September Splatfest: Retro vs Modern

[Squidify]

Team Modern won! :D I finally won! I haveent won for a while so Im happy.

 

[Либра]

Thank you Splatoon for the new Splatfest system. I have been waiting for the possibility of playing with any number of friends ever since S1, and it's finally become a reality. I'm not lying when I say that this was the first ever Splatfest that I can safely say that I enjoyed so much that I played not only for 8 hours straight and way past royalty, but it also made me look forward to the next one.

The new shifty station was pretty fun. I hated it at first because I felt like a fish on dry land whenever the bounce pads were involved, but once I found out that I can do some fun baller tricks with the new Kensa Charger, it turned into one of my favorite shifty stations. Quite nothing like spending the majority of the matches on mid and frontline with a Charger, feels a lot like good old S1 times.

Having a "clout" rating in normal mode over Splatfest power feels so much better for me, personally. Just a climbing number, no more power levels to worry about. That's what I'm talking about. Takes a lot of stress out of the game for me, especially when it's supposed to be a celebratory event, for me at least.

Though... with the majority of the broadcast having been x10 or x100 wins for retro, I was honestly expecting them to absolutely destroy team modern.

Turns out...

It wasn't the case.
Hecc. I'm surprised. Might be the Splatfest overhaul causing this. Might've just been another incident of books vs. movies. It's too soon to tell. GGs to my retro opponents, had a couple really close matches. You fought well. o7

 

[Coolkid]

WHOOHOOO finally the curse is broken! congrats to all fellow team modern players! we did it! :D

 

[Chaos_Knight]

Hmmm...I'm getting a feeling having more popularity is gonna mean a win from now on.

 

[Cephalobro]

Yes! The popular team on Marina's side finally won! And the score is more than sweet.

 

[Ikalula]

From the Switch Online App, it mentions the average Clout per team. So Hm... I’m wondering if they just take the total Clout won by each team and average it by the total amount of players on that team and then pit those two averages against one another.

We’ll have to wait for the next few Splatfests to truly see how the new system works. And, one again, congratulations Team Modern. Make it rain Sea Snails for me.

 

[Ansible]

AHEM! *clears throat*

Splatfest is rigged!!!

With that out of the way... a full 0-3 shutout? Wow.

 

[ThatSquidYouKnow]

had a lot of fun this splatfest, mostly just played with friends so i can't really rate the pro mode or whatever, but going in blind with like little to no knowledge about the changes it seemed pretty good. won most of my matches and ye ez clap

Spoiler: screencap things dump

 

[Cyan]

After discovering that Normal mode ranks you up quicker at the very end of my run to King I don't think I'm ever bothering with Pro or "old" Splatfest queue again. I couldn't tell a difference in player skill, and honestly I'm not surprised Retro lost, I had to hard carry a bunch of times on matches where I was playing really well and the team would still throw the match in the bin right at the end. I even had one where I scored 11 kills and wiped the team and we only barely made a comeback. Honestly not much of a fun Splatfest, and there were a few people disconnecting mid-match, on both the enemy's team and my own a few times. Fortunately I only played on the new Shifty like 3 or 4 matches of the entire session, so I missed most of what was a bizarre and unfun layout. Considering how great those bounce pads were in the single player I'm disappointed in the way they were incorporated into Shifty.

With what SplatNet says on the "Average" when it comes to Clout, it's most likely that it takes total team clout and divides it amongst the player base to get that score, but it wouldn't make much difference in % because that's just going to based on total team clout regardless. I'll be honest, the whole Clout thing makes 0 sense, and seems like a mechanic they threw in as a way to clearly tell people things have changed. All that's different is you rack up points for your team as opposed to "wins" (which is still the same thing), but with Normal queue getting x10 and x100 random matches that is purely the one thing that will counter the whole "less popular wins more" argument. That is something that could have just been thrown in to regular Splatfest and left at that. I don't believe the "synergy bonus" is going to be a good thing for Splatfests, as that boost on clout isn't entirely fair, and makes little sense in the grand scheme of things.

x10 and x100 battles are a good idea, because for people who constantly complained that they never contributed because of mirror matches can now have a battle worth 100 of the less popular team or 10 matches' worth. I just don't think the style bonus will lead anywhere good. Again, this is something that could have been implemented under the old system. Keep 4 player squads separate from solo goers and just have everyone get access to x10 and x100 battles, ignore clout and leave it as "most wins" because ultimately, that's how it changed in the grand scheme of things. The matching bonus is a fun idea, and good for casuals, but I definitely think the bonus should only contribute to your rank up and not to clout for the team, so it's still an incentive but not one that can interfere directly with the results of the match. Definitely a good change, but chances are if it becomes "popular team always wins" like Splatoon 1 started like, we could have the Splatfest complainers kick off again, which is just a headache for the rest of us.

 

[MINKUKEL]

Wow, a 3-0 result. Surely this one result proves that the system is fixed!
Joking aside, this comes as no surprise given how crappy this whole fest went.

After discovering that Normal mode ranks you up quicker at the very end of my run to King I don't think I'm ever bothering with Pro or "old" Splatfest queue again

Do you get more exp in normal or something?
It's worth playing in pro IMO simply for being able to continue with the same team if you get a good one going. Also I found that matchmaking took a lot longer in normal (and is accompanied by an annoying beeping sound that I don't understand the purpose of).

 

[KiwiS]

Only at the end have I found an awesome team in normal mode that went through 7-wins w/o lost whit me. Once you find your team it becomes awesome. I think I prefer normal to pro.
Congrats on the win team Modern, gg everyone in my team, you did your best!

 

[Spaceswitchmars]

The difference between clout and wins is that wins didn’t count anything against its own team (potentially putting the more popular team at a disadvantage if the good players happen to play their own team more) but clout does count those games. So while games against the other team are more important, there aren’t games in there that are completely useless like in the old system. So clout really is a change, and it’s a great one.

 

[Coolkid]

i am glad they finally count mirror matches as well! that was what made the splatfests kinda rigged since it felt like you would be playing for nothing if you had many mirror matches but now that those count as well,splatfests will finally be more fair and now the popular team can win too so from now on each win in a splatfest will be a fair 1 :D

 

[Dessgeega]

The difference between clout and wins is that wins didn’t count anything against its own team (potentially putting the more popular team at a disadvantage if the good players happen to play their own team more) but clout does count those games. So while games against the other team are more important, there aren’t games in there that are completely useless like in the old system. So clout really is a change, and it’s a great one.

I didn't consider that. Credit where credit is due, that's definitely an improvement. And despite my grumbling, I did have a genuinely good time with my friends and played far longer than I usually do.

Cyan does raise some good points about the clout system though. The fact that a dedicated quad could devise a set-up so their matches are worth twice as much as those of solo players is both interesting and a little worrying.

Well, it's a new system and there's obviously a few kinks to be ironed out. I look forward to seeing how the next splatfest goes down!

 

[Spaceswitchmars]

I didn't consider that. Credit where credit is due, that's definitely an improvement. And despite my grumbling, I did have a genuinely good time with my friends and played far longer than I usually do.

Cyan does raise some good points about the clout system though. The fact that a dedicated quad could devise a set-up so their matches are worth twice as much as those of solo players is both interesting and a little worrying.

Well, it's a new system and there's obviously a few kinks to be ironed out. I look forward to seeing how the next splatfest goes down!

All of this is true.

One of my main gripes about it is pro mode is kind of redundant. It would sort of make sense to have a ranked mode in that spot or even some insane Splatfest-only type of mode they make up just for this purpose. Doesn’t even need to be terribly balanced if it’s only available for 24 hours every 5-6 weeks.

 

[MINKUKEL]

Do we know for a fact that mirror matches now contribute or is that speculation? Because that kind of goes against the idea of a splatfest in a way. I mean, it would check out, mathematically, if they just did clout/team size, but it still seems a bit weird to me.

(potentially putting the more popular team at a disadvantage if the good players happen to play their own team more)

Yeah, but the opposite can be said if you consider that bad players might be in mirror matches more.

 

[Cyan]

Wow, a 3-0 result. Surely this one result proves that the system is fixed!
Joking aside, this comes as no surprise given how crappy this whole fest went.

Do you get more exp in normal or something?
It's worth playing in pro IMO simply for being able to continue with the same team if you get a good one going. Also I found that matchmaking took a lot longer in normal (and is accompanied by an annoying beeping sound that I don't understand the purpose of).

You do in fact get more XP on your Splatfest title when in Normal mode if your team qualifies for any of the synergy perks, which also goes for how much Clout you get for winning the match. It shows the points for winning with a x1.x multiplier, so it can increase your score faster than just being in Pro queues with Splatfest Power. Apparently you can cap it out a x2.0 multiplier, so you can double your speed at which you reach Splatfest royalty and get twice the amount of clout for your team.

As for the beeping sound, my suspicion is they just ripped the Squad and League matchmaking setup (Squad from Splatoon 1). It was there to be used as a "you haven't readied up" indicator in Splatoon 1 (where it disappeared once you readied), but I haven't done League recently enough to know if it's there as well (which I suspect is the case). It is most likely an accidental quirk that it plays when searching for more teammates, since your team isn't full and searching, and because it isn't a full friend lobby where it gets dismissed upon hitting ready it just plays indefinitely until the team is full and ready to find opponents.

According to Inkipedia the clout you receive in a mirror match doesn't contribute to the overall statistics of which team won. So it seems that people may have been misled to believe mirrors do contribute now, which as everyone else has already said wouldn't make any sense and would give the popular team an instant advantage since they would never concede clout to the enemy on a defeat, and instead get a net gain over the less popular team. This is the most likely approach anyway as a means to keep Splatfest as fair as is reasonable without the rabid fans covering their ears and shrieking at the top of their lungs that they never contributed to the outcome because their team had too many mirrors and could never play the enemy when the matches that count is the same amount for both teams (what wonderful logic).

For anyone interested here is the link to read up on Inkipedia about the current findings of clout and how it most likely works: https://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Splatfest#Clout

 

[MINKUKEL]

According to Inkipedia the clout you receive in a mirror match doesn't contribute to the overall statistics of which team won.

Yeah, I just read that in the patch notes earlier today. Makes a hell of a lot more sense to me.

As for the beeping. It's just so weird that it's only in 'normal', not in pro. I guess the game is searching extra hard in normal mode.

Kinda wish I had known sooner about the extra xp in normal (did play that for a few matches but I guess I wasn't paying attention to the results or something). That could've spared me two or three matches on Shifty. Which I just did not enjoy at all.

 

[MindWanderer]

My thoughts and experiences:

• "Normal" and "Pro" modes are definitely messed up. I found "Pro" to be the more casual mode, with no friends and better matchmaking.
• I don't think I saw any teams in "Normal" mode, otherwise they would have coordinated their aesthetics better. You can get 1.2x clout and points just by being the same sex ("Dude" or "Lady") and species ("Squid" or "Octo"), and not once did I see that happen--I saw one or the other but never both. It would go up to 1.4x clout if you just chose all 4 weapons of different classes ("Variety") or of the same class (e.g. "Shooter"), and then even higher if you choose similar headgear (I got "Nearsighted" once) and shoes (saw "High-toppers" in the chyron once).
• I saw almost exactly 50/50 between teams winning the 100x's in the chyron.
• I went close to 50/50 myself, slightly more losses, but 6 games in a row disconnected right after awarding XP and all, and thus weren't in my log. However, I got only one in-game disconnect the whole time.
• I only got one multiplier battle, a 10x which I lost, and you can't make up for that. So I was a loss for Team Retro. BTW, that was in Pro, so there were multiplier battles in Pro.
• Item XP danced around like mad. Some games I would win and get no item XP. Then I'd play another match and it would start 2000 XP higher than where it was before the match and level up from there.
• Clout is weird. In "Pro," you gain clout equal to the opposing team's power, so there's a small reward for going up against higher-power opponents, but that's assuming you win and the teams are closely matched anyway. In "Normal," you get a fixed bonus for winning but mostly you get more for inking more. That means that the optimal strategy is to ink more, slay less. If you're winning but getting 600p per battle, you aren't doing your team any favors.
• I actually really liked the Shifty Station. It seems like it's easy to get a lockdown from the center area, but it's also really easy to sneak onto the bounce pads and into the enemy side or right around the center for a flank. The only things I didn't like were that there wasn't much turf to ink, so the games were extra-swingy and could easily turn 20% in the last 5 seconds, and that the brown crates were almost the exact same color as the Retro ink.

 

[Metasepia]

Keeping this brief, Matchmaking felt much improved and like there wasn't a major difference in skill between opponents and teammates. The ink colors were actually unique, (I took it as an opportunity to take some shots of my Woomy and Oomy) and I was able to reach royalty at roughly the same rate as I did for other Splatfests.

Also, this Shifty station was absolutely, utterly, wholly, not designed with Dualies in mind.