Sooooooooo...... last night I go into ranked, and the matches all feel far more normal and less wildly unbalanced and unwinnable in the opponent's favor. We start winning..... 2-3 per series, though the total BS matches are still littered in there enough to follow
@Ansible 's rank-up pattern of win 2 lose 3, win 3, lose 3, etc. But suddenly I'm not 90% of the time the top splatter. Sometimes I'm numerically #2 but all my badges are for objective defense/offesnse and not pure k/d/#1 target badges. 3 squids on the team actually all have similar high k/d (with one noticably less), while the other teams's are lower (vs all low with one (me) noticibly higher as it's been.) With the team holding the enemy back on their own, I have time to actually play the objective more rather than just constantly being on the defensive and non-stop splatting. I'm actualy the #3/#4 KD at times, playing a defensive role, with actual time of nothing going on, trailing the team as backup. We were probably the "overpowered" team in unbalanced matchups some of this time....the first time "on the other foot" all week that's more than one or two matches a day. We win through KO's several times. There was one or two series that was a total shut-out against with BS matches, but generally at least one win per series, and several times more. I end TC a lot of points ahead of where I started, in the 600's. It went from days of "TC is impossible to win ever, at all" to coming out ahead with multiple KO wins. And I didn't have to play like 2 players at once to do it, while normally I have to play like 2 players at once just to lose.
And then I play SZ, traditionally my best mode, but all week it's been as much a losing streak as every other mode. At first I lose, but I realized right away it's because the maps (Mahi/Inkblot) are not good maps for my usual dynamo. I wasn't feeling confident with chargers at all yesterday, so I just went with the "next best thing" to dynamo, my flingza (main for RM/sometimes TC, I hate using it for everything, but it's kind of a failsafe choice when the game doesn't hate me), and we start winning. Second or third series........we win straight through....5 wins....0 losses............... I'm not the k/d lead at all, but we're all close. Several times in matches there's just no enemy squid around at all while we control the zone. I actually start just camping (sharking?) at the zone without opposition and without 2-3 squids concentrating fire on me at all times.
.....and now I'm A+.....
Whaaaat the fuuudge.....
Did the wave of ultra-meta super-squids leave the game? Did the wave of noobs leave the game? Did Nintendo break something on the matchmaker last week and now they quietly fixed it server-side? Is it still broken and something in my invisible matchmaking data changed that now I'm not stuck in whatever nightmare "your place is to always carry weak teams against harder enemies" mode it had me in (until I inevitably get stuck back in that place at some point?) What changed is not me. What changed is either no hax, or the matchmaking changed. But did it change for everyone and was broken, or did it change for me because the magic invisible matchmaking data had me incorrectly flagged as some sort of X-rank Terminator squid that balances other otherwise unbalanced matches single handedly and now it (temporarily?) figured out I'm not? It's almost like it's realized there was an error and slotted me to be the one to get carried now. I went from like A220 to A+ in a handful of series after 4 days of relentless brutality and unyielding losses no matter what. It wasn't a lucky team...it was lucky teams all night long... (with some exceptions.)
And that's the weird part. We're not talking about randomness within the matchmaker. If it were random you'd find yourself 50/50 on either side of the imbalances. If you're consistently matched on one side of the imbalance night after night, for dozens of matches, it's not random or accidental, it's building that setup by design repeatedly. But...it's also not based on your actual skill or play if it then just throws you in the opposite direction and you're consistently matched on either balanced teams on on the "good" side of the imbalanced for numerous sets in a day. So there's something "mechanical" at work that's very broken (or evaluating people poorly, or lack of players), not just random bad matchaking by chance. Statistics proves it's not by chance.
Does what we do even affect ranks, or do we just get assigned winnable and unwinnable games to be positioned where the machine decides we'll be positioned? During the losing streaks it seemed like no matter what I did, super ultra tryhard pour all energy into splatting and pushing the objective, or go and paint corners, harass enemies, never bother with the objective at all yielded identical results. Yesterday I feel like I could have painted corners and still won. Maybe it wasn't THAT automatic, I did play tryhard, and there surely were some power plays by me that I'm sure contributed equally to others, but it FELT almost causal-TW level instead of tryhard high level ranked level.
Now, I will put one disclaimer in and say that after
@The Salamander King 's conversation, I "went meta" and put on a Respawn Punisher shirt to go with Hydra for TC, and Ninja Squid + Speedup for Flingza in SZ. I'm certain that Ninja was somewhat helpful in SZ in particular, although my finsihing K/D's were LOWER than what they've been all week ,not necessarily because I played worse, but because the rest of the team was actually splatting squids much more, and therefore they didn't all fall in my lap. Which is good, because with Ninja and Respawn I had a lot less ink available than I normally have with ink up + ink saver main so I'd have been hosed if matches didn't go in my favor. I don't think Respawn Punisher really contributed anything at all other than having slower ink refill and less autobombs available. My k/ds were positive, but when you divide the difference of me out for extra seconds, and enemies down for an extra .75 seconds, and my lower splat totals than usual, along with the long idle periods where I stayed behind to stay alive when the pushes ended, more often, I really don't think that contributed meaningfully to any difference. I can say positively that these shirt changes would not have had any effect on the last 4 day's matches. I'd have been overrun and unable to retaliate instantly. That DID happen several matches yesterday as well, but it was the exception rather than the rule.
I think what
@banyochan was talking about plays into it. Low player population. It may be that not many people, or not many geographically advantageous people were playing Sun-Wed, and then Thu the player population was larger. If that's happening it means they may not have enough squids of a given ability to match so it basically just matches together anyone, balanced or not, bad lag or not. There's not many explanations for how an "A" level lobby should have 3 good squids and then a (maybe Japanese?) mini-tri-string user that goes 2/11 and never gets near the tower.... why is that guy there? He's not helping the team, and he's surely not having fun in a lobby he's clearly dominated in.... nobody wins, the poor guy is just there as filler fodder to fill an empty 8th slot.
And now, it's time for another episode of "HAX, GLITCH, OR LAG! (applause)" There was only one match that I had some question about the legitimacy of it. We did get stomped badly but what seemed like an overwhelming team, but the final push felt wrong to me. There was a (Japanse, maybe? Not sure, didn't seem visibly laggy which I'd expect in Japan, translated kana name means nothing in English, though so possibly.) sloshing machine that went 10/0. 0 deaths in TC kinda stands out to me, that's virtually impossible even for a distance eliter let alone a sloshing machine. The fact that even I never splatted him also stands out to me. Watched the replay, and he's good, moves fast, his aim doesn't SEEM bot assisted or anything (those guys the other day anything they slightly glanced at died instantly, this guy was sloshing a lot and more shots missed than conencted), hyperactive moving around, so hard to splat, ok....but....near the end of the final push something had felt wrong, I'd saved my booyah bomb as a last chance defense for the tower, and used it on the tower. From his camera's perspective, sure enough he was INSIDE the bomb blast at the tower...but took no damage at all.... Could be lag, could be hacks, could be a glitch where the tower can be used to survive a booyah blast somehow? Either way that push should have failed, he should have been splatted, and the KO should not have happened there, and the invincible squid is the reason.
uys' experience with the game is so polar opposite to mine it's actually crazy. I go into ranked and don't see any Tacticoolers at all, every short range weapon is using ninja squid, and every charger is running respawn punisher.
Haha, yeah, I honestly assumed/expected you'd have a very different experience. That top rank/comp sphere in a game is always a world apart from the main game experience it becomes its own thing. Because the skill is so different the ability set is so different, and the way abilities are used/"exploited" in different ways at that level changes how the systems of the game even work, what abilities are considered useful, and it's really a whole other world up there. Splatoon, for better or worse, draws a lot of systems design from fighting games, and FG has always been that way.
Heck, there may be different metas by rank, but in Splatoon there's different metas by DAY! Not even joking, I've noticed that in general, whole weapon sets and strategies that work one day are continuous failure the next day. The map rotation is part of that, but it feels like from one day to the next the play is completely different. Although, does meta-by-rank apply to S3 since now a given "rank" isn't actaully giving you matches from within that rank? You don't really know if your "C+" game is actually a bunch of C+ noobs or if you're acually in the S/X/comp meta if the game feels you are.
LOL I love that graph! That should have been the box art for S2!
Camping and sharking are kind of different things
Have those terms always been used that way? I swear in S1 we called parking a carbon roller at the base of the ramp in Urchin Underpass "camping" and "sharking" was the carbon roller zooming around with ninja squid popping up anywhere at any time for the kill? The sniper standing on the perch was either " useless perch sniper" if on your team and you lost or "sensei" if on the other team and you lost. :P
Can you post one of your replay codes?
I'm sure I'll have another such set of matches coming up. Yesterday's streak of good matches overwrite the bad examples from my history, but I really have two places to go from here: I'll either have more replay examples of the push to post by the end of the weekend, or the lucky strek continues and I'll be S/S+0 by the end of the weekend? I'll post them if I go back to normal (which I probably will) :)
It is easy to forget that assists also are added onto the total kill count of each player.
Assists go into the kill count? Is that new for S3? In S2 I thought kills were just kills and for assists you had to check the phone app. Although that brings up another interesting point. Theres a lot, and I mean a *LOT* of times where I very definitely get the kill on someone, but the assit icon, not the splat icon pops up. That's definitely lag based, but the sheer frequency that a direct hit, without anyone else attacking yields an "assist" icon is insane. We're talking charger hits and rollers over the head where I get an assist icon and defintely don't have a teammate attacking with me. Unless I'm doing 99 damage and they get finished off by 1 damage from ink or something, that may have the assist icon too?
Really, it's kind of broken to not show the assists column by itself and to include it in kills. They showed it in the phone app on 2, idk about 3, but that's flat out stupid to not just put it in the game. It's not hidden data, it's in the app.
In Splatoon, games decided by whichever team makes the best push
"Best push" That' one's hard to define outside of comp/squad where "best" is defined by a strategy. Even in solo X rank is that really definable? What makes a "best push" - whoever got it the farthest pushed it the "best", but it's also, in solo, a form of chaos and reaction. There's no way to plan doing it "best" really, it's the moment to moment that figures that out and that's a mix of random chaos, team overall skill, and really.....splatting. Because there's no other way to control the other team other than to remove them (or zone them from the objective.) Real coordinated strategies is a whole other thing, more like (American) football, (and thus Clam Bliz was invented) where the execution is 30% and the strategy is 70% of the result. In Solo you usually can't coordinate with a team to make a "best" push if everyone has different ideas. Although in all those bad matches the OTHER team always seems to somehow do that and work like a special forces squad while my team is scattered everywhere. Yesterday for a change it was our team acting that way...which was weird. In multiple series/teams....
omp players still have some major complaints, the biggest being the new maps, which @Saber talked about. Maps like Scorch Gorge and Eeltail Alley were actually larger in the early trailers than they are
I'm surprised comp has a lot of the same complaints the peanut gallery does. I agree with the maps in gerneral (though does eeltail need to be bigger?) Undertow bothers me a lot, I can see that map becoming like Arrowanna where it's just out of rotation for 6 months while they try to figure out how to repair it. I feel guilty because half my mains have missiles and both the noobs and the comps hate the missiles, lol. I swear it's a coincidence, those weapons did not have missiles in the last game! :)
The Splatoon devs are some of the best in the industry right now in terms of game balance.
Will they ever fix the matchmaker though? It's been broken since 2015 and only gets worse with age. They can balance specials for comp players and LAN parties all they want, but if they're throwing X and C together and calling it "A" and pitting teams of 2 hydras a charger and an aerospray against a team of nzaps and splattershots in TC, there's nothing "balanced" about playing the game unless you're in comp/LAN party. :P Nintendo's myopic focus on that comp level play/balance/top players thing is strange for a company that doesn't even sponsor eSports outside 1 Japanese tournament a year, and actively pulls their only FG out of FG tournaments. "Reduced tentamissile charge rate by 15p" does little to fix a game that has players that stand still and shoot fighting comp players with mismatched weapon mixes and an 800 ping which is what 90% of the player population will play. It's cool that they DO want it to be competitive, but it seems like most of their focus lies there rather than the general player population and they're almost content letting the general play rot into disrepair while they obsess over perfect balance for comps.
You don't get the lead in the first half of the game so you throw the second half?
I think you have that in reverse, your point IS my point, a TON of my games are from-behind victories.......for the other team...! :) It's when you DO have the lead in the first half, and then the enemy takes the lead in the second half, that taking the lead back appears impossible and I have yet to see it happen once in any match, thus why I started more or less giving up to conserve energy for the next match. If the match did not have a timer until someone won it would be different, but at the moment, it appears that numerically, there is simply not enough time on the clock to mount a SECOND comeback in the same game. The patter that was looping is we have the lead early, then half way or just past half-way the enemy has an unstoppable push to the lead...we do stop them, but to reverse it and take the lead back against a capable opponent isn't possible within the remaining time, considering the push has to be even farther than either team has pushed it already. Particularly true in TC and SZ. RM and CB have more chance, especially CB. RM is debatable. The time reuqired to reverse the turf control to really sustain a push deep into KO territory against enemies skilled enough to take down the highlighted and slow RM carrier isn't very likely. There's an outside chance of a sneaky RM race through enemy ink...I've done it once or twice in S1, but the enemy honestly has to be kind of bad to not shut that down. Of course that all never factored in yesterday where suddenly only a handful of games went that way and we were clearly outmatched.
Specifically, if your team does NOT have the lead in the first half, I think it's possible, if not LIKELY to mount a comeback at the end, which is I think part of what's been happening, and part of the momentum issue
@Saber talked about. For the team that HAD the lead in the first half, and can't shut down the resulting enemy comeback push in the middle to second half and lets them take the lead over, I think the liklihood of mounting a successful second-comeback in the allotted time without any OT and/or trading objective control in the OT (thus ending OT not in your favor), is infinitesimal. That's why one of my intended experiments was to actively try to PREVENT my own team from taking the lead early and see how that worked, but, insteady, my teams yesterday managed to simply hold the lead the whole match....
I think the only ways to "fix" that would be to solve the momentum problem (maps/specials related) or to get rid of the timer and partial win and change the modes to require a fight to the KO-death and not rely on clocks and OT. The clocks combined with the maps, turf control, and momentum are favoring whever takes the lead in the mid-to-second half, by making a comeback of both turf control and objective reversal a fight against the clock almost more than a fight against the other team, especially so in TC and SZ.
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