Thoughts on an online competitive scene for Splatoon

[Undr]

This is great. I feel once the game is released, the need for static practice groups will evolve into crews. Naturally this will lend itself well to what you've laid out here Fro.

 

[Lyn]

Honestly, You listed all the ideas I had.
I really hope they all get used (unlikely unfortunately), if they did Splatoon's future would look so bright

I believe we can make Splatoon's future bright anyways. All we need is Nintendo to continue to support the game long enough for it to happen.

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

I believe we can make Splatoon's future bright anyways. All we need is Nintendo to continue to support the game long enough for it to happen.

Yah, but I still hope that the OP even gets stickied or his ideas get stickied somehow. Cuz they are just so good

 

[FunkyLobster]

i also replied to you on squidboards beta, but i think a competitive splatoon group would follow a similar model to UGC as well

that said, there's definitely going to be some different rules depending on how the game works. do you vote on maps to play, or does the game randomly select them? can you play a game to bo3 or bo5? we know now that there's no way to make a private game with custom rules, but there's ways to work around it of course (you add everyone on your team and the opposing team to your friends list and all join a game or something)

either way, there's definitely going to be splatoon teams and probably seasons that run on a single or double elimination bracket

 

[HaDeeZ]

we know now that there's no way to make a private game with custom rules

Do you mean we know that there is option to change the rules or that there is no opt to have private online lobbies? Because the latter is probably the single most important requirement for competitive Splatoon, it will be hard for the game to survive with a lack of private lobbies.

 

[FunkyLobster]

Do you mean we know that there is option to change the rules or that there is no opt to have private online lobbies? Because the latter is probably the single most important requirement for competitive Splatoon, it will be hard for the game to survive with a lack of private lobbies.

yeah, sadly :/ there's definitely ways to work around it, like having everyone on your team and the enemy team added, or maybe there's a tournament mode that's private in the base game, but as far as i'm aware you cannot have a private room for 7 of your friends exclusively

 

[HaDeeZ]

yeah, sadly :/ there's definitely ways to work around it, like having everyone on your team and the enemy team added, or maybe there's a tournament mode that's private in the base game, but as far as i'm aware you cannot have a private room for 7 of your friends exclusively

Yikes thats pretty soul crushing, honestly cant see community surviving long without it. Trying to organise PUGs or team scrims by all trying to join at the same time will be a complete nightmare, especially if the game proves to be popular and there is a relatively large player base. Not to mention factors like online ranks will also make it more difficult, I really hope this feature is included on launch if not then at least added later on like they did with Titanfall.

 

[FunkyLobster]

Yikes thats pretty soul crushing, honestly cant see community surviving long without it. Trying to organise PUGs or team scrims by all trying to join at the same time will be a complete nightmare, especially if the game proves to be popular and there is a relatively large player base. Not to mention factors like online ranks will also make it more difficult, I really hope this feature is included on launch if not then at least added later on like they did with Titanfall.

i agree. i don't think it's absolutely damning for the game but it does make life a bit harder

 

[Kat]

The private lobbies are literally the only way this can work as far as I can tell. Destiny has a system where people try and join matchmaking at the same time to get matched, quitting and rejoining the lobby until they get matched with the right people. Destiny's system only works because of the fact that for a brief moment you can see who you're matched against before the game kicks off, many games don't have this little quirk so it might be basically impossible to set up PUGs, we'll have to see. High hopes.

If there are private lobbies however then we're good to go. As far as the league style, I've never played UGC, I was always ETF2L being in Europe and all but a point based league system is definitely the way to go, no eliminations. Each team plays every other team in their division, 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loose etc, when the season is all played out the team with the most points wins. Skill based divisions, 1, 2, 3 etc. Winners of a division move up, bottom team goes down, playoffs if we have more than 4 in each div. We can figure out rule specific stuff when the game launches and we can see the specifics. We'd probably need a bit of site infrastructure added to make organising teams etc. easier but again another thing for another time.

But yeah I'd love a PUG scene and a league for sure but in my eyes without a private lobby system we're going to have some massive problems for sure. Also, if we're organising teams or sorting stuff out let me know, I'd be more than happy to help, had a lot of experience with it before.

 

[FunkyLobster]

round robin actually sounds like a cool idea, but that'd take a really long time if a lot of teams sign up for a season... i think single or double elimination would work better for a UGC style format

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

The private lobbies are literally the only way this can work as far as I can tell. Destiny has a system where people try and join matchmaking at the same time to get matched, quitting and rejoining the lobby until they get matched with the right people. Destiny's system only works because of the fact that for a brief moment you can see who you're matched against before the game kicks off, many games don't have this little quirk so it might be basically impossible to set up PUGs, we'll have to see. High hopes.

If there are private lobbies however then we're good to go. As far as the league style, I've never played UGC, I was always ETF2L being in Europe and all but a point based league system is definitely the way to go, no eliminations. Each team plays every other team in their division, 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loose etc, when the season is all played out the team with the most points wins. Skill based divisions, 1, 2, 3 etc. Winners of a division move up, bottom team goes down, playoffs if we have more than 4 in each div. We can figure out rule specific stuff when the game launches and we can see the specifics. We'd probably need a bit of site infrastructure added to make organising teams etc. easier but again another thing for another time.

But yeah I'd love a PUG scene and a league for sure but in my eyes without a private lobby system we're going to have some massive problems for sure. Also, if we're organising teams or sorting stuff out let me know, I'd be more than happy to help, had a lot of experience with it before.

It would definately make the online tourney scene hard, but as long as we have offline tourneys that are streamed by twitch the game will thrive

 

[Kat]

round robin actually sounds like a cool idea, but that'd take a really long time if a lot of teams sign up for a season... i think single or double elimination would work better for a UGC style format

From personal experience elimination systems don't work periods of time longer than a couple of days. Save them for 1-2 day cups in my personal opinion. The problem with elimination style is that once a team is knocked out they can be out of competitive play besides scrims and pugs for weeks at a time. It's not too good for getting practice in a comp environment, plus in such a new game only being able to face on team before you get knocked out could lead to some really weird skill differences.

I know ESEA, TheDGL, ETF2L all do round robin ladder style leagues and they seem to be the standard. However I do know that ESL tend to do mostly if not only Elimination style so honestly it's down to what everyone wants.

Just my stance but I think elimination isn't a great idea, however, we could totally have 1-2 elimination cups alongside normal seasons.

 

[FunkyLobster]

From personal experience elimination systems don't work periods of time longer than a couple of days. Save them for 1-2 day cups in my personal opinion. The problem with elimination style is that once a team is knocked out they can be out of competitive play besides scrims and pugs for weeks at a time. It's not too good for getting practice in a comp environment, plus in such a new game only being able to face on team before you get knocked out could lead to some really weird skill differences.

Just my stance but I think elimination isn't a great idea, however, we could totally have 1-2 elimination cups alongside normal seasons.

well you're the one with experience, i'll take your word for it

i'm worried that round robins of hundreds of teams could take forever is my concern though though... i f it's longer than a few months, it would feel weird calling it a true "season"

although since splatoon is purely 4v4 instead of 6v6 and 9v9, team management would definitely be substantially easier than in tf2, so maybe the seasons would be shorter... it's hard to tell

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

From personal experience elimination systems don't work periods of time longer than a couple of days. Save them for 1-2 day cups in my personal opinion. The problem with elimination style is that once a team is knocked out they can be out of competitive play besides scrims and pugs for weeks at a time. It's not too good for getting practice in a comp environment, plus in such a new game only being able to face on team before you get knocked out could lead to some really weird skill differences.

I know ESEA, TheDGL, ETF2L all do round robin ladder style leagues and they seem to be the standard. However I do know that ESL tend to do mostly if not only Elimination style so honestly it's down to what everyone wants.

Just my stance but I think elimination isn't a great idea, however, we could totally have 1-2 elimination cups alongside normal seasons.

I love the idea of round robin but I guess I am just assuming a big turn out for tournies. You don't think those tournaments will extend way too long?
I know this ain't melee but usually those last til 11pm and those are elimination

 

[Kat]

well you're the one with experience, i'll take your word for it

i'm worried that round robins of hundreds of teams could take forever is my concern though though... i f it's longer than a few months, it would feel weird calling it a true "season"

although since splatoon is purely 4v4 instead of 6v6 and 9v9, team management would definitely be substantially easier than in tf2, so maybe the seasons would be shorter... it's hard to tell

Well with hundreds of teams we'd have divisions and groups all running simultaneously, maybe aiming for roughly 6-8 teams per group. These groups would all play simultaneously within their groups and then we could possibly have all the winners of groups A-D in Div1 play in an elimination style playoff. There are many different ways to do it, I was just thinking to try and keep things fair and fun towards the beginning of the game's competitive lifespan if it kicks off.

Now this is purely for an Online competitive scene only, for a LAN it's elimination all the way, I'm thinking of something that will be easy to work around, dependable and will run for a good period of time, like several days to weeks even. I'd hate for any one team to be down and out for too long and getting loads of teams to play game after game over a short amount of time might be a little much to ask.

It's totally an idea there could be multiple cups running at the same time though, I do enjoy elimination cups way more personally but I just feel there are more downsides to elimination style brackets at the momentt.

Again I'm no eSports professional, I don't manage any sites or leagues, however I have played a lot of different games in many different leagues but by all means I don't want to sound condescending or elitist by any means.

 

[FunkyLobster]

I love the idea of round robin but I guess I am just assuming a big turn out for tournies. You don't think those tournaments will extend way too long?
I know this ain't melee but usually those last til 11pm and those are elimination

round robins for the UGC model, double elimination for tournaments? they don't all have to have the same rules

 

[FunkyLobster]

The private lobbies are literally the only way this can work as far as I can tell. Destiny has a system where people try and join matchmaking at the same time to get matched, quitting and rejoining the lobby until they get matched with the right people. Destiny's system only works because of the fact that for a brief moment you can see who you're matched against before the game kicks off, many games don't have this little quirk so it might be basically impossible to set up PUGs, we'll have to see. High hopes.

If there are private lobbies however then we're good to go. As far as the league style, I've never played UGC, I was always ETF2L being in Europe and all but a point based league system is definitely the way to go, no eliminations. Each team plays every other team in their division, 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw and 0 for a loose etc, when the season is all played out the team with the most points wins. Skill based divisions, 1, 2, 3 etc. Winners of a division move up, bottom team goes down, playoffs if we have more than 4 in each div. We can figure out rule specific stuff when the game launches and we can see the specifics. We'd probably need a bit of site infrastructure added to make organising teams etc. easier but again another thing for another time.

But yeah I'd love a PUG scene and a league for sure but in my eyes without a private lobby system we're going to have some massive problems for sure. Also, if we're organising teams or sorting stuff out let me know, I'd be more than happy to help, had a lot of experience with it before.

yeah i've only done a few scrims in tf2, never actually done a full season in ugc before, so i'm just being cautious about what would work for splatoon

i do agree that a double elimination would be too unforgiving and short lived for a full season now, though

 

[Flying_Tortoise]

Well with hundreds of teams we'd have divisions and groups all running simultaneously, maybe aiming for roughly 6-8 teams per group. These groups would all play simultaneously within their groups and then we could possibly have all the winners of groups A-D in Div1 play in an elimination style playoff. There are many different ways to do it, I was just thinking to try and keep things fair and fun towards the beginning of the game's competitive lifespan if it kicks off.

Now this is purely for an Online competitive scene only, for a LAN it's elimination all the way, I'm thinking of something that will be easy to work around, dependable and will run for a good period of time, like several days to weeks even. I'd hate for any one team to be down and out for too long and getting loads of teams to play game after game over a short amount of time might be a little much to ask.

It's totally an idea there could be multiple cups running at the same time though, I do enjoy elimination cups way more personally but I just feel there are more downsides to elimination style brackets at the momentt.

Again I'm no eSports professional, I don't manage any sites or leagues, however I have played a lot of different games in many different leagues but by all means I don't want to sound condescending or elitist by any means.

nah I love the different point of view. I see what you are saying.
Especially with a new scene, it'd definitely be better for everyone to feel like they got their money's worth, even if they lost. sounds like a good way to go for sure
edit: I really hope a lot of the TF2 players give their input as well. Since they got the online tourney experience. I know some have come up, but more would always be nice

 

[Undr]

Is a Double Round Robin season followed by a Single Elimination tournament with seeding based on Season Ranking be viable?

 

[Kat]

Is a Double Round Robin season followed by a Single Elimination tournament with seeding based on Season Ranking be viable?

I like the seeding idea for an elimination cup, however what d'you mean by double round robin?

I really hope a lot of the TF2 players give their input as well. Since they got the online tourney experience. I know some have come up, but more would always be nice

I used to play ETF2L, which is Europe's main TF2 league, for a good couple of years myself along with attending the iSeries LANs, but yeah I'd be interested to see what anyone else with experience would say.