Splatoon Regional Play Petition

[Gryffin]

I started a petition to Nintendo to restrict online play to regional zones.

Please sign the petition.

https://www.change.org/p/nintendo-s...source=share_for_starters&utm_medium=copyLink

 

[warghoul]

No thanks on the regional only option.

 

[Spiderface]

As someone in Western Australia, this would probably mean the game would be unplayable for me.... it's a good idea in principle but it would mean people in some regions would be totally screwed.

In the evenings in Australia during our Splatfest the pool of players seems tiny and wait times are pretty long. If it were like that all the time it probably wouldn't be worth me playing...

 

[Airi]

If it was optional, I wouldn't mind there being an option for regional matchmaking. I'm completely against the idea of forced regional matchmaking like your petition makes it sound. There's no reason for forced regional matchmaking. The majority of Splatoon players like and enjoy the international matchmaking. We shouldn't be punished and forced into regional matchmaking because some players can't handle international. :/

Regional should be a thing but only if it remains optional and we can still choose international if we want to. For some of us, forced regional matchmaking would make this game unplayable.

 

[Dessgeega]

I'm not sure I'd want this even if it were optional. Splitting the playerbase is an ongoing problem many online games have, after all.

 

[Jei-Cos]

While this is the literal reason that I can almost never play the game to begin with, I also have to say that I would rather it be optional. Not for me, but for the rest of the world. There are regions who would have barely enough players to warrent even bothering with the game because there's no one to play it with. On the other hand like I said, though, the whole global thing is the entirety of why I can't play..I'm constantly thrown onto servers that are WAY too fay away.

Also, I think this is a dumb idea because what makes you think Nintendo gives a crap? People signing this doesn't mean Nintendo has to do it, right? So what happens then?

 

[Brunosky_Inc]

I long ago posted in another similar thread why this would be something that sounds good on paper but would be terrible in practice.

In short, I'm against it. In an ideal world, the dynamics of matchmaking wouldn't change much. However, the reality is far from that. Here are my posts with my reasoning behind this:

Regarding regional matchmaking, I honestly think it'd be a terrible idea. My most ridiculous lag experiences have been during Splatfests, which are regional; and that would also mean the game would have less people to match up with. Since matches only starts when 8 players are on the lobby, having games not start because of a lack of players on one regional area at one time would be terrible for the game.

I'd much rather have global matchmaking than regional matchmaking with less potential players and hours where matchmaking would be almost impossible.

Regional matchmaking would be optional, not the only option though ;)

That'd still divide the player base, increasing the time necessary to fill a lobby on a global scale. This isn't like Mario Kart where you can have incomplete lobby games. If one of the regions doesn't let you fill a lobby your only chance would be global matchmaking, where you'll still run into trouble since now people in other regions are divided between regional and global matchmakers.

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When i was playing splatfest it only took a few seconds extra to find games. Might be because a lot of people are active during splatfest, but i'd still love to play regional matchmaking.

Splatfests are events out of the ordinary. They take place during the weekends, which is naturally when more players are available, and by their very nature they attract more players than usual. Splatfests are far from being representative of what would happen during valley hours in player count when you include regional matchmaking.

Besides, regional matchmaking would divide the playerbase in more ways. Japanese players are numerous and close to each other, so it's highly likely a huge number of them would stick to regional since it'd just be so much better, thus taking a huge chunk of global players out of the picture.

Europe is also relatively close knit, but there are less overall players. It's likely regional matchmaking would work like a charm... when it actually manages to find enough players in reasonable timeframes, that is.

America... oh boy, America. That place is huge, and with a particularly high concentration of potato connections (dumb monopolies in the US, a respectable number less developed countries in Central and South America). As I said, Splatfests have been the times I've faced my most ridiculous cases of lag during my playtime, and without a really significant increase in game performace. You would now have regional matches with the same ocassional hickups and significant downtimes, or global matchmaking where a good chunk of the playerbase is sticking to their regional matchmaking. Not a good experience overall.