Why Competitive Splatoon should use all Game Modes instead of one

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Turd war pleas; cool. Shoulda covered the structure of modes, in the op. Structure adds to the competitive value and it could have helped turd war; if it had any.

 

[Agosta44]

Personally I would be fine with all modes. Maybe not all at once though. I've played some great turf matches against Japanese players but I don't think in the long run it'll be viable. It'll probably turn into 8 Dynamo Roller games. That thing is insanely powerful in Turf War when you learn how to use it.

 

[AnchorTea]

I think trying to mix multiple modes in a single bracket or event is a bad idea, it makes as much sense as having the first round be chess and the second round be go. There could be separate events for each mode, but I'm not sure our scene will be big enough to sustain all four, let alone whether there'll even be that much interest in all four.

I never mentioned that idea. If you're subtly referring to me.

 

[[EJ]_Locke]

I never mentioned that idea. If you're subtly referring to me.

I thought that was the entire point of your thread.

 

[Draayder]

I thought that was the entire point of your thread.

No, the whole point was that turf war can and should be played competitively. How this should happen wasnt brought up at all.

Personally I do think mixed tourneys could be a lot of fun, just list off that round one is going to be let's say splat zones with this stage or pool of stages, and round two is turf war with this stage and so on. If everyone knows the stages and modes before hand they can prepare accordingly. Of course there'd also be other tourneys for just X mode, but I'd be down for a mixed tourney for sure.

I think I'd think of it more like a triathlon or decathlon lol.

 

[Zovnig]

If you lose, it's not the games mode fault it's your fault.
You as a whole team weren't good enough to take and maintain mapcontrol.
If you're getting greedy, you'll die.
If you're too slow to aim, you'll die.
If you're stupid enough to lure in 1qm and all die to one inkzooka, you'll die.

You just have to be the better player/team to win. Nothing else.
And I like turf war for what it is, because it gives me the opportunity to sneak by and start a comback in the
enemies back. I couldn't do that this way during splat zones if everyone is lurking at one place.

EDIT:
Btw, why can't competetive play mean, that we determine the best team out of 2-3 modes with 3 games each? The overall best just wins. Or is that too much?

Are you a mind reader by any chance? This post was almost entirely what i have been thinking, while reading this thread. Just with 3 modes and 5 matches in each. You might be good at one small part of the game, but do you have what it takes to dominate and changing you strategies on the go? Now that takes a lot more skills. (come to think about it. Isn't 4vs4 matches in CS:GO also play with best out of 15 games?)

TW is not as competitive by nature as the other modes, but if a inkzooka can destroy your whole team 10 second before the game ends, then it's your own fault for not spreading out and keeping up the pressure.

 

[Mister Chippy]

Just to throw in my own 2 cents, while I'm up for trying everything I have some worries about TW. The big one is because of how TW works and how the last 30 or so seconds are the only thing that actually count in most even matches competitive TW might turn out to be really, really boring because everyone will try to play as safely as possible by being constantly split up and avoiding all fights for the majority of the match.

The second one is that SZ is really just a more competitive version of TW. The basic objective is essentially the same (control turf by inking over it) but the ruleset has been changed a little to centralize the action and to make all actions throughout the match impactful.

Turf Wars was designed to be a casual mode, everything that gives it competitive potential is present in Splat Zones without all the problems. I'm down for giving it a shot, but I don't think it should be put with the more competitive modes yet.

 

[AnchorTea]

I thought that was the entire point of your thread.

No, the whole point was that turf war can and should be played competitively. How this should happen wasnt brought up at all.

Personally I do think mixed tourneys could be a lot of fun, just list off that round one is going to be let's say splat zones with this stage or pool of stages, and round two is turf war with this stage and so on. If everyone knows the stages and modes before hand they can prepare accordingly. Of course there'd also be other tourneys for just X mode, but I'd be down for a mixed tourney for sure.

I think I'd think of it more like a triathlon or decathlon lol.

You're both wrong no offence.

The point is that ALL online modes should be used in general. I never said that they should be mixed as a rotation. How did people come up with that conclusion?!

 

[iTwAsLucK]

No, the whole point was that turf war can and should be played competitively. How this should happen wasnt brought up at all.

Personally I do think mixed tourneys could be a lot of fun, just list off that round one is going to be let's say splat zones with this stage or pool of stages, and round two is turf war with this stage and so on. If everyone knows the stages and modes before hand they can prepare accordingly. Of course there'd also be other tourneys for just X mode, but I'd be down for a mixed tourney for sure.

I think I'd think of it more like a triathlon or decathlon lol.

I disagree that certain rounds should be certain modes... as it could eliminate a team that is the best at every other mode.
Imo there should be a pick / ban style. Here's a VERY rough example:
Team A bans a game mode, Team B bans a game mode, Team A picks a remaining game mode from what's left.
Then Team B bans a map, Team A bans a map, and Team B picks a map from the remaining map pool.
x3/5/7/any odd number really.


=====

Also, for what it's worth, I think it's incredibly silly of people to argue for the point that "only the last 30 seconds matter". Have you ever watched a hockey or soccer (football) game? When a game is tied and one team scores in the last 20 seconds of the last period / half..... they'll win 99% of the time. Does this mean that those sports shouldn't be viewed as competitive? What about sudden death overtime / golden goal? "All it takes is one goal, there's no skill involved".
I dunno, the whole "last 30 seconds" arguement just seems like a cop-out answer.

 

[Draayder]

You're both wrong no offence.

The point is that ALL online modes should be used in general. I never said that they should be mixed as a rotation. How did people come up with that conclusion?!

Yeah I get that you weren't advocating for mixed tourneys, I was just throwing in my thoughts on them which was kind of derailing so I apologise. I pointed out turf war being the point since it's the big one people are arguing CAN'T be competitively played and shouldn't be given a chance, but yeah I agree all mode should be given a shot in competitive.

 

[SlimyQuagsire]

If tournaments have ssb64, melee, PM and ssb4 why can't splatoon have 4 separated games witin a torney too?


Eventually the less popular modes will disappear, like PM and ssb64, but they had their time at least

I think we haven't considered this as much because we're trying to decide how tournaments "should" be, as in like, something et in stone. TOs have the authority to do this, but will we end up with a truly desired reult? If, say, Turf War becomes the most popular format and becomes the main component of the competitive scene, is tht really the best scenario?

Also, for what it's worth, I think it's incredibly silly of people to argue for the point that "only the last 30 seconds matter". Have you ever watched a hockey or soccer (football) game? When a game is tied and one team scores in the last 20 seconds of the last period / half..... they'll win 99% of the time. Does this mean that those sports shouldn't be viewed as competitive? What about sudden death overtime / golden goal? "All it takes is one goal, there's no skill involved".
I dunno, the whole "last 30 seconds" arguement just seems like a cop-out answer.

I explained why the 30 second argument is a thing earlier in this thread.

 

[Mister Chippy]

Also, for what it's worth, I think it's incredibly silly of people to argue for the point that "only the last 30 seconds matter". Have you ever watched a hockey or soccer (football) game? When a game is tied and one team scores in the last 20 seconds of the last period / half..... they'll win 99% of the time. Does this mean that those sports shouldn't be viewed as competitive? What about sudden death overtime / golden goal? "All it takes is one goal, there's no skill involved".
I dunno, the whole "last 30 seconds" arguement just seems like a cop-out answer.

The difference is that scoring a goal in soccer doesn't remove points from the opponents score, so goals you make early on matter. That's why that only happens when the game is tied. In turf wars the games are essentially always tied because early points are meaningless since they can just get erased. That's what people are talking about when they say that only the last 30 seconds matter, because the game is always effectively a tie for the first two and a half minutes.

 

[Draayder]

I disagree that certain rounds should be certain modes... as it could eliminate a team that is the best at every other mode.
Imo there should be a pick / ban style. Here's a VERY rough example:
Team A bans a game mode, Team B bans a game mode, Team A picks a remaining game mode from what's left.
Then Team B bans a map, Team A bans a map, and Team B picks a map from the remaining map pool.
x3/5/7/any odd number really.

That'd be a solid way to do it as well, if you're doing best of 3/5/whatever you can alternate who bans what first or you can base it on loser, depends on what's more advantageous I guess. I like set modes for each round since people know what to expect and don't get thrown into a mode they weren't expecting because their opponent chose it, but I understand why you'd want bans.

I wonder if like 1 minute turf wars could be used as a tie breaker or to decide who picks first or w/e, that'd be hilarious and p fun. Plus, if it really is entirely luck based, it's still as good as a coin flip.

 

[iTwAsLucK]

The difference is that scoring a goal in soccer doesn't remove points from the opponents score, so goals you make early on matter. That's why that only happens when the game is tied. In turf wars the games are essentially always tied because early points are meaningless since they can just get erased. That's what people are talking about when they say that only the last 30 seconds matter, because the game is always effectively a tie for the first two and a half minutes.

That's a much better explanation than the others were giving. Thank you for that.

I still think there are things to consider such as map control, team setup, liberty to ink obscure places, etc. that are an advantage of playing well in the "early game". I don't view things as a "tie" for the first two and a half minutes. I think once you can team up with your friends on the same team we will start seeing this type of dominance in turf lobbies.

 

[Kaliafornia]

Personally I do think mixed tourneys could be a lot of fun, just list off that round one is going to be let's say splat zones with this stage or pool of stages, and round two is turf war with this stage and so on. If everyone knows the stages and modes before hand they can prepare accordingly. Of course there'd also be other tourneys for just X mode, but I'd be down for a mixed tourney for sure.

I think I'd think of it more like a triathlon or decathlon lol.

That would actually be pretty fun. I could see Nintendo doing something like that.

 

[Chapter Serf]

Bans and the teams selecting the mode and stages they want, in my opinion, is the best way to do it. It has worked for Smash since the days of 64 (Stage Banning etc.) why wouldn't it work here?

And I don't see why Turf Wars shouldn't be included in that list. Leave it up to the individual teams at tournaments to decide if they want to play it or not.

For me, the rules for tournaments shouldn't be very complex in this regard:

Ban and choose a game mode (etc.)
Ban and choose a map (etc.)
Give both teams a fair amount of time to select weapons and gear
Rinse and repeat until best of whatever is achieved

 

[[EJ]_Locke]

It will attract more players to be a part of Competitive Splatoon

Let's say that Rainmaker was the only Mode used at tourneys and this situation happened:

Person: "I really want to join this tourney! Because I have been practicing Tower Control!"

TO: "No-can-do. Tower Control is illegal at all tourneys."

Person: "Why?"

TO: "Because Tower Control and all other Game Modes besides Rainmaker are considered casual and non-competitive."

Person: "What if I don't want to do Rainmaker?"

TO: "Oh well."

I know that this is a really specific type of situation, but you get the idea. Every single human being ever has their own opinions. Every single gamer has their own opinions. Every single Splatoon player has their own opinions. Some would prefer certain Game Modes over others. I don't really have much to say since this is very straight forward.

That's all I have to say. I hope those who believe that only one Game Mode for Competitive Splatoon is fine will realize that is a terrible idea. I hope you all have a nice day shooting/flinging ink.

This is how I got that impression.

 

[Draayder]

This is how I got that impression.

Pretty sure the example was if Rainmaker was chosen as THE ONLY competitive mode therefore every single tourney ONLY ran rainmaker, there were no tower control or splat zones or any other mode tourneys because it was decided ONLY rainmaker is competitive.

Which is exactly what they're saying they want the community to avoid, banning modes arbitrarily, even if it's turf war.

 

[flc]

so apparently 20k characters is the post limit.

I fail to see how Turf War isn't competitive just because you can lose the match if your entire team gets cleared out within the last 20 seconds. That's why you don't let yourself die. You spend the first 2.5 minutes spreading ink, then you spend the last 30 seconds staying alive and protecting your turf. No matter where the Inkzooka comes from, it is never, truly random. You can downplay any mode if you judge it based solely on hypothetical outcomes. Splatzones isn't competitive because if your team gets cleared out twice you're almost done with the game. Tower Control isn't competitive because if you wipe out the entire opposing team at the start, the game is over. Those are gross simplifications of reality, but that's basically what you are doing here. The game has more depth than you give it credit for.

"Everybody just casually spreads ink for 2.5 minutes then culminates in the center for a grand showdown. My clan and I have personally tested Turf War, therefore what we say is law."

No, that's not what happens. The better team will usually have a good 70% of the map taken over, which is hard to reverse if you're playing against competent players. A lone Inkzooka or laggy Roller won't be enough to turn the tides of the battle unless you're playing one of those dumb teams that insists on staying out in the open because they're greedy for more points. Controlling territory is an important aspect of all three modes. But in Turf War, people care more about scoring points than protecting the base, so some of the more strategic elements are lost in translation. Turf War gives you an opportunity to make a comeback, but the other modes don't. Is it possible to regain control of the map within the last 30 seconds? Yes. Is it easy? No. Does it happen often? No. It's highly situational. Maybe not in your rooms, but your personal experiences don't determine the competitive viability of certain modes. All three modes are at least somewhat competitive, but Nintendo is currently promoting Turf War is "the" mode for competition, which is why Splatfest is Turf War only. I won't be surprised if they make friend rooms Turf War only, which would be highly disappointing, but also unsurprising given Nintendo's track record when it comes to online play. Set your expectations accordingly.

The problem isn't that the one engagement can be decided by luck (that was a continuation of my original point). As I repeatedly said, the problem is the 'one engagement' part. Whether you lose it by luck, fluke, skill, it doesn't matter; if you lose that one fight toward the end of the game, the match is over. The only things that are relevant to the final fight that occur prior to it are special meter (which is important for obvious reasons) and how much of the map is not inked (which isn't, because after winning a fight you can cover a very large amount of the map and the only thing having more turf does is make it slightly harder to regain enough turf to win). The point about flukes and luck (which aren't the same thing, and we'll get to that) was just adding to that; if this one-engagement-to-rule-them-all were entirely based on skill, then it'd still be bad, but not crippling. The problem is that it's not entirely based on skill because, like any other shooter, you can fluke a game-changing shot with just about anything, ranging from the 96 gal's 75% max range accuracy (giving you a coinflip on a two-shot kill) to an inkzooka that the enemy just happens to not be looking at the moment you pop it and anything in between.

Also, friendly reminder that winning an engagement in turf gives your entire team a second special due to how much turf you cover in that time, while the team that has to respawn needs to either SJ to a survivor (and risk getting camped) or swim to the last-second fight, meaning they have to fight with no specials.

Furthermore, 70% of the map is not as much as it might seem like once you factor in the 5-10% that people don't ink. Safe spawn locking setups on each map only give you that much of a lead on a few select maps, and spawn camping to that degree against decent teams is VERY difficult without a straight up counter-composition.
- Saltspray: Cover short exit w/ grenades, long exit with someone on the sniper steps, south and catwalk exits with whatever else. Enemy team is locked into spawn and can maybe get south if you aren't killing them with an elitre every time they go that way. Holding from here allows the enemy about 25-30% of the map, but if they break out, they can rush mid and north and abuse the high ground for very fast clearing, using grenades at catwalks and sniper nest to halt the last-second push.
- Kelp: Two and two. One on each side holds ramp, other roams/scouts. About 20% for the other team, but the catwalks provide an easy way to cover mid in a matter of seconds. Easy to lock down, but you also have a lot more ground to cover prior to the spawn lock.
- Bluefin: Spawn camping is very difficult here; first storey is easiest due to pincering but gives the other team about 35% of the map, while holding second storey is very hard but gives the other team only about 10%. Engagement win on first storey -> both mids is about 30% by itself and takes very little time. Holding at 45-40 is pretty easy if all you need to do is not die for ten seconds, especially if you have a charger or the other team doesn't.
- Walleye: Plenty of spawn camp options, but the best require the left flank to be secured (the loss of which gives the other team a lot of advantages) and anything that doesn't hold the left flank is very susceptible to leaking. Similar problem to Bluefin, on a lesser scale. Probably the hardest map to come back on due to how hard it is to build special on the defence and how little of the map you actually get (about 15%), but it takes very little time to retake mid due to the high ground you have open to you.
- Blackbelly: You either give the other team their spawn area (about 25%) or you push up on the high ground (limiting them to about 15% but making it MUCH easier for the other team to counterattack), but either way the other team need only win one fight to take their entire spawn area (which takes about three seconds), halfpipe, and tower. And, of course, from the tower you can ink about a third of the map.
- Mackerel: Such a small amount of inkable turf combined with the fact that people generally break out via the high ground (giving them about 20% of the map just from those high ground corridors alone) makes a mid retake virtually instantaneous. Spawn lock is very easy and safe on this map, but also quite fragile due to how hard it is to stop people escaping to the far side courtyard if one person goes down.
- Arowana: Other team gets their catwalks for free unless you manage to get up to their spawn in a similar way to Walleye. Very dangerous, and even then only limits the other team to about 20% if you're lucky. If you can't take those catwalks, the other team gets their lower mid very easily, and has plenty of flanking routes. Hardest spawn lock in the game in my experience, since inkzookas and even grenades struggle to hit the catwalks from the low ground.
- Underpass: Need to secure the top platform overlooking the mid hill with a wall or something; other team generally only gets about 15-20%, but they also take mid VERY quickly with all that high ground.

The key point in all this is that, yes, spawn camps are effective, and, yes, it's usually difficult to push out of a spawn lock. Yes, the winning team can do a lot to prevent themselves from being pushed back due to flukes, and yes, a lot of what the locked team does is predictable (which is why it's called a spawn lock in the first place). But these are best-case scenarios for the team that's spawn locking, and they still aren't enough to make the game anything more than a likely victory. And we aren't even beginning to look at what happens when the gap between two teams is small enough to allow spawn camps to happen.

Finally, say what you will about me or the lounge, but the fact is that there aren't that many groups of A+ players (and I never said we were "top" players) out there with both the numbers and the willingness to test these sorts of things. I don't know what kind of things you see playing with N5, but over hundreds of turf games with 8 loungers, everything points to this. I by no means imply that what I say is law (if it were, I wouldn't need to back it up with observations). What I am saying is that a collection of A+ players doing the next best thing to playing Turf in a competitive friend room is about as good an emulation of "competitive" Turf as you're going to get, and it doesn't work.

I mostly agree, but there are a few things about this that I wanna point out, perhaps not even against your argument. More of a clarification/important concept. it may sound dumb to point out, but the last 30 seconds of the game are inherently the most important because after that, it's over. There is not another chance to push or react, it is the finality of it that makes it so important. It's a familiar concept in many time based games. I know a lot of this community is familiar with Smash Bros., so I'll use the example of running a game to time. It is a strategy that insures the opponent doesn't have an opportunity to come back by virtue of the match almost being over.

The problem is that the last 30 seconds of a Zones or Tower match only happen if the teams are close enough in skill and composition matchup to actually let the game get to that point, and what happens in the lead-up to those last 30 seconds matters. If it's down to 30 seconds and we have 100 points to run through on the zone, we're in a lot more trouble than if we were down to 10 points. Tower's last 30 seconds is either frantic offence or furious defence depending on who has the advantage in distance. The last 30 seconds of Turf determine the game outright. Yes, who's on the defense matters, but whether you're in a winning or losing situation, winning that last fight wins you the game, and as a result, the win percentage spread versus skill spread is not at an acceptable level. This is what it means to not be a worthwhile competitive mode, even if the mode can be played competitively. The best teams will be in an advantageous situation no matter the gametype, but they have a much greater chance of losing a Turf game than Zones or Tower.

I think that 3x kill/ last 25 seconds all depends on whether it was a close match or not. If you were spawn camping Wally (an open map) most of the game and 3xkill happened with 25 seconds on the clock then by that time your team should have it locked down by then enough not to have completely lost when the other team makes the final push with 25 seconds left even though pushing is easy on Wally. This happened to my teams a lot during splatfest. We would have the entire map sans right around their base covered and they would finally manage to take out 3 or all of us. But since they had no one to super jump to they are basically inking as they go while we swim right to them in all of our ink and cut them off before they make any real progress although they do have a good chunk of 20-30% back.

What I was getting at was in TW or SZ if you are in a fairly evenly matched game the last 25 seconds for that final push count a lot more than if one team completely dominated the other all game and you have to push, in the last seconds or in OT for the comeback. Overall flukes and variables are much more likely in TW since you always have to run out the game clock, but if your team overall is dominating the entire match you shouldn't lose.

(Also I use .96 gal in TC and rarely miss even in A rooms, it helps if you lower sensitivity and use gyro).

Taking splatfest as any indication of anything at all isn't a good idea. No organisation and no guarantee of skill at all. It does demonstrate what I'm talking about, but remember that competent teams will generally be able to leverage their special meter advantage after winning an engagement (because after a fight you usually need about 140 pts for special, which you can get very quickly). Yes, you can cut them off, and yes, it is easy to get to mid again even without SJ targets, but you also need to be able to at least hold them back--and a single inkzooka, well-placed grenade, wail, inkstrike... anything could stop you.

I'll put it to you this way, just taking arbitrary numbers: if one team outmatches the other by, say, 20% (so 60-40), then ideally they would win about 60% of their games. My argument is that there is an acceptable range of actual outcomes, whereby some results come down to luck. In that 60-40 case, if 10% of the games came down to luck, then you'd end up with a 54-46 record by skill, and a 5-5 record by luck on average, resulting in 59-41 overall--only a one-game swing. My argument is that, whatever arbitrary definition of what's acceptable we come to, Turf will always fall on the wrong side of that definition. My experience indicates that Turf is far too easy to lose as a dominant team, and far too easy to win due to reasons that have nothing to do with skill, enough such that a 60-40 skill spread would end up with about a 50-50 win spread, and I say this is not acceptable.

Just to clarify: 96 gal has ~75% accuracy at max range and the spread at mid range is enough to make hitting moving targets annoying, but if it ever hits two shots in a row it will always kill due to the damage it has. This makes it one of the most RNG-dependent weapons in the game (ranging from useless to best in the game depending), since missing a bunch of shots makes its TTK fluctuate from excellent to Rapid Blaster tier.

Shouldn't we wait until there has been turf war clan matches before we start dismissing the mode as a competitive mode?

"Yeah but we of Imperious have tested it, and we didn't like it," Therefore we must take out the mode and force others to play splat zones/tower control because we are better at those modes to retain our status as a "top tier" team.

I would appreciate if you could leave your bias and personal agenda to yourselves and discuss the actual competitiveness of the mode.

Personally, I think instead of trying to get this mode banned, trying to get something constructive going would be better. I mean come on, many of us came from the Mario Kart community, which didn't have a properly functioning "team mode" either. But what we did do was create a meta game out of it, even though the mode was still FFA.

Going with this analogy, I think something like "adding the points of a team up over the span of 12 matches, the clan with the most points wins." just like the Mario Kart meta game. This would make everything you do important. (inking turf, killing the enemy to prevent them of racking up points etc.)
It would also make winning less important and it takes out the importance of the last 30 seconds, because it will only award 1200p which over 12 games could easily be recovered from. (again, just like in Mario kart)
It also forces your team to do well consistently on both skill and strategic level. (which makes the mode even more competitive than the others because the other modes rely more on raw power rather than strategic playing.)

TL;DR: Please use more constructive criticism instead of dismissing the game mode.

oh and P.S. I've seen people talk about "random inkzookas/inkstrikes etc" these people aim their special attacks at you, there is literally nothing "random" about that. (except when lag starts messing up the game) But this can be said of any game mode Splatoon has to offer.

We should and will evaluate it when the time comes. But this thread is here, now, taking a position that I believe to be fallacious (though it's not going to kill the community one way or the other as certain people in this thread have said). You can pretend that I have ulterior motives (though I'd appreciate it if you did not pretend to be an authority on what I do and why I do it), but the fact is that what we've been doing in the lounge is the next best thing to playing private lobbies for ourselves, and that is where I am drawing my arguments from. Perhaps you've been doing the same in N5 and have come to different conclusions. This is where you share those observations. This is not where you pass off mine as readily as you say I pass off competitive Turf.

If you insist on taking the MKW analogy, Turf would be MKW where the team who gets the bolt wins the race. As you know, MKW is dominated by bolts, just like how other modes are often swung on lopsided engagements. The difference is that bolts don't directly determine the outcome, they influence it. A top 2 breakaway is not going to suddenly lose just because the other team used a bolt. It might if the other team uses the bolt well or if the team with top 2 chokes, just like how a well-timed inkzooka can give the weaker team mid control but does not end the game. But if MKW were determined entirely on bolt count, it would come down to how well the baggers play. But as we know, 9th place bolts, 10th place bills, goldens, bad rolls in the first 20 seconds... these are all entirely luck dependent, meaning that even the most lopsided of bagging matchups could go 6-6 just as easily as they could go 12-0.

And finally, to clarify the difference between luck and a fluke: a fluke is something happening based on a chaotic situation playing out in just the right way that would repeat itself given the same preconditions. Luck is when the same preconditions give different results each time. If someone happens to be looking the other way for whatever reason (even and especially if that reason is one that increases their chances of winning on average) and you get a zooka on them, those same events will always result in them dying. If you're shooting at someone with an Aerospray at max range, them dying after five shots is luck that will not necessarily repeat itself.

No, that makes too much sense. We should just make ignorant statements with anecdotal evidence and draw hasty conclusions before all of the game's online features are given to us so we can thoroughly test out the competitive viability of Turf Wars.

flc likes to believe that he has authority and everything he says is right.

And then there's this guy. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and ignore the part where you assert yourself as an authority on my motives.

When I post these sorts of messages--and you'll note that my post count is relatively low given the amount of ****posting I do--it's because I have arrived at a conclusion, be it tenuous or concrete, after experimentation, observation, and analysis. I never preclude the fact that I could be wrong, because that is completely against my own interests (not to mention everyone else's). I would personally love for Turf to be competitively viable; more play diversity is always great, even if only for alleviating boredom. What I would like has no bearing on my observations, and so I am arguing against its inclusion in competitive play.

 

[[EJ]_Locke]

so apparently 20k characters is the post limit.



The problem isn't that the one engagement can be decided by luck (that was a continuation of my original point). As I repeatedly said, the problem is the 'one engagement' part. Whether you lose it by luck, fluke, skill, it doesn't matter; if you lose that one fight toward the end of the game, the match is over. The only things that are relevant to the final fight that occur prior to it are special meter (which is important for obvious reasons) and how much of the map is not inked (which isn't, because after winning a fight you can cover a very large amount of the map and the only thing having more turf does is make it slightly harder to regain enough turf to win). The point about flukes and luck (which aren't the same thing, and we'll get to that) was just adding to that; if this one-engagement-to-rule-them-all were entirely based on skill, then it'd still be bad, but not crippling. The problem is that it's not entirely based on skill because, like any other shooter, you can fluke a game-changing shot with just about anything, ranging from the 96 gal's 75% max range accuracy (giving you a coinflip on a two-shot kill) to an inkzooka that the enemy just happens to not be looking at the moment you pop it and anything in between.

Also, friendly reminder that winning an engagement in turf gives your entire team a second special due to how much turf you cover in that time, while the team that has to respawn needs to either SJ to a survivor (and risk getting camped) or swim to the last-second fight, meaning they have to fight with no specials.

Furthermore, 70% of the map is not as much as it might seem like once you factor in the 5-10% that people don't ink. Safe spawn locking setups on each map only give you that much of a lead on a few select maps, and spawn camping to that degree against decent teams is VERY difficult without a straight up counter-composition.
- Saltspray: Cover short exit w/ grenades, long exit with someone on the sniper steps, south and catwalk exits with whatever else. Enemy team is locked into spawn and can maybe get south if you aren't killing them with an elitre every time they go that way. Holding from here allows the enemy about 25-30% of the map, but if they break out, they can rush mid and north and abuse the high ground for very fast clearing, using grenades at catwalks and sniper nest to halt the last-second push.
- Kelp: Two and two. One on each side holds ramp, other roams/scouts. About 20% for the other team, but the catwalks provide an easy way to cover mid in a matter of seconds. Easy to lock down, but you also have a lot more ground to cover prior to the spawn lock.
- Bluefin: Spawn camping is very difficult here; first storey is easiest due to pincering but gives the other team about 35% of the map, while holding second storey is very hard but gives the other team only about 10%. Engagement win on first storey -> both mids is about 30% by itself and takes very little time. Holding at 45-40 is pretty easy if all you need to do is not die for ten seconds, especially if you have a charger or the other team doesn't.
- Walleye: Plenty of spawn camp options, but the best require the left flank to be secured (the loss of which gives the other team a lot of advantages) and anything that doesn't hold the left flank is very susceptible to leaking. Similar problem to Bluefin, on a lesser scale. Probably the hardest map to come back on due to how hard it is to build special on the defence and how little of the map you actually get (about 15%), but it takes very little time to retake mid due to the high ground you have open to you.
- Blackbelly: You either give the other team their spawn area (about 25%) or you push up on the high ground (limiting them to about 15% but making it MUCH easier for the other team to counterattack), but either way the other team need only win one fight to take their entire spawn area (which takes about three seconds), halfpipe, and tower. And, of course, from the tower you can ink about a third of the map.
- Mackerel: Such a small amount of inkable turf combined with the fact that people generally break out via the high ground (giving them about 20% of the map just from those high ground corridors alone) makes a mid retake virtually instantaneous. Spawn lock is very easy and safe on this map, but also quite fragile due to how hard it is to stop people escaping to the far side courtyard if one person goes down.
- Arowana: Other team gets their catwalks for free unless you manage to get up to their spawn in a similar way to Walleye. Very dangerous, and even then only limits the other team to about 20% if you're lucky. If you can't take those catwalks, the other team gets their lower mid very easily, and has plenty of flanking routes. Hardest spawn lock in the game in my experience, since inkzookas and even grenades struggle to hit the catwalks from the low ground.
- Underpass: Need to secure the top platform overlooking the mid hill with a wall or something; other team generally only gets about 15-20%, but they also take mid VERY quickly with all that high ground.

The key point in all this is that, yes, spawn camps are effective, and, yes, it's usually difficult to push out of a spawn lock. Yes, the winning team can do a lot to prevent themselves from being pushed back due to flukes, and yes, a lot of what the locked team does is predictable (which is why it's called a spawn lock in the first place). But these are best-case scenarios for the team that's spawn locking, and they still aren't enough to make the game anything more than a likely victory. And we aren't even beginning to look at what happens when the gap between two teams is small enough to allow spawn camps to happen.

Finally, say what you will about me or the lounge, but the fact is that there aren't that many groups of A+ players (and I never said we were "top" players) out there with both the numbers and the willingness to test these sorts of things. I don't know what kind of things you see playing with N5, but over hundreds of turf games with 8 loungers, everything points to this. I by no means imply that what I say is law (if it were, I wouldn't need to back it up with observations). What I am saying is that a collection of A+ players doing the next best thing to playing Turf in a competitive friend room is about as good an emulation of "competitive" Turf as you're going to get, and it doesn't work.



The problem is that the last 30 seconds of a Zones or Tower match only happen if the teams are close enough in skill and composition matchup to actually let the game get to that point, and what happens in the lead-up to those last 30 seconds matters. If it's down to 30 seconds and we have 100 points to run through on the zone, we're in a lot more trouble than if we were down to 10 points. Tower's last 30 seconds is either frantic offence or furious defence depending on who has the advantage in distance. The last 30 seconds of Turf determine the game outright. Yes, who's on the defense matters, but whether you're in a winning or losing situation, winning that last fight wins you the game, and as a result, the win percentage spread versus skill spread is not at an acceptable level. This is what it means to not be a worthwhile competitive mode, even if the mode can be played competitively. The best teams will be in an advantageous situation no matter the gametype, but they have a much greater chance of losing a Turf game than Zones or Tower.



Taking splatfest as any indication of anything at all isn't a good idea. No organisation and no guarantee of skill at all. It does demonstrate what I'm talking about, but remember that competent teams will generally be able to leverage their special meter advantage after winning an engagement (because after a fight you usually need about 140 pts for special, which you can get very quickly). Yes, you can cut them off, and yes, it is easy to get to mid again even without SJ targets, but you also need to be able to at least hold them back--and a single inkzooka, well-placed grenade, wail, inkstrike... anything could stop you.

I'll put it to you this way, just taking arbitrary numbers: if one team outmatches the other by, say, 20% (so 60-40), then ideally they would win about 60% of their games. My argument is that there is an acceptable range of actual outcomes, whereby some results come down to luck. In that 60-40 case, if 10% of the games came down to luck, then you'd end up with a 54-46 record by skill, and a 5-5 record by luck on average, resulting in 59-41 overall--only a one-game swing. My argument is that, whatever arbitrary definition of what's acceptable we come to, Turf will always fall on the wrong side of that definition. My experience indicates that Turf is far too easy to lose as a dominant team, and far too easy to win due to reasons that have nothing to do with skill, enough such that a 60-40 skill spread would end up with about a 50-50 win spread, and I say this is not acceptable.

Just to clarify: 96 gal has ~75% accuracy at max range and the spread at mid range is enough to make hitting moving targets annoying, but if it ever hits two shots in a row it will always kill due to the damage it has. This makes it one of the most RNG-dependent weapons in the game (ranging from useless to best in the game depending), since missing a bunch of shots makes its TTK fluctuate from excellent to Rapid Blaster tier.



We should and will evaluate it when the time comes. But this thread is here, now, taking a position that I believe to be fallacious (though it's not going to kill the community one way or the other as certain people in this thread have said). You can pretend that I have ulterior motives (though I'd appreciate it if you did not pretend to be an authority on what I do and why I do it), but the fact is that what we've been doing in the lounge is the next best thing to playing private lobbies for ourselves, and that is where I am drawing my arguments from. Perhaps you've been doing the same in N5 and have come to different conclusions. This is where you share those observations. This is not where you pass off mine as readily as you say I pass off competitive Turf.

If you insist on taking the MKW analogy, Turf would be MKW where the team who gets the bolt wins the race. As you know, MKW is dominated by bolts, just like how other modes are often swung on lopsided engagements. The difference is that bolts don't directly determine the outcome, they influence it. A top 2 breakaway is not going to suddenly lose just because the other team used a bolt. It might if the other team uses the bolt well or if the team with top 2 chokes, just like how a well-timed inkzooka can give the weaker team mid control but does not end the game. But if MKW were determined entirely on bolt count, it would come down to how well the baggers play. But as we know, 9th place bolts, 10th place bills, goldens, bad rolls in the first 20 seconds... these are all entirely luck dependent, meaning that even the most lopsided of bagging matchups could go 6-6 just as easily as they could go 12-0.

And finally, to clarify the difference between luck and a fluke: a fluke is something happening based on a chaotic situation playing out in just the right way that would repeat itself given the same preconditions. Luck is when the same preconditions give different results each time. If someone happens to be looking the other way for whatever reason (even and especially if that reason is one that increases their chances of winning on average) and you get a zooka on them, those same events will always result in them dying. If you're shooting at someone with an Aerospray at max range, them dying after five shots is luck that will not necessarily repeat itself.



And then there's this guy. I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt here and ignore the part where you assert yourself as an authority on my motives.

When I post these sorts of messages--and you'll note that my post count is relatively low given the amount of ****posting I do--it's because I have arrived at a conclusion, be it tenuous or concrete, after experimentation, observation, and analysis. I never preclude the fact that I could be wrong, because that is completely against my own interests (not to mention everyone else's). I would personally love for Turf to be competitively viable; more play diversity is always great, even if only for alleviating boredom. What I would like has no bearing on my observations, and so I am arguing against its inclusion in competitive play.

YO GUYS! Jesus is back! But seriously, this is all that I need to hear. This pretty much sums up my thoughts in a nutshell.