sly_snivy
Full Squid
Recently I tried out a new Private Battle game mode I thought up, and I'm wanting to get some ideas from the community how how to improve it and make it run more smoothly.
First, a summary. The players are randomly divided into two teams of four. Then, each team is presented with two sets of paired weapons that are randomly generated. For each pair, they select one for their use, sending the other to their opponents. After both teams have selected, each team's comp consists of two weapons they selected, and two that they received from their enemies. This was inspired by the Clash Royale draft mode from way back when, so if that helps you, it's exactly that with Splatoon weapons. The teams then decide amongst themselves as to who plays what, and then the game begins. While any game mode could work, I ran this only on the Anarchy modes.
I do really like the concept, but when I actually held the event it was kinda scuffed. The games took ages to get going, as I had to generate the weapons, and the teams each time (I was doing it on the fly, so it felt like I was taking forever). To give you and idea, there were four matches played over the hour and thirty minute session. Another source of time delay was figuring out who was sitting out, since we got up to 10 players interested immediately. Beyond that, I felt that the VC situation was a bit weird. We flopped back and forth from doing split VCs for each team to doing all in one. I liked the split VCs better since each team could debate weapons without knowing what the other team was doing. It was also a tad faster since they could debate at the same time. However, it is a casual event, so I don't really know how I feel about split VCs encouraging more "sweaty" gameplay with callouts occurring during games. While that's not a bad thing, I want to prioritize the mode being fun first. But then when I went back to a unified VC since it got messy with people hopping in unannounced, as this was held in the Splatoon Stronghold VCs. However, this caused a big slowdown and I felt like the Alpha team was put at a disadvantage since Bravo would know what weapons were being sent to them before they selected theirs. A part of that messiness, though, could have been because I had more strangers in it since I needed more people beyond my team to get two teams of eight going.
Anyways, I'm looking for ideas on how to make this a more streamlined event, since there was a lot of interest in the mode. I do like that there is some strategy before the gameplay starts, and that will inherently cause it to be slower than normal Splatoon gameplay. I just want it to feel more smooth so more games can happen a session. A few of my own ideas are to make a discord server for it so its more clear who is playing in the event since that was a source of chaos, and to prepare the random weapons in advance. With that out of the way, I would appreciate any input on potential improvements!
First, a summary. The players are randomly divided into two teams of four. Then, each team is presented with two sets of paired weapons that are randomly generated. For each pair, they select one for their use, sending the other to their opponents. After both teams have selected, each team's comp consists of two weapons they selected, and two that they received from their enemies. This was inspired by the Clash Royale draft mode from way back when, so if that helps you, it's exactly that with Splatoon weapons. The teams then decide amongst themselves as to who plays what, and then the game begins. While any game mode could work, I ran this only on the Anarchy modes.
I do really like the concept, but when I actually held the event it was kinda scuffed. The games took ages to get going, as I had to generate the weapons, and the teams each time (I was doing it on the fly, so it felt like I was taking forever). To give you and idea, there were four matches played over the hour and thirty minute session. Another source of time delay was figuring out who was sitting out, since we got up to 10 players interested immediately. Beyond that, I felt that the VC situation was a bit weird. We flopped back and forth from doing split VCs for each team to doing all in one. I liked the split VCs better since each team could debate weapons without knowing what the other team was doing. It was also a tad faster since they could debate at the same time. However, it is a casual event, so I don't really know how I feel about split VCs encouraging more "sweaty" gameplay with callouts occurring during games. While that's not a bad thing, I want to prioritize the mode being fun first. But then when I went back to a unified VC since it got messy with people hopping in unannounced, as this was held in the Splatoon Stronghold VCs. However, this caused a big slowdown and I felt like the Alpha team was put at a disadvantage since Bravo would know what weapons were being sent to them before they selected theirs. A part of that messiness, though, could have been because I had more strangers in it since I needed more people beyond my team to get two teams of eight going.
Anyways, I'm looking for ideas on how to make this a more streamlined event, since there was a lot of interest in the mode. I do like that there is some strategy before the gameplay starts, and that will inherently cause it to be slower than normal Splatoon gameplay. I just want it to feel more smooth so more games can happen a session. A few of my own ideas are to make a discord server for it so its more clear who is playing in the event since that was a source of chaos, and to prepare the random weapons in advance. With that out of the way, I would appreciate any input on potential improvements!
