What Do You Want to See From Splatoon 2?

[Coricus]

I like your ideas except for the first one, so allow me to be captain naysayer :p Clothing is super-important in Splatoon, partly because being able to recognize what your opponent is wearing can help you guess their strategy - if they have this hat with this ability, you might guess that they'll jump a certain way on match start. Or maybe you recognize that the melee guy's packing ink resistance shoes. That sort of thing. Separating clothing from appearance while still retaining abilities would remove this small but important factor in reading opponents.

I suppose that's fair enough. I was trying to figure out ways around not being able to identify their utility loadout, but admittedly there's no real way to actually judge that on an instant basis. Tying gear to stats can leave fashion and utility at odds a bit at times, but the alternative is to go in blind on what the opponent is going for gameplay wise.

That's the tricky thing about trying to think of ways to improve your favorite games, some ideas might sound perfectly good in your head, but all too often when it comes down to actually applying them to gameplay there's something you missed about the idea that makes it not nearly as valid as it sounded at first.

 

[Flareth]

octolings

It'd be nice if they put in the option to swap weapons/gear while in a lobby. They had it with Private Battles in Splatoon 1 and they added it to Mario Kart 8 DX, so unless there's something I'm missing it shouldn't be too much of an issue to have, even if it's something that the game needs an update for.

As far as gear goes... can we change to be a stackable ability instead of a main/shoe-exclusive one? That's the biggest issue I had with gear in the original, since there were very few instances where I felt the need to run shoes with a different main ability could actually work. True, the limitation it imposes doth play into gear strategy a bit, but it seems like an unnecessary one.

And if we're talking "fat chance in hell" desires, then I still want SOAP shoes added in at some point.

 

[Dessgeega]

octolings

It'd be nice if they put in the option to swap weapons/gear while in a lobby. They had it with Private Battles in Splatoon 1 and they added it to Mario Kart 8 DX, so unless there's something I'm missing it shouldn't be too much of an issue to have, even if it's something that the game needs an update for.

As far as gear goes... can we change to be a stackable ability instead of a main/shoe-exclusive one? That's the biggest issue I had with gear in the original, since there were very few instances where I felt the need to run shoes with a different main ability could actually work. True, the limitation it imposes doth play into gear strategy a bit, but it seems like an unnecessary one.

And if we're talking "fat chance in hell" desires, then I still want SOAP shoes added in at some point.

Good news! You got your ink resistance wish, cause that is EXACTLY what happened! :D

 

[Coricus]

And if we're talking "fat chance in hell" desires, then I still want SOAP shoes added in at some point.

Considering those have a history of being added to video game franchises to initially justify rail grinding, that would be ABSURFLY fitting.

Or they could like, add the standard shoes of the character that did that in the first place as another idea. I mean, whatever's fresh. Insert memes here

Got ourselves an inktuation, stuck in a new location-

 

[BooDestroyer]

So is Salmon Run really the only thing that sets Splatoon 2 apart from 1? Because that's all they ever seem to be talking about.

 

[Lonely_Dolphin]

So is Salmon Run really the only thing that sets Splatoon 2 apart from 1? Because that's all they ever seem to be talking about.

Sure if you want to pretend new weapons, new maps, new story n singleplayer levels, new customization, and so ons don't exist. :L

 

[Ulk]

I got all I need from this game. New hairstyles and fixed gear/ability system. I never asked for more.

Only got a few more issues left, some of which may not even be one since we don't have all infos yet.

- First and foremost the possibility that Salmon Run will be an offline-exclusive outside online event times, which is/would be a massive flaw.
- Decrease of the usefulness of even the main amiibos (I don't even want to know how useless the rest will be)
- Still unchangable gear main abilities.
- Severely disappointing graphical performance for a sequel.

 

[Coricus]

I got all I need from this game. New hairstyles and fixed gear/ability system. I never asked for more.

Only got a few more issues left, some of which may not even be one since we don't have all infos yet.

- First and foremost the possibility that Salmon Run will be an offline-exclusive outside online event times, which is/would be a massive flaw.
- Decrease of the usefulness of even the main amiibos (I don't even want to know how useless the rest will be)
- Still unchangable gear main abilities.
- Severely disappointing graphical performance for a sequel.

I would imagine the third point ties into @Dessgeega 's argument that people judge each other's capabilities based off the clothing they wear, as changing main abilities would have the same net effect as cosmetic gear in that situation. I'd be open to the idea of being able to wear any clothes I want to personally, but the potential issue is there.

As far as the graphics go, the Switch isn't that much more powerful than the Wii U and despite that there's still quite a few improvements, with the lighting being changed, the ink being significantly more reflective and now having varying thickness, grass and trees having greater detail, the single player armor's headphone effects being a bit (literally) flashier, etc. The fact that it doesn't "look like a sequel" seems to be more of a side effect of the series not having enough time to evolve it's artstyle and not having a significant reason to change settings.

The Amiibos seem to still give unique gear even if at random, and now hold gear sets that can be quickly pulled up on any system and allow selfies with said sets as well. Which I mean, it's less useful yeah, but the main things outright missing are lobby games that used a second screen the Switch doesn't have and the challenges and weapons that due to the way single player is set up the boy and girl Inkling challenges and all of the weapons seem to have been integrated into the main game.

Although Salmon Run is a concern for me as well. Splatoon 2 doesn't give you the option to split Joy-Cons likely because of a mix of FPS and character customization, so that would bring me back to the age old issue of not having any way to play a mode with anyone. . .Please don't do that to me, Splatoon wizards, LOL.

 

[Flareth]

Good news! You got your ink resistance wish, cause that is EXACTLY what happened! :D

Nice! Can't wait to see how that'll work out.

- Severely disappointing graphical performance for a sequel.

I actually agree with this in a sense. It's not that it looks bad, mind you, but it doesn't really seem all that different from the original game beyond the upgrades. That it led me to believe Spla2n was an enhanced port of vanilla Splatoon at first doesn't help much. I suspect it's a result of the game only coming out twa years after the first.

#freethekraken

 

[Dessgeega]

Nintendo tends to go for stylized looks rather than cutting edge realism, seemingly a lot more these days too. It helps them push "better" graphics on less powerful hardware. I guarantee that Splatoon will age better graphically than many other big-name titles these days 10 years from now. Could they have prettied it up more? Sure, but it looks good regardless.

 

[Ulk]

I would imagine the third point ties into @Dessgeega 's argument that people judge each other's capabilities based off the clothing they wear, as changing main abilities would have the same net effect as cosmetic gear in that situation. I'd be open to the idea of being able to wear any clothes I want to personally, but the potential issue is there.

As far as the graphics go, the Switch isn't that much more powerful than the Wii U and despite that there's still quite a few improvements, with the lighting being changed, the ink being significantly more reflective and now having varying thickness, grass and trees having greater detail, the single player armor's headphone effects being a bit (literally) flashier, etc. The fact that it doesn't "look like a sequel" seems to be more of a side effect of the series not having enough time to evolve it's artstyle and not having a significant reason to change settings.

The Amiibos seem to still give unique gear even if at random, and now hold gear sets that can be quickly pulled up on any system and allow selfies with said sets as well. Which I mean, it's less useful yeah, but the main things outright missing are lobby games that used a second screen the Switch doesn't have and the challenges and weapons that due to the way single player is set up the boy and girl Inkling challenges and all of the weapons seem to have been integrated into the main game.

Although Salmon Run is a concern for me as well. Splatoon 2 doesn't give you the option to split Joy-Cons likely because of a mix of FPS and character customization, so that would bring me back to the age old issue of not having any way to play a mode with anyone. . .Please don't do that to me, Splatoon wizards, LOL.

I believe the entire "looking into each other's abilities" system is entirely pointless and doing nothing but limiting creativity in the first place. The system is already fundamentally flawed by showing you half of the opponent's hand and hiding the other half. I don't see this being changed to seeing none of the abilities an issue in the slighest. I'd in fact be for the removal of this system as a whole, even if it weren't for the implementation of gear swap. Competitively speaking, it simply has no value whatsoever. Why weigh down our balloon with a rock if it's just a rock?

Be there whatever reasons there may be, a flaw is a flaw, and a sequel showing this little improvement in graphical performance definitely is a flaw. Though frankly, even if this wouldn't be an excuse anyway, I do not believe that this is the Switch's limit. Far from it. Surely it's not that much more powerful, but failing to the point of not being able to tell if a game is a sequel or not is a little too laughable of a performance.
And even it was the Switch's limit, criticism would have to go towards the Switch as well then. After all they insist on labeling it a home console, yet it traditionally doesn't meet a single home console standard, including graphical performances, which technically speaking could have been fixed by adding hardware to the dock.That's too many details to get into though and a little off-topic.

Same story here. A flaw is a flaw. Though in this case I don't even see any viable potential excuses from their side at all. It's not the problem that they seemingly did not add the exact same form of content as the previous game. It would have been very much possible to implement something of equal value after all, which a "quick outfit swap" option and a "selfie" option most certainly is not. There was significantly less effort put into the content of newer amiibo. Surely this is a downgrade.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing when it comes to Salmon Run. I was efering to the fact that their wording in an interview slightly indicated that Salmon Run would not be available online at all times but event-specific.

 

[Coricus]

I believe the entire "looking into each other's abilities" system is entirely pointless and doing nothing but limiting creativity in the first place. The system is already fundamentally flawed by showing you half of the opponent's hand and hiding the other half. I don't see this being changed to seeing none of the abilities an issue in the slighest. I'd in fact be for the removal of this system as a whole, even if it weren't for the implementation of gear swap. Competitively speaking, it simply has no value whatsoever. Why weigh down our balloon with a rock if it's just a rock?

Be there whatever reasons there may be, a flaw is a flaw, and a sequel showing this little improvement in graphical performance definitely is a flaw. Though frankly, even if this wouldn't be an excuse anyway, I do not believe that this is the Switch's limit. Far from it. Surely it's not that much more powerful, but failing to the point of not being able to tell if a game is a sequel or not is a little too laughable of a performance.
And even it was the Switch's limit, criticism would have to go towards the Switch as well then. After all they insist on labeling it a home console, yet it traditionally doesn't meet a single home console standard, including graphical performances, which technically speaking could have been fixed by adding hardware to the dock.That's too many details to get into though and a little off-topic.

Same story here. A flaw is a flaw. Though in this case I don't even see any viable potential excuses from their side at all. It's not the problem that they seemingly did not add the exact same form of content as the previous game. It would have been very much possible to implement something of equal value after all, which a "quick outfit swap" option and a "selfie" option most certainly is not. There was significantly less effort put into the content of newer amiibo. Surely this is a downgrade.

I don't think we're talking about the same thing when it comes to Salmon Run. I was efering to the fact that their wording in an interview slightly indicated that Salmon Run would not be available online at all times but event-specific.

Well then, in that case out of curiosity and the potential ability to have more information for them to reference for a hypothetical Splatoon 3, I'd like to ask what you'd wish to see out of these situations in the first place.

What specific details were you looking for them to improve in terms of the graphics that they didn't? "The graphical performance is bad" is a vague enough statement used and abused in so many wildly different ways by so many people for so many different things that it doesn't offer a particularly easy to visualize point of reference. What sort of prettier Splatoon 2 were you picturing? Give me some points of reference. Paint me a visual picture.

Thinking on the Amiibo situation, the way they used to describe having Amiibo compatibility almost sounded like they didn't even want to bother with Amiibo at all but felt obligated to. . .that doesn't speak to their defense, but it does offer a look into their mindset of exactly why they might have dropped the ball in that case. Perhaps they need a bit of reassurance that people would rather they go all in? I feel like I remember folks being upset at the amount of content locked behind Amiibo previously. Of course, it would also help the situation to know specifically what sort of Amiibo content you wished to have included in the game.

And I admit that I have a tendency to cut off into unrelated tangents and am seemingly physically incapable of not coming off like I am ignorant of every possible piece of video game news, but yes, I am aware of the potential status quo of Salmon Run and that is what I'm worried about. Please don't think I'm a squidiot.

 

[innsxo]

I'd love to see the old ultimates coming back as DLC, and maybe customizable weapons where you can add your own little twists, like picking the abilities and such.

 

[Ulk]

Well then, in that case out of curiosity and the potential ability to have more information for them to reference for a hypothetical Splatoon 3, I'd like to ask what you'd wish to see out of these situations in the first place.

What specific details were you looking for them to improve in terms of the graphics that they didn't? "The graphical performance is bad" is a vague enough statement used and abused in so many wildly different ways by so many people for so many different things that it doesn't offer a particularly easy to visualize point of reference. What sort of prettier Splatoon 2 were you picturing? Give me some points of reference. Paint me a visual picture.

Thinking on the Amiibo situation, the way they used to describe having Amiibo compatibility almost sounded like they didn't even want to bother with Amiibo at all but felt obligated to. . .that doesn't speak to their defense, but it does offer a look into their mindset of exactly why they might have dropped the ball in that case. Perhaps they need a bit of reassurance that people would rather they go all in? I feel like I remember folks being upset at the amount of content locked behind Amiibo previously. Of course, it would also help the situation to know specifically what sort of Amiibo content you wished to have included in the game.

And I admit that I have a tendency to cut off into unrelated tangents and am seemingly physically incapable of not coming off like I am ignorant of every possible piece of video game news, but yes, I am aware of the potential status quo of Salmon Run and that is what I'm worried about. Please don't think I'm a squidiot.

Out of the situation? Quite easy really. Rerollable main abilities. Nobody gets to know what the other person has up his sleeve ability-wise without dying to them. It's a double-blind after all.

I never said "the graphical performance is bad". I said it's bad for a sequel, which it most certainly is. That's in no way vague either. I even specifically explained that this is the case due to both games being hardly visually distinguishable. And that's simply how it is. Our personal views mean nothing there. It's not about what I or what you subjectively and personally hoped for or expected. Personally when I heard of a sequel, the last thing I wasted a thought on was graphics. If graphics were a huge factor in my preferences, I can assure you I wouldn't waste my time with the one company that utterly fails to meet graphic standards generation after generation.
It's about the objective standard of a sequel showing little to no improvement in a category compared to its predecessor. And that is a textbook flaw. Now I know the topic is about things we personally hope for. But as I said, with regard to my subjective perspective, I already got all I wanted. From an objective perspective, there are flaws left. Graphics are one of them. And a graphical improvement to the point where you can actually tell it's a sequel is a minimum for an acceptable performance.

Certain amiibo offering too much content is no excuse for others offering too little. It's mostly not even about the amount but rather about the content itself. BotW for example was criticized heavily for its exclusive contents due to some of it being literally several times superior to anything you can find in the game. Prime example being the Bow of Twilight. Splatoon amiibos were however never that controversial. Other and unrelated amiibo being criticized does in no way justify a downgrade of the content offered by the Splatoon amiibo.
Same thing here by the way. It's purely objective. What content I wish for doesn't matter, because either way I'm not buying amiibo. That, objectively, they downgraded the content of the amiibo does matter.

 

[Cyan]

I'd love to see the old ultimates coming back as DLC, and maybe customizable weapons where you can add your own little twists, like picking the abilities and such.

Both of those are pretty bad ideas to be honest. All the old specials have been removed because they were too dominant and flipped the game balance in an instant. Inkzooka could wipe a team by itself, Kraken and Bubbler were overused cheap panic specials to save themselves and get easy splats, Echo was a massive wall hack, Killer Wail and Inkstrike were arguably more balanced, but Wail cuts off so much map for the duration, especially with all the long corridor maps in Splatoon 1. Bomb Rush appears to be back and largely the same, but it looks like it uses the main weapon to fire bombs rather than allowing both. Splatoon 2 is putting a far larger emphasis on weaker specials that need to be coordinated with your team to be more useful and is changing the non-explosive subs to be more of a zoning tool than in 1 (Disruptors are now toxic mist zones, Point Sensors linger for a while etc.). To bring the old specials back is to revert the game to the state of Splat 1 with overbearing specials dictating who wins and loses, not to mention locking it behind a £5 paywall or whatever it would cost, giving an advantage to those who burn money on things that redundant.

The second idea is frankly worse than the first. Look at all other shooters that let you pick weapons and then choose your sub and special. All that does is make people pick things like the regular Spattershot (a good all-round weapon with little weaknesses) and whack on it the most powerful sub and special and take it to ranked. It's a great way to make a game boring and samey in about 2 weeks of it being out as things get dominant. By restricting weapons to 2 kits you can better control the balance of the game, and we already had ridiculous weapon kits on some weapons in Splatoon 1 (Splash Wall/Kraken .96 Deco for one, Disruptor/Bubbler Zink Mini Splatling etc.). It also allows them to keep the special depletion mechanic where weapons that are overused/deemed "too good" can be punished by losing more special or having specific parts of the kit targeted to reduce the weapon's power. Again if that was unlocked through paywall DLC the game would lose competitive viability as well as really annoying people that the game became "pay to win" by getting super powerful specials from Splat 1 and the ability to combine it with the best sub weapons.

 

[Kabel]

I think the main issue with Splatoon and it will be like this for any sequel is that its main mechanic of inking your turf makes it harder to differentiate.

While Splatoon 3 may look even more improved the ink just overshadows everything.

 

[Coricus]

Out of the situation? Quite easy really. Rerollable main abilities. Nobody gets to know what the other person has up his sleeve ability-wise without dying to them. It's a double-blind after all.

I never said "the graphical performance is bad". I said it's bad for a sequel, which it most certainly is. That's in no way vague either. I even specifically explained that this is the case due to both games being hardly visually distinguishable. And that's simply how it is. Our personal views mean nothing there. It's not about what I or what you subjectively and personally hoped for or expected. Personally when I heard of a sequel, the last thing I wasted a thought on was graphics. If graphics were a huge factor in my preferences, I can assure you I wouldn't waste my time with the one company that utterly fails to meet graphic standards generation after generation.
It's about the objective standard of a sequel showing little to no improvement in a category compared to its predecessor. And that is a textbook flaw. Now I know the topic is about things we personally hope for. But as I said, with regard to my subjective perspective, I already got all I wanted. From an objective perspective, there are flaws left. Graphics are one of them. And a graphical improvement to the point where you can actually tell it's a sequel is a minimum for an acceptable performance.

Certain amiibo offering too much content is no excuse for others offering too little. It's mostly not even about the amount but rather about the content itself. BotW for example was criticized heavily for its exclusive contents due to some of it being literally several times superior to anything you can find in the game. Prime example being the Bow of Twilight. Splatoon amiibos were however never that controversial. Other and unrelated amiibo being criticized does in no way justify a downgrade of the content offered by the Splatoon amiibo.
Same thing here by the way. It's purely objective. What content I wish for doesn't matter, because either way I'm not buying amiibo. That, objectively, they downgraded the content of the amiibo does matter.

Saying that the graphical performance is "bad for a sequel" is vague because I still have no idea whether or not you noticed something specifically in the raw assets that was lacking or if the lack of change in artstyle in an already stylized game is what caused it to become difficult to distinguish. Every time I see someone comment on the lack of improvement in the graphics that's something that crosses my mind and I still don't think I've figured out anything definitive on it either way.

When the games are held side by side or one plays the Testfire and watches all the trailers and then goes back to the original, there are some very marked jumps that make Splatoon 2 have a noticeably better feel, but Splatoon has a VERY specific design fashion that has remained pretty much identical between the two games and an artstyle that was designed to make it look as good as possible without high detail assets in the first place. Hence my contemplation that the issue may to a large degree lie in two years not being enough time for artstyle evolution rather than "LOL recycled assets just a port." Why would that even matter? Because if the issue is that people are confused by the lack of change in the artstyle, then all the attempts in the world for the Splatoon team to bump up the asset quality in the future in order to try to fix the issue are gonna fall flat and hard.

"Graphics" is a nothing word. It has been abused so thoroughly by the general public that no matter how many times it's repeated it says absolutely nothing. It could refer to resolution and frames per second, which if comments at E3 are to be believed Splatoon 2 has maxed out both of for the specs of it's system barring the hubworld and the usual fuss over that. It could refer to the level of detail in the assets, or the level of neat visual tricks and pretty lighting styles being pumped out by the engine. Or it could just refer to "whatever I don't think looks good."

So that's why it's best to identify something more specific than "graphics." There's any number of things it can refer to, and if the message isn't clarified it just boils down to "this doesn't look good," which says absolutely nothing on how to actually fix the issue at hand. There needs to be something for the people in charge of the situation to work off of, otherwise they'll either try to do the right thing but have it be "not enough," ignore the criticism because it lacks enough substance to work with, or just take an outright detrimental direction while trying to fix it by accident.

 

[Ulk]

Saying that the graphical performance is "bad for a sequel" is vague because I still have no idea whether or not you noticed something specifically in the raw assets that was lacking or if the lack of change in artstyle in an already stylized game is what caused it to become difficult to distinguish. Every time I see someone comment on the lack of improvement in the graphics that's something that crosses my mind and I still don't think I've figured out anything definitive on it either way.

When the games are held side by side or one plays the Testfire and watches all the trailers and then goes back to the original, there are some very marked jumps that make Splatoon 2 have a noticeably better feel, but Splatoon has a VERY specific design fashion that has remained pretty much identical between the two games and an artstyle that was designed to make it look as good as possible without high detail assets in the first place. Hence my contemplation that the issue may to a large degree lie in two years not being enough time for artstyle evolution rather than "LOL recycled assets just a port." Why would that even matter? Because if the issue is that people are confused by the lack of change in the artstyle, then all the attempts in the world for the Splatoon team to bump up the asset quality in the future in order to try to fix the issue are gonna fall flat and hard.

"Graphics" is a nothing word. It has been abused so thoroughly by the general public that no matter how many times it's repeated it says absolutely nothing. It could refer to resolution and frames per second, which if comments at E3 are to be believed Splatoon 2 has maxed out both of for the specs of it's system barring the hubworld and the usual fuss over that. It could refer to the level of detail in the assets, or the level of neat visual tricks and pretty lighting styles being pumped out by the engine. Or it could just refer to "whatever I don't think looks good."

So that's why it's best to identify something more specific than "graphics." There's any number of things it can refer to, and if the message isn't clarified it just boils down to "this doesn't look good," which says absolutely nothing on how to actually fix the issue at hand. There needs to be something for the people in charge of the situation to work off of, otherwise they'll either try to do the right thing but have it be "not enough," ignore the criticism because it lacks enough substance to work with, or just take an outright detrimental direction while trying to fix it by accident.

I really don't see how "no visible difference" is a vague statement at all. You cannot tell it's a sequel.The only thing that makes it difficult to distinguish is the lack of work put into the graphics. Not more not less. Art style is not an excuse for a lack of improvement and does in no way hinder improvement either. You can very well maintain an art style and drastically improve graphical performances. It's frankly that simple. This isn't a day and age where this performance isn't exceedable. Far from it.

If you need to put footage side by side to come to the conclusion which one is supposed to be the sequel, we're talking, as I already said, exactly about "hardly visually distinguishable", if not less. That isn't even port material. A notable graphical improvement is seen immediately. If you have to look at details, you can stop right there and qualify it a pathetic performance.

No. Graphics do not refer to only one specific aspect. If we talk about graphics we speak of all factors that make up graphics. Graphics are the result that stems from the interaction of all factors. It says absolutely everything that relates to all visual factors. They all go hand in hand and create one performance together. A 2 FPS game with top quality textures and true 8K resolution is terrible. It's just one factor causing it, being the frame rate, yet the overall performance is terrible. And we can say, this game has bad graphics.

It's really not. The game is hardly visually distinguishable. That's a fact we cannot dance around and a fact that stands. What exactly they could have improved doesn't matter as long as we know that there definitely was room for improving. Surely I can talk all day about improved textures, deeper shadows, framerate boosts, improved drawing distances and the countless of other factors they could have worked on to make a more viable graphical performance. None of this changes this one simple fact however.

 

[Dessgeega]

You must hate so many games then, since marginal visual differences across franchises is such a common thing these days. There's really no point in attempting to discuss this with you.

 

[Coricus]

You must hate so many games then, since marginal visual differences across franchises is such a common thing these days. There's really no point in attempting to discuss this with you.

Honestly, it's been a common thing since. . .ever. I thought about everything from the modern types of situations and an eerily similar reaction to the Splatoon 2 one people had to Destiny 2 all the way back to Mega Man 2-6 and Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels. I almost brought it up myself, actually, but I figured I might catch some negative attention for something that would just qualify as a flaw in those games as well according to the logic rather than particularly excusing any flaw Splatoon 2 might have.