What can Splatoon do to break Splatoon's problem with Splatfest in America?

[CM2]

Not only Callie won six times in a row, but the less popular team always seem to win no matter what as of recently thanks to the x6 win multiplier. It doesn't help the fact that the win dialogue for this Splatfest wasn't thrilling. Even NoA seems bored of Callie winning all the time. It's not fun if one side of the competition is the only who decides who gets to win honestly.


I know this sounds like a crazy suggestion, but I truly believe that a x3 multiplier would not be so bad because at least Team Past would have still won and the less popular team from now on do not have as much as an influence on winning the whole competition.

 

[SpaceCanary]

I agree with x3, or at least bumping it back to x4. With x6 winning popularity just dooms your team, but with x4 Marshmallows won although they were more popular.

Also, we can't have our cake and eat it too. Either we stick with exciting themes that lead to lopsided majorities and blowouts (like NA Splatfests), or we have slightly blander themes like Heads vs. Tails or Apples vs. Oranges that are closer and more fun to play, but people will still whine about needing better themes (like EU Splatfests). I personally endorse the second option so long as the themes aren't totally uninteresting, because I am sick to death of blowout matches all day long.

 

[PrinceOfKoopas]

Maybe we can have exciting themes AND close matches.

Team Art vs. Team Science? Or is that never gonna happen again in our polarised world?

 

[Ryuji]

Nintendo just needs to make the themes more polarized; ie, make both sides equally appealing. It wouldn't be as bad to lose if the multiplier wasn't so large and the themes were closer in number votes.

 

[Smashling79]

They need to move the multiplier back down to x4. x6 is just rediculous...

 

[StayPuft]

nintendo is not to blame

everyone is under the impression that the less popular team will win (or the team with the least amount of 'kids')
so everyone half-decent and above chooses the "less popular team" and proceeds to beat up the other team of "kids" and those dumb enough to actually choose a side they support

self-fulfilling prophecy

 

[Vitezen]

Remove the popularity statistic altogether.

 

[Mateiüsthesquidwarrior]

Well for a start, maybe nintendo could actually give Marie the "winning team."

But really, I think there just need to be some more "ambiguous" splatfest themes, where the winner is not certain from the beginning. It would not be hard for nintendo to think of pairings of relatively equal popularity.

That's why art vs. science was an anomaly. Because it's pretty unpredictable which people will like better. Unlike some other splatfests. I mean, we all know younger kids like ninjas, pizza, autobots, and planes better.

I don't think there necessarily needs to be change in the calculation of final score, I think it's more about the themes.

(Though I do think that the popularity statistic at the end is kind of useless. Although taking it out would make having "ambiguous" themes all the more important.)

 

[Flareth]

I'm not sure the kids are to blame. Children exist in Europe/Oceania an Japan, right? By this logic, the trend of "more popular team has more n00b kidsquids" should equally apply there. But, surprise surprise, it doesn't. In fact, over there the more popular teams actually do pretty well (especially in Japan).

In my opinion, if they don't want popularity to factor into determining the winner, they should just not factor it into determining the winner. They can keep it around, though, if only so people can see who turned out to have the popular vote. But leave the wins percentage as the only deciding factor for who wins the Splatfest.

(And yeah, Marie could do with some better teams, but that's not something you can really control.)

 

[Babycowland]

I'd up for switching back to x4 wins multiplier to try to discourage people from picking sides based mostly on which side will be less popular.

Another option could be to adjust how popularity factors into the final result. One way to do that might be to have wins determine the base amount of points and then have the more popular team get some bonus points (equivalent to 2-5% or something) on top of that base value. Doing that would give people an incentive to be on the more popular team, but not such a huge one to encourage gaming the system, while also helping ensure that wins are the main thing that determine the results of a Splatfest.

That said, I'm not very confident that we'll see any changes to the Splatfest scoring formula so long as this remains an NA specific problem.

 

[Gameboy224]

Remove the popularity statistic altogether.

That really doesn't help. The problem is NA's minority team always wins, the popularity statistic at this point doesn't exist. Even if we take away popularity, people still are gonna pic the minority team.

OT: Radical solution that would probably actually work. Go to the extreme and bump the multiplier back to 2x for a Splatfest or two without a notification then move it back to 3x or 4x. Jumping back to 2x will cause mayhem and disarray to anybody who chose a side based on minority since the minority is unlikely to win with the 2x multiplier. Bumping it back to a more reasonable multiplier after to try and maintain that balance and benefiting from the disarray caused by the multiplier change shock.

I mean this is unrealistic, and unprofessional, but it might work.

 

[SpaceCanary]

I'm not sure the kids are to blame. Children exist in Europe/Oceania an Japan, right? By this logic, the trend of "more popular team has more n00b kidsquids" should equally apply there. But, surprise surprise, it doesn't. In fact, over there the more popular teams actually do pretty well (especially in Japan).

True, but EU and Japanese Splatfest themes might not draw kids to one side as effectively. For example, if I were a kid and you asked me which flavor of ramen noodles I liked best, I'd probably just flip a coin. But every kid loves things like Autobots or ninjas. So the logic still applies elsewhere. . . it's just that sometimes neither team has more kids.

 

[LimitCrown]

nintendo is not to blame

everyone is under the impression that the less popular team will win (or the team with the least amount of 'kids')
so everyone half-decent and above chooses the "less popular team" and proceeds to beat up the other team of "kids" and those dumb enough to actually choose a side they support

self-fulfilling prophecy

There isn't any evidence to suggest that the result of the most popular team losing because people deliberately choose the other team is clearly a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, there is evidence to suggest that the 6x multiplier places too much emphasis on wins.

 

[Flareth]

I'm curious, are we supposed to be upset that the 6x multiplier causes popularity to not win games? Or is it because the 6x multiplier prevents Splatfests from being really close?

Because I'm of the latter group, and I'm getting the impression that most of y'all are in the former group.

 

[redacteddd]

Simple: Japan needs the 6x and not us. Localize the US version to have a lower multiplier if possible. EU/Oceania do not have any sort of trend towards the minority or majority so that's up for debate.

 

[LimitCrown]

Simple: Japan needs the 6x and not us. Localize the US version to have a lower multiplier if possible. EU/Oceania do not have any sort of trend towards the minority or majority so that's up for debate.

Japan did not need the multiplier to be increased. It wouldn't have changed the results of most of their previous Splatfests anyways.

 

[TCSmith0812]

How about instead of rewarding you based on what team you pick, the increase how far you can go with the sea snails? Like I agree that whatever team wins should get more sea snails, but what if there were more classes that give you more sea snails? That way it is more merit based. Like those who choose to play longer get even more snails? I know this is kind of already a thing, but maybe kick it up a notch by adding classes passed king or queen. That way if you REALLY want snails, you can just play for a long time.

 

[warghoul]

Callie is just better. Deal with it.

 

[Spraylan]

I'm fine with overwhelming support of one side over the other leading to a victory. Get rid of the multipliers.

 

[No-Intro-Needed]

It's hard to say how they can fix this problem because none of the Splatfests in North America were decided because of the x6 multiplier (http://gomtuu.org/splatfests/). Remember in the first Splatfest when people complained how popularity shouldn't decide who wins, now those people want popularity to matter (because of salt). Even removing the rule of playing against the same team would receive complaints because nobody would be able to play at all because of the lack of opponents available. That was the case with the first Japanese Splatfest (Rice vs. Bread) because they didn't allow teams to face themselves in turf wars, they added the rule because of the number of people getting kicked because the game was unable to find opponents. Even with every single fix, I predict it's only going to cause new problems or only make things worse. Every region has its own problems, every NA Splatfest is always one-sided (Callie always wins) while EU keeps getting all the dumb ideas (North Pole vs. South Pole/Pro-Pineapple Pizza vs. Anti-Pineapple Pizza). I think the most logical thing to do is to be careful what Splatfest choices should be used and think about how one-sided it will be.