Splatoon Problems

[BlackZero]

The thing is that Nintendo is and has always been a company that runs on populism. Whenever someone at Nintendo has to choose between pleasing a large amount of passingly-interested people or pleasig a smaller amount of more dedicated people, they'll always pick the former. One of Nintendo's core design philosophies is to have their barriers of entry as low as possible. Based on what you say about server-based online play ans P2P-based online play, P2P allows more people to play at all, and hence that is their reason for it, and probably their sole reason for it.

In my experience, Nintendo favors the Japanese market over international ones. I wouldn't call that populist per se, as they focus on what appeals to a specific market and don't make much effort to appease international markets. AFAIK in Japan, it is perfectly normal (and may actually be preferable) for gamers to meet up at a physical location to play multiplayer games together. In that scenario, Nintendo would favor local play over online play because the demand in their key market simply isn't there. If a group of friends want to play together, they meet up and play together. Nintendo has always focused on local play, and I don't see them breaking that tradition overnight, especially if online play isn't a priority for their key consumer base. There is also the whole "family friendly gaming" vs " random people shrieking obscenities at each other" thing too. Nintendo has kept their image as "family friendly" a priority, and online play will certain rock that boat. I wouldn't be surprised if the higher ups were gunshy about associating their company with the whole "CoD Player" crowd.

I continued his losing streak down to B+ 40-something! Then like a switched was flipped, I won pretty much every game back to the mid A-'s. I have gotten two accounts up to S in a relatively short time and I'm pretty sure I'm not generally outplayed in B+ games :) I can't say I know why this happens, but I wish the Splatoon developers would put an end to it. Ranked battles would be so much more enjoyable if there were more balanced matchups without ridiculous losing or winning streaks.

When you win several games in a row, your player value increases disproportionately and hurls you into a tier of players that is beyond what you can consistently perform at. When you enter losing streaks, your value decreases disproportionately until you hit a point where you are way above the level of the people you play with. The system bounces between these two extremes the more a person plays through winning and losing streaks. To "stabilize" this, most people that play games with an Elo-based matchmaker make themselves stop after 3 consecutive losses so they don't enter a free fall and avoid bouncing between win streaks and losing streaks.

 

[jsilva]

When you win several games in a row, your player value increases disproportionately and hurls you into a tier of players that is beyond what you can consistently perform at. When you enter losing streaks, your value decreases disproportionately until you hit a point where you are way above the level of the people you play with. The system bounces between these two extremes the more a person plays through winning and losing streaks. To "stabilize" this, most people that play games with an Elo-based matchmaker make themselves stop after 3 consecutive losses so they don't enter a free fall and avoid bouncing between win streaks and losing streaks.

Of course that is just conjecture when we're talking about Splatoon ;)

Even if it wasn't, it doesn't fully explain how it is that I lost nearly every game about 10 games in a row at the low A- to mid B+ range. I know you can throw in the tilt argument, but that's simply a guess and even if I were affected (I wasn't) at some point I should have been matched on a strong enough team to win even if my own play was compromised (I certainly wasn't playing below the level of my opponents). Statistically it shouldn't be possible that I was matched on the substantially weaker team that many games in a row.

Unless the system was deliberately trying to make my son's account lose to 'balance' the ranks according to whatever it uses to rate player performance by deliberately grouping players together on the same team who are likely to lose. That would support my argument, that the matching system has an agenda, that it deliberately influences game outcomes.

In any case, it really feels like there's an essential bit of information we're missing.

Edit: And also, even if what you said is 100% correct, I want to play the game! Why should I have to stop playing the game I purchased just because the matchmaking sucks and I don't want to make it worse by continuing playing through a losing streak? :)

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

And also, even if what you said is 100% correct, I want to play the game! Why should I have to stop playing the game I purchased just because the matchmaking sucks and I don't want to make it worse by continuing playing through a losing streak? :)

It may be a way to discourage people from succumbing to the Gambler's Fallacy, which I admit I can be quite prone to (and is a major reason why I do not gamble). I don't think that's the reason though, as giving people losing streaks only encourages Gambler's Fallacy.

Something I have noticed, however, is that the higher your number within a rank, the more likely the game will put you into a losing streak, and it will continue until you stop playing.

In my experience, Nintendo favors the Japanese market over international ones. I wouldn't call that populist per se, as they focus on what appeals to a specific market and don't make much effort to appease international markets. AFAIK in Japan, it is perfectly normal (and may actually be preferable) for gamers to meet up at a physical location to play multiplayer games together. In that scenario, Nintendo would favor local play over online play because the demand in their key market simply isn't there. If a group of friends want to play together, they meet up and play together. Nintendo has always focused on local play, and I don't see them breaking that tradition overnight, especially if online play isn't a priority for their key consumer base. There is also the whole "family friendly gaming" vs " random people shrieking obscenities at each other" thing too. Nintendo has kept their image as "family friendly" a priority, and online play will certain rock that boat. I wouldn't be surprised if the higher ups were gunshy about associating their company with the whole "CoD Player" crowd.

That's a very good point. Arcades are still quite popular in Japan, though my sources from Japan say that they're slowly getting centralized into large urban areas, and Nintendo focusing on the Japanese market is certainly one of the reasons people are deeming the Wii U a failure in the west--it's definitely no failure in Japan, where Wii U games regularly make a lot of the top 30 week to week (and Splatoon only fell out of the top 10 once ever since it was released).

Still, that doesn't affect the decision between P2P-based and server-based matchmaking, and I would say Nintendo chose P2P because it's more accessible and allows a greater number of people to play.