The Sting Ray Treatment

[Linneus]

I wanted to talk about the current way kits are designed and the progenitor of this horrible pattern... Let's talk about what happened back in Splatoon 2.

I'm gonna assume you all already know about Sting Ray! A special that got way too powerful and was NEVER balanced. The devs spent the entire lifetime of the game trying to walk back their changes without returning Sting Ray to its awful origins at launch and never got there.

But they had one solution as a backup. And it's the saddest, most non-solution of all time (and it's one that at least a few of you are well aware of!)...
...What if they just... stopped putting it on weapons?

The very last Sting Ray weapon added to Splatoon 2 was the .52 Gal Deco, released on January 20, 2018. Splatoon 2 wasn't even a year old, and it had content that went all the way to April of 2019! To put that in perspective...

...That's not even a third of the way into this game's lifespan. That bar is 621 days long, and the last Sting Ray weapon was 183 days in. That's 29%.

And the worst part is that I genuinely believe that they looked at this and said "I guess that's the solution."
I was genuinely afraid Crab Tank would never be on another weapon in Splatoon 3, and that's very nearly true! We're coming up on the last season, and Crab Tank has gotten ONE new weapon.

We're at the point where if a sub-weapon is in the upper half of a collectively-imagined tier list, they're just not gonna put it on anything. Weapons just stopped getting bombs! Torpedo, Fizzy Bomb, and Burst Bomb are on six weapons each!! Oh, but Ink Mine? Nine weapons. Splash Wall? TEN WEAPONS-- Wall isn't even that weak, but half the roster isn't looking for one!

Get this-- Splat Bomb is currently on 9 weapons. That's pretty good! ...Until you realize that seven of them were in the game on launch. They've added two Splat Bombs (Ttek and Gold Dynamo).

All of this has come to a head in this season, where the most well-liked kit is one that just seemed cool with the New Squiffer.

Lastly, all this is because someone asked me what my dream Nautilus Kit was. I said Inkjet with either Fizzy or Burst Bomb. That sounds indulgent and OP as hell, but you know why I was comfortable naming those?

Because I just wanted to see those in the game again.

If Sting Ray is anything to go by, I think we may very well be going into the last season with another round up of Angle Shooters, Toxic Mists, Splashdowns, and Wave Breakers.

 

[DzNutsKong]

If the implication's that they're afraid to add Fizzy Bomb, Torpedo, or Burst Bomb to new weapons, then I don't think I agree with at least the former two.

Fizzy Bomb has had a lot of strong points in this game across vanilla Machine and Ballpoint both being really, really good, but I can't say Torpedo has had anything similar. The closest you'll get is Dapple Nouveau seeing a bit of success on ranked modes and both vanilla Wiper and Rapid Deco seeing occasional top level use, but there's no comparing that to Machine and Ballpoint. You could say it's telling that they're seeing so much use on several weapons despite there being so few kits but if you look at top level play you're going to see a lot of bombs in general. If anything I have to imagine Nintendo internally is looking at those two differently from other subs in some other way. Maybe they're not meant to be super widespread because they're supposed to feel more special seeing as they're more unique and there are more "ways of using them" than other bombs for a lack of better explanation.

I think Angle Shooter is kind of "replacing" Burst Bomb for a lot of weapons but the reasoning may be one of those tin foil hat theories that doesn't have enough backing it. This is the first game where Jet Squelcher hasn't had a Burst Bomb and it just so happens to be after Splatoon 2 where it was an extremely powerful weapon, Slosher has it and the developers know how strong it was with Burst Bomb in Splatoon 1 and might have wanted to replicate how it feels without it being nearly as consistent, and there are weapons like Rapid Pro Deco and Big Swig where you could easily see the intention for combos like what Range and Carbon have. Stamper and Splash are still very strong but I think if anything the developers had no way of knowing how strong they would end up when much of their viability hinges on a brand new main weapon and special respectively. You could absolutely argue that they're afraid of adding Burst Bomb to new weapons if you want to look at the game like this, and I wouldn't disagree with you.

But for what it's worth, I don't think the developers are afraid of experimentation. I wouldn't be surprised if Tenta Missiles was the single part of this game they were the most cautious of seeing as they were extremely broken in Splatoon 2 and I think deliberately given to historically not very good weapons on launch. Despite that, and despite said weapons seeing legitimate success on launch regardless, they've ended up giving Tenta Missiles to two new weapons post-launch. They're probably confident they've pinned down the problem and/or want to experiment more.

If common theories are right then we'll be getting ten "new kits" next season - Range, Hydra, Heavy Edit, Bamboo, Recycled Brella, Douser Dualies, and then two kits for the new sword and stringer each. Six of those ten are new kits and we're later in the game's lifespan so now would be the time for them to distribute Torpedo and Fizzy more no matter how you look at it. I'm still holding out hope that we'll get third kits since iirc Sheldon's Picks came after all of Splatoon 2's major updates but even still this is something we shouldn't need to worry about.

 

[Linneus]

I really don't think it's a case of being "afraid"-- Honestly, I don't want to claim to know the reason at all!

I can't tell you why they do it, but I can say that once upon a time they stopped using the most overpowered and poorly designed special wholesale, and years down the line it's progressed to a point where "anything that's generally powerful and useful is just going to be used less", and it's just... it sucks! I don't get it!

But I would LOVE for the next season to not have this problem, and I also think it's a time ripe for experimentation, but, well... I also think they've missed more than a few opportunities in the past.

 

[Grushi]

At first I thought us not getting many of the more powerful subs and specials was a coincidence and that we'd get more of them eventually but now that you mention it it really seems intentional from the devs. As much as some people joke that the kits seem ai generated or whatever there's definitely some reasoning behind them

I really hope you're wrong, because even if I agreed with the idea that we can't let any kit be "too" good, I think classifying splat bomb or torpedo as being too strong is just taking it way too far.

But at the same time sometimes it feels like nintendo gives weapons genuinely strong kits on purpose, like there's no way every brella's second kit is genuinely powerful balance-wise (except arguably undercover but even then that was a new special) by accident, it feels like a genuine attempt to make sure the class sees more use competitively and in ranked where they were considered awful before, or sblast getting an insane second kit once nintendo realized the main weapon isn't that insane

I didn't really buy that theory before but the more kits we get the more likely it seems. It sucks, and I really hope this is just some crazy coincidence or that the devs change their mind because this just isn't a good direction for the kits

(Whoops rant over)

 

[DzNutsKong]

I really don't think it's a case of being "afraid"-- Honestly, I don't want to claim to know the reason at all!

I can't tell you why they do it, but I can say that once upon a time they stopped using the most overpowered and poorly designed special wholesale, and years down the line it's progressed to a point where "anything that's generally powerful and useful is just going to be used less", and it's just... it sucks! I don't get it!

But I would LOVE for the next season to not have this problem, and I also think it's a time ripe for experimentation, but, well... I also think they've missed more than a few opportunities in the past.

I'm not saying that this is definitely what Nintendo is thinking either. I just think it's way easier to have peace of mind when you can come up with at least some explanation for why the developers do what they do. Much better to tell yourself why they might've wanted to try Splash Wall Splashdown on Explosher than to just point and laugh and complain about how this game's kits are all terrible or whatever. This is just what I personally think is the most likely reason that also leaves room for some optimism.

 

[missingno]

I'll never understand why, if they were so afraid of Sting Ray or anything in S3 now, they didn't just... nerf it.

 

[Tessaract]

I'll never understand why, if they were so afraid of Sting Ray or anything in S3 now, they didn't just... nerf it.

For Sting Ray in particular, unless they nerfed it to the point of uselessness it could never be properly fixed. It had a fundamental design problem of being a death laser that could hit from literally across the entire stage; rainmaker and tower in particular basically couldn't have overtime against a good ray user. Nothing they could patch beyond making the damage pathetic could really change how broken the special concept was, and this is why Killer Wail 5.1 doesn't allow manual aiming. Without the beam radius increase they added early on the special was terrible, and it was extremely strong with it.

None of the specials in Splatoon 3 have the same level of broken fundamental design (although I'd add that something like reefslider has design flaws but is really weak). Crab is really well designed, but the devs just seemed really hesitant to tone it down early on into the game's lifespan because they seemed to want people to "get used to it first". Could they have made splash 210p to at least tone down the spam early on? Of course.

 

[missingno]

For Sting Ray in particular, unless they nerfed it to the point of uselessness

Honestly, do that then. It's better for Sting Ray to be bad than busted. Underpowered things can't ruin the meta, overpowered things can.