Underexplored Metagames

[Par / Remora]

Splatoon 3 has had a pretty consistent update cycle since launch, what with us getting balance changes roughly every 1.5 months, with the midseason patch often having the most balance changes to counterbalance them not having new content. Sometimes, like we seem to be experiencing with the most recent patch, the metagame doesn't get shaken up much at all. Other times, however, we suddenly get thrust into a brand-new format that seems doomed to be underexplored, because the next patch is going to have enough new toys to completely uproot the meta before it gets a chance to settle.

Time and experimentation at top level is usually what ends up causing shifts in a metagame, whether they're current or historic. In other games that are able to keep historic metagames going long enough, there are often many strategies lurking beneath the surface of what was winning tournaments while they were current. For Pokemon, we have Smogon's past-generation singles formats that have evolved and changed over time since people kept playing those formats in tournaments and on ladder years and years after those generations came to a close. In Yu-Gi-Oh, historic formats like Goat and Edison had passionate communities that kept them alive long enough to discover the decks that won tournaments while they were current were actually not the strongest decks you could've been playing in those tournaments, and the modern versions of those formats now look very different to how it looked on historic tournament breakdowns.

Splatoon, being strictly an online game, never has the time it needs to fully explore metagames like that. Even when an individual game stops getting support at the end of the patch cycle, enough people drop off or move onto the next game that I haven't heard of anyone challenging the notion that there might've been other strategies that could compete with the top performing comps. Hindsight and better understanding of a given game can often drive innovation in older metagames, but it's not like we can set a PB to be operating on patch 4.1.0 or something. We're always stuck on the current patch, so that kind of theorycrafting is kind of a waste of time.

Despite that, this thread was an idea I've wanted to humor for a while. What patches/metagames do some of you think might have been underexplored for one reason or another? I'm not qualified enough to really put forth potential comps for them, but I think there were some points in Splatoon 3's life where I think some alternative ideas might have had legs to stand up to what was dominating that format. Heck, we're in a wildly diverse metagame right now, with a balance patch coming in a matter of weeks. There is no way we end up anywhere close to solving this metagame before it comes to an end, so I think the current cooler-dominated meta is going to end up with this fate. Are there other patches where some of you might've felt the same? I really want to know.

 

[Snikerop]

You've made a very detailed observation (very cool).

In my opinion, to call a metagame completely solved implies a best strategy which will all but guarantee victory. However, any game as granular as chess is thus unsolved. There is no guaranteed winning strategy. Sometimes that's because there are multiple equally strong strategies, sometimes it's because valuable niches are present which can disrupt certain top strategies, sometimes top strategies fall off due to other metagame shifts, sometimes all three of the above are true.

With that in mind, I want to put forth something I think is interesting. On launch, the sheer power of stamper was not immediately obvious. At the time, it wasn't really considered a top weapon in part because it was brand new and nobody knew how to use it, and in part because of other perceptions which cause people to think it was weak. However, due to the high object-centric metagame of the beginning of the game (splash crab + machine booyah), it was considered to be a niche object shredder that fit nicely onto team comps. Regarding your question, I would want to see where crab meta would have gone considering what we know now about the strength of stamper.

Of course, there's an entire discussion to be had there about how the community (at least, the western community) tends not to value niches. But that's another can of worms and I don't want to hijack your thread :)

Edit: I talked at length here about solved metagames not because you brought it up (in fact, you may have taken care explicitly not to), but because that's how public dialogue of "underexplored" vs "saturated" is perceived and I wanted to make the distinction that just because a past meta was saturated does not mean that it is solved. This is why my points on solved metagames lead into crab meta.

 

[Par / Remora]

You've made a very detailed observation (very cool).

In my opinion, to call a metagame completely solved implies a best strategy which will all but guarantee victory. However, any game as granular as chess is thus unsolved. There is no guaranteed winning strategy. Sometimes that's because there are multiple equally strong strategies, sometimes it's because valuable niches are present which can disrupt certain top strategies, sometimes top strategies fall off due to other metagame shifts, sometimes all three of the above are true.

Full agree here. I think it's really neat when a metagame shift is allowed to happen naturally, since imo it helps a lot with keeping a metagame fresh and interesting without needing a balance patch to shift things around for us, hence why I wanted to talk about how it often doesn't happen in our game.

With that in mind, I want to put forth something I think is interesting. On launch, the sheer power of stamper was not immediately obvious. At the time, it wasn't really considered a top weapon in part because it was brand new and nobody knew how to use it, and in part because of other perceptions which cause people to think it was weak. However, due to the high object-centric metagame of the beginning of the game (splash crab + machine booyah), it was considered to be a niche object shredder that fit nicely onto team comps. Regarding your question, I would want to see where crab meta would have gone considering what we know now about the strength of stamper.

Launch Stamper is absolutely something that could've been a menace if it wasn't for its learning curve. This was pre-buff Zipcaster, but even without it, launch stamper had a very real, very strong niche that few teams caught onto at the time.

Of course, there's an entire discussion to be had there about how the community (at least, the western community) tends not to value niches. But that's another can of worms and I don't want to hijack your thread :)

I could literally go on a multi-paragraph rant on this topic, as someone who loves niche weapons and leveraging their strengths to answer what's strong. But yeah, that's not this thread. ;^^

Edit: I talked at length here about solved metagames not because you brought it up (in fact, you may have taken care explicitly not to), but because that's how public dialogue of "underexplored" vs "saturated" is perceived and I wanted to make the distinction that just because a past meta was saturated does not mean that it is solved. This is why my points on solved metagames lead into crab meta.

Legit, crab meta was on my list too, I just figured using a more recent example would be easier to follow since we're currently living the cooler meta, and crab meta has been dead for over half a year now. It's a perfect example of "that's it, we figured something considerably stronger than everything else out" and leaving it at that, leading to a lot of mirror matches in top cuts. Even in the current format, it's almost impossible to escape cooler. Maybe a pencil/zap-less or even cooler-less comp could theoretically exist that could challenge the dominant cooler-spamming strategies of today, and the benefit of hindsight would lead us to find some overlooked weapon some months into the future.