Splatoon 2: Find Out What's Fresh! (General Discussion)

[Award]

Is it me, or with the new maps, is Eliter just not what it once was? At least not as a splatting tool? The open field leaves little in the way of kill zones to set up. It feels like the role of Eliter has changed a lot. It no longer seems like it's about splats....regular chargers with their kits seem more about being an aggressive splatting charger. Instead has kind of a new role of "battlefield general". It seems more useful as an inking tool, almost rivaling aerospray, with the side bonus of being an occasional long range sniper. But with it's tremendous inking abilities, it seems like it isn't about splatting squids but instead changing the turf to control the flow of battle, opening paths for teammates, and closing paths for enemies. Which is cool, that's how I originally played eliter before the partial-charge, dmg+++ meta formed. But it's very different.

Oddly it's one of the few weps I've managed to get to "fresh" fast despite not racking high splat counts.

Also, is it just me, or was the most useless sub in the game, made even MORE useless in this game? Ink mines seem almost entirely worthless as nothing more than tripwire point sensor. I keep planting them as bombs before remembering they're not!

Power Level seems to be a basic MMR or ELO System.

The theory of such a system is to match teams of comparable skill together. Say 1600 to 1600. One team will most likely be favored to win. If they do, then they'll gain a small amount of points. One team is favored to lose. If they lose, they'll lose a small amount of points. The opposite is true, if the favored team loses they lose quite a lot, and if the unfavored team wins they gain a lot.

Some ELO systems can factor in Streaks. The first 10 matches of the system are the most volatile, as the systems are designed to put you where you belong as quickly as they can, and ideally get you to a 50% win rate. Of course, if you're good or continue to improve you'll rise in the system, and if not you'll fall.

All of this is going to be a bit weak in Splatoon 2 though. We don't have the 3 million concurrent players that something like League of Legends has. So the game is going to find it harder to match you against the appropriate skill level. Region Locking makes this even harder still. The system works, I rarely get a deviation of Power greater than 200, and I gain a lot of points when I beat teams of higher power than mine. It's just a bit of luck to decide whose on what team and the Power Levels therein.

The real travesty with matchmaking is that it doesn't bother to read your weapon choices. Seeing the enemy team with 4 Aerosprays is a treat in most game modes. Having mine use quad dualies is not.

Ahh, the ELO matchmaking debates begin anew!! Squidboards LIVES! Did you hear that Dessgeega? Back to the future!

Seriously though, in this particular game the big big problem (related no doubt to the small player base) isn't just that it doesn't factor in the weapons too much (allegedly it does somewhat, but it doesn't do a good job at all IMO...the wep sort often determines who wins), but the biggest problem is how it arrives at team power. The most common thing I saw in the last game, I see all the time in this game, where it's clear it mixed one or two above or very above average players with 2-3 very below average players and declared it a "match" in power to an opposing team with 4 median-capable players. Thus I'll see tons of RM matches where I get 20+ splats, stop the RM almost every time it's picked up, paint half the map, and am the only one to post a lead carrying the RM, the rest of my team got 5, and we loose heavily against a team were the total number of splats was lower than our combined total, but all 4 players had relatively even numbers. Similarly when we win, it tends to be when each of us got 7-8 splats, rather than me getting 20 and everyone else getting few. Player base probably factors in, but ideally it should be mixing individuals with similar values rather than mix & match 200+200+200+1000 = 400+400+400+400. The numbers may line up, but in reality, one 1000 can't realistically carry 3 200's to victory alone against 4 400s. Even if in pure Deathmatch skill they could easily do so, turf coverage becomes the unfixable factor.

At least the new ladder ranking system makes that bearable though...it mitigates the throwaway matches a lot better than the old system and reduces the sodium in ranked. It still makes for very many unsatisfying matches in both directions though.

True, but everyone deserves more than "I'm only inking a path to find someone to splat" or "you're in my aggro field, now I must stop whatever else I'm doing and go splat you" programming.

Maybe I just don't have the correct mindset to effectively play in this genre. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Haha, yeah. I generally agree. But when I play TW and lament it not being like it once was, I keep asking myself "how would it be played otherwise, then?" And I can't really think of anything. Most of the fun time was because people would just paint and avoid confrontations :p But that was because we all sucked and had no idea what we were doing. And then there were the cute little Christmas noobs. I played a TW match yesterday with what was obviously a little kid, standing on spawn, just looking around. Never got far from spawn, terrified of the field. Just looked around and up at the sky and wandered around the base. 0 kills, 0 specials. 400 ink points though! It reminded me of the old days. I hadn't seen that in AGES, but used to see it always.

But when I really think of playing....how do you not splat? Someone's inking, you have to stop them. And TW is where you test out crazy weapons, so you're going to focus on how to use them. Few test the inkability of weapons, they test how you attack moving targets with them. I miss old, gentle TW, but was it gentle because it was played gently, or was it gentle because we all would still fall off the first jump of Bluefin Depot every respawn and couldn't ink the Underpass with an aerospray :p

But the gameplay loop is "go out and paint and stop the enemy from painting over your paint. So everyone goes out to paint, and when you see another squid, you stop to shoot each other. I think the big thing is these maps really just force everyone to the center with no real side escape or alternate route. Mackerel was always a blood bath. Moray allows a lot of flank routes where you get squids behind enemy lines (For better or worse). Most of the new maps are just a big center arena and a few ramps like waterslides into the big center arena. EVERY map is Underpass now. :p No side alcoves like Walleye or Arrowana, no crazy odd paths like Museum. no triple channels like Skatepark with flank paths to paint while nobody is watching. Musselforge is probably the most diverse of the new maps with the over/under routes. Raceway is just skatepark without the walled channels, whatever that one is that's like underpass but not underpass but I swear is really underpass....without the side areas to get lost in. Even if everyone weren't TRYING for splattage, it would just happen due to map design. Though if I pull out aerospray I jsut run around inking aimlessly since stopping to shoot stuff would probably get me killed, so I can go into noob mode with that :)

 

[Vitezen]

@Award I think this is counter-intuitive, but weapons like sniper rifles that perform through denying a large line of sight area don't necessarily need kills to be successful. If a sniper can see you as you approach, you're likely to die. It doesn't mean that you should try to approach anyway, it means you need to take a different angle. Every death against a solo sniper is a pure mistake; you either didn't maneuver properly, or you let him see you.
Imagine we have an incredibly simplistic map, two straight hallways with nothing in them. One hallway has a sniper at the far end. Why would you enter that hallway? He has an insurmountable advantage, countless opportunities to try and kill you while you have to get through the entire hallway just for a CHANCE to kill him. If every member of the team refuses to enter that hallway because they know they'll lose, you get zero kills. But you controlled that entire hallway single-handedly. A natural result of this is that you're going to be doing a lot of painting and other stuff. When no one's approaching you, might as well just ink.

 

[Award]

@Award I think this is counter-intuitive, but weapons like sniper rifles that perform through denying a large line of sight area don't necessarily need kills to be successful. If a sniper can see you as you approach, you're likely to die. It doesn't mean that you should try to approach anyway, it means you need to take a different angle. Every death against a solo sniper is a pure mistake; you either didn't maneuver properly, or you let him see you.
Imagine we have an incredibly simplistic map, two straight hallways with nothing in them. One hallway has a sniper at the far end. Why would you enter that hallway? He has an insurmountable advantage, countless opportunities to try and kill you while you have to get through the entire hallway just for a CHANCE to kill him. If every member of the team refuses to enter that hallway because they know they'll lose, you get zero kills. But you controlled that entire hallway single-handedly. A natural result of this is that you're going to be doing a lot of painting and other stuff. When no one's approaching you, might as well just ink.

I remember that line of thinking back in November of '15 when I first got into Eliters. I picked eliter before the splat charger/splatterscope. And that was the way I used it, and was the prevailing conversation around the weapon. That's probably what addicted me to the game more than anything else. Then sometime around Feb of '16, it changed to "if you're not the kill leader, you shouldn't be playing chargers.", and the eliters stopped being about control-through-ink-and-intimidation as it once was and became about being the lone instant-death machine map-wide. The eliters were expected to be raining death whenever a squid popped up anywhere. Then the nerfs came and I switched to splatterscope and bamboozler as the good in between.

Somehow in S2, and what you said seems to confirm it, we may have gone back to rolling the clock back to November '15 and eliter may be back to what it ORIGINALLY was and not what it became and is most known for. If so, I may have to become an eliter main once again after all! I loved that role! That turf control role was the most addicting part of all Splatoon (though I've grown quite attached to octobrush and sploosh since then.)

Edit: It seriously needs a better kit though :P Inkmine is amazingly terribad and the storm, while awesome, doesn't make up for it.

 

[Maave]

Also, is it just me, or was the most useless sub in the game, made even MORE useless in this game? Ink mines seem almost entirely worthless as nothing more than tripwire point sensor. I keep planting them as bombs before remembering they're not!

I think the point-sensing ink mine on the e-liter is freaking awesome. I place them the flank paths approaching my perch and it's a great early-warning system. It would be more useful if I could partial-charge the enemies, usually I have to run away, but the point sensor often entices my teammates to chase the flanker. Sometimes (not consistent) the opponent will get enough damage from the ink mine that I can partial-charge them.

 

[Saber]

Okay I actually found out a neat trick of the splatbrella, if you open it as you super jump and land on someone you will squish your opponent with the umbrella.
So splatbrella have slightly less to worry about when falling on stages like moray cause you can just pogo stick the poor player who dare to be underneath you.....in this case me

 

[ZEROrevive]

So splatbrella have slightly less to worry about when falling on stages like moray cause you can just pogo stick the poor player who dare to be underneath you.....in this case me

So effectively....you can pull a ducktales styled landing, but without the bounce?

Nice tip!

 

[SquidKid85]

Okay I actually found out a neat trick of the splatbrella, if you open it as you super jump and land on someone you will squish your opponent with the umbrella.
So splatbrella have slightly less to worry about when falling on stages like moray cause you can just pogo stick the poor player who dare to be underneath you.....in this case me

I'm...going to enjoy this... *evil smile*

 

[Ansible]

I~ think I may be getting better with the Sting Ray. It's still lousy with -2hp per hit and turns like steering a diesel with your feet.

So much hampered potential!

It's just so annoying to be spot-on target, managing to keep the stream trained on them or repeatedly tagging them, and get a 50/50 chance whether or not I splat them. Though whenever not using it for splatting it has a number of creative uses from anywhere on the map, such as turning on ink rails, inking walls from both sides, inking flanking or rainmaker paths, and inking large hearts on walls or floors.

 

[Lonely_Dolphin]

I've avoided having to deal with the Stingray so far, not because I'm trying to, just none of the weapons I use have it. That'll change once they release the Sloshing Machine, but hopefully they'll have buffed it by then, hopefully! Oh, and they better have buffed the Sloshing Machine itself aswell like they did the H-3 n Rapid Blaster.

 

[IHaveAToaster]

If the Stingray actually got a decent buff I might consider using weapons with it instead of dismissing them on sight, it's just too weak at the moment...

On the subject of subs and specials: I hate how they gave the Mini Splatling an identical kit to a shooter unlocked at a low level (the Dualies) like they did in first game.

 

[Award]

I think the point-sensing ink mine on the e-liter is freaking awesome. I place them the flank paths approaching my perch and it's a great early-warning system. It would be more useful if I could partial-charge the enemies, usually I have to run away, but the point sensor often entices my teammates to chase the flanker. Sometimes (not consistent) the opponent will get enough damage from the ink mine that I can partial-charge them.

Yeah, that's how I've tried using it, and I'm sure it's how it's meant to be used. I guess the way I play, I'm mobile enough that I don't just park permanently on a perch. Granted, the sheer painting/intimidation factor of the 4k goes back to how early eliter 2k was, but after the dmg+++++ meta I got used to being a mobile sniper willing to push. I'm having to back off being an aggro eliter with the 4k versus the dmg 2k and be more perch-ey, but not so isolated in a location that the trip mines are really helpful. Plus, with the new maps, by the time the trip wire triggers, they're already too close.

Though the bigger thing is I have to get better at CQC with it. The partial charge being gone makes me replace it with spamming ZL and using it like an underpowered brella. Running works but also makes new problems. Mines just aren't helpful enough for trying to stand your ground. I'd rather the mines have been toxic-mist mines rather than point sensor mines. That would have been really useful!

I~ think I may be getting better with the Sting Ray. It's still lousy with -2hp per hit and turns like steering a diesel with your feet.

So much hampered potential!

It's just so annoying to be spot-on target, managing to keep the stream trained on them or repeatedly tagging them, and get a 50/50 chance whether or not I splat them. Though whenever not using it for splatting it has a number of creative uses from anywhere on the map, such as turning on ink rails, inking walls from both sides, inking flanking or rainmaker paths, and inking large hearts on walls or floors.

I do hate the Sting Ray. It's cool-ish for TC (but even then kills too slow for the turn rate) but kind of useless everywhere else. Except for drawing hearts.

 

[the]

I've avoided having to deal with the Stingray so far, not because I'm trying to, just none of the weapons I use have it. That'll change once they release the Sloshing Machine, but hopefully they'll have buffed it by then, hopefully! Oh, and they better have buffed the Sloshing Machine itself aswell like they did the H-3 n Rapid Blaster.

Ooh, I haven't gotten the H-3 yet. How'd they buff it?

(And yeah I am also hoping for a sloshing machine buff. It was really fun in the first game and I hope more people give it a try in this game)

I~ think I may be getting better with the Sting Ray. It's still lousy with -2hp per hit and turns like steering a diesel with your feet.

So much hampered potential!

It's just so annoying to be spot-on target, managing to keep the stream trained on them or repeatedly tagging them, and get a 50/50 chance whether or not I splat them.

I've personally found that strafing with the stingray held still has been more effective for getting splats on people. I dunno if I've just been getting lucky, or if maybe the slow-aiming thing doesn't apply when moving the whole thing to the side. (If this is the case, the run speeds in my splatling and charger sets should come in handy!) I should test that out in the firing range, because whenever i have done it in battle it's always been through a wall, so I couldn't see what was happening. Just watching tick after tick of damage and praying they didn't get out of the way.

 

[Ansible]

I've personally found that strafing with the stingray held still has been more effective for getting splats on people. I dunno if I've just been getting lucky, or if maybe the slow-aiming thing doesn't apply when moving the whole thing to the side. (If this is the case, the run speeds in my splatling and charger sets should come in handy!) I should test that out in the firing range, because whenever i have done it in battle it's always been through a wall, so I couldn't see what was happening. Just watching tick after tick of damage and praying they didn't get out of the way.

Nope, you're pretty correct because it's much much easier and faster to strafe with it than turn while firing.

Whether I'm behind cover or not, I try to use prediction and mind games: knowing their intent and guessing their movements. Even if I can't get the splat, I at least managed toclear them out or recklessly nudge towards one of my teammates.

And I'm slowly becoming a jerk when it comes to enemy Sting Rays (and some Tenata Missile strikes). If they can see me as they use it, instead of fleeing I'll try to stay in place and just play jump rope or tip toe just out of range. And sometimes squidbag taunt their aim. ¬.¬; I especially like doing this on the railings of Moray Towers for the added challenge of not unintentional falling off the building.

 

[Spaceswitchmars]

I think the point-sensing ink mine on the e-liter is freaking awesome. I place them the flank paths approaching my perch and it's a great early-warning system. It would be more useful if I could partial-charge the enemies, usually I have to run away, but the point sensor often entices my teammates to chase the flanker. Sometimes (not consistent) the opponent will get enough damage from the ink mine that I can partial-charge them.

Same but with the rapid blaster. It's good to have the peace of mind so I'm not always checking behind me while trying to hold neutral ground.

 

[SquidKid85]

Well guys...

Spoiler

Today Is A Good Day.

 

[ZEROrevive]

Well guys...

Spoiler

Today Is A Good Day.View attachment 5388

Heeeey congrats! Your in for some fun times. Definitely share your Switch FC with us folk when you have the time.

 

[Saber]

Well guys...

Spoiler

Today Is A Good Day.View attachment 5388

Congrats

 

[SquidKid85]

Heeeey congrats! Your in for some fun times. Definitely share your Switch FC with us folk when you have the time.

Thanks. It's late here, so I won't now, but once I get it SWITCHED on, *gets splatted* I'll start adding you guys. Don't have any games right now, only had enough for the console and a screen protector, but there are a few other things I'm looking to sell in order to get Splatoon 2.

 

[ZEROrevive]

Thanks. It's late here, so I won't now, but once I get it SWITCHED on, *gets splatted* I'll start adding you guys. Don't have any games right now, only had enough for the console and a screen protector, but there are a few other things I'm looking to sell in order to get Splatoon 2.

At least the bigger half is out of the way for you, and hey- you got something to set up and mess with a little. There's some free demos on the Eshop you can at least try out in the meantime.

 

[SquidKid85]

At least the bigger half is out of the way for you, and hey- you got something to set up and mess with a little. There's some free demos on the Eshop you can at least try out in the meantime.

Well I honestly might just wait till I get a game to set it up. I mean, my TV already has 2 other consoles hooked up to it, and there's only so much room around it. "My TV" as in the one downstairs I primarily use for gaming...But ya, good to have the bigger portion of the deal done.

Also 2000th post, WOO!