Why Clam Blitz is the Best Ranked Mode and How to Fix the Others

[OnePotWonder]

This thread is mostly unplanned. I've been meaning to discuss the game's Anarchy Battle modes for a while, and I just recently felt the pushing power of motivation to lead me to write this thread. I'm going to be very brutally honest; while the anarchy modes are all conceptually well-designed, in practice they all fall flat with the sole exception of Clam Blitz.


Let's start at the beginning with Splat Zones, the first ever Ranked Battle mode from Splatoon 1.

Splat Zones is the most popular mode for competitive play because it's the mode whose issues are mitigated most by a coordinated setting, but that doesn't mean its issues are lesser. In solo queue, this mode is lockout hell. Because the objective stays in the middle of the map and doesn't require a member of the scoring team to actively maintain it, locking out while in control of the Splat Zone(s) is very easy compared to other modes, even with the losing team getting passive special advantage. A team in control of the zone can go three players down and recover without even receiving a penalty in some cases.
And note that this is all without mention of cheese. Honestly, though, Splat Zones has the least problematic cheese out of any mode. Cheese only applies for the team that isn't presently in control of the zone, meaning it can only be used in a disadvantaged state. Zone cheese, while still definitely a negative, does help to mitigate some of the mode's lockout issues.

So the problem with Splat Zones is pretty straightforward; because of the extremely low-maintenance objective, lockouts are much more common and oppressive than in other modes. Ultimately, the objective does nothing to handicap the scoring team, which is a problem. There are two solutions that I can think of to mitigate this problem.

Active Scoring
This basically means making the team in control of the zone(s) do something to score points. For example, balloons could spawn around the middle of the stage while a team is in control of the zone(s), and popping them would be the way to score points. This makes it so the scoring team has to devote a player to popping balloons to score and can only lock out with three players (akin to a later, better mode).

Moving Zone
A concept proven by Bluefin Depot, a zone that moves closer to the base of the team that isn't in control of it would also be a fairly effective solution. It would also be less intrusive to the way the mode plays than Active Scoring, though probably harder to implement on every map unless only the area of the zone moves, and not the terrain it's on. But that might cause new problems.

I would consider both of these solutions to be fairly equal, one simpler to implement, the other more true to the mode's origins.


Next up we have my personal least favorite mode, Tower Control.

This mode's main problem is the most obvious of all; rampant snowballing, with the team in control of the objective having more of an advantage than a disadvantage at least half of the time. No special run-down needed, we should all know what causes this issue; passive special advantage. It's completely backward, with the team in control of the tower gaining a ton of passive charge and the losing team only gaining passive charge while the tower is in neutral. This is an easy fix.

Passive Special Charge
The way the mode's passive special charge currently works is the team in control of the tower gains 4.5p per second, and the losing team gains 2.25p per second while the tower isn't in control. This will be changed to only players riding the tower gaining 4.5p per second, and the losing team gaining 2.25p per second while not in control of the tower.
I believe the original intention of the mode's passive special charge was it being a way to compensate a player for riding the tower, more often than not a boring and uneventful task. The issue is that it extends to the player's entire team, even when they're winning.

There are a few more things I'd like to touch on. First and foremost is the myriad of cheese strategies surrounding the mode. I honestly think all of them should be eliminated; it should be completely impossible to perfectly protect the tower, it's only annoying and makes the mode less fun.

Anti-Cheese

• Triple Inkstrike markers will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Booyah Bomb will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Kraken Royale will be unable to climb the sides of the tower and will be automatically pushed off of it.
• Ink Vac will be automatically pushed off of the tower.
• Big Bubbler will not be able to be placed on the tower.

Lastly, a change to fix a personal gripe I have with the mode; the tower unnecessarily providing useful cover to riders via the tower pole.

Tower Design Change
The pole on the tower will be shortened such that only the point on the top remains.

That last change is up for debate, though I genuinely can't think of a good reason to give tower riders extra cover in a mode that already has more than its fair share of snowballing issues. A bit of rubber-banding would be nice.


Thirdly, we have Rainmaker. It is most definitely an anarchy mode that exists.

Rainmaker is a very odd mode in the fact that all of its problems are either inherent and conceptual or based on the stage design. A lack of options for offensive routes and rainmaker-free zones can just be attributed to stage design problems. The fact that the mode has the strictest weapon pool, often requiring options with high DPS, is inherent to the way the Rainmaker's shield works as well as object damage multipliers doing little to equalize the damage different weapons are able to do. There is no easy quick fix for Rainmaker, it can only really get better through changes to other aspects of the game's design. One of the aforementioned fixes can be applied in this post, though.

Rainmaker Shield
Object damage modifiers altered such that each weapon deals ~400 DPS to the Rainmaker shield, with highly ink efficient weapons being a little weaker and ink-hungry/object damage-oriented weapons being a little stronger. This means no more Wellstring V two-shotting the Rainmaker shield. (Why is that even allowed in the first place?) This change should improve the weapon diversity of Rainmaker by a good bit.


That leaves us with the final mode. Clam Blitz.

Clam Blitz is a near-perfect anarchy battle mode, lacking the issues of all of the others. One player on the scoring team isn't forced into a state where they're vulnerable and their impact on the game is limited. It's closer to Splat Zones than Tower Control or Rainmaker, but rather than the objective being in the middle of the map and requiring no maintenance, the objective is within or near to each team's base, and requires the scoring team's attention for them to score points. All four members of the scoring team can push into the enemy base, but in order to maintain a scoring streak, one member of the team has to hang back to collect more clams.
And then there are the clams themselves, spawning around the stage and being highlighted when painted over with friendly ink, encouraging teams to actually paint the stage for a helpful advantage. Power Clams are reasonably difficult to obtain and a fair handicap, with a target clearly painted on the carrier's back. Clam Blitz is basically just better Splat Zones, where painting weapons still have a niche in making clams easier to find but not being oppressive like they are during zone contestation.
Better Splat Zones, but with worse cheese. Worse cheese that is hilariously easy to fix.

Perfecting Clam Blitz
There will be a 30 frame delay between when a player lands from a super jump and when they are able to throw clams.

You don't even need to completely remove power clam jumps, you just need to nerf them so they don't require a frame-perfect counter. There is of course still the problem of weapons like brushes and Sploosh being able to cheese a power clam into the enemy base with their mobility, but such strategies are usually easy enough to counter (unless a stage has a flank designed perfectly for them like on Hagglefish).

Without the power clam super jump cheese, I see no reason for competitive players to not start playing Clam Blitz alongside Splat Zones in mainstream competitive play. It's not like Clam Blitz is lacking in weapon diversity.


Anyway, that's enough of me ranting about the anarchy modes. Fortunately, I probably won't have to do it again.
Thank you for reading through this, and feel free to offer feedback if you so wish.
As per usual, have a wonderful day.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I wrote up this whole big post a while ago about Clam Blitz that got lost somewhere and I figure now's the perfect time to try and retype my thoughts since some of them are covered here. Helps that I would only need to go partway into what I did earlier because you already go over some of the things I like about it, by far the most commonly-discussed issue with it and a good way to fix it. This post is pretty long as is but would've been a lot longer had I not had someone else's opinions to add to.

I think Clam Blitz is an absolutely fantastic mode...in a coordinated setting. Despite that, when asked what my least favorite ranked mode was, my answer was Clam Blitz. This is entirely because I find it dreadful to play in a solo environment (and don't have much to complain about with other modes but that's besides the point).

Every single time I would hop into Clam Blitz in any of the Anarchy modes, I'd quickly get the feeling that everyone's idea of how to play the game is completely different from usual. It's not for the better. The whole idea of "map control" suddenly feels lost on everyone or at the very least like it's pushed back to a secondary focus. The most obvious thing would be that it's because people are collecting clams instead of taking their proper positions. Collecting clams is important, yes...but it feels like people spend way too much time doing that in place of everything else that they need to. Some of this might just be the average player's movement feeling a tiny bit slow to someone like me but I doubt that's all there is to it.

I've heard from a handful of people that the mode is just overwhelming for them which is understandable. In addition to everything you'd need to focus on in any other Splatoon game, which is already a lot on its own, the game no longer has one single place that you can focus on as the objective. No Rainmaker to follow or Splat Zone to keep track of. The objective during most points of the game is spread across every little clam that pops up on the ground in addition to each basket and whatever people have a Power Clam.

Maybe someone who feels that way could give me some insight here but it could be a number of things. On top of everything else in Splatoon, now people need to focus on the following - where all are there clams that are reasonably close to me? How many clams do I have? Are these clams close enough to where I'm going for it to be worth grabbing them, or would it take too long? Also, where should I even be standing if I don't know where other people are right now or don't have a more specific objective to play around? There's no good way to gauge any of these things, nothing to learn or limit test without just having better game sense in general. This is game sense that becomes much tougher to learn from playing a game mode that most people don't know how to play.

No matter which of those things it's because of, the bottom line is that solo teammates rarely feel like they are where they're supposed to be, both for my teammates and my opponents. I genuinely have not touched solo matchmaking in this mode for more than a few games in a long time but back when I was a worse player it felt like I was playing an entirely different game. Opponents could randomly go on a tear on my teammates because I wasn't in the one part of the map where we slipped by each other, I could get 3 picks and my teammates are too busy picking up clams to do anything about it, and so on. It felt like I was at the mercy of the game's practically completely random matchmaking as opposed to my own skill. This is all stuff that exists in regular solo but feels so much more pronounced here.

Everything I just mentioned is the big reason why there are solo queue players that spend entire Clam Blitz games essentially trying to "speedrun" the mode. If nobody has proper map control, then it becomes way easier for an Inkbrush or something to get a Power Clam, immediately rush it to the basket, and score free points while everyone is struggling to kill them. If you or your teammates don't know where the objective line is then this is an absolute nightmare to handle. I've seen one Inkbrush in solo that can't even come close to hitting the limit with mashing for their weapon. If you're on a team with someone like this particular Inkbrush then they're giving you no paint, no fighting capability, no special output, no map control, and instead someone trying their absolute best to run around and hope that people can't kill them while they do their thing. Not fun to play with or against.

It's not like the game ever gives any obivous punishment to an Inkbrush for doing this. The penalty and the opponents' free pity clam are both ways to discourage, but still allow for smaller pushes if the situation calls for them, but to the Inkbrush even a failed push where only they get 20 points might just feel like the slow progress that this mode deliberately still allows. If the opponents get a huge score from the free Power Clam, that's on the Inkbrush's team for not playing well enough after the fact. It's really not obvious just how much easier these kinds of things can make the opponents' lives.

There's a pretty easy mental pitfall to get stuck in here too. What's stopping this Inkbrush from thinking in any of these games that they're doing exactly what they're supposed to? In their heads they're skirmishing really hard and playing "support" by reducing how much their teammates need to focus on scoring. There are probably some games where this Inkbrush player feels like they won entirely because of their strategy and games where they lost because they felt like their teammates didn't do their jobs. It's not my fault I died 17 times. My job is to skirmish and support with the objective. My teammates should have covered me better because fighting well is not my job. This is a very common strategy and I think I'm doing good with it, so it CAN'T be my fault.

When someone falls into this line of thinking, which I see being a very real possibility with how many people are doing it, then they're goading themselves into a playstyle that has an incredibly low skill ceiling. There is very little skill expression and very little to optimize. If someone like this runs into a team that's at a certain level, maybe sometimes even a team with one especially good player on it, there will be little they can do. No matter what happens the Inkbrush user will end up learning about or improving upon practically zero compared to the already small amount that happens from each game for every given player. What helpful takeaways could someone like this even have after a game?

Beyond that whole issue, if nobody knows where the objective line is and nobody knows when to pick up clams, how is a group of strangers without voice call supposed to get a strong push with any kind of consistency? An ideal Clam Blitz push has everyone scoring, around three or at least two people trying to hold the enemy team away from the basket, and when necessary a fourth person going back to get more clams. That is a lot for the average player to parse.

Even if they could do that there's nothing saying their movement is good enough to do so before the basket closes again and renders the push dead. This is all best case as well assuming you're able to keep four people alive as a push starts. This much just adds to each game feeling random even if it technically isn't. Some people just never get ready for that push for one reason or another, or sometimes you just have unfortunate timing and it's either one person or another who isn't ready. There is zero way to perform the amount of planning you need for this mode. There is too little that one player themselves can directly control.

It's all a shame because there's no good way to fix this. The core idea of Clam Blitz is anchored around all of the things that give it these problems. Even if you were to come up with some way to fix everything here, who's to say what kind of impact this would have on people who enjoy it in its current state, solo queue or otherwise? You can't change too much about any one mode without that change being massive and shifting a lot of opinions. Even some maps in the same mode feel completely different from one another! You can't tell me that opinions on Splat Zones would be the same if every map worked like Eeltail Alley or Flounder Heights and both of those maps' zones have completely different issues that are both separate from the rest of the mode!

Maybe it'd be better to play now that I'm a better player. My last play session was during a stream where I won every single one of the six or seven Clam Blitz games I started. I'm not quite ready to approach solo Clam Blitz with an open mind again though. This game mode was incredibly frustrating to get into for basically all of the reasons I just mentioned when I was newer and they didn't feel like they went away for as long as I gave it that chance. There's sadly not really much of a point for me to anyways. I'm at the point in playing where anarchy points don't matter so I'll just end up playing the other rotation if one of them has Clam Blitz on it.

I'll end by reiterating this much - I genuinely love Clam Blitz when I'm playing with people I'm familiar with, especially on a voice call. The coordination required always feels absolutely incredible to execute and every push outside of those with a bunch of Power Clam jumps feel completely earned. This would be my favorite mode in the game if there were no way to play it in solo queue for some reason. The difference between coordinated and solo play for this mode is much, much bigger than any other though and it's in a way that ruins the experience for me. I do hope the developers can figure something out with this mode.

 

[OnePotWonder]

I wrote up this whole big post a while ago about Clam Blitz that got lost somewhere and I figure now's the perfect time to try and retype my thoughts since some of them are covered here. Helps that I would only need to go partway into what I did earlier because you already go over some of the things I like about it, by far the most commonly-discussed issue with it and a good way to fix it. This post is pretty long as is but would've been a lot longer had I not had someone else's opinions to add to.

I think Clam Blitz is an absolutely fantastic mode...in a coordinated setting. Despite that, when asked what my least favorite ranked mode was, my answer was Clam Blitz. This is entirely because I find it dreadful to play in a solo environment (and don't have much to complain about with other modes but that's besides the point).

Every single time I would hop into Clam Blitz in any of the Anarchy modes, I'd quickly get the feeling that everyone's idea of how to play the game is completely different from usual. It's not for the better. The whole idea of "map control" suddenly feels lost on everyone or at the very least like it's pushed back to a secondary focus. The most obvious thing would be that it's because people are collecting clams instead of taking their proper positions. Collecting clams is important, yes...but it feels like people spend way too much time doing that in place of everything else that they need to. Some of this might just be the average player's movement feeling a tiny bit slow to someone like me but I doubt that's all there is to it.

I've heard from a handful of people that the mode is just overwhelming for them which is understandable. In addition to everything you'd need to focus on in any other Splatoon game, which is already a lot on its own, the game no longer has one single place that you can focus on as the objective. No Rainmaker to follow or Splat Zone to keep track of. The objective during most points of the game is spread across every little clam that pops up on the ground in addition to each basket and whatever people have a Power Clam.

Maybe someone who feels that way could give me some insight here but it could be a number of things. On top of everything else in Splatoon, now people need to focus on the following - where all are there clams that are reasonably close to me? How many clams do I have? Are these clams close enough to where I'm going for it to be worth grabbing them, or would it take too long? Also, where should I even be standing if I don't know where other people are right now or don't have a more specific objective to play around? There's no good way to gauge any of these things, nothing to learn or limit test without just having better game sense in general. This is game sense that becomes much tougher to learn from playing a game mode that most people don't know how to play.

No matter which of those things it's because of, the bottom line is that solo teammates rarely feel like they are where they're supposed to be, both for my teammates and my opponents. I genuinely have not touched solo matchmaking in this mode for more than a few games in a long time but back when I was a worse player it felt like I was playing an entirely different game. Opponents could randomly go on a tear on my teammates because I wasn't in the one part of the map where we slipped by each other, I could get 3 picks and my teammates are too busy picking up clams to do anything about it, and so on. It felt like I was at the mercy of the game's practically completely random matchmaking as opposed to my own skill. This is all stuff that exists in regular solo but feels so much more pronounced here.

Everything I just mentioned is the big reason why there are solo queue players that spend entire Clam Blitz games essentially trying to "speedrun" the mode. If nobody has proper map control, then it becomes way easier for an Inkbrush or something to get a Power Clam, immediately rush it to the basket, and score free points while everyone is struggling to kill them. If you or your teammates don't know where the objective line is then this is an absolute nightmare to handle. I've seen one Inkbrush in solo that can't even come close to hitting the limit with mashing for their weapon. If you're on a team with someone like this particular Inkbrush then they're giving you no paint, no fighting capability, no special output, no map control, and instead someone trying their absolute best to run around and hope that people can't kill them while they do their thing. Not fun to play with or against.

It's not like the game ever gives any obivous punishment to an Inkbrush for doing this. The penalty and the opponents' free pity clam are both ways to discourage, but still allow for smaller pushes if the situation calls for them, but to the Inkbrush even a failed push where only they get 20 points might just feel like the slow progress that this mode deliberately still allows. If the opponents get a huge score from the free Power Clam, that's on the Inkbrush's team for not playing well enough after the fact. It's really not obvious just how much easier these kinds of things can make the opponents' lives.

There's a pretty easy mental pitfall to get stuck in here too. What's stopping this Inkbrush from thinking in any of these games that they're doing exactly what they're supposed to? In their heads they're skirmishing really hard and playing "support" by reducing how much their teammates need to focus on scoring. There are probably some games where this Inkbrush player feels like they won entirely because of their strategy and games where they lost because they felt like their teammates didn't do their jobs. It's not my fault I died 17 times. My job is to skirmish and support with the objective. My teammates should have covered me better because fighting well is not my job. This is a very common strategy and I think I'm doing good with it, so it CAN'T be my fault.

When someone falls into this line of thinking, which I see being a very real possibility with how many people are doing it, then they're goading themselves into a playstyle that has an incredibly low skill ceiling. There is very little skill expression and very little to optimize. If someone like this runs into a team that's at a certain level, maybe sometimes even a team with one especially good player on it, there will be little they can do. No matter what happens the Inkbrush user will end up learning about or improving upon practically zero compared to the already small amount that happens from each game for every given player. What helpful takeaways could someone like this even have after a game?

Beyond that whole issue, if nobody knows where the objective line is and nobody knows when to pick up clams, how is a group of strangers without voice call supposed to get a strong push with any kind of consistency? An ideal Clam Blitz push has everyone scoring, around three or at least two people trying to hold the enemy team away from the basket, and when necessary a fourth person going back to get more clams. That is a lot for the average player to parse.

Even if they could do that there's nothing saying their movement is good enough to do so before the basket closes again and renders the push dead. This is all best case as well assuming you're able to keep four people alive as a push starts. This much just adds to each game feeling random even if it technically isn't. Some people just never get ready for that push for one reason or another, or sometimes you just have unfortunate timing and it's either one person or another who isn't ready. There is zero way to perform the amount of planning you need for this mode. There is too little that one player themselves can directly control.

It's all a shame because there's no good way to fix this. The core idea of Clam Blitz is anchored around all of the things that give it these problems. Even if you were to come up with some way to fix everything here, who's to say what kind of impact this would have on people who enjoy it in its current state, solo queue or otherwise? You can't change too much about any one mode without that change being massive and shifting a lot of opinions. Even some maps in the same mode feel completely different from one another! You can't tell me that opinions on Splat Zones would be the same if every map worked like Eeltail Alley or Flounder Heights and both of those maps' zones have completely different issues that are both separate from the rest of the mode!

Maybe it'd be better to play now that I'm a better player. My last play session was during a stream where I won every single one of the six or seven Clam Blitz games I started. I'm not quite ready to approach solo Clam Blitz with an open mind again though. This game mode was incredibly frustrating to get into for basically all of the reasons I just mentioned when I was newer and they didn't feel like they went away for as long as I gave it that chance. There's sadly not really much of a point for me to anyways. I'm at the point in playing where anarchy points don't matter so I'll just end up playing the other rotation if one of them has Clam Blitz on it.

I'll end by reiterating this much - I genuinely love Clam Blitz when I'm playing with people I'm familiar with, especially on a voice call. The coordination required always feels absolutely incredible to execute and every push outside of those with a bunch of Power Clam jumps feel completely earned. This would be my favorite mode in the game if there were no way to play it in solo queue for some reason. The difference between coordinated and solo play for this mode is much, much bigger than any other though and it's in a way that ruins the experience for me. I do hope the developers can figure something out with this mode.

First time in a while where I read through the entirety of one of these, and unsurprisingly you make many excellent points. Clam Blitz is a brilliant mode, that’s an undeniable fact, but it is most definitely one of the hardest modes to learn, and one of the easiest modes to learn incorrectly.

I wonder if increasing the minimum penalty to 20 would be a good idea. It would completely kill repeated single-clam pushes and therefore the main “Inkbrush go wheeeee” power clam spam playstyle that often ends up prevailing at lower levels. Question is would it be worth it with regards to how the mode plays in higher levels. I can’t see it being a huge problem.

I would recommend a tandem brainstorm, but it’s not like we have control over the game or anything, so it probably isn’t worth the time.

 

[isaac4]

Anti-Cheese

• Triple Inkstrike markers will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Booyah Bomb will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Kraken Royale will be unable to climb the sides of the tower and will be automatically pushed off of it.
• Ink Vac will be automatically pushed off of the tower.
• Big Bubbler will not be able to be placed on the tower.

Instead of Strikes being completely destroyed when they come into contact with the tower, why not have them bounce off? I'm mainly suggesting this idea to avoid the situation where the user is trying to displace the enemy team with Strikes but unintentionally throws them onto the same path that the tower is currently moving in.
It would also look funny seeing them bounce away, lol.

Tower Design Change
The pole on the tower will be shortened such that only the point on the top remains.

That last change is up for debate, though I genuinely can't think of a good reason to give tower riders extra cover in a mode that already has more than its fair share of snowballing issues. A bit of rubber-banding would be nice.

I don't think a change for the tower pole is needed, especially because it would just make it easier for backlines to kill the player riding tower (not that it's that hard for them to begin with).
I'd probably be more open to the idea if we were talking about how TC currently is but with the changes you've made towards improving the mode and nerfing "gg specials" it just doesn't feel necessary.

Perfecting Clam Blitz
There will be a 30 frame delay between when a player lands from a super jump and when they are able to throw clams.

You don't even need to completely remove power clam jumps, you just need to nerf them so they don't require a frame-perfect counter. There is of course still the problem of weapons like brushes and Sploosh being able to cheese a power clam into the enemy base with their mobility, but such strategies are usually easy enough to counter (unless a stage has a flank designed perfectly for them like on Hagglefish).

What's your opinion on power clam jumps? I don't like them at all and would prefer if the Power Clams would drop after landing with them from a super jump.
Similar to how they currently work with specials like Reefslider and TSD.

 

[OnePotWonder]

Instead of Strikes being completely destroyed when they come into contact with the tower, why not have them bounce off? I'm mainly suggesting this idea to avoid the situation where the user is trying to displace the enemy team with Strikes but unintentionally throws them onto the same path that the tower is currently moving in.
It would also look funny seeing them bounce away, lol.

I could do that, but then what about Booyah Bomb? It seems hardly bouncy. I feel like just completely disincentivizing throwing displacement at the tower isn’t really a bad thing.

What's your opinion on power clam jumps? I don't like them at all and would prefer if the Power Clams would drop after landing with them from a super jump.
Similar to how they currently work with specials like Reefslider and TSD.

That is definitely another way of going about it. I think being able to super jump a power clam to the enemy basket is an integral part of the way the mode plays (when have pity clams ever been used otherwise?) but there should be some mechanic to add delay between when a player lands and is able to throw the clam, since current clam jumps are simply equivalent to cheese.

 

[isaac4]

I could do that, but then what about Booyah Bomb? It seems hardly bouncy. I feel like just completely disincentivizing throwing displacement at the tower isn’t really a bad thing.

Yeah, there's definitely nothing wrong with just making the specials themselves unusable when throwing it at the tower.
I wonder if there's a better solution that would require a much larger rework of the entire mode itself but that might be getting too off topic.

 

[solz]

I love clam And I agree with you guys. (Especially because It can't be cheesed with clash Like every other mode) Going along with the bouncing idea, what if The tower just consumes it. Problem solved. Lastly, What is the Rainmaker Had double health.

 

[SAMICOM]

This thread is mostly unplanned. I've been meaning to discuss the game's Anarchy Battle modes for a while, and I just recently felt the pushing power of motivation to lead me to write this thread. I'm going to be very brutally honest; while the anarchy modes are all conceptually well-designed, in practice they all fall flat with the sole exception of Clam Blitz.


Let's start at the beginning with Splat Zones, the first ever Ranked Battle mode from Splatoon 1.

Splat Zones is the most popular mode for competitive play because it's the mode whose issues are mitigated most by a coordinated setting, but that doesn't mean its issues are lesser. In solo queue, this mode is lockout hell. Because the objective stays in the middle of the map and doesn't require a member of the scoring team to actively maintain it, locking out while in control of the Splat Zone(s) is very easy compared to other modes, even with the losing team getting passive special advantage. A team in control of the zone can go three players down and recover without even receiving a penalty in some cases.
And note that this is all without mention of cheese. Honestly, though, Splat Zones has the least problematic cheese out of any mode. Cheese only applies for the team that isn't presently in control of the zone, meaning it can only be used in a disadvantaged state. Zone cheese, while still definitely a negative, does help to mitigate some of the mode's lockout issues.

So the problem with Splat Zones is pretty straightforward; because of the extremely low-maintenance objective, lockouts are much more common and oppressive than in other modes. Ultimately, the objective does nothing to handicap the scoring team, which is a problem. There are two solutions that I can think of to mitigate this problem.

Active Scoring
This basically means making the team in control of the zone(s) do something to score points. For example, balloons could spawn around the middle of the stage while a team is in control of the zone(s), and popping them would be the way to score points. This makes it so the scoring team has to devote a player to popping balloons to score and can only lock out with three players (akin to a later, better mode).

Moving Zone
A concept proven by Bluefin Depot, a zone that moves closer to the base of the team that isn't in control of it would also be a fairly effective solution. It would also be less intrusive to the way the mode plays than Active Scoring, though probably harder to implement on every map unless only the area of the zone moves, and not the terrain it's on. But that might cause new problems.

I would consider both of these solutions to be fairly equal, one simpler to implement, the other more true to the mode's origins.


Next up we have my personal least favorite mode, Tower Control.

This mode's main problem is the most obvious of all; rampant snowballing, with the team in control of the objective having more of an advantage than a disadvantage at least half of the time. No special run-down needed, we should all know what causes this issue; passive special advantage. It's completely backward, with the team in control of the tower gaining a ton of passive charge and the losing team only gaining passive charge while the tower is in neutral. This is an easy fix.

Passive Special Charge
The way the mode's passive special charge currently works is the team in control of the tower gains 4.5p per second, and the losing team gains 2.25p per second while the tower isn't in control. This will be changed to only players riding the tower gaining 4.5p per second, and the losing team gaining 2.25p per second while not in control of the tower.
I believe the original intention of the mode's passive special charge was it being a way to compensate a player for riding the tower, more often than not a boring and uneventful task. The issue is that it extends to the player's entire team, even when they're winning.

There are a few more things I'd like to touch on. First and foremost is the myriad of cheese strategies surrounding the mode. I honestly think all of them should be eliminated; it should be completely impossible to perfectly protect the tower, it's only annoying and makes the mode less fun.

Anti-Cheese

• Triple Inkstrike markers will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Booyah Bomb will be destroyed and wasted on contact with the tower.
• Kraken Royale will be unable to climb the sides of the tower and will be automatically pushed off of it.
• Ink Vac will be automatically pushed off of the tower.
• Big Bubbler will not be able to be placed on the tower.

Lastly, a change to fix a personal gripe I have with the mode; the tower unnecessarily providing useful cover to riders via the tower pole.

Tower Design Change
The pole on the tower will be shortened such that only the point on the top remains.

That last change is up for debate, though I genuinely can't think of a good reason to give tower riders extra cover in a mode that already has more than its fair share of snowballing issues. A bit of rubber-banding would be nice.


Thirdly, we have Rainmaker. It is most definitely an anarchy mode that exists.

Rainmaker is a very odd mode in the fact that all of its problems are either inherent and conceptual or based on the stage design. A lack of options for offensive routes and rainmaker-free zones can just be attributed to stage design problems. The fact that the mode has the strictest weapon pool, often requiring options with high DPS, is inherent to the way the Rainmaker's shield works as well as object damage multipliers doing little to equalize the damage different weapons are able to do. There is no easy quick fix for Rainmaker, it can only really get better through changes to other aspects of the game's design. One of the aforementioned fixes can be applied in this post, though.

Rainmaker Shield
Object damage modifiers altered such that each weapon deals ~400 DPS to the Rainmaker shield, with highly ink efficient weapons being a little weaker and ink-hungry/object damage-oriented weapons being a little stronger. This means no more Wellstring V two-shotting the Rainmaker shield. (Why is that even allowed in the first place?) This change should improve the weapon diversity of Rainmaker by a good bit.


That leaves us with the final mode. Clam Blitz.

Clam Blitz is a near-perfect anarchy battle mode, lacking the issues of all of the others. One player on the scoring team isn't forced into a state where they're vulnerable and their impact on the game is limited. It's closer to Splat Zones than Tower Control or Rainmaker, but rather than the objective being in the middle of the map and requiring no maintenance, the objective is within or near to each team's base, and requires the scoring team's attention for them to score points. All four members of the scoring team can push into the enemy base, but in order to maintain a scoring streak, one member of the team has to hang back to collect more clams.
And then there are the clams themselves, spawning around the stage and being highlighted when painted over with friendly ink, encouraging teams to actually paint the stage for a helpful advantage. Power Clams are reasonably difficult to obtain and a fair handicap, with a target clearly painted on the carrier's back. Clam Blitz is basically just better Splat Zones, where painting weapons still have a niche in making clams easier to find but not being oppressive like they are during zone contestation.
Better Splat Zones, but with worse cheese. Worse cheese that is hilariously easy to fix.

Perfecting Clam Blitz
There will be a 30 frame delay between when a player lands from a super jump and when they are able to throw clams.

You don't even need to completely remove power clam jumps, you just need to nerf them so they don't require a frame-perfect counter. There is of course still the problem of weapons like brushes and Sploosh being able to cheese a power clam into the enemy base with their mobility, but such strategies are usually easy enough to counter (unless a stage has a flank designed perfectly for them like on Hagglefish).

Without the power clam super jump cheese, I see no reason for competitive players to not start playing Clam Blitz alongside Splat Zones in mainstream competitive play. It's not like Clam Blitz is lacking in weapon diversity.


Anyway, that's enough of me ranting about the anarchy modes. Fortunately, I probably won't have to do it again.
Thank you for reading through this, and feel free to offer feedback if you so wish.
As per usual, have a wonderful day.

with a full vc team, i agree, it is best. soloq clams is either pretty good or awful.

 

[Algae]

Some things I'll chime up: first, passive special charge. If a team has the objective, they have passive charge in Tower and Clams, but their enemies do in Zones and Rainmaker. Well, only the tower rider is hindered by playing the objective, and someone holding a Power Clam can still move and fight freely. I honestly don't understand how well this mechanic is designed.

If the Clam Blitz penalty was always 20 (glad you see the power clam as a basket-opening tool, too), and you couldn't instantly super-jump-cheese, I'd find the mode flawless for coordinated play. Now, would y'all prefer better instructions for ranked modes, or restricting Clam Blitz to League Battles?

The two major flaws I'll recap for the Splat Zones objective: it's highly centralized, and VERY low-maintenance. The solution for the former is for each map to have two zones that are a distance apart, so you'll have to push a bit (though not as much as S1 Port Mackerel and Moray Towers). This will also encourage attempting and resisting flanks. For the latter, I suggest placing a turbine (as in the Side Order objective, but immobile) on each zone. It can be shot to sprinkle player ink and make flipping a zone harder, but spinning the frontmost one with both zones under your control is required to score points, and shorter-range weapons will have a harder time making use of their higher DPS. These will work for any well-made map, with a more flexible objective line and a fixed push distance like in Clam Blitz.

 

[DzNutsKong]

If the Clam Blitz penalty was always 20 (glad you see the power clam as a basket-opening tool, too), and you couldn't instantly super-jump-cheese, I'd find the mode flawless for coordinated play. Now, would y'all prefer better instructions for ranked modes, or restricting Clam Blitz to League Battles?

I don't think either of those would be perfect fixes. I don't know if they're specifically meant to address any of the things I mention but you'd really have to make a strategy guide rather than instructions to fix those. I have to wonder if even something like that would accurately explain to people how they can truly play Clam Blitz better as opposed to explaining it in the way Nintendo thinks works, which may well actually include suggesting people play like the Inkbrush I mentioned for one reason or another. This game has a lot of nuance that it's impossible to tell whether or not the developers have picked up on or not. Worth mentioning that American audiences in particular are notorious for just not reading the rules for things as well.

I didn't play Splatoon 2 but League Battle was just a ranked mode that you had to queue up with teammates for right? If so then restricting it to League Battles would be nice if not for a few things. If someone doesn't have any friends to play Splatoon with then they're just locked out of the mode, plain and simple. There are still people who enjoy this mode in a solo setting so removing some of them from being able to play it entirely wouldn't be ideal. Even still, for the people who do have others to play with, you're making it a lot less easy to access by reducing the amount of chances the average person would just be able to hop on and play to get as close to valuable practice with the mode as they can.

I do think this game would be a whole lot better about these things if the matchmaking were super accurate but that isn't really feasible to expect in a game like this. My next best solution would be something like restricting it to League Battles like you suggest but I don't think Nintendo would do that for the reasons I listed. The 20 minimum penalty thing would be nice as well but would not fix everything and Nintendo might also think it would complicate the mode further. I tried brainstorming some ideas the day I made my bigger post and most of the ones that felt more realistic felt like they completely changed the identity of the mode. Maybe there's a good way to fix this mode's solo queue problems out there, but I definitely haven't been able to think of one so at this point I'd just be content if they made Power Clam jumping a bit harder and called it there.


If the post I'm replying to isn't meant to be a response to me in any way then that's my bad LOL, I still do have something else to reply with that's definitely relevant at least.

With the passive special charge - for Splat Zones it's for the enemies because Zones is the most "vanilla" mode where you don't need to focus the objective for as long during a given game. Splatoon 3 naturally leans towards being snowbally so anything to combat that helps. For Rainmaker it's because it's by far the most snowbally mode and defenders desperately need it. For Tower Control it's probably on the attackers because either the tower rider needs something to do if they're not longer-ranged but truthfully don't have a great guess for that, and for Clam Blitz it's because holding a push in Clam Blitz is a bit harder than other modes in my opinion. I feel most of these are pretty well-placed except for maybe Tower Control where it could have easily gone to the defenders instead and I could've probably come up with some reason why it was that way.

 

[Algae]

With the passive special charge ...

Despite Zones' similarity to Turf War, I wouldn't describe it as "vanilla", since it's mechanics are mentioned as lackluster by Ranked mode standards. I'm not sure what you mean by better matchmaking, since Splatoon ranked still uses power ratings internally (to my knowledge), and the lowest-level Ranked players are getting oriented to the game (C- is where you start, whether or not it's accurate to your skill). I'm curious, do you find matchmaking too slow? Too inaccurate to skill level? Are there too many ranked queues? Should there be more clear-cut solo/team separation?

If I were to organize ranked queues, I would honestly use the same map-modes for all queues per rotation, while making it less obvious to players; you'd choose Ranked or Ranked with Friends/League version on the surface. This would encourage playing on the queue that suits your playing environment, instead of which mode you like most. This also means no more separate Challenge rotations.

To be more specific on passive special charge, I get that Zones' charge compensates for lack of maintenance for the objective, but snowball elements of Tower would be helped if the only recipient of special charge was the rider. Lastly, I'm curious about why Rainmaker (and Splat 3 compared to earlier games) may lead to snowballs, putting aside the potential for stalling -- I hear that the Rainmaker's slowness, lack of sub & special, and obvious appearance on the map make it the weakest weapon in Splatoon.

 

[DzNutsKong]

I'm not sure what you mean by better matchmaking, since Splatoon ranked still uses power ratings internally (to my knowledge), and the lowest-level Ranked players are getting oriented to the game (C- is where you start, whether or not it's accurate to your skill). I'm curious, do you find matchmaking too slow? Too inaccurate to skill level? Are there too many ranked queues? Should there be more clear-cut solo/team separation?

This is better in X Battle specifically once you get past 2000 and is as good as you'll reasonably get below then, but it doesn't feel accurate to skill level at all in the Anarchy modes. I've had multiple games now where I've been put up against people I recognize and I know are struggling to hit S+ while I've come out of like half of my recent play sessions having won over a dozen games in a row just off of solo queue games. I've also had quite a few games where I've been put up against top players even when I was just starting out and definitely not good enough to be competing with them. I technically don't know if the game has anything internal for this but all of that definitely shouldn't be possible if so.