It's sunday night, 7pm EST, and I'm sitting there for two minutes waiting for a battle to finish because there are no other available players at the moment. I finally get into a battle, and its me as a level 7 (circumstances, was using brother's ID, literally only took interest in Wii U for this game) and one other sub 10 pitted against level 15-20's.
I've seen so much praise about this game, or otherwise people playing the "it's been a week, can't judge" excuse, it's time to see some critique. Because first impressions matter, and new players might not be so willing to give the game that week, especially if they can still get a good price at the Gamestop for a trade in.
Now let's go through the list of problems...
- If your accuracy isn't good, you're gonna get wrecked.
- I sat at "chill" for a good 4 matches. By the mid of the fourth one and dying for my umpteenth time, I realized I no longer gave a **** and just wanted the match to end. Got tired of getting curb stomped four times in a row. Kicker? I waited after the second match for a shot at a new group. Barring any potential Japanese repeats, I got a new list of English names at least. No such luck. Still ended up with roughly 30%-60% losses. Every. Single. Match.
- No visible form of pairing far as I can tell. Or if the game does try to stick low levels with low levels, there simply aren't enough anymore. You either got in on the first wave of players and crunched to 20, or you'll be weeded out by the bigs picking on the smalls. Way to go, Nintendo.
- At the very least, they could look at the players that won the last match and try to separate them, instead of this RNG assignment bull$#!%.
- Getting shot at at all is a death sentence since an opponents blob can and will slow you TO A CRAWL. Weapons are supposed to drop ink at one's feet, but this only happens very occasionally, instead of with every shot. This is in fact a deal breaker, since the first one to get hit turns into a turret unless they get immediately lucky, meaning easy pickings for the one that can still move (and aim.)
- Dying means losing special meter. Freaking ironic, since it's the tool that can easily turn the tide of battle and when you're getting stomped, you sure as hell aren't going to get to use it.
- My 2 enhancements per slot vs their 4. GG.
- Japanese laggers.
- There's no consolation for a losing streak what-so-ever. I'm level 7. Thanks for making leveling (read: getting up to par with the 20's) even more painful. I'd like to make 1000 exp per run, not, oh... 600-700, MAYBE. Getting curbstomped makes it hard to ink territory at all.
- No boost to poor performers either. Hell, a respawn time reduction for the team clearly losing would maybe improve the losing team's chances. When the entire enemy team is sitting just outside the spawn circle and no one can get through because it's hard to be sneaky when moving fast requires inking the ground first... or a ton of resistance and inkling speed, it's kind of a "why even bother" moment.
- Control scheme is actually on the level dog piss. Sticks only is clunky as hell due to lack of tuning (gotta push the sticks half way to even get a response) and my tactic of making finite adjustments by strafing is wrecked by getting stuck on enemy ink. Basically, they have to line themselves up for me. Motion controls are wonky. If I need to look up and adjust to the left, apparently I have to actually turn my controller to the right. Mind, they can desync, so I have to constantly reset just to look up or down reliably, which is never when I actually, really need to.
- Player base is split between turf war "public" games and ranked matches. Please, make the player pool in turf wars even shallower for your up and coming pre-10's. I get that reintroducing the rank 10+ addicted to ranked matches to the turf war pool just means more double digits vs. the few newbs, but at least those newbs will be less likely to see the same few 15-20's repeatedly, whom I'm fairly certain are at this point just seeking easy item leveling. The newbs seriously desire to be stomped by the same double digits over and over and over.
I can see this maybe changing once the allure of new game modes wears off, but it's still a gamble, and still stupid of Nintendo to split the player base like this.
Basically, this game has no safety net, and the newbs will be run off too fast to keep the game popular for long. Mark my words. I'll of course give it a few more tries over the week, but I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If I'm not having fun because I feel whatever I'm doing is futile and I never feel like I even have the chance to win - I lose motivation, and eventually I quit. Like everyone else.
That's Splatoon's reality. It IS NOT a long term game in it's current state. There is too high a wall to climb, and the only way new players are going to climb it is if they're just that stubborn or they get really lucky with their team allotments and at least see 50-50 win-lose ratios that aren't complete stomp fests.
It is very telling when what should be prime time there seem to be so few players on I actually have to wait for a match (over 2 minutes, so it's among one of the only ones!) to end, and 90% of the players I do end up getting stuck with easily double my level. So low player numbers, and the extreme minority of those player numbers are under level 10.
I'd give this game a year, but I can barely justify 6 months before only the "pro circuit" really remains, if it even takes off.
Your "tips" are not welcome. Not the point of this thread, and most players won't visit an information medium to see them, making them moot. You'll notice, MOST of the above list is entirely in Nintendo's power to fix.
I've seen so much praise about this game, or otherwise people playing the "it's been a week, can't judge" excuse, it's time to see some critique. Because first impressions matter, and new players might not be so willing to give the game that week, especially if they can still get a good price at the Gamestop for a trade in.
Now let's go through the list of problems...
- If your accuracy isn't good, you're gonna get wrecked.
- I sat at "chill" for a good 4 matches. By the mid of the fourth one and dying for my umpteenth time, I realized I no longer gave a **** and just wanted the match to end. Got tired of getting curb stomped four times in a row. Kicker? I waited after the second match for a shot at a new group. Barring any potential Japanese repeats, I got a new list of English names at least. No such luck. Still ended up with roughly 30%-60% losses. Every. Single. Match.
- No visible form of pairing far as I can tell. Or if the game does try to stick low levels with low levels, there simply aren't enough anymore. You either got in on the first wave of players and crunched to 20, or you'll be weeded out by the bigs picking on the smalls. Way to go, Nintendo.
- At the very least, they could look at the players that won the last match and try to separate them, instead of this RNG assignment bull$#!%.
- Getting shot at at all is a death sentence since an opponents blob can and will slow you TO A CRAWL. Weapons are supposed to drop ink at one's feet, but this only happens very occasionally, instead of with every shot. This is in fact a deal breaker, since the first one to get hit turns into a turret unless they get immediately lucky, meaning easy pickings for the one that can still move (and aim.)
- Dying means losing special meter. Freaking ironic, since it's the tool that can easily turn the tide of battle and when you're getting stomped, you sure as hell aren't going to get to use it.
- My 2 enhancements per slot vs their 4. GG.
- Japanese laggers.
- There's no consolation for a losing streak what-so-ever. I'm level 7. Thanks for making leveling (read: getting up to par with the 20's) even more painful. I'd like to make 1000 exp per run, not, oh... 600-700, MAYBE. Getting curbstomped makes it hard to ink territory at all.
- No boost to poor performers either. Hell, a respawn time reduction for the team clearly losing would maybe improve the losing team's chances. When the entire enemy team is sitting just outside the spawn circle and no one can get through because it's hard to be sneaky when moving fast requires inking the ground first... or a ton of resistance and inkling speed, it's kind of a "why even bother" moment.
- Control scheme is actually on the level dog piss. Sticks only is clunky as hell due to lack of tuning (gotta push the sticks half way to even get a response) and my tactic of making finite adjustments by strafing is wrecked by getting stuck on enemy ink. Basically, they have to line themselves up for me. Motion controls are wonky. If I need to look up and adjust to the left, apparently I have to actually turn my controller to the right. Mind, they can desync, so I have to constantly reset just to look up or down reliably, which is never when I actually, really need to.
- Player base is split between turf war "public" games and ranked matches. Please, make the player pool in turf wars even shallower for your up and coming pre-10's. I get that reintroducing the rank 10+ addicted to ranked matches to the turf war pool just means more double digits vs. the few newbs, but at least those newbs will be less likely to see the same few 15-20's repeatedly, whom I'm fairly certain are at this point just seeking easy item leveling. The newbs seriously desire to be stomped by the same double digits over and over and over.
I can see this maybe changing once the allure of new game modes wears off, but it's still a gamble, and still stupid of Nintendo to split the player base like this.
Basically, this game has no safety net, and the newbs will be run off too fast to keep the game popular for long. Mark my words. I'll of course give it a few more tries over the week, but I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If I'm not having fun because I feel whatever I'm doing is futile and I never feel like I even have the chance to win - I lose motivation, and eventually I quit. Like everyone else.
That's Splatoon's reality. It IS NOT a long term game in it's current state. There is too high a wall to climb, and the only way new players are going to climb it is if they're just that stubborn or they get really lucky with their team allotments and at least see 50-50 win-lose ratios that aren't complete stomp fests.
It is very telling when what should be prime time there seem to be so few players on I actually have to wait for a match (over 2 minutes, so it's among one of the only ones!) to end, and 90% of the players I do end up getting stuck with easily double my level. So low player numbers, and the extreme minority of those player numbers are under level 10.
I'd give this game a year, but I can barely justify 6 months before only the "pro circuit" really remains, if it even takes off.
Your "tips" are not welcome. Not the point of this thread, and most players won't visit an information medium to see them, making them moot. You'll notice, MOST of the above list is entirely in Nintendo's power to fix.