What happened to Saltspray Rig in Ranked?

[Zombie Aladdin]

Saltspray Rig rarely ever comes up in Ranked anymore, and when it does it's always Splat Zones. Ever since I started playing, I have not caught it even once in Rainmaker or Tower Control. Is something wrong with Saltspray Rig that it's been exploited, or is it just coincidence?

 

[redacteddd]

In Turf War, area control of the entire map is emphasized. Ranked modes are focused around control of a central objective. Unlike all the other maps, Saltspray Rig doesn't have rotational symmetry, in effect, meaning the map doesn't lead to a narrow center. As such, it's ranked configurations don't take advantage of the whole map, leading to a huge chunk of the map being left unused.

As @flc detailed in this thread, due to the way bullets function in Splatoon compared to other shooters, the left side of the map gains a cover advantage. Not a big one mind you, but enough that it could hurt.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Oh, wow. I didn't know about the game's mechanics giving an advantage to whoever begins on the left. That must explain why there haven't been any maps besides Saltspray Rig that aren't rotationally symmetrical. I take it that, for a similar reason, Bluefin Depot Splat Zones is rare.

It doesn't really explain why Splat Zones is still present and comes up pretty often for Saltspray Rig though, which also leaves the entire northern area unused, and unlike Rainmaker or Tower Control, has no incentive whatsoever to ink that area.

 

[Tent-attack]

This puts me in the mind of when Triggerfish was taken out of Turf and Zones rotations because of the jump exploit in the middle of the map. Maybe they're tweaking Saltspray in the gamemodes it isn't appearing in currently. I wouldn't be surprised if Saltspray got a complete makeover like Urchin did at some point down the line. Something to keep in mind at least.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Yeah, I'd expect a 3.0.0 update sometime soon. If they're going to do a total overhaul, the next one would likely be Saltspray Rig.

 

[Inyo]

I think Port Mac would get the re-design over Saltspray, considering how stupidly easy it is to spawn lock on that map.

I see that some tourneys still use Saltspray Tower Control in their map picks, maybe that won't continue?

 

[Deleted Member]

In order for Nintendo to balance Saltspray Rig, they would either have to make bullets shoot from the center of an Inkling's body, allow left-hand or right-hand wielding on the go, or completely re-do the map in favor of rotational symmetry instead of reflective symmetry.

 

[Dreamy Luigi]

Red Highlight= Delete
Blue: Spawn Area (of course add more paths to the rest of the stage)
Yellow: Zone (one on each side)
Orange: Tower
Green line: line of symmetry.

Then the map won't be complete trash. :)

 

[redacteddd]

Red Highlight= Delete
Blue: Spawn Area (of course add more paths to the rest of the stage)
Yellow: Zone (one on each side)
Orange: Tower
Green line: line of symmetry.

Then the map won't be complete trash. :)

You're right, but then it would become what Urchin Underpass is after the redesign. An unremarkable map that looks nothing like it was supposed to.

 

[TheSaltySquid]

The thing with Saltspray is that with rainmaker especially it was too easy to get an advantage and took it out and made it zones only. Saltspray is very special

 

[★Forge]

Irk SR is my fav stage and I never see it on Tower or rainmaker only splat zones, which is like once every 2 weeks, which is ridiculous.