Why Competitive Splatoon should use all Game Modes instead of one

[Manta]

Last second Inkstrikes will dominate Turf War if it ever is played competitively. 4 Inkstrikes to gain +40% over your opponent, that they can't counter, and makes the 90% of the game time mean nothing? Sounds good. Oh, and the only way to counter is to use 4 Inkstrikes yourself, or completely base camp the enemy for the entire match...

Turf War isn't really a strategy haven game mode either. The game mode could be 1 minute long, and still be as random as a 5 minute game. You need a huge skill disparity for TW to show who the better team is. Splat Zone or TC have a lower skill disparity threshold for proving the better team.

Like, if you play 10 games each of SZ, TC, and TW, you'll be able to identify the better team through the SZ and TC winrates. For TW they will be largely inaccurate and most likely not consistent if repeated.

Or kill them before their meter reaches max.... it's not like it takes 2 seconds to refill. Agree with the rest of your statement though.

 

[JBtheHunter]

Like, if you play 10 games each of SZ, TC, and TW, you'll be able to identify the better team through the SZ and TC winrates. For TW they will be largely inaccurate and most likely not consistent if repeated.

That is completely untrue. In all modes, the better team will win the majority of the time. Tired of people spreading this Turf War is random BS. The amount of strategy involved with Turf War is mouthwatering, and is the most fun way (in my opinion) to play competitively. The layout of the maps matter way more in Turf War than in the other modes and that makes each individual map feel extremely important. The concept of competitive Splatoon was born when Turf War was the only mode, because the people that played it understood the different strategies that could be employed. This mode was always going to be a mode used in competitive play and the people trying to resist that need to accept it. If your argument boils down to "only the last 30 secs matter" then you have been playing this mode wrong.

 

[Hope]

That is completely untrue. In all modes, the better team will win the majority of the time. Tired of people spreading this Turf War is random BS. The amount of strategy involved with Turf War is mouthwatering, and is the most fun way (in my opinion) to play competitively. The layout of the maps matter way more in Turf War than in the other modes and that makes each individual map feel extremely important. The concept of competitive Splatoon was born when Turf War was the only mode, because the people that played it understood the different strategies that could be employed. This mode was always going to be a mode used in competitive play and the people trying to resist that need to accept it. If your argument boils down to "only the last 30 secs matter" then you have been playing this mode wrong.

You didn't actually respond to his point, what is your counter to "only the last 30 seconds matter" ?

 

[WaifuRaccoonBL]

That is completely untrue. In all modes, the better team will win the majority of the time. Tired of people spreading this Turf War is random BS. The amount of strategy involved with Turf War is mouthwatering, and is the most fun way (in my opinion) to play competitively. The layout of the maps matter way more in Turf War than in the other modes and that makes each individual map feel extremely important. The concept of competitive Splatoon was born when Turf War was the only mode, because the people that played it understood the different strategies that could be employed. This mode was always going to be a mode used in competitive play and the people trying to resist that need to accept it. If your argument boils down to "only the last 30 secs matter" then you have been playing this mode wrong.

Ranked matches are described as "for competitive matches." The new squad system only works for ranked modes. The heart of the competitive game was built for ranked modes, while Turf War was made for quick matches and showing off the game.

The thing about Turf War is it was built for comebacks. Take specials. You get more points for inking over enemy ink than inking plain ground. This isn't as effective in rank modes because there isn't as much room to work with usually, but in Turf War, you don't even have to worry about running into the enemy team if you are careful.

The problem with this strategy you come up with is that it isn't split second thinking until the last 30 seconds. There is no weight to getting killed or losing a lot of turf until the last 30 seconds. In ranked matches, making a bad play means that the opponents counter could permanently get a point taken off their counter meaning one step closer to victory.

I won't deny there is strategy in Turf War, but it isn't to the same depth as ranked battles because you can relax while making those strategies.

 

[missingno]

That is completely untrue. In all modes, the better team will win the majority of the time. Tired of people spreading this Turf War is random BS.

The majority, sure. You'd be hard pressed to find a game where the better team isn't winning >50%, wouldn't make much sense really. But the question is if it's quite as consistent as the other modes, and I highly doubt it is. As others have outlined, the mechanics so easily lend themselves to last minute flukes, much moreso than other modes.

 

[Kowai Yume]

Well Splatoon in general is still in its infancy, so we don't know what modes are balanced and which ones aren't. I'm gonna bring up comp TF2 in this case. They tried Capture the Flag in its early seasons of 6s, but found out that the maps are poorly designed for a 6v6 setting. So they removed those maps from the rotation and kept Control Points and King of the Hill since those work in a 6v6 setting. Then they removes some KotH/5CP maps from rotation since they don't work in a 6v6 setting. The point I'm getting is that it's gonna take time to figure out which mode works for comp and which doesn't. Give the comp scene time to figure out what to do with its ruleset and map rotation before we ban things.

 

[Ponytail]

I gave up after reading 30 posts and saw that there are 5 pages.
So I think I'm just going to support the OP's point because uh... he's right.

So let's define "competitive" real quick with The Google.
"of, relating to, or characterized by competition."
That didn't help... so what's competition?
"the activity or condition of competing"
Okay this is getting a little silly but... what does compete mean?
"strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same."
Thank you Google.

So basically, in order for something to be competitive you have to prove you're better than your opponent. Pretty much all game modes follow this paradigm.

Also, let's look at competitive Smash as I'm sure most of you here are at least mildly intrigued if I mention a Meta Knight player destroyed Mr R 3-1 in Grand Finals.... after said meta knight player sent Mr. R to the Loser's bracket.
But, enough of Leo. What matters here is that Melee was not designed to be competitive. Even before the Wavedashing era it was competitive. Smash 4 was also designed by Sakurai and while it has more balance to it than Brawl did and thus allows for more outplaying your opponent, it still wasn't meant to be competitive. The only element of it that was intended and is similar to other fighting that were made to be "competitive" is perfect shielding being similar to parrying in Street Fighter III. Everything else is stuff Sakurai has decided against patching for some reason.
Oh, and Smash took second and third place of most competitors at Evo 2015. It was only beaten by Street Fighter. The second most competitive fighting game, was meant for casuals. I don't think we can say the "casual" mode that is TW is anywhere near out for the count as far as it's potential in the competitive scene.

 

[Hope]

I gave up after reading 30 posts and saw that there are 5 pages.
So I think I'm just going to support the OP's point because uh... he's right.

So let's define "competitive" real quick with The Google.
"of, relating to, or characterized by competition."
That didn't help... so what's competition?
"the activity or condition of competing"
Okay this is getting a little silly but... what does compete mean?
"strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same."
Thank you Google.

So basically, in order for something to be competitive you have to prove you're better than your opponent. Pretty much all game modes follow this paradigm.

Also, let's look at competitive Smash as I'm sure most of you here are at least mildly intrigued if I mention a Meta Knight player destroyed Mr R 3-1 in Grand Finals.... after said meta knight player sent Mr. R to the Loser's bracket.
But, enough of Leo. What matters here is that Melee was not designed to be competitive. Even before the Wavedashing era it was competitive. Smash 4 was also designed by Sakurai and while it has more balance to it than Brawl did and thus allows for more outplaying your opponent, it still wasn't meant to be competitive. The only element of it that was intended and is similar to other fighting that were made to be "competitive" is perfect shielding being similar to parrying in Street Fighter III. Everything else is stuff Sakurai has decided against patching for some reason.
Oh, and Smash took second and third place of most competitors at Evo 2015. It was only beaten by Street Fighter. The second most competitive fighting game, was meant for casuals. I don't think we can say the "casual" mode that is TW is anywhere near out for the count as far as it's potential in the competitive scene.

There's a difference between being competitive and competitively viable. Most people when they say turf isn't competitive mean the latter.

 

[Power]

I didn't even want to get back into this argument again, but here I am. Just because there are other modes doesn't mean we should use all of them. Obviously, anything in which you are pitted against an opponent can be deemed competitive, but once again it does not mean we should use all modes. One may require more skill and execution. None of this is even official until the big update, but it seems more likely that turf will be left out of the competitive circles, simply because of the difference in its design compared to the other modes. There is really no point in rehashing the same arguments anymore, just wait until the update.

 

[Marraphy]

he results are determined in the last minute or 30 seconds of the competition. ---My team could be absolutely dominating the entire match, but we all die at the last thirty or 20 seconds and the opposition has a chance to scratch out a win.

I see this argument a lot from many people; is Splat Zones and Tower Control not the same thing? In any mode, either team can make a lucky comeback at any point in the match. Skill's involved in all the modes.

 

[Drez]

I wonder if there'd be anyway of making it more competitive? Speaking hypothetically, since the key problem is that it's only the result at the end of the 3 minutes that counts, maybe having the result determined by, say, coverage at a number of evenly spaced intervals during the match (and not necessarily weighted equally) would work better? But perhaps we'd just have the same problem several times over...
Still, I don't see that people should mind that it's isn't competitive - it's clearly the 'for fun' gamemode, and it does that very well.

I'm thinking for competitive turf wars, you'd need to simplify it. People have problems with the InkZooka, well nurf it or remove it and anything like it. Maybe even killer whail. I really like turf wars, wouldn't mind seeing how that plays out without some of the probs people have with it. That way we'd just focus more on the placing of paint, and taking out the roles who do it better (rollers, etc). I just foresee more of 1v1's if those op items are taken out. Just shooting and rolling.

HOW ABOUT WE JUST REMOVE ALL SPECIALS? : O

Like, you'd have one dedicated roller, and the rest be shooters to support the roller. Maybe even add two more slots so that each team can have five, with two rollers per team, with three players supporting them. Just an idea.

---

Otherwise, I'm not too keen on tower defense. I haven't played it yet though, but I'll give it a chance. I think I'd prefer splatzones to tower defense though, as I assume it's all about kills? That I'm down for.

--

Splatoon is nothing if you remove the turf war aspect. It's a very unique aspect of a 'shooter' and I feel there can be alot of potential for it. Otherwise, you are just playing paint ball. Improve it, sure. But don't remove it. Never forget your roots.

 

[Vyvuto]

I'm going to flat out say that I hate the idea of multiple gamemodes being played in a competitive ruleset. I don't hate you if you believe that competitive games should feature all gamemodes, but I don't like that one idea you have. I'm sure that all of you are really cool people, so I don't want to offend any of you.

That said, I think that Splatoon should have a competitive ruleset where only one gamemode -- Splat Zones -- is played. Why, you ask? Well, there are many, many reasons. The main problem, though, is that having too many gamemodes being competitively played spreads the metagame thin and slows its progress. Each gamemode is very much more different than similar, all with completely different objectives. If a team wants to get good at competitive Splatoon, they'll have to practice strategies for all three of the gamemodes instead of just one. This makes it so that new strategies are developed less quickly, because instead of focusing on one mode and advancing its metagame, teams have to focus on every mode. There's a reason that almost no other competitively played video games do it. For instance, you don't see Melee tournaments being played where the first game of a set is a Stock match, the second game is a Coin match, and the third game is a Bonus match. It forces players to get a bit good at three different modes, two of which have less features that make them enjoyable, skill-based competitive modes to watch and play. Because Melee tournaments have the system that they do with only one mode which is extremely suited for competitive play, players can focus on getting amazingly good at one specific gamemode which makes for a more exciting spectator game and game for the players to play. I think that this is by far the most important reason that only one gamemode should be played.

As for the point that using only one gamemode in competitive Splatoon rulesets will drive people away from the scene, I'd like to say that those people wouldn't last long in a competitive videogame scene regardless of the amount of a gamemodes. If a person didn't want to play competitive Splatoon because their favorite mode, Turf War, wasn't included in the ruleset, then they'd probably be easily discouraged by other things, such as their first loss or hearing that their gun isn't viable. Let me tell you a story about myself, and Melee (my favorite videogame of all time if you couldn't tell). When I was little, I played hours on end of Melee with my sister. I always chose a random stage with her, because "being good at all stages is the mark of a good player" and I chose Ness, stating that "he's hard, but you can be sooo good with him". In particular, I was always excited when the random stage chosen was Big Blue or Pokefloats. I loved their music and their atmospheres. I got introduced to competitive Melee years later, and I found out that you couldn't choose Big Blue or Pokefloats to play in tournament. I found out that I couldn't choose Ness, lest I be completely and utterly bopped. I had the mindset of a competitive player, though, and I still entered tournaments with my new mains Shiek and Falco, and played on Final Destination and Battlefield. There were probably thousands of people like me, people who originally played casually but jumped at the chance to play against other amazing players in a skill-based environment and were willing to disregard some parts of the game for it. And now, look at the Melee scene. Its most recent tournament, EVO 2015, had almost 2000 entrants. If some kid didn't want to play competitive Melee because Coin mode wasn't played competitively, then that same kid would probably not want to play competitive Melee because he lost two games and won none at his first tournament, even if Coin mode was introduced. That kid doesn't have the competitive mindset that is necessary to play any competitive videogame, and the same goes for Splatoon. If that kid was a Splatoon fan instead of a Melee fan, the point would still stand that he probably wouldn't last long in competitive Splatoon, even if Turf War was the only mode that was played.

There are also many, many issues with all modes but Splat Zones. By far the most problematic gamemode, though, is Turf War. There are so many problems that make it hard to play competitively. But first, let's take a step back. What is a competitive game? As OP said, any game can be played competitively. If there are two people who play a game and want to be the best at it, better than each other, then that game that they're playing is competitive. However, there is a difference between playing a game competitively and being a game suited to competitive play. The latter type of game must fulfill some requirements:

1. The game must be much more skill-based than luck-based, so a better player can be determined by their results in competitive play, not by random chance.
2. The game must have the potential for a deep metagame. In other words, the game's mechanics must allow players to continuously become better and better, without a high skill ceiling.
3. The game must be relatively balanced. This mainly applies to video games, where multiple characters can be chosen from, but in essence, not one type of character (or gun in a shooter HINT HINT) should be much better than all the others.

I believe that every gamemode, save Splat Zones, fails these criteria.

First, let's take on Turf War. UUUUUGGGH. I think it's clear by now that I hate Turf War with a burning passion. I'll go over exactly why I hate it, and where it goes wrong as a competitive game mode. Turf War, as other posters have said, is largely dependent on what players do in the last 30 seconds or a minute of a match. This makes the game's player interaction really limited to direct confrontations that happen in only the last 1/3 to 1/6 of a match. This fails two points at once, both point one on the first list and point one on the second list! Also, Turf War is not balanced. The Aerosprays have been shown to be the best guns by far to use in Turf War. That fails point three on the first list. There are also some gripes that I have unrelated to the aforementioned points. Because the maps are so large and there are no centralized areas that are important to Turf War, player interaction is very much more limited, thus making the deep metagame of the firefights less important due to the fact that these firefights don't occur as often.

Next, let's try to do some analysis of the Rainmaker gamemode. We haven't seen much of Rainmaker, but the general gist of it seems to be that to win, one of a team's players must capture an orb and run it to the other team's base, similar to rugby in a weird way. The twist is that the player with the orb has access to an Inkzooka-like weapon. The metagame thus becomes overcentralized on getting the orb as soon as possible, making the metagame shallower due to the fact that the team who gets the Rainmaker first is the team that will almost always win. Still, it might be too early to tell what Rainmaker will be like, and there might be an ink limit on the Rainmaker. I also dislike the fact that any one member of the team has mechanics entirely different from the rest of their team. This makes it so the firefight aspect of Splatoon is completely changed, depending on whether or not you're fighting the person holding the orb (the Rainmaker). In my opinion, the game's strategies and mechanics, especially concerning firefights, should be relatively similar, regardless of the team member that you're fighting.

Now, let's focus on Tower Control. Tower Control is, in my eyes, the second-best gamemode in the entire game. However, it does have some downfalls. For instance, rollers and chargers are the best weapons in Tower Control, making it unbalanced. Also, Tower Control has a similar problem as Rainmaker where the person on the tower is essentially a sitting duck, changing up the firefight strategies and mechanics depending on whether or not you're fighting a person on the tower or off of it (and whether or not you're on the tower or off it). Also, the tower is extremely glitchy, and camera mishaps that can make it impossible to do anything frequently occur near the tower. Other than those gripes, though, Tower Control is a pretty good gamemode.

Finally, let's talk Splat Zones. In Splat Zones, many more guns are viable than in other modes, each with different strengths and weaknesses depending on the map and the desired role of the player. The game isn't decided by the last minute, and it is just as likely for a team to win in the first minute than the last. The mechanics are very homogenous, and there will never be a "powerup" or "powerdown" unlike in Rainmaker and Tower Control that a specific team member has. Lastly, the need to take/defend specific points on the map leads to lots of player interaction and firefights, enhancing the depth of the metagame.

This post ended up being much longer than I expected it to be, but that's because I think that it's extremely important for Splatoon's competitive scene to make the correct decision early on, and I believe that the correct decision is for Splat Zones to be the only competitive gamemode. I'd rather Splatoon go the way of Melee, a Nintendo game whose community made competitive choices that created a game suited to competitive play, than the way of Mario Kart, where the community made choices that led to the game's competitive downfall. I do feel that I could've explained some things better, so if you disagree with some things in this post, I'll try to elaborate what I meant by certain statements and why I believe certain things. Still, I hope that now you realize why Splat Zones is the only gamemode that should be played in competitive Splatoon.

 

[Drez]

You know now that I think about it, Turf Wars definitely needs to be balanced in order for it to become competitive. I just find it fun and would put alot of time to it if it became viable somehow. Specials should not be used. More stages that can be viable in competition. I feel that there should be a respawn timer too. I don't know why I always think of league. Maybe it should play like that? 5 v 5, and each team have roles and such. So that would make it harder for the losing side to comeback, making it a priority to die less.

Otherwise I have no other idea for the '30 second comebacks'.

I'd rather focus on Splatzones/ and some viable form of TW. I don't really want to try Tower Defense but yet again, i'm just biased and haven't tried TD yet, but will.

 

[toadster101]

There's a difference between being competitive and competitively viable. Most people when they say turf isn't competitive mean the latter.

Odd.

 

[missingno]

Anything can be competitive, but not everything should be. What people are trying to say here is that they don't think Turf Wars is a good format for competition compared to the other options, due to the shortcomings that have been discussed.

There, now can we quit nitpicking over semantics already?

 

[toadster101]

Anything can be competitive, but not everything should be. What people are trying to say here is that they don't think Turf Wars is a good format for competition compared to the other options, due to the shortcomings that have been discussed.

There, now can we quit nitpicking over semantics already?

It's not semantics, it's hypocrisy. If Mario Kart is competitive just because you "compete" against other players, doesn't that make Turf War a competitive game mode?

The whole "Aerospray is OP in Turf War" complaint is laughable, considering that a team of four Aerosprays will get demolished by two competent .52 Gals or a Squelcher. While we're on the subject of weapon balancing, Chargers have a huge advantage in modes like Splat Zones, but I don't see a problem with that. They designed the game this way intentionally, and it's why the ranked modes and maps are change every four hours. Certain weapons excel depending on which mode or map you play, which is why I would prefer a counter pick system where the losing team gets to decide which mode is played. That hardly seems unreasonable.

 

[Drez]

Then abolish those short-comings instead of doing away with the whole thing (Example, do away with specials for one thing). I'm down with all modes being competitive. I also agree to having a counter-pick system. Also would rather like having a little bit more time to know what the other team has.

 

[missingno]

It's not semantics, it's hypocrisy. If Mario Kart is competitive just because you "compete" against other players, doesn't that make Turf War a competitive game mode?

Sigh, like I just explained, yes, Turf Wars can be be competitive, anything can be, but the question we are asking is whether it should be. When someone describes it as "not very competitive", what they really mean is that it's not good for competition. It's not as consistently skill-based, which is supposed to be the hallmark of a good competitive game. You're taking the word competitive too literally, this has been explained enough times already. Nobody is actually trying to say it is outright impossible to compete at it, you are splitting hairs over semantics.

Then abolish those short-comings instead of doing away with the whole thing (Example, do away with specials for one thing). I'm down with all modes being competitive. I also agree to having a counter-pick system. Also would rather like having a little bit more time to know what the other team has.

I'm strictly opposed to trying to ban anything within the game like activating your special, as opposed to only regulating things outside of it, like selecting modes or stages at the menu. It's extremely messy to deal with and enforce, and if that's the lengths you have to go to in order to fix Turf Wars then that just shows it's a broken mode and we're better off playing something else instead. Why play a cut down version of Turf Wars when we could just play all of Splat Zones or Tower Control and not have to deal with that problem?

 

[flc]

only going to respond to this point because most of it is "look at melee for example" which is so unbelievably fallacious given that it's a different genre, 14 years old, was designed as a party game, and is an example of a game succeeding in spite of itself

(@toadster101: I was going to respond to your last reply to me but never got around to it, my apologies for that)

That said, I think that Splatoon should have a competitive ruleset where only one gamemode -- Splat Zones -- is played. Why, you ask? Well, there are many, many reasons. The main problem, though, is that having too many gamemodes being competitively played spreads the metagame thin and slows its progress. Each gamemode is very much more different than similar, all with completely different objectives. If a team wants to get good at competitive Splatoon, they'll have to practice strategies for all three of the gamemodes instead of just one. This makes it so that new strategies are developed less quickly, because instead of focusing on one mode and advancing its metagame, teams have to focus on every mode. There's a reason that almost no other competitively played video games do it. For instance, you don't see Melee tournaments being played where the first game of a set is a Stock match, the second game is a Coin match, and the third game is a Bonus match. It forces players to get a bit good at three different modes, two of which have less features that make them enjoyable, skill-based competitive modes to watch and play. Because Melee tournaments have the system that they do with only one mode which is extremely suited for competitive play, players can focus on getting amazingly good at one specific gamemode which makes for a more exciting spectator game and game for the players to play. I think that this is by far the most important reason that only one gamemode should be played.

I can't think of any better way to halt a metagame's progress than to never play more than one game mode. Splat Zones is the simplest gametype from a strategic perspective, because it's both the simplest objective and the most straightforward to win (take point, set up, hold point, as compared to towers, where you need to work with and account for a lot more variables). This is not a bad thing. It just means that it's the gametype that everyone is going to be most comfortable with, since we learned ranked with it and have plenty of experience with it.

If you enforce zones only in competitive, you force the metagame to develop around lightning pushes (where you wipe the enemy team as quickly as possible) and defensive setups (where you try to get into safe positions and block the other team's fast push). The team with the best defence wins, because zooka is so strong that it's almost certainly going to work at some point.

Hopefully you see the problem already, but if not, I'll elaborate further.

Now examine tower control. Instead of being all about single, all-in pushes into defensive setups, TC is about protracted, standoff pushes at multiple areas of the map, with a forced positioning disadvantage and protecting against waves of defenders.

The problem with limiting gametypes, especially this early on, is that you are gambling on your understanding of the gametype being correct, and for a gametype like towers (which is relatively new and very poor for non-organised play) or rainmaker (which isn't even out yet), I don't believe this is actually possible.

Naturally, I've been arguing against turf war for months now, and this might seem like a contradiction. Turf is not like the other modes in that it's timed, and the only thing that matters is how the map lies at the end of the game. I believe this is a fundamental problem, but I also believe that playing competitive turf is the only way to demonstrate this gametype's problems. I would prefer turf to be out of the rotation as soon as possible, but I also want people to acknowledge that it's bad instead of constantly having that question mark over their heads.

Now, returning to my original point.

Multiple gametypes require mastery of the game, and enforcing single gametype means that a team can win a tournament without being the best at the game.

"but items/coins/bonus in melee!" No. Stop comparing to melee, it's a fourteen-year-old party game made competitive by sheer fluke and popularity, whereas Splatoon is new, has much less leeway for people to make idiotic decisions about its competitive future, and is at least designed around the idea that it will be played competitively. Items add needless randomness and break the game in a way that is not ideal. Other gametypes in Splatoon require that teams be good at more than just using zooka, getting four kills, and then throwing down splash walls and putting chargers on choke points for 50 seconds. If anything, zones is looking to be one of the shallower gametypes, at least as far as team compositions go.

Even if the comparison were valid, items and coins were both accepted gametypes in the very early days of melee and were demonstrated to be trash. The community, splintered though it was, did experiment with these gametypes and determined them to be bad. Likewise, the other various gametypes in CS:GO were experimented with in the CS1.6 days until demolition was decided upon. CTF and Deathmatch are both still played in Quake 4v4. Halo actively runs at least five gametypes (Team Slayer, Oddball, KOTH, Neutral Bomb, CTF). Competitive TF2 runs KOTH and CP, only now beginning to phase KOTH out of the rotation. At no point did people say "well I played this one time and didn't like it, we should ban it".

Maybe, eventually, we can start to discuss removing modes from competitive play. But we need to know how they are played before we can do that. I've seen at least two games ruined by communities that didn't know a ****ing thing about the game they played and refused to play with rules that were not what they were used to, and restricting competitive to Zones this early on would almost certainly make the trifecta.

 

[Drez]

I'm strictly opposed to trying to ban anything within the game like activating your special, as opposed to only regulating things outside of it, like selecting modes or stages at the menu. It's extremely messy to deal with and enforce, and if that's the lengths you have to go to in order to fix Turf Wars then that just shows it's a broken mode and we're better off playing something else instead. Why play a cut down version of Turf Wars when we could just play all of Splat Zones or Tower Control and not have to deal with that problem?

I mean, doesn't the other modes not have specials either? People say that Turf Wars is unbalanced, then why throw it away instead of balancing it? I mean, I agree with people that Inkstrike is pretty OP, and I'd have more fun without it because I can rely on my skills. Or they can leave it as is and have a separate turf war mode that is more viable for competitive play. That would be the answer for you, since you'd rather just have a different mode to play in than the Regular Turf Mode.

I don't think turf wars is 'this is where we play with our specials mode', (as you say without some of those, that TW is cut down... I wouldn't think so) but to me is more about the paint. That's all. Stay true to that, and that's all we need. Specials make the game a bit more luck based, not the mode itself. Right? We don't inkstrikes or killer whails. Bombs and inkspays are nice and I don't think they are OP.

Hey. At least why not give the thought of a viable TW a chance, as I will give the other modes a chance. Variety is good. Bold, I just feel that's a lazy mindset and won't be healthy for the game. Now if there is ALOT that needs to be done and people can show that to me, I may back down. Yet I think we can still hope for a better Turf War. Turf War is new.

I think a barebones Turf War without specials should be an option open to us, as items can be turned on or off in smash bros.