Hewhoamareismyself
Inkling
- Joined
- May 29, 2015
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- HWAAIM
I believe the actual time it takes to spawn from the moment you die to the moment you move out is about 8 seconds, maybe a little less, but it's generally come to that.
But, as we've said, that kill means a whole lot more.
First off, it's important to recognize that a squid doesn't immediately start painting the ground/accomplishing an objective immediately. This anecdote may not matter to you, it may be fairly self explanatory. I'm gonna use a TF2 anecdote because it's what I know. In 6s, knowing when you have a player advantage is very important when pushing or taking control points, but when you see that you have 5 players up and the other team has 3, it's not always enough of an advantage to push in on as it takes a bit of time for players to re-enter the fray beyond spawning. For this reason, the fastest classes are the most common, to make the most of that advantage. If it takes 15 seconds to spawn, but an extra 15 to make it to where you're needed, a kill buys your team a 30 second advantage, so you need that extra time to be as small as you can control it, I haven't timed that but for the sake of argument we'll say the faster classes can get there in about 8 seconds. In highlander, where engineers can build teleporters, the slower classes can make it to the fight much, much faster, so 30 seconds out of the fight becomes closer to 20. That's important as well.
Splatoon is much faster than what I've described, but time is key because games last 3 minutes instead of 5 to 10. If the battle is taking place right outside your doorstep it probably won't take more than 2 seconds to start being useful and taking ground back, which comes out to 10 seconds total. If the battle is not close to home, you have a friend that needs help, or you're looking to take grownd farther upfield, you're going to jump ahead, which usually takes about 4 seconds totalling 12 seconds before you start being useful after death.
In a 180 second match of Turf Wars, this equates to 1/18th or 1/15th of the game where a player does nothing. Expanding this further, with 4 players total, you effectively take away 1.4%-1.7% of the other team's ability to cover the ground. This video of the 18 kills with 0 deaths equates to playing an entire match 4v3. That's a HUGE advantage. If that person manages to paint any ground at all by the end of the match, they've already helped more than harmed their team by focusing entirely on kills.
But obviously this won't always be the case, and it's hard to judge exactly how hard fishing for kills aids you in this way. If you get 6 kills and 1 death, at the very least you've bought yourself 48 seconds of a 4v3 situation (assuming you jump while the other guy was spawncamped and didn't have to spend much time getting in position). However, if this was, say, in the first 90 seconds of a match, it may not matter nearly as much as it's highly likely any ground you paint in that time is painted over again. From what I've seen, on a map like Arowana Mall, the map is going to be painted over fairly quickly. This is really important to think about if you're going to engage or just try and avoid fights. Since it doesn't matter if you held 80% of the map for 2:45 of the game and the other team stages a massive comeback in the last 15 seconds, you need to be sure that kill is definitely going to have an impact.
This brings up another important aspect of the kills debate, and one I haven't seen talked about much. The timing of kills. At the start of the match, you try and cover as much ground as possible right off the bat and don't engage the other team immediately. In the first 18 seconds of one multiplayer match I watched, http://i.imgur.com/aWXFNmv.png the outlined area was covered, more or less completely, and maybe more that I didn't see because I don't have a WiiU gamepad to look at. I'm going to lowball that and say that was about 20% of the map already covered, though I suspect it's closer to 25%. If each person covered an equal amount of ground in that time, that means they were covering about 5% of the map each in those 15 seconds, and this already is not the case as they did not spread out evenly at the very beginning and tended to go to the center or the right. It could easily be higher, again. If that is the case, and you land a kill in a 1v1 during the last 20 seconds of a match with plenty of ground to take from the enemy team, that is very likely free ground at the end of the match. There are, obviously, exceptions to this rule, if an enemy ambushes you during this time, or you run out of room to cover before time runs out. It's reasonable, I think, to say you could cover 4% of the ground if you're alone after just getting the kill in an enemy dominated area. This equates to an 8% swing in your teams' favor in the last moments of the match, which could easily be what sets you over the edge.
Now, what if you took this a step further and said you have a coordinated team push wherein you stalk enemy gamers and pounce on them all in the last 30 seconds of the match? Assuming you get 3 kills and a death, you not only have free time to cover a significant amount of ground, but the 3 spawning players only have 2 options to go from: they can jump to the last person alive, or they can run from spawn. The less options they have, the less ground they can cover. This is a high risk, high reward strategy however, and many weapons aren't equipped for engaging multiple enemies at the same time. If you get the drop on an enemy with a roller, it could easily spell victory.
I'm gonna take a break now and just post this, I'll get to editing immediately with other things I want to say.
Edit1: Alright back to this.
Things I can't talk about are weapon strengths and rwabacks much, but I can probably say with ccertainty that chargers and rollers are probably going to be more effective at getting sneaky kills than other weapons? More to come on that.
But given that I''ve talked a lot about the timing of the kills, and how fast things just get painted over, it may seem like it isn't really worthwhile to go for kills in the early game and midgame. I'm going to say it isn't worth the effort unless you have a definite advantage, either already at close randge with a roller, rounding a corner, or you have a lot more ink coverage than the other person when engaging, having the drop on someone, or having more people to help you. Establishing control means the other team will have to take control at one point or another, and getting a couple of kills in a specific area will establish control pretty easily. In a large secluded area, or in an area with significant height advantage over your surroundings, establishing control early can be very important, and getting a kill or two fighting over that space can be a good way to establish that control. camping in this game is probably not to your benefit as you want to be able to cover a large amount of space, but having a person designated to holding an area down may prove very beneficial in the other gamemodes.
There's also the obvious boon of throwing someone off their game by netting a couple kills on them early.
(DISCLAIMER: All of my info comes from studious watching of gameplay in streams and videos in the past hours, I don't have the game myself and will not for a bit, so obviously my data is not to be trusted 100%, and discussing timing I get pretty speculative concerning your team's ability to get a kill when taking an enemy by surprise and whatnot, but the theory should stand no matter what)
tl;dr: a late game kill will change a match very much.
But, as we've said, that kill means a whole lot more.
First off, it's important to recognize that a squid doesn't immediately start painting the ground/accomplishing an objective immediately. This anecdote may not matter to you, it may be fairly self explanatory. I'm gonna use a TF2 anecdote because it's what I know. In 6s, knowing when you have a player advantage is very important when pushing or taking control points, but when you see that you have 5 players up and the other team has 3, it's not always enough of an advantage to push in on as it takes a bit of time for players to re-enter the fray beyond spawning. For this reason, the fastest classes are the most common, to make the most of that advantage. If it takes 15 seconds to spawn, but an extra 15 to make it to where you're needed, a kill buys your team a 30 second advantage, so you need that extra time to be as small as you can control it, I haven't timed that but for the sake of argument we'll say the faster classes can get there in about 8 seconds. In highlander, where engineers can build teleporters, the slower classes can make it to the fight much, much faster, so 30 seconds out of the fight becomes closer to 20. That's important as well.
Splatoon is much faster than what I've described, but time is key because games last 3 minutes instead of 5 to 10. If the battle is taking place right outside your doorstep it probably won't take more than 2 seconds to start being useful and taking ground back, which comes out to 10 seconds total. If the battle is not close to home, you have a friend that needs help, or you're looking to take grownd farther upfield, you're going to jump ahead, which usually takes about 4 seconds totalling 12 seconds before you start being useful after death.
In a 180 second match of Turf Wars, this equates to 1/18th or 1/15th of the game where a player does nothing. Expanding this further, with 4 players total, you effectively take away 1.4%-1.7% of the other team's ability to cover the ground. This video of the 18 kills with 0 deaths equates to playing an entire match 4v3. That's a HUGE advantage. If that person manages to paint any ground at all by the end of the match, they've already helped more than harmed their team by focusing entirely on kills.
But obviously this won't always be the case, and it's hard to judge exactly how hard fishing for kills aids you in this way. If you get 6 kills and 1 death, at the very least you've bought yourself 48 seconds of a 4v3 situation (assuming you jump while the other guy was spawncamped and didn't have to spend much time getting in position). However, if this was, say, in the first 90 seconds of a match, it may not matter nearly as much as it's highly likely any ground you paint in that time is painted over again. From what I've seen, on a map like Arowana Mall, the map is going to be painted over fairly quickly. This is really important to think about if you're going to engage or just try and avoid fights. Since it doesn't matter if you held 80% of the map for 2:45 of the game and the other team stages a massive comeback in the last 15 seconds, you need to be sure that kill is definitely going to have an impact.
This brings up another important aspect of the kills debate, and one I haven't seen talked about much. The timing of kills. At the start of the match, you try and cover as much ground as possible right off the bat and don't engage the other team immediately. In the first 18 seconds of one multiplayer match I watched, http://i.imgur.com/aWXFNmv.png the outlined area was covered, more or less completely, and maybe more that I didn't see because I don't have a WiiU gamepad to look at. I'm going to lowball that and say that was about 20% of the map already covered, though I suspect it's closer to 25%. If each person covered an equal amount of ground in that time, that means they were covering about 5% of the map each in those 15 seconds, and this already is not the case as they did not spread out evenly at the very beginning and tended to go to the center or the right. It could easily be higher, again. If that is the case, and you land a kill in a 1v1 during the last 20 seconds of a match with plenty of ground to take from the enemy team, that is very likely free ground at the end of the match. There are, obviously, exceptions to this rule, if an enemy ambushes you during this time, or you run out of room to cover before time runs out. It's reasonable, I think, to say you could cover 4% of the ground if you're alone after just getting the kill in an enemy dominated area. This equates to an 8% swing in your teams' favor in the last moments of the match, which could easily be what sets you over the edge.
Now, what if you took this a step further and said you have a coordinated team push wherein you stalk enemy gamers and pounce on them all in the last 30 seconds of the match? Assuming you get 3 kills and a death, you not only have free time to cover a significant amount of ground, but the 3 spawning players only have 2 options to go from: they can jump to the last person alive, or they can run from spawn. The less options they have, the less ground they can cover. This is a high risk, high reward strategy however, and many weapons aren't equipped for engaging multiple enemies at the same time. If you get the drop on an enemy with a roller, it could easily spell victory.
I'm gonna take a break now and just post this, I'll get to editing immediately with other things I want to say.
Edit1: Alright back to this.
Things I can't talk about are weapon strengths and rwabacks much, but I can probably say with ccertainty that chargers and rollers are probably going to be more effective at getting sneaky kills than other weapons? More to come on that.
But given that I''ve talked a lot about the timing of the kills, and how fast things just get painted over, it may seem like it isn't really worthwhile to go for kills in the early game and midgame. I'm going to say it isn't worth the effort unless you have a definite advantage, either already at close randge with a roller, rounding a corner, or you have a lot more ink coverage than the other person when engaging, having the drop on someone, or having more people to help you. Establishing control means the other team will have to take control at one point or another, and getting a couple of kills in a specific area will establish control pretty easily. In a large secluded area, or in an area with significant height advantage over your surroundings, establishing control early can be very important, and getting a kill or two fighting over that space can be a good way to establish that control. camping in this game is probably not to your benefit as you want to be able to cover a large amount of space, but having a person designated to holding an area down may prove very beneficial in the other gamemodes.
There's also the obvious boon of throwing someone off their game by netting a couple kills on them early.
(DISCLAIMER: All of my info comes from studious watching of gameplay in streams and videos in the past hours, I don't have the game myself and will not for a bit, so obviously my data is not to be trusted 100%, and discussing timing I get pretty speculative concerning your team's ability to get a kill when taking an enemy by surprise and whatnot, but the theory should stand no matter what)
tl;dr: a late game kill will change a match very much.
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