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I just played some more yesterday, my first time in a bit, and first time with the new stuff. New music is, much like the old music, great. New weapons seem cool but after messing around with a few I went back to my trusty old splattershot jr. its the first weapon in the game and i still find it the most effective. This game is still mad fun, I've still only played the base mode though, never tried ranked or any of the new stuff.

 

FWIW for team making and levels, I haven't noticed that player level really makes much of a difference, it seems pretty balanced with respect to that.

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That last Splatfest went to the Marshmallows. Another loss for me, as i sided with the Hot Dogs.

 

So i am going to say that i have, broadly, had increasingly few problems with Splatoon. I think most of what Nintendo is doing to the game is a step in the right direction, but i think the Urchin Underpass rework has kind of been a disaster and makes me super wary of any other big map reworks they have planned. The map is even more prone to stomps than before, and it has completely lost its simple, competitive flow.

 

I still think Dynamo Rollers need to be nerfed.

 

There's also been a lot of talk in around Splatoon's emerging community of teams getting organized and tournaments being planned. I'm very curious to see what "competitive" Splatoon would look like.

 

 

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.

 

Player level really doesn't mean anything, It just tells you roughly how much they've played, not how good they are.

 

As for the repeated losses in ranked, and especially in the case of ranked where people have to at least kind of know what they're doing to get as far as a B rank, i think it just shows how much Splatoon is a design built to reward coordination and teamwork, while not really doing anything to facilitate it. I tend towards feeling that Nintendo made the right choice in not having voice chat, especially having just played a few particularly toxic matches of Dota 2, but they at least needed a more diverse array of pings and barks to allow people to communicate with eachother. If your team isn't gelling, if they aren't just innately all on the same page, it's just not going to happen, that win isn't going to happen.

It's not hopeless though, you can help things along by acknowledging that you're part of a team and setting out to actively try to be less of a lone wolf. Try to watch your teammate's back, coordinate fire with them, go for flanking maneuvers, create opportunities for them to escape or approach with explosives and covering fire. Or even just persistently harass the objectives, you don't always need decisive plays and you don't need to be the hero, momentum is real. Constantly contest the hill in splat zone from a safe vantage point or keep the tower pushed in tower control. (Dive up on that thing, back off for safety, go climb back on it. Keep moving, but keep it pushed until friends show back up to help.) You might end up with a bad KDR, but you might also still be the one that won the match.

 

Also, i encourage giving squad battles a shot if you can get some friends on an external voice chat channel. Chaining supers during a tower push is the most amazingly awful thing you can do to somebody in Splatoon. Do it, you'll feel great.

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I don't feel the same way about Urchin Underpass. I feel the narrow pathways before led to the overcentralisation of certain weapons and made it very difficult to leave your base once you have been pushed back. The new Urchin Underpass opens up the main entrance to your base, but reworks the central area so that there is more cover available. I hate the dynamo roller as much as anyone, though. Its range definitely needs to be nerfed, or maybe reduce its effectiveness (e.g. more paint scatter leading to less 1-hit splats) when splashing from a high ground. 

 

I played in a squad with Patricia from Kotaku not too long ago, and while it is definitely better than random squads, using skype or another voice chat software would have been really beneficial. 

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Blowing that main entrance into each base wide open and filling it with tons of cover seems like it's just made it harder to defend and easier for enemies to get in. Every Turf War match i've played on the new Urchin Underpass has ended in a shutout for one team or the other, literally every single one, there have been no close games. That does not feel to me like the changes are working as intended.

 

Charger players seem really salty about the changes too, i guess. There's no good sight lines for them anymore.

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Charger definitely doesn't seem like a good match for Urchin Underpass, before or after the patch, in my opinion. Yesterday I played some turf war with the Slosher on Urchin and won the three times I played on it (also lost both games on Arowana), although not all of them were necessarily one-sided. I think it's just a matter of some weapons being better on some maps than others, and I am perfectly fine with that. Slosher and rollers seem to be the best on Urchin, whereas I struggled on Arowana with the bucket because I was getting shot at by chargers all over the place. 

 

In other news, Rainmaker mode finally has a date, which is Friday evening for US players and Saturday morning for EU players (I assume that means Saturday evening for Asian/Australasian players). It's a mode that requires players to carry the Rainmaker superweapon from the centre of the map to the enemy base. It looks like it replaces your weapon with an inzooka-like weapon, and you are unable to superjump while carrying it. It looks like you can't drop it unless you are splatted, at which point the Rainmaker drops and a shield forms around it, which needs to be destroyed before another player can carry it.

 

Splat Zones is still my favourite ranked mode because it is more in line with how I enjoy playing the game; i.e. covering the ground with ink, but I'll definitely be giving this mode a go this weekend.

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I want to get back into this. I fell off it after I had a long ass losing streak and other releases took me away from it.

Is there now an easier way to reroll your gear, or do you still have to rely on RNG to get what you need?

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I think there is a way of rerolling that doesn't use sea shells or your coins, that relies on just force-quitting the game when you get something you don't like? Not sure exactly how it works and I don't intend on ever using it. I've gotten pretty lucky with my rerolls. I have my perfect shoes right now (ink resistance + 3 swim speed up). I fell back down to A- from A after a disastrous quad-squad session where every single opposing team bar one was S/S+. I think I want to try to buckle down this weekend to reach A+.

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It took me 22 tries but I rolled perfect shoes. It's such s good game! I do have a problem with the weapon options though, the standard tentatek splattershot with the inkzooka feels like the perfect load out.

I like the "shotgun" too, but it's a very high risk gun that rewards perfect aim, and punishes slight misses. Never quite got good enough to use it.

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PSA: splatoon.nintendo.net is now available in English! And is also apparently officially called SplatNet. This site, which has been available for several months now in Japanese, shows you which of your friends are online, what the current and next 2 map rotations will be, as well as a weekly ranking among your friends. It also shows you their most recent gear loadouts, levels and ranks, and allows you to set a play-date with your friends and can be linked to a twitter account. Pretty handy!

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It's Splatfest time again. I haven't played since two Splatfests ago, and was having a good night playing regular and ranked matches when the splatfest dropped in, and now uh oh everyone's really good.

 

The warehouse level seems to be particularly cruel - in most of my matches, one team has almost crushed the other.

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I bought a Wii U today and had it hooked up and updated just in time for Splatfest to start. Mind you, never played Splatoon before, had NO idea what Splatfest was. But whatever, I prefer car travel so that was as good a reason as any to spend my opening levels in the game getting WRECKT. But it's fun. The controls were really weird to adjust to. I hated the motion control for up and down, then hated the right-stick for looking even more because its sensitivity is unwieldy (even when adjusting it) so I went back to motion.

 

Then the servers went down, I guess. Which is fine, I have work in the morning and there's no way I'm gonna be like "oh whoops it's 2am" again in my life.

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I bought a Wii U today and had it hooked up and updated just in time for Splatfest to start. Mind you, never played Splatoon before, had NO idea what Splatfest was. But whatever, I prefer car travel so that was as good a reason as any to spend my opening levels in the game getting WRECKT. But it's fun. The controls were really weird to adjust to. I hated the motion control for up and down, then hated the right-stick for looking even more because its sensitivity is unwieldy (even when adjusting it) so I went back to motion.

 

Then the servers went down, I guess. Which is fine, I have work in the morning and there's no way I'm gonna be like "oh whoops it's 2am" again in my life.

 

The motion control is great once you make that adjustment, you'll feel like you're playing a PC shooter. Pro-tip: Get used to twisting the pad left and right so you can have some quick horizontal fine-tuning in fights as well. The right stick should be used for navigation and broadly reorienting yourself mid-fight. There's no aim sticky in Splatoon, relying on the stick is a much harder way to play.

 

I didn't even realize another splatfest was going on, i'll have to play tomorrow before it finishes up.

General summary of splatfest: It's an intermittent faction metagame where you have a chance to earn super snails based on how many points you earned for your faction and whether or not your faction actually won. Other modes, like ranked parties, are suspended during splatfests. Super snails are then used to upgrade 1 and 2 star gear into 3 star gear, and re-roll sub skills on that gear. (Which you can only do once a piece of gear is maxed out on slots and experience.)

 

And yeah, connectivity tends to crap itself during splatfests.

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@henroid: if you want to get up to speed real quick, someone put up a really good post on Metafilter.

 

How do you guys spend your time in Splatoon?

 

I used to stick mainly to regular battles, but the task of juggling ground coverage and fighting off kids/squids got kind of aggravating, and now that I know the maps better I'm finding the ranked game modes much more exciting, offering a lot more of those interesting moments that make online shooters worthwhile. Wish I were better at it, though, because it's a real bummer seeing that ranking slide down.

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I just started playing Splatoon yesterday, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm not a huge fan of competitive multiplayer, but the way that the games seem pretty low-pressure (I'm not at level 10 yet, and haven't unlocked the ranked mode) yet are really fun. Any time I've played online FPS games I'd inevitably get frustrated by how often I would die without really learning anything. Here, there are things to do as each match starts, and while I will still get killed, it doesn't feel as bad if I've helped to mark territory. It's incredible how, over the matches that I've played, even with a big range in levels of the combatants, everything has felt so even. I kind of wish that I could play this with some friends online, the battles would benefit from voice chat (but only with people you know/trust). The wide variety of weapons is pretty intimidating, but the first weapon is pretty solid, especially for a new player. PRETTY FUN. Thanks for the links in this thread, they've been helpful!

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@TangoCharlie: I spend 90% of my time in ranked mode, since I want to make a serious effort at hitting S/S+. I'm currently in A-, though I have spent a lot of time in A. I'll play turf wars to wind down after an intense ranked session, or maybe even warm up for ranked if I haven't played in a couple of weeks. 

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Thanks for the link Tango but I'll just play the game straight-up.

 

I was able to get more time with the game tonight than my first, I think, and have fallen in love with the Ink Roller was a weapon. It sorta encompasses the theory of how shotguns work in shooting games, which are my favorite. And it is DAMN good at that role. The only thing I hate is people who execute a pretty genius move in combat; splat the ground around me, which makes me move slow, then they have all the time in the world to nail me. One dude from Japan (maybe? he had the characters in his name) was just... he excelled at it. Blew me away.

 

I unlocked access to a Nintendo zapper for a weapon choice. Didn't buy it yet.

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The only time I find myself going "oh come on," which is my most mild upset reaction to a video game, is if I have more than two matches in a row of getting beaten BADLY. But that doesn't happen too often. In general the game doesn't make me too upset even when I lose. Probably the two biggest things helping there are the time of individual matches, how fast it is to get into another match, and your level / gold progress is based on individual merit. I guess there's the whole thing where winning streaks multiply your earnings but still. Losing isn't THAT big of a deal.

 

This game is just really smart at how it handles itself. The community is great too. I love wandering around hubs and just seeing the incredible things people have in their Miiverse comments.

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I try to make sure all I care about is personal success. Teams can be all over the place. There are some players who are just insanely good, which is always the thing that puts me off online shooters. I don't have the time, nor patience to get that good!

 

Yeah the miiverse is amazing for Splatoon. So much great artwork. The way it's integrated into the game showcases how fantastic the miiverse idea is.

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So, on a serious note:

 

When I see people in the town square doing cool animations, is that something you can trigger manually or does it just depend on where you are facing / standing next to? Because there's people sitting on rails, or looking inside stores, etc. I wanna do that!

 

Also I learned to fear people who have Japanese symbols for names. They are SO GOOD at this game, ffs.

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Re: Japanese players: I've often entered ranked matches as the only person whose name ISN'T spelled out in Japanese characters (I'm on the West Coast, Canada, fwiw). I used to agree that the Japanese names were a reliable indicator of good-at-this-game, but I'm not so sure any more.

 

ANYWAY, did you guys notice that if you stand in the lobby (plaza?) and spin around to face "out" of the plaza, there's just a billion Splatoon Miiverse post billboards?

 

It looks like the Futurama episode where they enter the internet in VR and are attacked by flying ads.

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Regarding plaza animations: I think the plaza just has a bunch of kid location/animations and fills those in randomly with people from Miiverse. The only things that are individual are the Miiverse post and the clothes.

 

I've been playing solid for the last month since I finally got good internet out here in the country. Absolutely totally in love with this game and I rarely get into competitive multiplayer. Right now I'm around level 23 with a solid B in the rankings. I'm still totally in love so I think I'll see if I can't push that ranking up into the A levels.

 

I agree with TangoCharlie on Japanese players. I don't think there's necessarily any correlation of skill, just that there are a lot more of them. It was funny how much longer it took to get a game going on this latest splatfest just because Japanese players were excluded.

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