We as a community need to change the way we talk about competitive levels of play

[Mazumie]

(copied and pasted from another thread I said this in)

I feel like we need to change the way we talk about levels of play. Low Ink is not Low Level / Beginner. It is mid-level.

The way we as a community talk about competitive Splatoon, there are three tiers or levels: 1. Low-level, 2. Mid-level 3. Top-Level. Low-level ranges from the lowest divs and people who never place all the way to div 5. That is a HUUGGGEEE range and an injustice to the skill range found therein. I can't say I know from experience, but I'm sure there is also a skill gap in a "Mid-level" Div 4 team that just got low ink banned and any teams/FA's breaking into the Top levels of play. This old way of talking worked when the scene was smaller but we just had the largest LUTI season ever recently.

I think we would do better to talk about the range of competitive play into four levels: 1. Low-level (the first four bottom divs 11, 10, 9, 8), 2. Mid-level (Div 7, 6, 5, and teams that place in high-rank brackets) 3. High-level ( Div 4, 3, 2, and Low-Ink banned teams) and of course 4. Top-Level (Div 1/X)

Talking about levels of competitive play in this way, I think, would help to temper expectations. Helps those new to the scene not feel like they need to rush to the current "Mid-level" to be worth their salt. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm a young, senile whipper snapper who needs copium to feel good about themselves because I'm still new to the competitive scene, but I'm willing to die on this hill until someone changes my mind.

 

[ThatsSo]

I'm sorry man but Div 7 is not mid level and Div 4 is not high level

 

[Supa Fern]

One of the things i always found weird from the competitive scenario is the path players take after getting Low Ink Ban is that it is not an straight easy one.
Low ink Is great for getting the people to start playing competitive and it sounds it is the intention they created.
However it creates a surplus of teams that can not compete on low ink anymore that want to continue playing but often struggle to keep the team afloat. Quoting Gem during one of his videos, he said winning low ink is the peak for most teams and the tournaments are very hyped compared to other with the current mid level label.
I feel the issue is that there isnt much Mid level tournaments that can top the build low ink does.

My perspective is based on My competitive experience from 12/2017 until March 2023. So obviously i could be missing many things. Correct if i am wrong

 

[OctoBlue]

I'm sorry man but Div 7 is not mid level and Div 4 is not high level

I think div 4 could be high level tbh

 

[SquidAbortions]

We must get rid of toxic in gay community

 

[MintyMisc]

I think skill level can’t really be represented properly by hard categories, it’d probably be better to try to put it on a spectrum. Additionally, there are multiple skills that go into competitive, such as game skill & comms skill, both necessary, but definitely separate.

 

[Mazumie]

One of the things i always found weird from the competitive scenario is the path players take after getting Low Ink Ban is that it is not an straight easy one.
Low ink Is great for getting the people to start playing competitive and it sounds it is the intention they created.
However it creates a surplus of teams that can not compete on low ink anymore that want to continue playing but often struggle to keep the team afloat. Quoting Gem during one of his videos, he said winning low ink is the peak for most teams and the tournaments are very hyped compared to other with the current mid level label.
I feel the issue is that there isnt much Mid level tournaments that can top the build low ink does.

My perspective is based on My competitive experience from 12/2017 until March 2023. So obviously i could be missing many things. Correct if i am wrong

I agree with pretty much everything you just said. It seems to me that Low Ink was more or less created to support players new to competitive and kinda graduate them into the "Next Level" of competitive play, but now we have two things that changed that. 1. There are so many more players and teams that when Low Ink Started, it is consistently one of the largest tournaments we have in our scene. 2. The range skill of players who qualify is so much bigger I believe Div 5-11 is allowed. We used to not have as many Divisions in LUTI, so the skill gap has increased

It also has to do with supply and demand. There will always be a chronic shortage of tournaments and TO staff (much like the chronic shortage of DM's in RPGs) because it requires more effort on the TO's part. So there never be enough Beginner skill cap tournaments to funnel low-level players to the mid-level and mid-level players to high-level. So, many of the best low-level players stay there waiting until they have the right tournament run to graduate into the mid-level/

 

[Mazumie]

I think skill level can’t really be represented properly by hard categories, it’d probably be better to try to put it on a spectrum. Additionally, there are multiple skills that go into competitive, such as game skill & comms skill, both necessary, but definitely separate.

I don't think it's that we necessarily need hard labels. Many skills go into sploon and we are all at different places with those skills.

It's just that when tournaments are described as being "Beginner" or "Low-level," that means nothing to me when that can range from a Div 5 team that can hold its own in the highest bracket all the way to a new Div 11 team. I mean this is verbatim from the Low Ink "About" Page.

"Low Ink is a two day Splatoon 3 tournament for newer and lower level players."

 

[antyytna]

I don't think it's that we necessarily need hard labels. Many skills go into sploon and we are all at different places with those skills.

It's just that when tournaments are described as being "Beginner" or "Low-level," that means nothing to me when that can range from a Div 5 team that can hold its own in the highest bracket all the way to a new Div 11 team. I mean this is verbatim from the Low Ink "About" Page.

"Low Ink is a two day Splatoon 3 tournament for newer and lower level players."

This is mostly because those divs are essentially new. Before my break from Splatoon 2, I was like Div 6 out of I think 8. Or maybe it was 7, but I remember the highest div had two versions; a solid version, and a version for those who just did not put in enough results for seeding.

So from that perspective, yes, Low Ink was a low level tournament. Divs increasing has only increased the pie, but overall most players with a lot of experience still see Div 5 even as low level, and that probably is not changing, because the skill level has not really changed, just the amount of skill levels on the board has.

There is a tournament for like Div 8 IIRC, but I don't know the name of it.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

(copied and pasted from another thread I said this in)

I feel like we need to change the way we talk about levels of play. Low Ink is not Low Level / Beginner. It is mid-level.

The way we as a community talk about competitive Splatoon, there are three tiers or levels: 1. Low-level, 2. Mid-level 3. Top-Level. Low-level ranges from the lowest divs and people who never place all the way to div 5. That is a HUUGGGEEE range and an injustice to the skill range found therein. I can't say I know from experience, but I'm sure there is also a skill gap in a "Mid-level" Div 4 team that just got low ink banned and any teams/FA's breaking into the Top levels of play. This old way of talking worked when the scene was smaller but we just had the largest LUTI season ever recently.

I think we would do better to talk about the range of competitive play into four levels: 1. Low-level (the first four bottom divs 11, 10, 9, 8), 2. Mid-level (Div 7, 6, 5, and teams that place in high-rank brackets) 3. High-level ( Div 4, 3, 2, and Low-Ink banned teams) and of course 4. Top-Level (Div 1/X)

Talking about levels of competitive play in this way, I think, would help to temper expectations. Helps those new to the scene not feel like they need to rush to the current "Mid-level" to be worth their salt. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm a young, senile whipper snapper who needs copium to feel good about themselves because I'm still new to the competitive scene, but I'm willing to die on this hill until someone changes my mind.

I agree that this is how it should be, but you can't just change the meaning of words like that. It doesn't work. Those terms have a well-established meaning.
However, I have heard the term "entry-level" to describe the range of skill below low-level, and I think a wider adoption of this would be helpful.

 

[Mazumie]

I agree that this is how it should be, but you can't just change the meaning of words like that. It doesn't work. Those terms have a well-established meaning.
However, I have heard the term "entry-level" to describe the range of skill below low-level, and I think a wider adoption of this would be helpful.

I agree shifting the language we use would be hard and people will always oppose it, but I do think adopting a new term could also be appropriate. I just think the current language has the potential create an unhealthy mindset that someone isn’t “good” enough we’re they are at right now.

 

[Power]

It’s hard to have an objective measure of low, mid, high and top level that people will agree on until we have well structured leagues and points systems but that sort of thing seems to be in another universe. For example if you ask a top player this, they may consider players that some think are top players to be high level. If you ask a low level player they may start to account for the differences in skills among the current “low level”, meanwhile for a top player those differences don’t mean much.

So IMO it’s subjective until a system comes along to change how we view skill levels. Even then people will still have their own views of it.

 

[Pick]

If the problem is that "Low Level" is too large of a skill level range then why not just coin a term "Entry Level" for anyone not LSL/FTIU banned, and keep the rest the same.
I'm perfectly happy being called low level, it just means I have to explain that "low level" is still like top 1-5% of the whole game to people who don't play splatoon LOL

 

[Pick]

why not just coin a term "Entry Level" for anyone not LSL/FTIU banned

I did not read the whole thread before posting this, sorry squib lol. basically said the same thing as me

 

[Mr Sark]

It depends on perspective.

So when I first started playing competitive during splatoon 2 I got placed in div 5 and honestly with the little comp experience I had I thought that was mid level because I was x rank and thought that the s+/div 7 people were low level, and div 2+ was high level.
After over a year of playing competitive and getting more experience in scrims and tournaments I got div 2. Honestly playing at a div 2 level honestly felt like mid-level, not high level tbh, based on the actual high level teams that exist.
To me low div 3 and below can all be considered low level. Mid div 3 to mid div 1 would be mid level. High level would be high div 1 to mid div x. Top level are the small handful of teams that win majors.

And I know some really low level people tend to think that a div 4 or 5 is mid or high level just because they would stomp them in the same way a div 1 team would, but that doesn't mean they are really mid-level in my perspective

 

[Seafoo]

Dude, there are 5 sections

Low level
Mid level
High level
Top level
The like, 5-6 teams that are the best

 

[silly]

I get what you're saying but if anything I think the way most people talk about teams now is wrong. In my mind, "top level" are the teams that can give the best teams a run for their money, so like ~+1 level basically. High level is some of div X - ~Div 1 (most of +2-better half of +3) with midlevel being anything lower than that + li banned (at least div 4) and low level anything not low ink banned. The whole point of Low Ink is it's like the graduation of low level where teams start playing/performing against other similar in all skill level weeklies and bigger tournaments then just skill capped stuff. The way we think about skill levels now kinda just makes sense to me.

 

[antyytna]

If the problem is that "Low Level" is too large of a skill level range then why not just coin a term "Entry Level" for anyone not LSL/FTIU banned, and keep the rest the same.
I'm perfectly happy being called low level, it just means I have to explain that "low level" is still like top 1-5% of the whole game to people who don't play splatoon LOL

It is kinda weird that I can be better than 99% of the playerbase and still be a "low-level player" lmao

It gets even funnier when you see people who really really really should be Low Ink banned are still under

 

[Hitzel]

One of the things i always found weird from the competitive scenario is the path players take after getting Low Ink Ban is that it is not an straight easy one.
Low ink Is great for getting the people to start playing competitive and it sounds it is the intention they created.
However it creates a surplus of teams that can not compete on low ink anymore that want to continue playing but often struggle to keep the team afloat. Quoting Gem during one of his videos, he said winning low ink is the peak for most teams and the tournaments are very hyped compared to other with the current mid level label.
I feel the issue is that there isnt much Mid level tournaments that can top the build low ink does.

My perspective is based on My competitive experience from 12/2017 until March 2023. So obviously i could be missing many things. Correct if i am wrong

It sounds like people should be branching away from low ink BEFORE this happens instead of after.

 

[Axiom2477]

(copied and pasted from another thread I said this in)

I feel like we need to change the way we talk about levels of play. Low Ink is not Low Level / Beginner. It is mid-level.

The way we as a community talk about competitive Splatoon, there are three tiers or levels: 1. Low-level, 2. Mid-level 3. Top-Level. Low-level ranges from the lowest divs and people who never place all the way to div 5. That is a HUUGGGEEE range and an injustice to the skill range found therein. I can't say I know from experience, but I'm sure there is also a skill gap in a "Mid-level" Div 4 team that just got low ink banned and any teams/FA's breaking into the Top levels of play. This old way of talking worked when the scene was smaller but we just had the largest LUTI season ever recently.

I think we would do better to talk about the range of competitive play into four levels: 1. Low-level (the first four bottom divs 11, 10, 9, 8), 2. Mid-level (Div 7, 6, 5, and teams that place in high-rank brackets) 3. High-level ( Div 4, 3, 2, and Low-Ink banned teams) and of course 4. Top-Level (Div 1/X)

Talking about levels of competitive play in this way, I think, would help to temper expectations. Helps those new to the scene not feel like they need to rush to the current "Mid-level" to be worth their salt. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I'm a young, senile whipper snapper who needs copium to feel good about themselves because I'm still new to the competitive scene, but I'm willing to die on this hill until someone changes my mind.

I believe we shouldn’t even categorize at all. The reason divisions exist is to give definition to a teams skill level, and trying to divide it into low level high level etc is kind of redundant. However I believe the distinctions between so called low level mid level and top level are very apparent when looking at breakpoints in team skill. “Low level” is smth I look at as a place where you can essentially win with mechanics and almost any weapon comp (many low ink wins have proved this). Midlevel is where mechanics start to drop out of the equation and team coordination start really coming into play. (As a generalization, obv this is my opinion). Then high level is when you become so good that you can finally start winning tournaments (weeklies and stuff) and top level is where you can win majors. Overall I think the skill is definitely continuous and not divided into specific groups, but there are pretty clear breakpoints (mostly due to how the tournaments in this scene are set up) but also in general player skill