Rainmaker is a theoretically interesting mode...

[Wolfalisk]

...now disable it for the time being. I'll explain why, but first:

This is my first post on these forums and I feel bad that it is something almost overtly negative (because I love this game) but I am incredibly incensed over this absolute garbage mode. That's saying a lot considering how annoying it's getting when I find myself repeatedly on the "outplaying" team in Splatfest but still losing due to mainstream popularity winning out. Even then I resisted posting a thread about it (though I did sign up then with the intention to.) At any rate, I'll begin, and I promise there will be some constructive feedback in this post to hopefully justify its existence.

Key grievances:

- If the enemy team can slip close to the goal in the first minute or so of the game with the Rainmaker, they are deeply favored to win and need only entrench themselves and keep the enemy team from getting far with it. They are relegated to the relatively easier task of defense for the rest of the game. The game is essentially over, and will remain so for the next 3:00 outside of drastic throws.

- One of the biggest factors in this game is respawn manipulation. Killing enemies systematically so that you never face the whole team at once while you push their base often leads to a victory, as does wiping and pushing. The mode's momentum just seems too sensitive to this.

- The Rainmaker's hitbox and general offensive capability is hilariously out of whack. In these game modes the player transporting the win-critical item is usually exposed in some way. It is a sacrifice of player input in order to bring your team to victory. When you give this player a better Inkzooka while also not penalizing his movement in squid form (absolutely ridiculous in every way), the player isn't sacrificing anything. In ANY game with a carried neutral item related to the win condition, speed is UNIVERSALLY checked. If this mode followed these reasonable conventions at all, the Rainmaker would be dropped upon entering Squid form. Now since this game is different, it would be appropriate to simply limit its movespeed slightly.

Ways I would improve the mode:

- To alleviate the impossible-to-come-back scenario detailed above, and to keep the team that bumrushed early from simply being allowed to sit on their butts and defend for 3:00, make the distance counter recede back to around 50 if the Rainmaker has not been moved past that mark by the winning team for, say, 45 seconds. Currently, it'd be more prudent to just end the game if one team takes it to <20 distance in the first minute or so of the match. The losing team might as well just go ink territory for the level bonus points.

- Introduce respawn waves, where if multiple people are dead they can respawn together.

- Adjust the Rainmaker's power and give the player holding it some form of movement penalty. Allowing him or her to move at full speed in squid mode while carrying the objective is ludicrously nonsensical.

I have almost had it with this mode because of how goofy and non-competitive it is. It needs some serious work. If you haven't yet delved into it, I'll give you a quick summary. Victories don't feel like victories and losses don't feel like losses. It just needs to be disabled or transferred to a non-ranked queue until changes are introduced. You're throwing your hard-earned rank to the wolves if you queue for this mode. You've been warned.

 

[Reila]

I kinda like it the way it is now?

Btw, you can't really move at full speed in squid mode carrying the rainmaker. The movement speed is considerably slower.

 

[Kaze]

I kinda like it the way it is now?

Btw, you can't really move at full speed in squid mode carrying the rainmaker. The movement speed is considerably slower.

true, but you can always use x3 (main) to reduce the penalty by quite a lot.

and x3 (main) works well too on maps like Kelp Dome with those grate bridges.

 

[Euni B. Cummings]

saying its a better inkzooka is just plain false, it need to be charged, the shot moves slowly and it has a hard time hitting anything directly infront of it
also, there is a movement penalty
but i agree, the modes absolute garbagé, at least outside of squads, because it requires so much coordination which is non-existent when the only communication you have is "c'mon"

 

[missingno]

- If the enemy team can slip close to the goal in the first minute or so of the game with the Rainmaker, they are deeply favored to win and need only entrench themselves and keep the enemy team from getting far with it. They are relegated to the relatively easier task of defense for the rest of the game. The game is essentially over, and will remain so for the next 3:00 outside of drastic throws.

If you let them get that big of a lead that early, that's your fault. But it's nowhere near impossible to come back from, and if they're all together concentrating on defending up front you have a chance to just slip past and leave them to have to chase you down. Treat it like football and pull a quarterback sneak.

- One of the biggest factors in this game is respawn manipulation. Killing enemies systematically so that you never face the whole team at once while you push their base often leads to a victory, as does wiping and pushing. The mode's momentum just seems too sensitive to this.

- Introduce respawn waves, where if multiple people are dead they can respawn together.

Why don't you just wait for your teammates instead of trying to be a lone wolf? Make your own respawn waves.

- The Rainmaker's hitbox and general offensive capability is hilariously out of whack. In these game modes the player transporting the win-critical item is usually exposed in some way. It is a sacrifice of player input in order to bring your team to victory. When you give this player a better Inkzooka while also not penalizing his movement in squid form (absolutely ridiculous in every way), the player isn't sacrificing anything. In ANY game with a carried neutral item related to the win condition, speed is UNIVERSALLY checked. If this mode followed these reasonable conventions at all, the Rainmaker would be dropped upon entering Squid form. Now since this game is different, it would be appropriate to simply limit its movespeed slightly.

- Adjust the Rainmaker's power and give the player holding it some form of movement penalty. Allowing him or her to move at full speed in squid mode while carrying the objective is ludicrously nonsensical.

Um, are you and I playing the same mode? Have you never picked up the Rainmaker yourself to see how it works? The speed penalty already exists! And as for the "better Inkzooka", it actually has very exploitable weaknesses. The charge up time makes you a sitting duck if an opponent gets the drop on you, especially fast close range weapons. It's even harder to defend yourself while seekers or bombs are being thrown at you, as you cannot both charge and dodge. Furthermore, it is utterly terrible at inking, and near impossible to make your way through enemy ink without a teammate escorting you.

- To alleviate the impossible-to-come-back scenario detailed above, and to keep the team that bumrushed early from simply being allowed to sit on their butts and defend for 3:00, make the distance counter recede back to around 50 if the Rainmaker has not been moved past that mark by the winning team for, say, 45 seconds. Currently, it'd be more prudent to just end the game if one team takes it to <20 distance in the first minute or so of the match. The losing team might as well just go ink territory for the level bonus points.

No. No no no no no. Never take away points just for being early, it makes no sense. If I score 75 points at the start of the match and you score only 60 at the end, why the hell should you be given the win when you did less, just because it came later? That is not sensible game design. And when it comes to just ending the game early, um, that's what a knockout is. Like, there's a specific goalpost that ends the game early when you reach that very distance in case you forgot.

I have almost had it with this mode because of how goofy and non-competitive it is. It needs some serious work. If you haven't yet delved into it, I'll give you a quick summary. Victories don't feel like victories and losses don't feel like losses. It just needs to be disabled or transferred to a non-ranked queue until changes are introduced. You're throwing your hard-earned rank to the wolves if you queue for this mode. You've been warned.

The only real issue with Rainmaker is much simpler: It's more reliant on coordinated teamwork than any other mode, which is why it falls apart when people don't understand the right strategies and don't work together. In other words, the problem is you, kneejerking over blatantly wrong information instead of taking the time to learn how to beat the things you're having trouble with - or hell, even learning the basics of how the mode works, apparently.

 

[Reila]

true, but you can always use x3 (main) to reduce the penalty by quite a lot.

and x3 (main) works well too on maps like Kelp Dome with those grate bridges.

Hm, good point. Maybe they should nullify speed modifier abilities when the Inkling is holding the rainmaker in a future patch.

 

[missingno]

Well the abilities are only serving to reduce the penalties, you should still be a bit slower than an unburdened squidkid and a lot slower than those same abilities would make you while not carrying. And either way, the carrier's mobility is more bottlenecked by their ability to ink than anything else. It won't really help you push forward through enemy ink.

 

[Berentxo]

saying its a better inkzooka is just plain false, it need to be charged, the shot moves slowly and it has a hard time hitting anything directly infront of it
also, there is a movement penalty
but i agree, the modes absolute garbagé, at least outside of squads, because it requires so much coordination which is non-existent when the only communication you have is "c'mon"

I agree with the last part, but I think that's one of the most fun aspects of Splatoon. It forces you to pay attention to other's playstyles to figure how to best help or hinder them. Not so much in Turf Wars, where everyone can do their own thing and most of the time if everyone just focuses in inking the best they can, they get decent results, even in a losing match. However, in Ranked mode, if you do your own thing you're sure to lose, unless the rest of the team do really well. I have just been doing some Splat Zone matches, and there was this inkling girl (I can't remember her name, it was in katakana, which I haven't used in years) wrecking the opposing team with her E-Litre3K, which was really annoying because I was about to go up in rank and she got me back to where I had started today, but then I was in her team, which gave me a chance to observe what she was doing. We were in the same team several times, so I got back up to speed quite quickly, then we were split again, but I knew exactly what she was going to do and I just kept on sucker punching her even when my team seemed to struggle with something else, because I knew if I didn't it was going to be even worse. After a couple of matches like that she left the game.

So, even if this was in a different mode you can still communicate in many other ways: keeping close to someone, changing forms quickly so people know you're actually on the case and not asleep in your own ink, shooting someone in the face when there's someone behind them... People either seem to develop their own ways to say things, or I am reading too much into things.

 

[Luggy]

While I'm totally okay with @missingno 's rebuttal, I still find one problem with the mode.

The mode is pretty confusing for beginners. Compare it to the 2 other modes : you got a classic King of the Hill and a sort of Payload like mode. I'm sorry for not using their proper names, but you see what I'm talking about.
Rainmaker mode, or how I like to call it the "Gazorpazorp mode" due to it's wacky translation in french and my stupidity, can be confusing for new players, due to it's presentation. How many times do you see a beginner running to the opposite direction or simply taking the longest path to complete the objectif, thus leading you to a lost game ? Far too much, I would say.

The rest is pretty balanced, but maybe balancing some stuff to make the objective more visible for a new player would help. This mode is fair, like all the other modes : if your team doesn't know how to defend or push, you won't win this game. But the objective is not clear enough for beginners. And it's not nice to welcome a new player to rank mode with a lost game and a confusing game mode.

That's said, it is my personal opinion. Feel free to disagree.

 

[TheMH]

How many times do you see a beginner running to the opposite direction or simply taking the longest path to complete the objectif, thus leading you to a lost game ?

Well, this is still an issue even in S ranks. It seems like people just go nuts once Rainmaker is the mode to play. Same goes for the selected weapons. Yeah, it's a fun mode, but I decided to skip Rainmaker rotations for the time being until everyone has learned how to play this mode properly. And that's annoying, since I have the feeling Rainmaker is in rotation for more than 50% since it's been released... :|

I don't mind the map restrictions, but single player ranked mode needs a free mode selection NOW. There should be enough players around to fill the lobbies imo.