Why is turf war essentially region locked still?

[Emperor]

I'm kinda glad it's this way cause I lost count on how many times people have complained about Japan players back on Splat 1.

 

[Hamachiカマ★]

I'm kinda glad it's this way cause I lost count on how many times people have complained about Japan players back on Splat 1.

Lol I could care less about the salty players who complained about 'try hard' Japanese players. There are try hards in every region and honestly people got 'squidbagged' from people with English names more.
What's the point of playing if you don't get better? But I can see why people want turf war to be totally causal. No one wants to play if they are playing people that are better and make them angry.

 

[RespawningJesus]

I'm kinda glad it's this way cause I lost count on how many times people have complained about Japan players back on Splat 1.

I mean, they did complain for good reason. No one wants lag to make their match unbearable, there is no fun to be had there.

Note, not talking about the people complaining about Japanese players being crazy at the game, just talking about how playing against Japanese players tended to lead to laggy games.

 

[Hamachiカマ★]

I mean, they did complain for good reason. No one wants lag to make their match unbearable, there is no fun to be had there.

Note, not talking about the people complaining about Japanese players being crazy at the game, just talking about how playing against Japanese players tended to lead to laggy games.

In the last game I know people complained about try hard Japanese players, there are multiple posts on this if you just Google it. I acknowledge lag was a problem but as far as the biggest complaints it was try hards.

*Also I do not mean you personally or anyone else who has replied. I mean as a general people complained about try hard Japanese players a lot. As in it would be in Miiverse posts.
In my experience and what I can gather in past posts lag was a problem overall not just with foreign players.

Whoops thought you replied to me not Bakugo lol. But what I said still stands.

 

[RespawningJesus]

In the last game I know people complained about try hard Japanese players, there are multiple posts on this if you just Google it. I acknowledge lag was a problem but as far as the biggest complaints it was try hards.

*Also I do not mean you personally or anyone else who has replied. I mean as a general people complained about try hard Japanese players a lot. As in it would be in Miiverse posts.
In my experience and what I can gather in past posts lag was a problem overall not just with foreign players.

Whoops thought you replied to me not Bakugo lol. But what I said still stands.

Oh yeah, definitely. I remember a bunch of those posts as well. Only valid complaints were the lag ones. Can't be mad at someone for being better than you.

 

[Green Waffles]

Nintenodo responded to all the complaints about latency by not only dis-allowing you from playing with players who you'd have to high a ping playing with, but also prioritizing players whom you'll connect best with (an easier fix than making global connections better, across the board )

I get timed out so often, it's getting to me. When I do get a match, I'll wait anywhere from 1-6 minutes for a 3 or 1-5 minute match.
But on the bright side, my connection issues feel like they were practically cut in half.

So, they fixed one issue, but created a new one =/
"Wood u rather yor room smelly like dog poop, or cat poop?"
Can't the room smell like neither and I can cover it with ink in peace?
"Nope, sory!. Eet 2 hard 2 get rid of smellz ;P Just deal with it. BTWdon'tforgettostartpayingmecome2018kthxbye!"

 

[Hamachiカマ★]

Nintenodo responded to all the complaints about latency by not only dis-allowing you from playing with players who you'd have to high a ping playing with, but also prioritizing players whom you'll connect best with (an easier fix than making global connections better, across the board )

I get timed out so often, it's getting to me. When I do get a match, I'll wait anywhere from 1-6 minutes for a 3 or 1-5 minute match.
But on the bright side, my connection issues feel like they were practically cut in half.

So, they fixed one issue, but created a new one =/
"Wood u rather yor room smelly like dog poop, or cat poop?"
Can't the room smell like neither and I can cover it with ink in peace?
"Nope, sory!. Eet 2 hard 2 get rid of smellz ;P Just deal with it. BTWdon'tforgettostartpayingmecome2018kthxbye!"

Oh Nintendo. Well they are still learning the online multiplayer world I guess...even though they are a multi billion dollar company...

Meh, I guess I was lucky and barely had lag so I see this problem as worse than last time. Most of the time I'd run into cheating players more than accidentally laggy ones.

 

[Zwei]

I don't get this explanation or agree at all. How does pulling 'locally' reduce lag. Japan is not local to Australia, especially when Japan has the most players. Why would they ever need Australian players? Australia can also pull from closer countries.

This theory seems off to me. And a 5 minute wait makes me feel like it's necessary. Granted this mostly happens when I play at like 2am but I should be able to play a video game I paid for anytime I want with relatively the same quality every time. 5 min and everyone disconnects when we needed 1-2 more people is ridiculous.

Sorry if I seem daft, I seriously just want to understand why they might have done this when people are still disconnecting as much as the first game (or rage quitting maybe)

sigh

Unlike many other aspects of internet, ping is affected by physical distance. It's about how quickly data gets from you to your opponent. Even with fiber optic cables, necessary relays introduce lag, making long-distance connections have a slower ping than short-distance connections. The game doesn't necesarially know this, but it attempts to pair you with people who you have the least lag with, and a consequence of this is more local matchmaking than a random allocation. The first game did this as well, btw, and there would be even more DCes and extreme lag instances if it didn't.

Local is a relative term, japan -> australia is much shorter than japan -> europe. You underestimate how many people are on at 2 AM, and how many other lobbies that have to be filled with the playerbase at any given point in time.

Matchmaking is a near-impossible technological challenge, most complaints around matchmaking systems greatly oversimplify this challenge. This results in an overlooking of important details in proposed solutions.

 

[Green Waffles]

it attempts to pair you with people who you have the least lag with, and a consequence of this is more local matchmaking than a random allocation. The first game did this as well, btw, and there would be even more DCes and extreme lag instances if it didn't.

I rarely see a JP name(and I sometimes suspect they just changed their switch's region so that they could type Kanji), let alone an entire lobby.
Back in Splatoon 1, 80-90% of my lobbies were all JP and, while I had plenty of connection/lag issues during a playsession, in a majority of my matches the connection was fine.

 

[AwesomeCookie]

I remember hearing some Splatoon 1 fans complaining about the non-region locking because they keep on getting their butt kicked by those Japanese players. Maybe that's the reason they region-locked it? Nah. They just kinda suck.

 

[Hamachiカマ★]

sigh

Unlike many other aspects of internet, ping is affected by physical distance. It's about how quickly data gets from you to your opponent. Even with fiber optic cables, necessary relays introduce lag, making long-distance connections have a slower ping than short-distance connections. The game doesn't necesarially know this, but it attempts to pair you with people who you have the least lag with, and a consequence of this is more local matchmaking than a random allocation. The first game did this as well, btw, and there would be even more DCes and extreme lag instances if it didn't.

Local is a relative term, japan -> australia is much shorter than japan -> europe. You underestimate how many people are on at 2 AM, and how many other lobbies that have to be filled with the playerbase at any given point in time.

Matchmaking is a near-impossible technological challenge, most complaints around matchmaking systems greatly oversimplify this challenge. This results in an overlooking of important details in proposed solutions.

So why did I barely experience this horrible reacurring lag? CA is not close to Japan, maybe more than some places though. I also had two Wii u's in the house going at the same time...
Ofc this is just anecdotal evidence but I don't find the local matchmaking to be that great in terms of people DCing. Lag is a bit less but I barely had any anyway.

Ok cool, glad other people's lobbies fill but from what I gather that's not normally true late night/early morning turf war. Even in the middle of the day sometimes...

Why doesn't this apply to ranked? Because they have no choice once you get to S?

Also if you're going to be a bit passive aggressive and sigh no need to answer me. If this was about special needs or psychology I'd be an expert, not everyone is proficient in how the internet works in gaming. I'm also the kind of person who asks questions I'm curious about until I feel like I really understand.

 

[RespawningJesus]

So why did I barely experience this horrible reacurring lag? CA is not close to Japan, maybe more than some places though. I also had two Wii u's in the house going at the same time...
Ofc this is just anecdotal evidence but I don't find the local matchmaking to be that great in terms of people DCing. Lag is a bit less but I barely had any anyway.

Ok cool, glad other people's lobbies fill but from what I gather that's not normally true late night/early morning turf war. Even in the middle of the day sometimes...

Why doesn't this apply to ranked? Because they have no choice once you get to S?

Also if you're going to be a bit passive aggressive and sigh no need to answer me. If this was about special needs or psychology I'd be an expert, not everyone is proficient in how the internet works in gaming. I'm also the kind of person who asks questions I'm curious about until I feel like I really understand.

You probably didn't experience much lag with Japanese players because they weren't the ones hosting. Splatoon uses matchmaking servers to find games for us to join, but the actual match is done by Peer 2 Peer, where a player acts as the host instead of a server. If the host was in Japan, then you most definitely will feel some sort of lag due to the distance. If the host was closer to you, then you shouldn't have felt any problems.

 

[swimmingknife]

Ah well I didn't know how else to phrase it. Eh, you can't tell who is actually Japanese though, unless you are Japanese yourself or know the language in some cases. For instance I'll see a 'Japanese' name but it's a made up word or they spelled it incorrectly. It's very unlikely that they are actually Japanese. Idk about Australia but I'm sure it is the case there too unless someone has an actual Japanese friend, it's just someone using the characters (in turf war).

I live in Australia, and we're definitely playing against Japanese players most of the time. Several of them have added me as a friend after games, and whenever they're online it shows their game names in Japanese characters. So either they're Japanese, or they go to the extent of importing Japanese games to make it look like they're Japanese. It's pretty common that I'll go into a lobby and 6-7 out of 8 players will be Japanese.

I don't get this explanation or agree at all. How does pulling 'locally' reduce lag. Japan is not local to Australia, especially when Japan has the most players. Why would they ever need Australian players? Australia can also pull from closer countries.

Like what? Indonesia? New Zealand? Most of the countries close to Australia either don't get official localisations - which makes the game a niche product - or are pitifully small to begin with. Hell, even Australia itself isn't a particularly big country. We only have 25 million people in a country almost the size of the US. That's nothing.

Japan might not be the closest country to us, but it's the closest country with a player base worth mentioning. And I'm pretty glad we pull from there, because my online experience with Splatoon 2 has been surprisingly smooth. I can't exactly compare it to global play in Splatoon 2, since I haven't done that, but I played globally on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and it was lag city. I don't think I ever saw a kart actually driving in a straight line, they were all just erratically glitching around on the track. The lag I've noticed in Splatoon 2 (and ARMS as well) has been pretty rare, and minimal when it does happen.

 

[Zwei]

Most of the competitive audience is in japan, so once you reach 2 standard deviations from the mean, you're more likely to get paired with them. This is why japanese names are more common at higher ranks.

I see you guys are starting to misrepresent my argument so I'll reiterate: Matchmaking in turf right now is not intentionally region-locked. This is all I'm trying to argue.

I'm done arguing over whether splatoon 1 did this as well, and why this doesn't happen to as extreme of an extent in ranked, and go back to why the illusion of regional matchmaking is apparent.

It makes sense that, during matchmaking, you should be connected with people who you can communicate with as quickly as possible, and thus have low latency with--this is because splatoon is a real-time game, so delays in the tenths of a second can be very noticeable. This is done by checking the latency between two palyers using ping. While I don't believe that splatoon 2 matchmakes based off of anything other than ping, there is a correlation between latency and hop count.

This correlation may give the illusion that the matchmaking system intentionally matches you with people who have a low hop count. In reality this is because a low latency with a peer leaves a high chance of a low hop count.

 

[Hamachiカマ★]

I rarely see a JP name(and I sometimes suspect they just changed their switch's region so that they could type Kanji), let alone an entire lobby.
Back in Splatoon 1, 80-90% of my lobbies were all JP and, while I had plenty of connection/lag issues during a playsession, in a majority of my matches the connection was fine.

Oh the switch you can use kanji, hiragana, and katakana just fine without region switching. That's why I mentioned the people who spell things wrong, etc.

I live in Australia, and we're definitely playing against Japanese players most of the time. Several of them have added me as a friend after games, and whenever they're online it shows their game names in Japanese characters. So either they're Japanese, or they go to the extent of importing Japanese games to make it look like they're Japanese. It's pretty common that I'll go into a lobby and 6-7 out of 8 players will be Japanese.



Like what? Indonesia? New Zealand? Most of the countries close to Australia either don't get official localisations - which makes the game a niche product - or are pitifully small to begin with. Hell, even Australia itself isn't a particularly big country. We only have 25 million people in a country almost the size of the US. That's nothing.

Japan might not be the closest country to us, but it's the closest country with a player base worth mentioning. And I'm pretty glad we pull from there, because my online experience with Splatoon 2 has been surprisingly smooth. I can't exactly compare it to global play in Splatoon 2, since I haven't done that, but I played globally on Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and it was lag city. I don't think I ever saw a kart actually driving in a straight line, they were all just erratically glitching around on the track. The lag I've noticed in Splatoon 2 (and ARMS as well) has been pretty rare, and minimal when it does happen.

Thanks for your anecdotal evidence, it's easier to confirm if someone from Australia says it.

I just think it's odd people experience lag from global play, like someone else mentioned I truly do not. I'm just trying to figure out which one is the most common.
And for sure ranked is global and to me that would be the place to 'minimize' lag. I guess that's what I'm mostly stuck on because I for sure face Japanese people there and obviously I don't live in Japan atm.

 

[UnChosen]

When I tried playing after midnight it was almost impossible because it would take over 10 tries before a match starts. Most the the time I get dumped into a lobby with only me in it and the timer counts down with no one joining, or worse I get into a lobby that is mostly full and the lobby times out needing only 1-2 players.

Either Splatoon 2 is selling horribly in North America or there is something wrong with the matchmaking because I could get matches easier in some rather niche shooters on the PC. I have to wait like 10 minutes but at least I am not kicked out over 10 times before a match starts.

Nintendo should relax the region locking for a couple of hours in early morning or at least increase the waiting time during that period. I actually prefer the stable connections I had with the Japanese despite the small lag I had to adjust to. Matches I have with Americans despite having less lag always seem to have sudden ping spikes that usually leads to some crazy teleporting kills or outright disconnects that leads to instant losses.

 

[swimmingknife]

When I tried playing after midnight it was almost impossible because it would take over 10 tries before a match starts. Most the the time I get dumped into a lobby with only me in it and the timer counts down with no one joining, or worse I get into a lobby that is mostly full and the lobby times out needing only 1-2 players.

Either Splatoon 2 is selling horribly in North America or there is something wrong with the matchmaking because I could get matches easier in some rather niche shooters on the PC. I have to wait like 10 minutes but at least I am not kicked out over 10 times before a match starts.

Nintendo should relax the region locking for a couple of hours in early morning or at least increase the waiting time during that period. I actually prefer the stable connections I had with the Japanese despite the small lag I had to adjust to. Matches I have with Americans despite having less lag always seem to have sudden ping spikes that usually leads to some crazy teleporting kills or outright disconnects that leads to instant losses.

I find a similar thing tends to happen for me. I doubt it has anything to do with sales, it's probably just a matchmaking issue because so many people have gone to bed by then. It can certainly be annoying getting kicked repeatedly when you're perfectly happy to wait though. An option to manually refresh the timer would be a nice addition. There's also probably a bit of a vicious cycle to it as well; a significant chunk of the player-base drops off after midnight, so matchmaking takes longer, so more people leave because they don't want to deal with it, so matchmaking takes even longer, so more people leave, etc.

Of course, that said, I can understand why it generally prefers terminating lobbies rather than starting with too few players. Because I'd probably rather try matchmaking again than get thrown into a 3v4 and spend 3 minutes playing a match that I already know I'm going to lose.

It would definitely be nice if they relaxed the region-preferencing at times when local players are unlikely to be available. Yeah, the matches might be a little less stable, but it'd still be nice to have the option. If I need to get my ink fix at 3AM, I'll take a slightly laggy match over no match at all.