Super Jumping and Gear Abilities

[ThestralZ]

I think we can all agree that one of the things that makes Splatoon so unique compared to other shooters is Super Jumping. In most other games like TF2, Overwatch, or MW, dying and respawning is punished by forcing you to take more time to walk back to where you originally were, giving your enemy time to take space, secure their position, and win a team fight using a numbers advantage. This is balanced for teams defending, as often it takes less time for a defending team to get back to the fight than an attacking team. Most games then balance the offensive side by giving them more offensive respawn points if they complete a certain objective or by adding abilities and classes that enable fast movement like Engineer's teleporters in TF2 or Kiriko's dash in Overwatch. Splatoon does this offensive repawning by using Super Jumps. For Super Jumps, the only condition that needs to be met is having either a friendly player or a beakon on the map. By offering dynamic respawn points, Splatoon encourages more aggressive plays and stealth as viable options for the game.
The problem that occurs from offering dynamic respawn points is balancing safety of respawning with punishing bad jumps. Squid Beakons don't have this problem because they can't be hidden, as the map screen reveals exactly where they are. They are also balanced on the offense, as anyone trying to camp the beakon will be revealed on the map screen.* This makes the optimal strategy when playing with or against beakons to put them in safe alcoves where they can allow you and your teammates to rejoin the battle faster, while still making them vulnerable to any opposing push by the enemy. Jumping to a teammate is slightly different and more nuanced. Most Splatoon players learn quickly that jumping to a teammate who is surrounded by enemy ink often leads to immediate death on landing. This means, like beakons, the safest way of jumping to a teammate is when they are farther back from the fight and not in immediate danger. Usually, back line weapons like Chargers and Splatlings are naturally in these positions, making them the default weapons to rely on for jumps*. Most support weapons often rotate through the back line as well, meaning they're also often safe to jump to*.
What I have just described is the ideal universe for Super Jumping. The problem with what I have just described is that there are asterisks. Asterisk 1, Jump camping. Beakons have a range where players are shown on the map camping beakons, but that range isn't as big as it should be. Most mid to long range weapons can still camp a beakon without being shown on the map, especially Chargers. Asterisk 2, due to the range of certain weapons and specials in this game, often you can still get splatted immediately on landing, even in the back line.
The solution Nintendo opted to use to fix the problem was Stealth Jump. Stealth Jump hides the jump marker at long range, negating the ability for long range weapons to camp a jump while retaining the ability for short range weapons to find and deal with jumps that are too aggressive. The problem with Stealth Jump isn't necessarily its mechanics, but the trade-off cost of using it. By opting to use Stealth Jump, you sacrifice any way of using Drop Roller or Object Shredder. Drop Roller is fair, the two abilities don't really have a situation where they would want to be run in tandem, but it is annoying to give up Object Shredder given how potentially useful that ability is. Additionally, by running Stealth Jump, you sacrifice the potential of having a main of any kind on your shoes, making gear builds feel less impactful.
I suggest the solution to fixing this problem is two fold. One, buff the radius that Squid Beakon can detect enemies. This lets beakon weapons not run Stealth Jump, and make weapons using the beakons realize sooner when a beakon becomes useless. The other change is around Stealth Jump. I suggest that Stealth Jump be a default "thing" in the next game. To balance this, I think scoped chargers should be able to detect Jump Markers from any distance, and there should be a Headgear gear ability that lets any weapon detect the jump marker from full range. The only Headgear only abilities are Opening Gambit, a highly aggressive ability that won't usually overlap with needing to detect stealth jumps, LDE, which is over tuned and by offering this ability as a conflict of interest would decrease its dominance, and Tenacity, which sucks right now, but if it was ever buffed would mostly be used only by painting weapons to increase their spam, and not by aggressive weapons.
If I missed an important detail or you have comments on my solution, let me know in 'ze comments.

 

[vitellary]

The only Headgear only abilities are Opening Gambit, ... LDE, ... and Tenacity...

you forgot comeback, which is far and away the most used gear ability in the game right now. i think it's inaccurate to even claim that LDE is dominant at the moment; people are running comeback on nearly everything, and i'm not even sure a new ability to let you see long-range jumps would be worth sacrificing how much you get from comeback, unless you're running something like a charger build with respawn punisher where you aren't expecting to die. but in that situation i feel like it's kinda lame for them to be able to safely camp jumps from super far away, because that just gives them free kills that you can't really easily counterplay

the idea of making scoped chargers able to see stealth jumps is interesting in theory but i'd be very wary of buffing scoped chargers, because i don't think we want them in a spot where it's objectively better to use one over the other. at the moment, to my understanding, scoped vs unscoped is balanced exactly enough that it's basically just personal preference which one you use, which i think is a delicate balance that needs to be preserved. giving scoped chargers unique utility that regular chargers don't have feels like it might tip the balance too much in favor of "if you don't like using scoped chargers then you aren't picking the best option available" which feels bleh. granted, the proposal of the ability that gives you this sight anyway does kinda balance it back, because it would just mean scoped chargers have slightly more gear freedom than regular chargers, which isn't too bad

one final thing. camping a beakon jump is not nearly as easy as you make it sound, for one key reason: jumps to a beakon are completely hidden unless the beakon is broken. even if the jumper isn't wearing stealth jump, it is fully impossible to see an incoming jump to a beakon from any distance if you're trying to camp it. the only way to see the jump is if you break the beakon after they've committed to the jump, at which point the marker will be visible, but the person jumping in will also know that someone is watching, because the beakon disappeared from the map before they got to it. i'm not sure whether this really impacts any of your points that much, but i felt i should mention it because it's a very important mechanic of beakons that goes unmentioned in your own post

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

It feels kind of pointless to me to make stealth jump a default so that you don't have to use gear to not be jump camped by chargers, and then make it so that stealth jump doesn't work against scoped chargers or anyone with the new headgear ability. Yes, the super jumping weapons get more gear freedom, but long range weapons (unscoped chargers especially) would feel required to run the new ability for the exact same reason that SJ is good right now. Also, super jumping in would feel worse then before, because then you at least had the option to hide your jumps, but with this system that choice is up to your opponents, and that would feel way worse imo.

Most of this only really applies if the ability would be worth using over comeback, and I can't say if that would be the case. But I also think chargers are one of the main reasons people don't like having to use stealth jump, and having them be able to see the jump anyway wouldn't help, plus the scope vs unscope thing vitellary mentioned.

Here's an idea I just thought of: what if it only showed the jump markers while you're in the scope? I don't think this fixes the problems I described but it would make scoped chargers not be buffed too much and make the gear ability still do something.

 

[reelrollsweat]

im going to forego the whole ability thing and say that you can also fix this by just...... making better jumps? when and where you jump to is controlled entirely by the player. even if you have stealth jump its still not smart to jump immediately to the frontline because theres a radius where players close enough can still see your jump. sure it prevents chargers from camping you, but if your frontline teammate is fighting another frontline and you jump into that fight, and your teammate loses the 1v1, the enemy basically gets two free kills. i dont think making stealth jump permanent + adding a new ability to see jumps anywhere is a good solution for a problem thats just part of game sense and general awareness

(also even if they did remove stealth jump as an ability and add a new one in, why would it be headgear? doesnt it make more sense to replace a shoe ability with another shoe ability? drop roller and object shredder are both extremely situational anyways)