Recommended Posts

Ohhh man this Splatfest for AU/NZ+Europeans is kinda a snoozefest (pun very much intended). More than half my matches are Team Eat vs Team Eat, and often the opposite team only has 3 members, so we just completely roll over them. Team Sleep is very much underrepresented, and there have been a few matches where they also had only 3 members. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Rollercoasters took the NA splatfest. Waterslides had the popular vote, but the Rollercoasters played well enough to secure a large win majority and bring in the overall victory.

 

24 super sea snails! Woo!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The Rollercoasters took the NA splatfest. Waterslides had the popular vote, but the Rollercoasters played well enough to secure a large win majority and bring in the overall victory.

 

24 super sea snails! Woo!

 

This is exactly what Baseball speak sounds like to me.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The August update has officially been dated! August 6 (at least for Japan and Australia, not sure what other regions are like, probably within a day of each other)

 

It will include:

Custom lobbies with 1-7 of your friends, in ANY team configuration including 1v4

Partying up for ranked mode, in groups of 2-4

40 new pieces of gear

New weapon types: bucket and gatling gun

level cap raised to 50

S and S+ ranks added

 

This won't be the end of free updates to the game. It seems rainmaker game mode has been delayed and will not arrive with this August 6 update. Still, that's heaps of stuff and I'm looking forward to squadding up with Thumbs squids =D

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh wow that's amazing. I can't wait

 

the level cap increase is really what's going to get me playing that game again. Here's hoping I can still upgrade my items before I hit 50 though. That'll be a real kicker for me. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The ranked parties thing will be a new playlist called Squad Battle, it's worth pointing out. Normal ranked will still be solo queue.

 

Further letter ranks will actually probably help ranked out a fair amount. Right now there's a thing where there are some A+ guys that obviously hit that ceiling hard, but are still getting dropped into lower B and A rank games and just wreck house to a hilarious degree. A little more distance there might make ranked a more enjoyable experience for everyone. (Though it might only be a temporary solution, there are some big issues with how ranking works in Splatoon.)

 

Also, there was a japanese trailer for this update that depicted two new maps, maps we know not to be on the disc because those maps are now all live. One of the new maps was set on the roof of an apartment complex, and another spread out across a suspension bridge under construction. These maps are mia in descriptions of what the update contains, so they've probably been held back for another update a little further into the future. (Or will be in the update, but not be unlocked at that time.)

 

Finally, In addition to these actual new guns and their variants, there are still around 20-30 other weapons on the disc that have yet to be unlocked by Nintendo. (There's also a CTF-esque mode that's still locked.)

 

People think there might be more in-game music on the way for the game too.


UNFORTUNATELY, the news isn't all cool. Apparently one individual has managed to get weapon hacks working online, demonstrating it on a livestream with effects ranging from "painting the entire arena with one shot" to "causing an overflow and lagging everybody out of the game." The person allegedly indicated that they would not release the specifics of how it was accomplished or the tools they used, but... You know...

 

I guess it requires you to have a Wii U that has not been updated past a particular older and more vulnerable firmware, so it's probably not likely to become extremely prevalent over night, and i would hope Nintendo realizes they need to combat stuff like this for Splatoon to continue to flourish, but we'll see. These sorts of things are basically an inevitability for online games, and it usually comes down to how the developer was prepared to deal with it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The August update has officially been dated! August 6 (at least for Japan and Australia, not sure what other regions are like, probably within a day of each other)

 

It will include:

Custom lobbies with 1-7 of your friends, in ANY team configuration including 1v4

Partying up for ranked mode, in groups of 2-4

40 new pieces of gear

New weapon types: bucket and gatling gun

level cap raised to 50

S and S+ ranks added

 

This won't be the end of free updates to the game. It seems rainmaker game mode has been delayed and will not arrive with this August 6 update. Still, that's heaps of stuff and I'm looking forward to squadding up with Thumbs squids =D

 

 

Oh man, all of this is stuff I can absolutely get behind as a voter.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That update sounds pretty great. With the increased level cap and the additional stuff I have missed in past month I can definitely see myself getting back into this game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So i want to revise an earlier opinion about damage ups, and then i'm going to list off a bunch of other updated observations about skills in the game.

Damage ups cap early and hard and at different points on different shooters, but they don't cap at all on chargers and blasters and rollers and actually even grenades. (Though i've heard and generally observed that damage ups past the shooter cap still reduce damage fall-off past maximum range, but that's not very useful in most cases.)

Now, in many of those cases, it seems like it still wouldn't matter because you're dealing with one hit kills mostly, but that's not really true. You might gain a little more consistency out of your roller's flick attack, but the real treat is faster kills at lower charges on chargers, improved splash damage for grenades and blasters, and some extremely interesting results in a few specific cases.

Burst grenades, for example, which are not capped by by damage up and are not normally a one hit kill either.

The custom jet squelcher is an interesting shooter that has a kraken and burst grenades bundled with it. The burst grenades on that have some pretty interesting interactions with the jet squelcher itself, namely landing a direct hit with a burst grenade and cancelling out of that throw into weapons fire makes a 4 hit kill a 2 hit kill that's about a quarter of a second faster. (Which makes a slow and very long-range weapon quite competitive up close. Also, for the record, it drops to 3 shots if the enemy only gets hit by the splash damage of the burst grenade.)

I've been playing around with that though, and it took exactly five damage up subs to turn that combo into a 1 burst grenade and 1 shot kill that is just absurdly fast since you cancel out of the grenade throwing animation into weapons fire very quickly. (With these damage buffs, it's two shots of the JS when going of the burst grenade's splash damage, btw.)

 

So it turns out damage up is awesome, but still super situational. Builds kind of have to find the right thresholds for each weapon and cater to those individually, and in some cases, weapons just won't gain anything from it.

 

Also, i no longer feel that run speed up and swim speed up make enough of a difference to really matter. Run speed still seems more significant, and is very nice when combined with weapons that retain a lot of movement speed while firing, the n-zap is a good example, but swim speed is just such a tiny benefit. With no real data to back it up, i can say that i feel like i can maneuver more precisely and accelerate more quickly when using swim speed up, but i do not feel like my maximum speed is increased by any noticeable degree. (btw, neither swim speed up or run speed up affect the rollers' momentum during the held attack.)

 

Of the three ammo buffs, ink saver main seems to have the most noticeable impact, but i still prefer using ink recovery.

 

Given a lot of the details up top about damage ups, defense up also seems more useful now, it really throws those strats off. (Also the dummies in the training mode are clearly meant to be defense up mains, not subs as i think i had initially believed.)

 

I think ink resistance kinda sucks now, after the nerf.

 

Ninja squid is still awesome, despite the nerf.

 

Quick respawn is hugely undervalued. If you die 6 times in a match, one quick respawn main is saving you 40 seconds of down time. In a game with 3-5 minute matches, that is huge.

 

Special charge up is probably the all-around mvp of the skills though, it should probably basically always be in your build, and i think special saver is pretty valuable too. (Tenacity, imo, just doesn't really do enough to compare to either of those.)

 

The are other skills that have proven very useful, such as special duration up and bomb throw, that should be factored into focused builds, but are hard to work into generalized builds because they're so situational. (Each of the two named do basically nothing for certain supers and sub weapons.)

 

I don't really have any opinions about the super jump skills because i've basically stopped using super jump in the game aside from manic end-game tower pushes in ranked. Super jumps are just so unsafe, even with the stealth jump, teams never really ever try to make room for their allies to move in. (Though if they do, take advantage of it, of course.)

 

I feel like the meta will probably swing back to super jumps pretty hard once ranked parties are up though, a communicative team could probably abuse the super jump mechanic pretty intensely. (A build with a fast super jump and recon could theoretically be crazy useful in a voice-chatting ranked group. Have somebody return to spawn to check on enemy positions and then go group up with team mates.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks so much for all that info dude, you put a ton of work into that. Is there some kind of spreadsheet that you're putting all your observations into? I haven't really concentrated on making a good build, mostly because I'm still unsure how abilities affect my play exactly, and felt like most bonuses aren't significant. I definitely do agree that special charge up is one of the most powerful abilities though. Also, how did you come up with that 40 seconds saved from 6 deaths? That seems like quite a big deal, I was under the impression that it takes about 5-10 seconds to respawn normally, and you're suggesting that quick respawn is saving almost 7 seconds per death.

 

Do you guys think some kind of voice chat group for thumbs could be made when the patch hits? For when we team up in squad ranked mode.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can't take credit for all of it, a lot of it is informed by information gathered by a very active community of Splatoon players out on the internet in various places, but i do have around a half-dozen post-it notes with various original bits of research and scribbles on them. Heh.

 

I have all of the available weapons and have amassed a nearly complete collection of the gear currently in the game, and i've also played enough to get some sub skills onto all of them, so it's been pretty easy to mix and match things to poke around for interesting thresholds.

 

As for quick respawn, i thought it over and what i was saying didn't seem right, so i went and double checked it myself in a game just now. I was operating on the assumption that the default spawn timer was 10 seconds, but it's around 5-6. One quick respawn main drops it to around 3-4. So it's actually saving you something like 12 seconds on six deaths, which is still pretty okay, but i'm second guessing its place in my build now.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's cool, I am aware of places like squidboards where a lot of people are seriously looking into competitive viability and such, but it's nice to see your consolidated posts about the things you think are important. Personally I am playing the game somewhat seriously (B+ in ranked) but I'm just relying on mastering the weapons over focusing on minutiae with gear abilities. Somewhere down the line I will probably start paying attention more to gear abilities, but at this point I just wanna be staying fresh =P

 

I don't even have all the weapons yet, I kinda just bought the ones that interested me and even then I haven't used them all yet. There are definitely some weapons I own that I won't be touching much ever after trying them for a few rounds.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Gah! One bad roll and my whole plan just got ruined. The only way i'll be able to feasibly reroll this gear into something i want to use is with the rewards from a splatfest, but there's none on the horizon.

Anyways, I'm also B+ right now, kind of stuck in limbo there.

I'd like to say that i feel like i should be in the A ranks, but at least in 1v1 fights, i feel like i'm plateauing. (It's those damn dynamo rollers, i swear that's all it is!) It's hard to really know though, it's hard to know when you're so subject to the whims of your teammates. The teammate lottery is easily the part of this game i hate the most, being forced into a solo queue ranked mode with no control over who's watching your back. Very rare is the game where i feel like i have a team that understands any kind of coordinated tactics.

 

You know, i want to believe that nobody here needs to hear things like this, but i'm going to throw out some tips anyways:

 

Like, hey, in tower mode, i know people don't want to stay on the tower when their team has collapsed around them, it's a dangerous position and all that, but just... just try to ping it every couple seconds, just swim up there and touch it and back off again. Try to keep the ground around it painted as well as you can to give yourself space to work. Keep it pushed until your team can come back and be a defensive bulwark for whoever wants to sit up top.

 

In splatzones, one of the best things you can do is persistently and aggravatingly contest a hill from a safe vantage point. You don't need to seek out kills, you need to just keep the hill owned or contested. Your opponents will overextend while trying to push you away from the hill, and it will give you and your teammates plenty of opportunities to shut them down as they give up a safe posture.

 

You know, and in all modes, watch your map, have map awareness, look out for the tell-tale path of ink that reveals somebody trying to flank you.

 

And like, here's some kind of Halo 101 stuff that i think is variously applicable in Splatoon: My golden rule playing Halo was "don't chase" because there is never not an ambush lying in wait for you, every corner is a trap. I used to play team doubles a lot, and the rule of the day was to coordinate fire on one target to remove one of the opponents quickly and turn the dynamic into a nearly impossible 2v1 for the remainder. In response to exchanges like this, the person taking fire generally wants to take a few steps back and play a little more defensively, while the person not taking fire can take up a more aggressive posture. You would switch roles with your partner accordingly, whoever is taking fire backs off. The idea is that the person who is injured will be a highly tempting target that their opponents will want to chase after, and that invariably ends with them overextending and getting flanked and killed by the injured person's ally.

 

It doesn't work completely for Splatoon, because the objective is never just to get more kills, there's always some piece of the environment that you need to control, but a lot of the principles hold true. Overextending into enemy terrain puts you at a terrible disadvantage with severely restricted movement and potential ambushes literally all around you, but in Splatoon, you have to put yourself in those situations to win. So you try to provoke a response by poking and prodding at the various corners of the map as you move forward, you try to be aware of those dangerous sightlines that you can be attacked at range from, and when you find a fight, it's super nice to have somebody to step in and cover you as you wind back towards more advantageous footing. (You know, I would even equate hiding in ink with moving slowly to evade motion detection in Halo, some of that stuff even feels similar to me. Edit: It occurred to me later that i've completely ignored how Halo's own map control dynamics, the fight for power weapon spawns, similarly forces you into risky positions and confrontations with enemies, so there's probably even less of a difference than i'm asserting here.)


It's obviously on the whole a very different game, but the primary point i'm striving for is that i think there are some tremendously good shooter fundamentals in Splatoon, and i'm just itching for the day i'll be able to get into a coordinated party playlist for ranked.

 

Hey, but who knows? Maybe ranked parties will be a total shit show.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I went into Splatoon as someone who never played a lot of shooters and thus don't really know much about the finer details of tactics in such games. But, I actually saw Splatoon a little as a Lords Management game in third person, on a very micro scale. You've got 30 seconds of a laning phase where you push out three lanes (most maps quite distinctly have three lanes from the starting area), a few skirmishes near the centre, then from there you receive your ulti and team fights begin to happen. The principles of Lords Management games such as not overextending still apply as you said, and you can even TP in Splatoon, which usually isn't a thing in shooters, but is a staple in Lords Management. The different weapon loadouts are also suited to carry roles (high focus on splatting, e.g. seeker, inkzooka and killer wail) and support roles (e.g. squid beakon, splash wall, echolocator).

 

One thing I'd like to mention as sort of an addition to the general tips to players you've listed and also relevant to 2v1 scenarios: something that you can do when you are in a 2v1 situation in Splatoon is to shoot at your ally if they are under fire, and you are out of range of the enemy. Standing in enemy ink makes you take residual damage, and enemy fire sprays ink all around you, making it hard to escape. Shooting at your ally gives them a path of your colour ink for them to retreat through quickly, allowing you both to re-position safely, and reduces the residual damage they take from standing in the enemy ink.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've never really considered the loadouts and stuff nearly as deeply or taken it nearly that, or even the strategy, but I've still been spending a lot of time with the game (and doing quite well), though I mostly just play unranked games. This is the first shooter i've sent any appreciable amount of time with since Modern Warfare 2. Mostly i just use the starting weapon since it has great area coverage and comes with a bubbler, which is all the strategy i need for confrontations. 

 

Is the general consensus that the motion controls are the way to play? I didn't use them for a while, but i gave them another shot and after that I never looked back, its such a good idea. Feels great and adds precision by having both fine and coarse horizontal aim.

 

e: also, wrt buffs, the most important consideration for me with the clothing is how it looks, not its base buff. Fashion squids.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I went into Splatoon as someone who never played a lot of shooters and thus don't really know much about the finer details of tactics in such games. But, I actually saw Splatoon a little as a Lords Management game in third person, on a very micro scale. You've got 30 seconds of a laning phase where you push out three lanes (most maps quite distinctly have three lanes from the starting area), a few skirmishes near the centre, then from there you receive your ulti and team fights begin to happen. The principles of Lords Management games such as not overextending still apply as you said, and you can even TP in Splatoon, which usually isn't a thing in shooters, but is a staple in Lords Management. The different weapon loadouts are also suited to carry roles (high focus on splatting, e.g. seeker, inkzooka and killer wail) and support roles (e.g. squid beakon, splash wall, echolocator).

 

One thing I'd like to mention as sort of an addition to the general tips to players you've listed and also relevant to 2v1 scenarios: something that you can do when you are in a 2v1 situation in Splatoon is to shoot at your ally if they are under fire, and you are out of range of the enemy. Standing in enemy ink makes you take residual damage, and enemy fire sprays ink all around you, making it hard to escape. Shooting at your ally gives them a path of your colour ink for them to retreat through quickly, allowing you both to re-position safely, and reduces the residual damage they take from standing in the enemy ink.

 

I have actually said the words "Splatoon is basically Dota" to a friend as shorthand for how matches play out, i agree with all the odd parallels you're pointing out here. I tend to equate fighting on controlled ground as being akin to fighting under a friendly tower or near a friendly creep wave. Speaking practically, i'm not immediately sure there's a whole lot to take from it in terms of strategy and tactics, but they're fun comparisons to make. That said, in turf war, one of the best responses to a team with dangerous amounts of momentum is to play out something akin to a split push, and i've definitely become very wary of that point in every match where everybody's getting their supers online for the first time, because whoever gets the upper hand on that initial exchange of supers is likely going to control the pace for a large portion of the match.

 

As for that second thing... I feel like i've probably accomplished that as a general result of how i play, whenever i go into a fight i try to give myself as much ground as i possibly can, and that usually ends up giving whoever's already there more safe ground as well, but i've never actually considered purposefully laying down an escape option for an ally. I guess because i can't really communicate to them that's what i'm doing, but i know i'd love to have somebody do that for me, and i think i'll probably start doing that for teammates.

 

Is the general consensus that the motion controls are the way to play? I didn't use them for a while, but i gave them another shot and after that I never looked back, its such a good idea. Feels great and adds precision by having both fine and coarse horizontal aim.

 

I can't imagine playing this game without the motion control, there isn't really any aim sticky going on with dual analog as far as i can tell, and you need precision for the shooters and the chargers. You also need the motion control for bunny hopping hijinx as well, which is very common in the higher ranks.

 

e: also, wrt buffs, the most important consideration for me with the clothing is how it looks, not its base buff. Fashion squids.

 

I've gone as far as choosing clothing based on brand as well... So i can have better odds for getting what i want when i reroll. (Brands weight clothing towards certain sub skill rolls!)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I was walking home today and saw this! I guess it's an official thing they're doing across Canada on specific days: https://www.nintendo.com/en_CA/whatsnew/detail/bKBn27m8ZtI1zW9puuy_Zk1U7bj_T3kj

 

RYaMf0a.jpg

 

MmdG8sH.jpg

 

I heard that they were doing those in the US, but i hadn't heard that it was happening in Canada too.

Also: The major august update will apparently bring with it more balance updates.

So right now, all of the supers take 180 terrain points to become active. After the upcoming update, the killer wail will require 160, the echolocator will require 200, and the inkzooka will require 220. I agree with the killer wail buff and the considerable inkzooka nerf, but i'm not sure about the echolocator, i don't think it deserves that nerf. It's very good, but i'd argue that many of the other supers are still way more significant. The inkzooka had it coming though, i think that thing is the reason that the tentatek splattershot is one of the most dominant weapons in the game. (This might inadvertently make the E-Liter 3k and the Dynamo Rollers even more dominant.)

 

Also, apparently special charge up and tenacity both have not been functioning correctly, so that's being fixed. I'm very curious to see if special charge up will seem as significant after the update. (It wasn't calculating properly, i guess.) Splash Wall and Inkstrike are also receiving minor fixes.

 

A large number of the maps are being retooled for their gametype variants, the blocks and grates that appear to shuffle things around for each mode, but urchin underpass is being significantly reworked as a matter of level geoemetry, and that is a move i think is a super weird precedent and highly unnecessary. (They're opening up all the choke points, expanding the sniper nests, and adding more cover in the map center.) Urchin Underpass has its detractors, but it's by and large one of the more well liked maps in the game. It's nowhere near as controversial as Port Mackerel has been, why isn't that being retooled?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The August update hits today! Would anyone like to play Squad battles together? If we get enough people (not necessarily from this forum, invite your friends!) we could try to play a custom lobby too. I'll probably be on quite late for Americans, since I'm in Australia. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So they added four new battle themes, they're all pretty great.

 

The new weapons are super interesting and very different, they're going to create some weird new dynamics in the meta, i think. The paint bucket is proving to be a real asshole to fight against, especially. It seemingly suffers no damage penalty during fall-off at max range, so it has a massive advantage with higher elevations or when firing over obstacles. The splatling gun, on the other hand, follows the charger archetype relatively closely, but with a burst of weapons fire instead of a single shot. Terrific range and accuracy, and you retain a good deal of movement speed while charging and firing. (Longer charges make for longer bursts of weapons fire, naturally.)

 

Played a few hours in the doubles pool for squad battles and made pretty steady progress in ranking. Death to the team lottery!

 

Saw an inkling with a branded Famitsu costume and got myself the hat from the Ika Musume set.

 

I hate, hate, hate the redesigned Urchin Underpass. It's way too extensive of an overhaul, it doesn't feel like the same map at all. They took a straightforward and fiercely competitive map and made it wildly convoluted with tons of messy obstructions and elevation changes. Maybe my mind will be changed with further play, but where i'm standing, i think they've ruined one of the best maps in the game.
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Saw an inkling with a branded Famitsu costume and got myself the hat from the Ika Musume set.

 

Careful not to take off that hat...

 

ikaworried.png

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

SPLATOON!

 

After one Saturday where I think I (our team) won one or two of three dozen ranked matches, I was ready to throw this dumb game out the window. I don't know how to explain it except maybe I was really bad. Even still, though, at the C level, you wouldn't think one turd could drag down a whole team so effectively. And I'm not THAT bad - I had managed to climb to a B rank. Nothing crazy, but at least better than an empty fourth slot.

 

Anyway, there's a great roundup of Splatoon stuff on Metafilter and I dove (sploosh) into some of those links and came back fresh for the latest Splatfest, which was pretty fun! The team-making system seems a bit bonkers - I (lvl 17) would routinely get paired with a lvl 6, maybe a lvl 20 and a 25, and our rag-tag crew would be put up against four mid-20s players. It was hard to make sense of. But I grinded away at that Splatfest level and at a few clothes options and really improved my navigation and level-knowledge skills. I still can't aim at opponents to save my life, but that's less important in Turf War than in ranked matches, I guess.

 

The game still needs a "MUTE MUSIC" option, and I can't shake the feeling that chasing Splatoon clothing perks is not a great use of my time, but boy oh boy has Nintendo got that "just one more round" juju on lockdown. And man is it satisfying when you can pop a handful of dudes trying to make their way up the ramps of your Moray Towers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now