[Njok]

Relax man, I was not trying to attack you or Nintendo at all. I just stated that it sucks, and gave my reasoning for that opinion. I don't expect Nintendo to read this forum and go like: "hey, that guy made a good point, let's change that".

In case they do read it: It's all good, i still love you Nintendo.

 

[Marmalade]

This is a system they will have to change eventually. At the latest when the rainmaker mode comes out.
By then rotations would take up to 8 hours and depending on when these happen and how random they are, people that work or have long school days might not be able to play some modes for days.

They will lose way too many customers this way, because people will, understandably, get frustrated if it takes days to play the gamemode they want. Also lets not also forget that if you want to play on a certain map, it will take even longer.

I can understand that they don't want it to end like Mario Kart 8 lobbies, where some modes never had people to find, but MK8 is a different case all together. MK8 is basically all the same mode with different variations, so of course there won't be all too many people (if at all) in the different lobbies.
With Splatoon, we have completely different game modes, that all have different objectives and play differently. So of course there will always be players seeking matches in these different modes.

Overall, this is something that needs to be voiced now and needs to get Nintendo's attention as soon as possible. Otherwise it will hurt Splatoon more than it will help it, and that is something I truly do not want.

 

[Kirby Phelps (PK)]

Also, are we even sure that the game mode changes on rotation like the stages do? Because the stages switched out tonight, but Tower Control stayed as it was. Plus, Callie and Marie don't say anything like "Here's the current game mode: Tower Control." They only say what stages are coming.

 

[Njok]

It's probably going to run Tower Control for 24 hours like with the new maps and then do the normal rotation again. But no, i am not sure about that. Haven't read anything about it yet.