Par / Remora
Inkling
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2024
- Messages
- 8
- Location
- Chicago
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- She/Her
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- SW-1499-8134-7406
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.
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.