why the stage design is bad

[:pancakes:]

it's no secret that splatoon 3's stage design is not great. things are definitely better now than at launch, but not great. i think i've figured out why, and to explain i need to talk about tf2.

in tf2, there's a thing that happens in most matches collectively called "the pub push", where during the final minute of the game, most of the players will suddenly start focusing on the objective and progress will start to be made. in a video i watched the other day, the youtuber talked about how this is emblamatic of how tf2 is designed to trick players into being good team mates for doing selfish things. tf2 players can be surprisingly decent at teamwork despite the fact that tf2's voice chat is rarely used, and it's even rarer for it to be used for the match.

i think the map design in splatoon 3 is a poor attempt at the same thing. i think what the developers were trying to do is create that unintentional teamwork. by funneling every player into the singular path forward, the devs have done their best to ensure that you'll probably be near your team mates. this creates more opportunities for you to be a good teammate without even trying. the problem is that this approach doesn't work.

the first problem is that in enviroments where intentional, communicated teamwork is possible such as in competitive matches, these invisible guidelines should ideally have no effect. but the limited map design does have an effect, it hinders players. the second problem is that the map design doesn't actually do a very good job of forcing players into being good teammates to begin with. an important part of team play is engaging an enemy from multiple angles, which you cant really do in these maps. so while everyone is crammed into the same area and should hypothetically be helping their teammates, there still isn't really a good way to engage in team play intentionally or not.

what do yall think of this? agree, disagree? id especially like to hear from people who disagree so i can refine my theory!

 

[Azure ST]

in tf2, there's a thing that happens in most matches collectively called "the pub push", where during the final minute of the game, most of the players will suddenly start focusing on the objective and progress will start to be made. in a video i watched the other day, the youtuber talked about how this is emblamatic of how tf2 is designed to trick players into being good team mates for doing selfish things. tf2 players can be surprisingly decent at teamwork despite the fact that tf2's voice chat is rarely used, and it's even rarer for it to be used for the match.

I've never played or watched tf2 so I unfortunately don't have a good frame of reference for why that's apparently the case. What about the game design allows for that to happen? You go into it a little by mentioning the limited options of Splat 3's maps but I would be interested in more detail.

 

[:pancakes:]

I've never played or watched tf2 so I unfortunately don't have a good frame of reference for why that's apparently the case. What about the game design allows for that to happen? You go into it a little by mentioning the limited options of Splat 3's maps but I would be interested in more detail.

lots of factors in tf2 contribute to creating this accidental teamwork. the basic idea is that a player doing something selfish rewards their team. for example, if a player is spawn camping the enemy team because they want to get lots of kills, it helps their teammate by limiting how many people they need to fight. engineers can act selfishly by placing sentries in spots where they get lots of kills, which in turn creates a safe area for their teammates. engineers are also rewarded for maintaining a dispenser since it makes it easier to get metal (which they need to build, upgrade, and maintain their buildings). in turn, their teammates can also use the dispenser for health & ammo. medics get directly rewarded for healing by building up uber, which lets them go invincible alongside their heal target. in general, medic is the most powerful class (though only when used as a healer, he's pretty bad if you try to use him as a combat class) in order to encourage players to play him. another piece is how respawning works; players almost always respawn at the same time as other teammates. this obviously wouldnt work in splatoon because tf2 matches are about 3 times bigger & so there are more people dead at a given time.

 

[lesbianseagull]

While I'm not that picky about stage design, I have noticed a questionable trend towards both a narrowing & a flattening of the stages, with them becoming more linear. They have recently made efforts to mitigate the chokehold scenarios where these linear designs leads to spawn camping. And though I much appreciate these improvements I do yearn for to re-experience some of the older design philosophy where stages were more varied in terms of walled off, separated alternative routes you could take as well as an overall greater sense of distinctiveness & personality the old stages had. This of course is a generalization. I think they have done good with some of the new stages, especially the most recent one (which gives me hope for Splatoon 4).