Is it me, or are banners in the Shell Out Machine so hard to get? I know the limited edition golden one is supposed to be hard to get, but come on, I just want to use those that have renders on them.
Splatoon 3 general issues
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Squid Savior From the Future
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I have so say the rank system they came up with is so terrible. I set up my other acct with my new copy of the game. Spent days in two to get up to lv10 because the matchs we're brutal! Mostly S/S+ badges on tags. They said they match your with your skill now, but that means two to get to ranked is a grind and a good player on a new account doesn't have all their gear and weapons yet..... Everyone else does in an s/+lobby that matters.... This is the min max all special up crowd.
Then into ranked, the matches are more brutal in the Cs then most of what I've seen in s on the other account and is as intense as all the s+ rank up matches. It's going to take forever to get out of the Cs, I've lost 3 full series. Not because my c teammates suck but because these kids are s+. With this ranking system you have to win tons of s+matches to get out of C if the system thinks you're an s+... Which begs the question what exactly does rank mean if c and s+ matches are the same matches because the system assigned you s+ even if it shows c?
Great video btw, I watched it the other day and have been meaning to reply and never got around to it. I have some counter points but I have to rewatch a few times and take notes which I haven't done yet. I do get your point on it, but what you described is I think how it's MEANT to work, but it's not how it really works out in the real world. "Feeding" as you mentioned I don't think it's as avoidable as you imply. Not in solo. Not with random weapons. For that to really work in solo Nintendo would have to match weapons in teams based on specific categories so it works out as well as comp comps. They don't. And those generalities don't really apply to the game most will experience.
Then into ranked, the matches are more brutal in the Cs then most of what I've seen in s on the other account and is as intense as all the s+ rank up matches. It's going to take forever to get out of the Cs, I've lost 3 full series. Not because my c teammates suck but because these kids are s+. With this ranking system you have to win tons of s+matches to get out of C if the system thinks you're an s+... Which begs the question what exactly does rank mean if c and s+ matches are the same matches because the system assigned you s+ even if it shows c?
Here it is. It isn't pretty... or edited in any way, but here it is. One thing I forgot to mention: Tower Control and Rainmaker have checkpoints to help stop snowballing.
Does Superjumping Break Splatoon?
I was too lazy to edit this. Please forgive me. I also didn't write a script for this and it shows. Whatever.www.youtube.com
Great video btw, I watched it the other day and have been meaning to reply and never got around to it. I have some counter points but I have to rewatch a few times and take notes which I haven't done yet. I do get your point on it, but what you described is I think how it's MEANT to work, but it's not how it really works out in the real world. "Feeding" as you mentioned I don't think it's as avoidable as you imply. Not in solo. Not with random weapons. For that to really work in solo Nintendo would have to match weapons in teams based on specific categories so it works out as well as comp comps. They don't. And those generalities don't really apply to the game most will experience.
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Actually that is something I am suprised about, we know there is an algorithm in place for matching weapons
Because it I highly doubt the salmon run rotations are assigned manually each one though does follow the categories I mention
1 controller/ carrier (able keep map control and deposit eggs)
1 boss slayer/ support (usually an anchor)
1 frontliner (high mobility or aoe to handle target near water)
1 Tactician (an all rounder weapon that can usually fill in mulitple role as needed)
Now for the downsides
- to be fair not everyone is gonna play a weapon from " x " category
-this will slow down queue times exponential since the algorithum would need to process categorize and then allocate each player to their respective teams (on top of whatever it is already calculating)
- This could be an Overwatch moment, overwatch was a fun game because you could initally play whayever you from any role and even with multiple of the same champ.....but for sake of balance they took away many of the liberties of the game in the process and in turn took away some of the joy other had in the game
Again not saying this is a bad thing in this case getting a hydra, explosher, eliter, and Trislinger vs team of rushdown enemies isn't fun for either side and balncing this would help the causal ranked side as well....but it wouldn't be without its costs
Because it I highly doubt the salmon run rotations are assigned manually each one though does follow the categories I mention
1 controller/ carrier (able keep map control and deposit eggs)
1 boss slayer/ support (usually an anchor)
1 frontliner (high mobility or aoe to handle target near water)
1 Tactician (an all rounder weapon that can usually fill in mulitple role as needed)
Now for the downsides
- to be fair not everyone is gonna play a weapon from " x " category
-this will slow down queue times exponential since the algorithum would need to process categorize and then allocate each player to their respective teams (on top of whatever it is already calculating)
- This could be an Overwatch moment, overwatch was a fun game because you could initally play whayever you from any role and even with multiple of the same champ.....but for sake of balance they took away many of the liberties of the game in the process and in turn took away some of the joy other had in the game
Again not saying this is a bad thing in this case getting a hydra, explosher, eliter, and Trislinger vs team of rushdown enemies isn't fun for either side and balncing this would help the causal ranked side as well....but it wouldn't be without its costs
Forma
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Apparently you have a 6% chance of getting a banner, so... yeah, they're much tougher to get.
Communication errors are becoming so damn tiring to deal with. It's so frustrating trying to play with friends only to get kicked out after a single match over and over and over again.
SkyeTheDemon
Inkling
the banner is actually a much much much lower chance, on splat twit a image awhile ago went around saying it was like a .2%? But looking at Inkipedia(linked the item chances that they have down on the site specifically if curious for all of them) it looks to be a .1% chance for the seasonal banner.
Which is ever so frustrating as someone who plays other gacha games with having higher chances + pity but i'm unsure if splatoon 3 has a pity mechanic in any capacity, it doesn't seem to considering you roll one at a time anywho?
The banner thing wouldn't be as bad if it didn't cost 30,000 for every try after the first try (which only costs 5,000). Instead, I just end up getting tickets, stickers, or decor, sometimes even titles.
I just don't like artificial ways that games make you play for longer periods of time and this is definitely one of them. I understand that there is a lack of weapons and gear at the moment, but that's never an excuse to make cosmetics nearly impossible to obtain.
And yes, the communication issues are starting to get on my last nerves mainly because I'm trying to farm money, but the constant kicking before a match only adds to the time wasted. Oh yeah, they still didn't fix the Salmon Run error.
I just don't like artificial ways that games make you play for longer periods of time and this is definitely one of them. I understand that there is a lack of weapons and gear at the moment, but that's never an excuse to make cosmetics nearly impossible to obtain.
And yes, the communication issues are starting to get on my last nerves mainly because I'm trying to farm money, but the constant kicking before a match only adds to the time wasted. Oh yeah, they still didn't fix the Salmon Run error.
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Squid Savior From the Future
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The communications error problem is worse than I thought, it's spreading!
In case anybody missed the joke because this is a deserted ghost town, SB was down for a day or two and the first thing I thought of every time I tried it was "A communications error occurred" :D
In case anybody missed the joke because this is a deserted ghost town, SB was down for a day or two and the first thing I thought of every time I tried it was "A communications error occurred" :D
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Squid Savior From the Future
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Here's an interesting s3 glitch. I was in a match, ranked, the other day, we were winning, and then I got "connection error" (instead of communication error). It dumped me in the lobby (not the plaza) and marked it a loss. And then the splatcast came up telling me the maps changed. I went to go back into ranked and got the warning they'd punish me for disconnecting next time (ugh.) Then I noticed the maps did NOT change, it was the same ones. Then I looked at the time and map change wasn't for another 8 minutes. Somehow the game thought it was map change time and somehow caused a connection error they blamed me for, 10 minutes or so before the actual map change. This was before DST ended.
Other than that, dead horse, I know, but I really can not complain enough about the ranked matchmaking to make clear just how terrible it is and how much I disdain it. I really don't know what they did to it. I do know it got worse after the patch that said they "sped up" the ranked matchmaking. It seems slower, not faster, but the matching seems even worse. Alt account C+/B- rank up was every big as brutal as my main account S/S+ rank up. It's the same darned gameplay. It took 3 complete wipeouts with 0 wins to finally get to B- on the 4th. Teammates were very good. But the lobbies were horribly balanced. Wins were curbstomps where it was like there were no opponents. Losses were curbstomps as though there were no teammates. Just totally mismatched player skill between teams. There is no justifiable reason for a C+ rank-up battle to pose that level of challenge. S mainline battles (not the S+ rankup that's been a total cluster every time to the point I'm afraid to try again) are a breeze in comparison. That's just bad. It's all just random and meaningless. It's infuriating but I'm enjoying getting to play the ranked modes with whatever weapons I want and not give a care by playing on my alt. I'm going 100% splat charger right now. Never trusted that for ranked, but it's working if I odn't really want to rank up.
But when trying to play with friends it's the worst. Almost every single time I try you wait minutes to join, it connects, and then connection error. You wait again, but it doesn't show the other people playing, just online, then it shows them in lobby full, and not "drop ins ok" then randomly it'll show drop ins ok, you try to connect, wait 3 min, you all join in the lobby, the connection error. Go through that dance again, play 1-3 matches, then connection error. Then go through the dance again. Something about the friend connection seems to trigger the connection errors. I'd say maybe that's the root cause, but then it shouldn't be happening in ranked solo. BUT, I have noticed what I think might be a mixing of "open" ranked" and "series" ranked, which should never, ever happen, but I've seen a number of matches in solo where there are clear signs members of a team are playing coordinated, with coordinated tags/schemes, and signs they're playing on mic and coordinating. If they're blending open and series, no wonder the ranked modes are so bad.
@Saber That's true, but the bad weapon mixes really do break the overall gameplay. That having been said, I think it could balance itself out in different ways, if there were not superjumps. Those aggro players being able to keep dropping in where the all ranged players can't easily keep stopping them non-stop, keeps the rushdowns going by attrition until there's no way to hold ground. IF the aggro players had to be delayed by respawning it would give the all ranged team time to recover and push back. Just yesterday I played one of those where we were penned in at the very map and scenario Salamander discussed. There was simply no way to defend the waves. We were doing as well as we could overrun on all sides by them, but our ok team and weapon mix, even with lots of splats (I and one other squid had 20+ splats, and the others were also decent k/d, all positive, good team) but we could simply not splat them fast enough to keep them held back from their non-stop SJ waves, non-stop specials barrage. Salamander's points work in an IDEAL situation with an ideal weapon mix, and ideal skill matching, and really, with open mic comms. But that's not how 95% of Splatoon matches are played. SJ may not break it theoretically, but it breaks it in reality.
Other than that, dead horse, I know, but I really can not complain enough about the ranked matchmaking to make clear just how terrible it is and how much I disdain it. I really don't know what they did to it. I do know it got worse after the patch that said they "sped up" the ranked matchmaking. It seems slower, not faster, but the matching seems even worse. Alt account C+/B- rank up was every big as brutal as my main account S/S+ rank up. It's the same darned gameplay. It took 3 complete wipeouts with 0 wins to finally get to B- on the 4th. Teammates were very good. But the lobbies were horribly balanced. Wins were curbstomps where it was like there were no opponents. Losses were curbstomps as though there were no teammates. Just totally mismatched player skill between teams. There is no justifiable reason for a C+ rank-up battle to pose that level of challenge. S mainline battles (not the S+ rankup that's been a total cluster every time to the point I'm afraid to try again) are a breeze in comparison. That's just bad. It's all just random and meaningless. It's infuriating but I'm enjoying getting to play the ranked modes with whatever weapons I want and not give a care by playing on my alt. I'm going 100% splat charger right now. Never trusted that for ranked, but it's working if I odn't really want to rank up.
I think it's getting worse actually. They said they "fixed" it in that first patch, it did nothing. The second patch didn't mention it, but it seemed to both make it better and worse. I noticed when I'm in a lobby I'm more likely to remain in it for very long periods of time.......and when I am it stays on the same map the entire time without rotating. But when it isn't working it'll get connection error non-stop. I tried 7 times to start a match one day and it was the 8th that finally went into a lobby.
But when trying to play with friends it's the worst. Almost every single time I try you wait minutes to join, it connects, and then connection error. You wait again, but it doesn't show the other people playing, just online, then it shows them in lobby full, and not "drop ins ok" then randomly it'll show drop ins ok, you try to connect, wait 3 min, you all join in the lobby, the connection error. Go through that dance again, play 1-3 matches, then connection error. Then go through the dance again. Something about the friend connection seems to trigger the connection errors. I'd say maybe that's the root cause, but then it shouldn't be happening in ranked solo. BUT, I have noticed what I think might be a mixing of "open" ranked" and "series" ranked, which should never, ever happen, but I've seen a number of matches in solo where there are clear signs members of a team are playing coordinated, with coordinated tags/schemes, and signs they're playing on mic and coordinating. If they're blending open and series, no wonder the ranked modes are so bad.
Incidentally that's the same chance you have for getting a lobby successfully connected :)
Another SB poster and I had debated with S2's bad ranked matchmaking a conspiracy theory that it was actually DESIGNED to put players in a certain rank by assigning easy wins or impossible wins on purpose to manage the available player population through each rank ,and to encourage players to spend more time playing. I'm starting more and more to believe there is truth to that. IT may not be microtransaction monetized, but they still have a vested interest in manipulating results in the same way mtx-based games do to bolster engagement numbers. It feels like that often, when you get straight series of shutouts, or straight series of easy wins like a flag was flipped....it becomes hard to believe it's a coincidence over and over in succession. Considering the manipulation of your play time via gatchas and economy, it's not a huge stretch to believe the matching can be a result of cunning rather than incompetence.
@Saber That's true, but the bad weapon mixes really do break the overall gameplay. That having been said, I think it could balance itself out in different ways, if there were not superjumps. Those aggro players being able to keep dropping in where the all ranged players can't easily keep stopping them non-stop, keeps the rushdowns going by attrition until there's no way to hold ground. IF the aggro players had to be delayed by respawning it would give the all ranged team time to recover and push back. Just yesterday I played one of those where we were penned in at the very map and scenario Salamander discussed. There was simply no way to defend the waves. We were doing as well as we could overrun on all sides by them, but our ok team and weapon mix, even with lots of splats (I and one other squid had 20+ splats, and the others were also decent k/d, all positive, good team) but we could simply not splat them fast enough to keep them held back from their non-stop SJ waves, non-stop specials barrage. Salamander's points work in an IDEAL situation with an ideal weapon mix, and ideal skill matching, and really, with open mic comms. But that's not how 95% of Splatoon matches are played. SJ may not break it theoretically, but it breaks it in reality.
Forma
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Not a glitch, just what happens when your connection drops out.
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Squid Savior From the Future
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I haven't seen the artificial map change before though
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I would like to check this game out. Can you send the replay code?
Forma
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It's what happens if your Switch completely loses connection to the internet. You can pretty consistently do it yourself if you cut off your connection while it's in use (trying to search for a match after powering off your modem, for instance). It's usually a generic Switch error box that appears, but Splatoon's native "A communication error has occurred" will occasionally appear as well.
SkyeTheDemon
Inkling
I will say that at the very least with the splatfest being around the corner Conch Shells are a very cheap and effective way to play the gacha, while it does require more gameplay in essence, they're much easier to get due to it just being a matter of leveling up your catalog n' such?
But it's from my own experience, substantially cheaper than splurging 30k everytime you wanna get a roll when I could be using that money on actually important things, and realistically the Conch Shells have no other use and disappear after each splatfest so def not a bad idea to use them on gacha as a whole tbh!
SkyeTheDemon
Inkling
LMAO, I love this thank you for this beautiful work of art, I won't lie I was tryna check SB later on in the day and it just decided didn't load and I just now finally looked again and it's nice that it's back although slightly concerning, but just glad it's back tbh.
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Squid Savior From the Future
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Ever have that not-so-fresh feeling like you don't even have any teammates at all?
In fact that one yesterday made me think of something else as well. The snowball/SJ issue is also what creates the "sharking" issue as well. The sharking is only really dangerous once the enemy controls significant turf INSIDE your base. If it's just one squid behind enemy lines, they're easy to find and flush out once you realize they're there. They may successfully slow you down on the objective, but once you know they're there you can flush them out easily enough after. They become a real problem after the snowballing loads your whole base with ink because they can be anywhere, and you need to try to eat into all that turf to flush the shark otherwise they're an SJ anchor, usually yielding an ambush as you try, which combines with the other enemies retrenching their domination into your base. Which then adds a whole barrage of specials which doubles the control of the shark, and the front line into the base again. All really facilitated by the lack of delay in getting enemies back to the battle. I was concious of the discussion on "feeding" as I was "feeding" myself, (and we got successive team wipes) but also realized there was not much alternative in figuring out a strategy to deal with the invaders. You have to do something to test where they are and try to reverse the momentum, or try strategies to get new angles, but if they're good at it, there's always a full compliment of them where you need to be, that doesn't give many options to try approaches without high risk. It could be a simple issue of a match of a combined bad team vs a combined great team, but I can't single out teammates and say "one held us back" we all did relatively similarly so if we were worse, we were all bad compared to the opposition ,which just brings us to the matchmaking.
And THAT combination leads to the necessity of "feeding". I pride myself on not dying much at all, but in those cases you have to trial and error to figure out how to deal with them. You don't know where they are or for sure that they're there, so you start trying different strategies to handle them. You may figure one out through trial and error but then it's too late after repeated deaths/team-wipeouts. The match I'm referring to any time I would respawn you'd have to think of how to handle the tower squid, the tower squid surrounding it, and 2 sharking squid that could be anywhere, the sploosh of which was of course going for anywhere I might be on the high ground. (This excludes the round the other day on hammerhead where I inked some zone from the grate over the edge in the opening seconds, then got flanked by a sploosh that then sharked the rest of the match relentlessly hunting me over and over so that I never got back to the zone and got individually spawncamped, while my team happily raced past them to go die at the zone without ever flushing them out, leaving a charger to 1v1 a sharking sploosh. And then I got #1 zone inker.......because somehow the few lines of ink I laid down on the zone in the first 8 seconds was the most ink anyone put on the zone the whole match.... That was just "fun in the Cs", but amusing nonetheless :) )
Although I will also say I was noticing that a lot of those "snowball" (negative) rounds were also ones where my splat bombs could explode under people and they take no damage. I haven't worked out how much effect lag making invincible squids can really be the TOTAL cause of the "snowball" issue. I've taken to being a splat bomb main-charger of late. Which is very effective of course in TC. But I've noticed several round where bombs exploding that should have killed squid did nothing at all (and in one case neither did two direct full charge charger blasts to the face, while he ignored me like I wasn't even there, probably because on his screen I wasn't.) But I am noticing there are some lobbies where the bombs are just bursting around invincible squid, and of course that leaves me out of ink too easily with no effect on the enemy.
On the flip-side I've been on the opposite side of that balance enough, too, on the "snowballer" side enough, including as "that stupid s+ squid on on their B-team, it's so unfair!"....which.....isn't inaccurate..., and as the tag-along that barely did anything because the supersquid front-liners had it so locked down there wasn't much need for me to do much other than pick off stragglers. Including on that map yesterday. And it's true, the balance (matchmaking) certainly makes part of the problem. I was ping ponging between matches against impossible odds with rushdowns that start at the beginning, take over our base in seconds, and we're helpless to push them out, the best we can do is slow them down, and then a match where enemies are literally walking into my splat bombs repeatedly. So it's hard to work out where the mechanics are failing and where it's all about a matchmaker that's been flat out broken since 2015 and seems to be getting worse. But at this point it's clear they'll never fix the matchmaking, so they need to "break" the game balance to accommodate the expectation of bad matchmaking which is how the bulk of the game is played.
I was going to say what they need to do is just get rid of ranked entirely. Leave ladders for private battle, make the ranked modes open modes and just get rid of the ranking. It doesn't work. They're not going to fix it, and every time they try to fix it they make it worse, with the latest incarnation being that the ranks don't even affect the gameplay level you experience. But then I realized that still leaves you with an unfun game of 1 sided stomps at least 50% of the time.
There's one other metric involved I think. I went from Thu-Mon playing matches in the Cs and Bs loaded with S+ gameplay and impossible to win against superior enemy matches. Yesterday I went back to proper "B" type matches where losses were less about overwhelming X rank pro squids, and more about teammates that pick up the RM and have no idea where to go even if you try to clear the area ahead of them, or leave it sitting untouched even after an enemy wipeout. That's the same thing that happened on my other account. Days of impossible odds against clearly top tier pro squid, followed by playing mostly with noobs in the kiddie pool. What you play and how impossible ranking up are seem highly dependent on WHEN you play, it's a different game at different times. How could the "matchmaking" match up "C" and "B" matches for days that are pulling mostly top tier suqids, and then one day the switch flips and your back in low ranked land? I think earlier conversation is at play, there's not really that many players outside Japan, active at any time, let alone suitable for ranks, so they're basically picking "anything" from what's available, if the "best" match around is 5 ranks too high, that's what you get, if it's 3 ranks too low, that's what you get. Which then further contaminates ranking.
It's hard to pin down balance/gameplay issues when so much affecting the outcome in gameplay is technical or even player population based. But if doing something like dropping SJ (or severely delaying it) might help the odds of disadvantaged teams recover in a game where it's clear it's always going to pair mismatched teams, then that really needs to be considered. I do sympathize that sort of extreme action sucks for comp, but the game's not really about comp and Nintendo has never been big on that in their games (lest we head to Smashboards for more salt ;) ) They could keep that kind of stuff for private battles and drop it from solo since matchmaking doesn't play a factor there.
Finally: I hate New Mahi so much I think I want Moray back.
I'm pretty sure that one is bounced off the list by now or at least is so far down I'm not sure how I'd find it, though there was a not that dissimilar one yesterday, maybe I could find, though it was TC, not sure yet. I mean there were quite a few, but specifically that scenario and map I think were there. If I can't find those I'll just try to keep an eye out for one that might highlight it well and grab it. I'm sure I'll get more.
In fact that one yesterday made me think of something else as well. The snowball/SJ issue is also what creates the "sharking" issue as well. The sharking is only really dangerous once the enemy controls significant turf INSIDE your base. If it's just one squid behind enemy lines, they're easy to find and flush out once you realize they're there. They may successfully slow you down on the objective, but once you know they're there you can flush them out easily enough after. They become a real problem after the snowballing loads your whole base with ink because they can be anywhere, and you need to try to eat into all that turf to flush the shark otherwise they're an SJ anchor, usually yielding an ambush as you try, which combines with the other enemies retrenching their domination into your base. Which then adds a whole barrage of specials which doubles the control of the shark, and the front line into the base again. All really facilitated by the lack of delay in getting enemies back to the battle. I was concious of the discussion on "feeding" as I was "feeding" myself, (and we got successive team wipes) but also realized there was not much alternative in figuring out a strategy to deal with the invaders. You have to do something to test where they are and try to reverse the momentum, or try strategies to get new angles, but if they're good at it, there's always a full compliment of them where you need to be, that doesn't give many options to try approaches without high risk. It could be a simple issue of a match of a combined bad team vs a combined great team, but I can't single out teammates and say "one held us back" we all did relatively similarly so if we were worse, we were all bad compared to the opposition ,which just brings us to the matchmaking.
And THAT combination leads to the necessity of "feeding". I pride myself on not dying much at all, but in those cases you have to trial and error to figure out how to deal with them. You don't know where they are or for sure that they're there, so you start trying different strategies to handle them. You may figure one out through trial and error but then it's too late after repeated deaths/team-wipeouts. The match I'm referring to any time I would respawn you'd have to think of how to handle the tower squid, the tower squid surrounding it, and 2 sharking squid that could be anywhere, the sploosh of which was of course going for anywhere I might be on the high ground. (This excludes the round the other day on hammerhead where I inked some zone from the grate over the edge in the opening seconds, then got flanked by a sploosh that then sharked the rest of the match relentlessly hunting me over and over so that I never got back to the zone and got individually spawncamped, while my team happily raced past them to go die at the zone without ever flushing them out, leaving a charger to 1v1 a sharking sploosh. And then I got #1 zone inker.......because somehow the few lines of ink I laid down on the zone in the first 8 seconds was the most ink anyone put on the zone the whole match.... That was just "fun in the Cs", but amusing nonetheless :) )
Although I will also say I was noticing that a lot of those "snowball" (negative) rounds were also ones where my splat bombs could explode under people and they take no damage. I haven't worked out how much effect lag making invincible squids can really be the TOTAL cause of the "snowball" issue. I've taken to being a splat bomb main-charger of late. Which is very effective of course in TC. But I've noticed several round where bombs exploding that should have killed squid did nothing at all (and in one case neither did two direct full charge charger blasts to the face, while he ignored me like I wasn't even there, probably because on his screen I wasn't.) But I am noticing there are some lobbies where the bombs are just bursting around invincible squid, and of course that leaves me out of ink too easily with no effect on the enemy.
On the flip-side I've been on the opposite side of that balance enough, too, on the "snowballer" side enough, including as "that stupid s+ squid on on their B-team, it's so unfair!"....which.....isn't inaccurate..., and as the tag-along that barely did anything because the supersquid front-liners had it so locked down there wasn't much need for me to do much other than pick off stragglers. Including on that map yesterday. And it's true, the balance (matchmaking) certainly makes part of the problem. I was ping ponging between matches against impossible odds with rushdowns that start at the beginning, take over our base in seconds, and we're helpless to push them out, the best we can do is slow them down, and then a match where enemies are literally walking into my splat bombs repeatedly. So it's hard to work out where the mechanics are failing and where it's all about a matchmaker that's been flat out broken since 2015 and seems to be getting worse. But at this point it's clear they'll never fix the matchmaking, so they need to "break" the game balance to accommodate the expectation of bad matchmaking which is how the bulk of the game is played.
I was going to say what they need to do is just get rid of ranked entirely. Leave ladders for private battle, make the ranked modes open modes and just get rid of the ranking. It doesn't work. They're not going to fix it, and every time they try to fix it they make it worse, with the latest incarnation being that the ranks don't even affect the gameplay level you experience. But then I realized that still leaves you with an unfun game of 1 sided stomps at least 50% of the time.
There's one other metric involved I think. I went from Thu-Mon playing matches in the Cs and Bs loaded with S+ gameplay and impossible to win against superior enemy matches. Yesterday I went back to proper "B" type matches where losses were less about overwhelming X rank pro squids, and more about teammates that pick up the RM and have no idea where to go even if you try to clear the area ahead of them, or leave it sitting untouched even after an enemy wipeout. That's the same thing that happened on my other account. Days of impossible odds against clearly top tier pro squid, followed by playing mostly with noobs in the kiddie pool. What you play and how impossible ranking up are seem highly dependent on WHEN you play, it's a different game at different times. How could the "matchmaking" match up "C" and "B" matches for days that are pulling mostly top tier suqids, and then one day the switch flips and your back in low ranked land? I think earlier conversation is at play, there's not really that many players outside Japan, active at any time, let alone suitable for ranks, so they're basically picking "anything" from what's available, if the "best" match around is 5 ranks too high, that's what you get, if it's 3 ranks too low, that's what you get. Which then further contaminates ranking.
It's hard to pin down balance/gameplay issues when so much affecting the outcome in gameplay is technical or even player population based. But if doing something like dropping SJ (or severely delaying it) might help the odds of disadvantaged teams recover in a game where it's clear it's always going to pair mismatched teams, then that really needs to be considered. I do sympathize that sort of extreme action sucks for comp, but the game's not really about comp and Nintendo has never been big on that in their games (lest we head to Smashboards for more salt ;) ) They could keep that kind of stuff for private battles and drop it from solo since matchmaking doesn't play a factor there.
Finally: I hate New Mahi so much I think I want Moray back.
The few times the game thought I really lost connection it actaully dumps me back to the plaza, not the lobby, so that's interesting. Now, it needs to be said I definitely didn't lose actual internet connection at the network switch, I'd have known from other constant connection devices, so it's still a Switch issue one way or another. But interesting there's different results like that.
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On alot of these maps the choke point lies between the 50 point marker and your spawn, especially on the new maps. Once they pass that you got a anchor who can wall you out or someone sharking since you have no turf control
Areas include
- eeltail alley walkway
- box (sniper perch next to CB basket) scoruch gorge
-2nd level of hammerhead bridge
-Sniper perch undertow spillway
As for superjumping like I said I feel it is a problem but not in itself but rather cuz everything else encourages it to be unfair ink vac can protect and ally jumping in Bubble shield protects and provides a beacon
On top of that stealth jump, Quick respawn, ninja squid, and comback are really popular (if they aren't running LDE)
**also yeah Dynamo meta of S1 QR stealth jump is back, they even brought back the invincibility lag....just no one has picked up a dynamo yet
U know what isn’t popular? Beacon subs which provide an advatage to those at disadvantage for Superjumps and flanking, Object shredder which could pop shields, respawn punisher which can nerf taticoolers and Quick respawn tactics altogether...and ink vac which is great in coordination but rarely see th the light of day when at disadvantage cuz the delay in between lauching it lets players with ink efficiency or last ditch effort keep firing til it reach max then kill since they still have ink.
Though with all the above being mentioned...I discovered that tenta brella heavily counters alot of this, you can provide you allies with beacon to superjump and flank even at disadvantage
You can shield the allies who superjump to you, and send you a shield to turf large areas block LDE bombs, and protect allies all while doing amt of dmg to the enemy who swim into it and I running object shredder....cuz I hate the bubble shield spam lately (squiffer, splatroller, and 2 splatter shot jr)
Also there is a huge dive meta, people are running highly aggressive basically aiming to get a wipeout on the enemy team with a blitz and get to that choke point, this is made even worse by the bad team matchup, if you have more than two anchors you just get rushed down and you can't do anything.
Hoenstly it sucks splatoon is all about positioning but this meta is all about never letting the enemy position or even play and the map is helping them with it especially on Mahi (it is even worse than S1 urchin)
So how would I go about fixing this....
-Mahi mahi need a full map overhaul it is too small and you just get spawn camped
- Stealth jump need to add a delay to you superjumping speed (force players to use QSJ in place of other ability slots you did it with ninja squid)
-LDE need a nerf (only apply at 30 or nerf to its ink efficiency)
-Buff ink vac (you never get to fire due to the delay between it full charge and fire)
-Increase special charge need for splattershor jr, splatroller, and flingza
-Lastly I feel like the new maps need some minor tweak for the map layout across the various game modes (namely Clam Blitz and tower control splat zones feel pretty even across all but hammer head and occasionally eeltail and Rainmaker only really feels unfair on mahi mahi and mako mart)
Areas include
- eeltail alley walkway
- box (sniper perch next to CB basket) scoruch gorge
-2nd level of hammerhead bridge
-Sniper perch undertow spillway
As for superjumping like I said I feel it is a problem but not in itself but rather cuz everything else encourages it to be unfair ink vac can protect and ally jumping in Bubble shield protects and provides a beacon
On top of that stealth jump, Quick respawn, ninja squid, and comback are really popular (if they aren't running LDE)
**also yeah Dynamo meta of S1 QR stealth jump is back, they even brought back the invincibility lag....just no one has picked up a dynamo yet
U know what isn’t popular? Beacon subs which provide an advatage to those at disadvantage for Superjumps and flanking, Object shredder which could pop shields, respawn punisher which can nerf taticoolers and Quick respawn tactics altogether...and ink vac which is great in coordination but rarely see th the light of day when at disadvantage cuz the delay in between lauching it lets players with ink efficiency or last ditch effort keep firing til it reach max then kill since they still have ink.
Though with all the above being mentioned...I discovered that tenta brella heavily counters alot of this, you can provide you allies with beacon to superjump and flank even at disadvantage
You can shield the allies who superjump to you, and send you a shield to turf large areas block LDE bombs, and protect allies all while doing amt of dmg to the enemy who swim into it and I running object shredder....cuz I hate the bubble shield spam lately (squiffer, splatroller, and 2 splatter shot jr)
Also there is a huge dive meta, people are running highly aggressive basically aiming to get a wipeout on the enemy team with a blitz and get to that choke point, this is made even worse by the bad team matchup, if you have more than two anchors you just get rushed down and you can't do anything.
Hoenstly it sucks splatoon is all about positioning but this meta is all about never letting the enemy position or even play and the map is helping them with it especially on Mahi (it is even worse than S1 urchin)
So how would I go about fixing this....
-Mahi mahi need a full map overhaul it is too small and you just get spawn camped
- Stealth jump need to add a delay to you superjumping speed (force players to use QSJ in place of other ability slots you did it with ninja squid)
-LDE need a nerf (only apply at 30 or nerf to its ink efficiency)
-Buff ink vac (you never get to fire due to the delay between it full charge and fire)
-Increase special charge need for splattershor jr, splatroller, and flingza
-Lastly I feel like the new maps need some minor tweak for the map layout across the various game modes (namely Clam Blitz and tower control splat zones feel pretty even across all but hammer head and occasionally eeltail and Rainmaker only really feels unfair on mahi mahi and mako mart)
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Squid Savior From the Future
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A lot of good points. Especially on the maps and choke points. Unfortunately I doubt they'll "do an Arrowanna" and revamp the maps that exist, so we're stuck with having to balance around those problems.
I was actually maining Dynamo in zones on my main account up to S, but I found it to be too much of a liability which is why nobody uses it, and switched to Flingza (and now am all charger atm.) The emphasis on rushdowns, and the need to flank on these maps to get anywhere in the face of it means the long windup to attack just leaves you too vulnerable too often. The fact that it's a dynamo kit with a sprinkler means you're too often too defenseless unless you play totally support/anchor which isn't really doable in solo. I gave up on dynamo after a zones match where we had TWO dynamos, and both of us spamming tacticooler and we still lost badly I realized it's just too inflexible despite its strengths to really be a reliable weapon in this meta. Dynamo may have the invicilag back but it just doesn't feel like it did in S1. I think duelies broke it. They're so fast and the dodgerolls make every swing too high risk, the game basically mandates you can't play a weapon that slow. I'll always love it though.
Beacons were never ideal in solo, though I do see them in use on occasion. I think mostly so few weapons actually have beacons and the ones that do don't have meta specials - and others have bubble for special that's a better beacon. I think of every weapon I've used even just a little that I like to play with, only one has had beacons. IDK if sploosh still does, I used to use the sploosh that had beacons in S2 a lot. But my CEliter days in S1 with my QSJ/beacon build was the pinnacle of beacons to me. I love the mines, but I really missed the Custom in S2 and now S3. But I do see them from time to time. The bigger problem is I'm the only one that actually thinks to DESTROY enemy beacons most of the time, leaving flank lines open behind the team unless I do it :) They're rare enough nobody even looks for them. Can't blame them. I was conditioned for it as a beacon main in S1 :) I've considered running shredder often. Especially in TC where the bubbles are just an insta-win button (who thought allowing sustained invincibility to ranged and throwable weapons on the tower was a GOOD IDEA?!?! Rollers are unaffected and chargers are renderred useless. If I'm the only one in the area I've had to resort to taking my charger and doing a rushdown on the tower - high risk with a bomb. And if the bomb happens to not kill the rider, as happens if they're behind the pole or not...oh well...I "feed"..... ) Eliters are hosed, and squiffers, LOL.
Punisher seems pretty popular though.
Yeah, now that I've taken up splacharger as ranked main, I'm beginning to hate ink vac as being broken like stamp was. It's supposed to be an "invincibility special" but instead I find it just a "please kill me button" and end up never using my special. You fire up the vac, the sploosh/sshot just rushes you down face-touching distance and you die before you can fire. I'll tactically use the vac such as on the tower, or if I'm in the field alone and waiting for the team to come back if only to buy use a few seconds holding the objective in place before I die and leave a 3v4 for the team to try to fix, or from the rearguard to help the team push in with the tower RM mostly before the enemies notice I'm using it and their bombs disappear. And it's super userful in that role. But 80% of the time it's just a "please kill me" button best unused. I often just use it as a "RELOADING!" button. Becuase as a splat bomb main....I'm empty a lot.
And I agree about never letting the enemy position. It was fine at first, but in the past 3-4 weeks I've really seen the meta shift to that "zerg rush" where it's just "bee-line to the enemy base and hold it in the first 10 seconds and win" for any decent team. it sucked in Starcraft in the 90's and it sucks in Splatoon today. It's not just the map. That method is used so much in Museum that map is almost a joke. That map's been in 3 games now and this is the first time a zerg rush is a guaranteed win. The maps help, but the weapon/special/SJ mix is really the difference this time. Once in position, it's hard to shake them out of position, and winning mostly comes down to "does your team know rushing is the win button, and does the other team know that too?" Whenever 2 or more players on one team know that, and less than 2 on the other team does, the result is over before it starts. That's a bad balance. They hyper-aggressive "wipe everyone fast and win" really denies most of what made splatoon fun. Eliters were feeling good at first, but I dont' really use them other than TW now, and then, just for fun. The maps facilitate long-range unlike S2, but the emphasis on rushdowns makes eliters and even hydras not as viable as they were, the splacharger saves the day this time since the bombs make it suitable for doing rushdowns as well, albeit, it has to be tactical. Hydra's somewhat saved by autobombs. Eliter really needs a new sub. Mines are defensively great, and I like to use them offensively, but without a throwable or something, it's a sitting duck in the aggressive rushdown meta. Again....
I think if splacharger were less viable I'd have to hang up the chargers again. With the "faster data transfer" even rollers have become really problematic. We're back to the "fast shooter, and let lag make the win" meta from S1 where you get the 3 ticks from a splattershot all at once from a splattershot not aiming at you. When aerosprays become common rushdowns, you know it's lag driven. And bloblobber.....that's an ugly meta. I even like using that weapon but...the lag....it's the splatttershot 3 tick on overdrive. And explosher, like bombs, missess too many shots it should not miss.
(Big shout out though to whoever was on my team yesterday where while the whole enemy team was busy spawn camping us, and SJ'ing, our brave soldier grabbed the RM and ran it entirely through enemy ink, alone, and uncontested, LOL. Apparently everyone was so busy trying to splat the evasive bomb throwing charger, nobody noticed the "They have the rainmaker" banner and even bothered to go back and splat them despite owning the whole map.... :) I noticed it on the map and just played along keeping them busy sniping at nothing and evading near spawn so they didn't go as often back to their spawn and notice :) Nothing like a win by KO while playing 3v4 spawncamp :) Only works in RM though. And only if your enemies are good at shooting and bad enough at RM to not notice the RM is missing. :) )
Agreed on some changes. Mahi REALLY needs to be "Arrowanna'd". It's a bad map, full stop. IDK what they were thinking with that. It may be at it's best in Blitz where the design isn't super detrimental but it's awful in everything else.
Totally agreed on a delay on stealth jump and roll, though I still think there needs to be a bigger delay on ALL jump. And punisher is not a long enough delay at .2 seconds.
I somewhat agree on LDE, I don't run it so I'm not sure how effective it is, so I'd be ok leaving that as-is, but I won't argue against it either, because it could be a bigger factor than I realize.
TOTALLY agreed on inc vac. It's so bad. I only get to fire it maybe one out of ever 5 uses, and even when I can, I can't really aim it at anything, I mostly just quickly lob it before looking just to use it. Once in a while I get to use it as intended. The concept is also broken because you'll really only ever get 1/4 charge unless the enemies are idiots, and then you're standing around waiting for ink, or bullishly heading into enemy fire to try to pick up ink. Just letting you cancel and throw it whenever would be a buff. Worse is when the enemies ARE idiots and fill it up in .04 seconds and you don't realize it's charged because that never happens, and then you just stand there thinking you're dead :)
I'd also think they need to look into duelie rolling and how it affects various weapons. IDK how to fix it, it's a hard wep to play well, I'm not good with it, so I accept that it's skill based, but having these weapons that roll around fast really break the balance between a good number of other weapons. THey broke it in S2, but chose not to fix that in S3. Particularly where it comes to play is in those chokes and spawncamps where they have so much freedom of movement and you have none, it breaks the balance espeically if you're trying to take backe a base with slower weapons, AND low mobility, duelies are very broken opponents. I personally think it was a mistake ever introducing that weapon class, and 3 was an opportunity to remove it they missed. Worse, they added intensity up......amping duelie brokenness. If they're going to give duelies more dodge rolls, they should give chargers dmg+ for shorter charging again, too.
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So LDE basically invalidates ink saver items if your team is losing, you gain 12 ability points of ink saver main/sub, and ink recovery up (1 main 1 subn of each) at 50 mark
HOWEVER 30 secounds give you 24 ability points of inksaver main inksaver sub and ink recovery once they reach 30 mark (basically the equivalent of 1 main and 5 subs of each.....a pure set of each of these would only grant you 19 ink recovery), however in ranked this is permanent once they get to the 30 line any of the ranked modes), so yeah it is basically 24 extra ink effiecency and you have full freedom to run any other ability other than ink effiecency is basically invalidated (I mean it does still have its uses but not nearly as important as it should be
Intensify action also has a similar hidden talent (improving shot accuracy while jumping on weapons like .96, L-3 and H-3 which are notoriously bad), which is why I feel jump rng on blaster could be nerfed just a bit and be offset by intesify action
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Squid Savior From the Future
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Hmm, that IS pretty OP. I may have to try it to see how it behaves, though IDK, because I'm kind of reflex-dependent on my additional ink supply through the whole match and it may mess me up totally if I don't have it at all times, refill timing and everything will be off. OTOH I'm losing most of the time, so, net gain? :P That's pretty broken.
Intensify is the weirdest power up. It basically only boosts certain weapons and makes squid rolls "easier" which makes no sense because they're not very difficult to begin with (and accidentally doing it can be deadly. Especially on Mahi. Ask me how I know :) ) Does intensify help explosher during jumps? I experimented with the dummies and decided it doesn't, but I wasn't positive.
Maybe next time I'm in TW, I'll have to give tentabrella another try. I tried it a few weeks ago, along with splat brella and absolutely could do nothing with it other than get myself splatted. I have gained affinity for the undercover brella but not the tent at all. Maybe I'll give it another swing. Sorry in advance, @Ansible! :) If I ever get in with connection errors, anyway :)
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There is so much to unpack here. I'm going to try and make a video on some of this stuff because I would rather just do that than spend hours writing an essay here (as much fun as that would be). That also allows me to demonstrate some of this in-game.
A few things right off the bat:
Arrowanna Mall never got a big mid-game rework. It changed from S1 to S2 but it wasn't taken out of the rotation and worked on post launch like the other maps were. Speaking of that, quite a few maps have had major reworks after release. Urchin Underpass, The Reef, Shellendorf Institute, Starfish Mainstage, Blackbelly Skatepark, and Moray Towers have all had substantial reworks in the past. I guarantee Nintendo will pull some of the current maps out of rotation for a while and rework them in this game too. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that Mahi Mahi is going to get reworked soon.
Dualies don't really benefit much from Intensify Action. I don't know where you heard that it gives them an extra dodge roll but it does not. Maybe you're seeing Tetra Dualies roll 4 times and mixing it up with other dualies? To add to that, dodge rolling is really not difficult to deal with because the dualie player is locked into one spot and their roll distance and direction are predetermined. Long range weapons should have an especially easy time dealing with this because they can take advantage of the predetermined rolls and the crippling endlag after rolling to get easy kills from a safe distance away. Dualies as a whole have always been seen as "lesser shooters" because of this. Without dodge rolling, the dualie is painfully inaccurate and weak, but using a dodge roll to fix this makes your movement predictable. Shooters don't have this problem.
Also, we aren't in a rush down or "dive" meta right now. In fact, Eliter is probably the best weapon in the game right now. This is mostly due to the maps, many of which need some sort of rework. I think a lot of the issues you are having with snowballing and spanwcamping are compounded by a couple of poorly designed maps that allow that sort of play to work better than it should. Mahi, Hamerhead, Mincemeat, and Wahoo are probably the worst maps in the game right now and I do desperately hope that they are updated in the coming patches.
That being said, I'm going to work on that video to address the rest of this.