Why does the West suck?

[number1_ink_recovery_fan]

I apologize if the question is very on the nose, but it's one that I've had for a while ever since I actually started watching & playing the game. While digging through some older gameplay and diving head-first into the Japanese competitive scene & infrastructure, I notice a large skill discrepancy between the average high level Western & Japanese teams. No other Western team within the last 2 years has been able to achieve the same heights as peak FTW in terms of their sheer number of results, despite the fact that game knowledge & overall active player pool has increased in quality & quantity since the release of Splatoon 3.

Every Japanese-run tournament that a western team has ever participated in has resulted in the western team either getting grouped or not winning. The closest the scene has gotten is Bocut Nation getting 2nd in Area Cup back in Splatoon 2 and Jackpot landing 3rd/4th in another despite WINNING the Splat World Cup before. Another point becomes clear as you dig into the West's successes: most of the scene's victories have been handed from a selective few teams.

FTW, Starburst, and Jackpot are all exceptions to the region's trend of international failures, not the rule. Not a single other team has been able to match their individual results, despite (with all due respect) Japanese team compositions being gimmicky & objectively suboptimal.

 

[neonscreenlight]

-splatoon is MEGA popular in japan. it's like pokemania part 2 over there.
-because splatoon is so popular in japan, nintendo has a greater incentive to invest in the competitive scene there.
-japan is an island contained within one timezone, making it so much easier to do things like plan out real life events, find a team you can play with consistently, or have a stable internet connection with people all the time. that's not to say we don't have those things, obviously, but they're much harder to come by solely from the sheer scale of the countries we live in

 

[number1_ink_recovery_fan]

-splatoon is MEGA popular in japan. it's like pokemania part 2 over there.
-because splatoon is so popular in japan, nintendo has a greater incentive to invest in the competitive scene there.
-japan is an island contained within one timezone, making it so much easier to do things like plan out real life events, find a team you can play with consistently, or have a stable internet connection with people all the time. that's not to say we don't have those things, obviously, but they're much harder to come by solely from the sheer scale of the countries we live in

Most of the well established and respected tournaments/circuits in Japan aren't affiliated with Nintendo at all. They are independently ran by a variety of decently sized community-ran teams, and playerbase doesn't exactly correlate with the quality of TOP level play, just the quantity of the talent pool.

 

[Driftwood]

The most common explanation is that the player base is noticeably

playerbase doesn't exactly correlate with the quality of TOP level play, just the quantity of the talent pool.

Yeah but that's the thing. The the larger the talent pool the more one-in a million players there will be in it. And those players aren't going to be spread out evenly in the playerbase. They will seek each other out to make teams.
.

 

[Driftwood]

I think there is also more of a culture of taking the game seriously there, but that's kind of second hand. But in the US at least, most gamers who don't play Splatoon think of it as a kids game.

 

[Grushi]

What neon and driftwood said essentially, plus the language barrier makes it really difficult for both scenes to communicate. Maybe teams like Jackpot have the potential to win Area Cup or some other jp tournament, but they can't really practice against jp teams in scrims, so they're usually underprepared. I know they're kind of acquainted with Pixio Monsters but that's about it, and you could argue pxm aren't even top level jp.

Honestly though? I kind of like that about the scene. I like that even if you become a top level western team, there's still the final boss on the other side of the earth that you can strive to beat, it's kind of fun! And personally, as a solo player (for now for now okay) I know getting top 500 in takaroka div is my long term goal in this game, because it'd feel extra satisfying to win against some of these players.

 

[NumberOneAries]

It's honestly just harder to do stuff and get together with people in the West. There's both a crap ton more people over here, plus a bunch of factors that come with that being school, work, personal lives, pre existing commitments, timezone differences, etc. Some of these issues exist in Japan, obviously, but the West is so much bigger than Japan as Japan is a singular island (or collection of islands, I don't remember which) which the West includes North and South America, which houses like 20 different countries with different languages, types of the same language, and culture.
Not to mention in the US specifically it's different simply based on where you. I live in the South and idk anybody aside from maybe 5 people down here who play this game anyone I do play with typically is at least 2-3 states away. In person events are nearly out of the question, especially bc none are ever in the South .
Everyone's closer in Japan (literally) so it makes it a more thriving and visible competitive scene vs in the West where we're all scattered around. And even when we're not, there are only do few people who have the time to take this game seriously due to the sh*ty economy. It's rough out here

 

[missingno]

Suppose I take a purely random sample of 100 players, we'll call this group A.
Then I'll take another sample of 10,000 players and put them in group B.

If I then found the four best players in group A and put them on a team to play a set against the four best players in group B, which group is likely going to have the better team?

 

[Cephalobro]

I can see why players think Splatoon is a kids' game because most of Nintendo's games are made with children in mind. Now of course there are exceptions, but overall, for example, there will never be an official Mario game that's rated M. I suspect Splatoon will most likely keep its E10+ rating because Nintendo would intend that to be the case.

However, I will say that I did play with some players who didn't take a look at the map of the stage, or at least that's what it looked like to me. I always check the map of the stage often because you never know if a Sploosh or Brush snuck their way to your spawn area.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

Not a single other team has been able to match their individual results, despite (with all due respect) Japanese team compositions being gimmicky & objectively suboptimal.

I do think it's rather unfair for us, who are most definitely *not* top players, to call the comps used by the literal best players in the world "objectively" suboptimal. Gimmicky, maybe. But they wouldn't be using it unless it worked better than the alternatives.