As a very low level casual who only ever dabbles in ranked, I can't stress how important depth and freedom of skill expression is for splatoon. I struggle ever using squid rolls or substrafing or ledge snaps properly, but there's fun in *trying*. I have the choice to spice up my own gameplay for better results, and it's rewarding when it works! I don't have to learn advanced techs because I'm not interested in reaching the skill level where they become necessary. Limiting what comp players can do because of theoretical matchups they shouldn't even be in is awful and only makes gameplay more stale. Restricting map layouts so that "sweaty players can't flank kids" does nothing but hurt the game. Being locked out in turf war maps like scorch gorge means the only way to push is hope for an unlikely wipe in your spawn or somehow winning fights in mid against more skilled players. Casuals can only run in and hope they win, or stay locked on the plat chucking bombs at each other. There's no other routes, no stealthing, no hopes of sneakily stealing turf. If you're pitted against players above your level, losing is not the issue. It's having nothing to do other than take fights you cannot win. It makes gameplay overall more mind-numbing and frustrating, as the winning team has no need to check flanks or keep tabs on the map. All chokepoints do is stall the pace of matches and being forced to hide until a special is over or a backline looks away. I love splatoon best when it's fast-paced and chaotic, and maps like mincemeat seem so deadset on having everything be as predictable as possible
Yeah. One time, my team got spawn-locked on Walleye but I noticed through observation that all four players would always push to engage so I used the flank route and waited for my teammates to push the front so I could flank them and I got a team wipe with a *Bloblobber*. A Bloblobber of all things. My favorite playstyle is to poke and prod the enemy defenses wherever and however I can until I break through and then just wreak havoc and flanks played a huge role in that. Thankfully, even with a lack of flanks, Tent and CJet still allow me to break through and cause chaos but it's nowhere near as fun as when I could do it with a Bloblobber.
There are three "main" arguments about the ways Splatoon is beginner-unfriendly, and I feel like the validity of those arguments varies wildly. The most valid, I feel, is the argument that Splatoon 3's customization is too slow to unlock, and punishes beginners during the phase they're most likely to drop the game. I have 400+ hours in S3 and I STILL don't have the splashtag titles and banners I want. Some players will literally never unlock the Lucky-Duck banners because their rng seed will require them to put more time into grinding the game than there are hours in the season. Splatoon 3 makes your custom Inkling feel like an uncustomized Loser for way longer than virtually every other shooter on the market. The second argument, which is largely not an issue in Splatoon (yet), but still important to acknowledge, is that complex, high-execution mechanics is disability and hardware-restrictive. Many players feel they can't get into competitive Smash because their controller prevents them from being able to consistently execute techniques that give a tangible advantage. Many casuals worried that this exact thing would be an issue with Squid Rolls because they played Splatoon 2 with drifting joycons that don't register flicks correctly. The third argument, the one that this video addresses, which is most understandable, is that learning Splatoon 3 is slow and its modes are very complex. TF2 can explain its game modes in one splash screen, and its most complex game mode is still less complex than frickin' Rainmaker. I would largely argue that TF2 has about the same level of depth as Splatoon, but it's more accessible to casual players because it does a better job Explaining itself. I've known friends who picked up Splatoon 3 who dropped it before even reaching level 20 because many of the map modes, rulesets, and weapons are just plain BADLY conveyed. I've seen commenters in YOUR videos react with comments like "I was today years old when I found out the penalty is half the points you scored". The learning curve on this game is steep and doesn't have enough grips, and I don't think the players making the argument that Nintendo should "reduce the complexity" are complaining about how high the skill ceiling is when they can't even get off the skill floor.
As a casual player (roughly 200 hours of play time, mostly Turf War), I love the idea of having more depth to the game. It seems easy at first, but you quickly realize how very much there is to learn. And that's worlds better than a game where I play it for 20 hours and I know everything there is to know about it. The pro Splatoon players such as Gem, Prochara and the likes, through their videos, show how I can improve. And I've seen their advice improve even my casual play, so I trust their experience.
DO YOU LIKE THE TINY AWFUL MAP DESIGN OF NU-MAHI MAHI?? - no DO YOU LIKE THE MID-GRINDER THAT IS SCORTCH GORGE WITH LITERALLY NO WAY OUT OF MID BUT A GRATE WALKWAY? - hell noooo WELL GOOD NEWS, WE COMBINED THE TWO IN THE NEW MAP, CRABSOMETHING! ITS MAHIS TINY SIZE COMBOED WITH A MEATGRINDER MID AND GRATE WALKWAYS WITH NO FLANKS OR COVER! - .... why has the map designer not lost their job?
I miss when the maps were bad in a fun and unique way, now they're just bad in a boring and limiting way and all share the same exact reasons for being bad.
Always had this theory that the map designers from before were let go for having differences with the director (also probably the reason why spl2 maps were a bit less gimmicky than spl1 maps)
as a casual who struggles with awareness (thanks adhd!) and has poor reflexes… i think depth is really important to keep the game accessible. otherwise it would be down to who can react faster which is a fight i’ll never win
The problem is that those who complain about a game's depth are looking at the wrong thing. Rather the *rate of progression* between skill levels is what should be looked at. If a S+ rank player uses various techniques to it's limit, it does not mean that said technique is something you encounter at B rank. The depth of how far you are in the game's mechanics change on skill level. Those who play casually have a different depth than those who play competitively and so if a game's depth is widened by more mechanics, it won't affect the casual player because they won't ever reach as deep into the game to be able to learn said thing. In my opinion, the rate of progression players experience is a good one. I never felt like I was overwhelmed when climbing from turf war, to various ranks. Competitive players shouldn't be nerfed to please casual players if they aren't going to fight meet each other anyway.
@@esmooth919 I admit that the matchmaking has it's problem, but I don't think shallowing the game's mechanics would fix that since better players would still win over less experienced players. I think only being able to party with those in your rank would be a good change. Although I personally haven't had that many problems with the matchmaking.
@@turtlefalcon5546 Pretty sure this has been said on another squid school episode Ranks themselves don't count towards how good you are on average, there's an invisible glicko rating that determines what players you match up with So that means if the S+ player is with C players, that means around the same glicko skill level at the time of calculation.
I will say personally when I tried out a friend's copy of Splatoon 2 casually after playing a little bit of Splatoon 3 the number of kits and weapons was really overwhelming to me. This is a different kind of depth than you're focusing about, but it was a form of depth that WAS pretty overwhelming to me as a casual player (compared to Splatoon 3 where because I got it day 1 everybody started out with Jrs and then slowly new weapons were added over time)
@@SquidSchool nah, I was on a fresh save, it was the opponent kits I had a problem with! also even though you unlock them over time it honestly doesn't help a ton because the Sheldon UI being a single linear list makes it hard to find / conceptualize the different options
@@nightpool42 that so real honestly. I say this as someone who watched splatoon 2 for at least serveral years before getting the game - it did not occur to me at all that in my first turf match ever i would be pitted against people using booyah bombs. imagine how confused a completely new player would be, especially if that's your first encounter with that special, nevermind the whole kit
I think Pokemon is really interesting here, as it's a super duper deep game, yet it's a very accessible game - the solo campaign can be breezed through with a basic understanding of type match-ups, and it's probably a fun casual game with friends. In fact, I see a lot of casual Pokemon players complaining that the game doesn't have enough depth, that it isn't difficult enough, that spamming the super effective move will let you breeze through the solo campaign. However, the solo campaign, and the competitive scene are two very different things, and the solo campaign doesn't teach you anything about competitive. That's the issue there - the fact that the transition between "casual solo play" and "competitive multiplayer" is brutally rough. Scarlet and Violet specifically only has like 6 Double Battles in the entire game - Doubles being the official Competitive format. Depth isn't the problem, it's the complete lack of learning tools in-game. Bad tutorialization is also a big problem with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, funnily enough.
great comparison!! i haven’t been keeping up with the s/v meta but pokémon has always had a surprising amount of depth. but even an experienced player can be predicted by a newer player, which i think makes it really rewarding to get into if you’re willing to be observant of what moves other players often make
As someone at around 1800-2000 XP, I do in fact, get matched up against super cracked teams like DNA or Last Resort on occasion Also yeah I watch Scott the Woz, I do know the Nokia Engage
I think the depth people are afraid of are things like Melee's L-cancelling, fake depth; there's never a point where you don't want to L-cancel, and it just serves to widen the skill gap.
I think some useful terminology related to this topic would be 'skill floor' and 'skill ceiling' which are terms I've used for years when discussing this stuff with friends. Skill floor would be how much it takes for a player to feel like they have a handle on things, to more or less consistently do what they intend to without too much clumsiness. And skill ceiling would be how far a player aiming for mastery can push things before they run into a wall of "there's not really anything more to learn/practice". Best case scenario is a game with a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, which I think Splatoon overall does pretty well with. A good recent-ish example from my own experiences that displays the differences between the terms would be the rework of Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter Rise. I first started playing Monster Hunter with the release of World, and after putting dozens of hours into the game I started trying out weapons that weren't Bow; I quickly fell in love with Hunting Horn. A thousand-ish hours later I had a lot more experience with every weapon in the game but Hunting Horn was definitely established as my main, and I felt like I was pretty good with it, but loved that I still had more I knew I could learn and practice to get even better. Then Rise comes out and I'm super hyped because of all the new moves they're showing off for Hunting Horn, and I soon learn that's because they reworked the weapon. Seems fair to me, Hunting Horn was a distinctly unpopular weapon in World for various reasons, and among those reasons would be a high skill floor for not a lot of personal damage, so I wasn't too upset that they decided to rework it. A couple hundred hours into playing Rise after release though and while I held to my reasoning for being fine with them reworking the weapon to begin with, I wasn't near as personally happy about the results of that rework. The rework needed to lower the skill floor of the weapon, and that they certainly managed, well if I might add. But it brutalized the skill ceiling of the weapon, because at a couple hundred hours into playing Rise I felt like I'd already slammed into that wall of not being able to further improve with it. I think reintroducing a higher skill ceiling is easily possible without ruining the new lower skill floor, by simply adding in some of the Encore moves it had in World; and its skill ceiling got fixed a bit with the expansion, but not as much as I'd like (ironically they did give it one of those encore moves back, but not all five, and that one could've easily been all five because they were dependent on a directional input and one button). I still think the rework was a good idea overall because to my knowledge it did greatly help the weapon's popularity, it just happened to leave those who already liked the weapon and were interested in pushing it to its limits kinda out in the cold, which was a fairly small number of players all things considered.
Fighting games are "hard" and tend to have a high skill ceiling, but Street Fighter 6 proves that complexity is not the main factor that keeps casual players away.
Part of what makes SF6 so great is that despite the simpler control scheme, its drive system adds far more options and depth than SFV. They successfully catered to both sides, and it’s so much more fun for it.
Honestly anyone who wants to actually learn a fighting game can learn to throw out a quarter circle and a DP input, with the exception of people who physically cannot do motion inputs for whatever reason, most people complaining about fighting game controls being "too hard" or "too complex" just doesn't want to invest the time into developing that skill. I guarantee if you give yourself 20 minutes of actual lab time learning how to do motions you will be able to do them consistently 99% of the time.
I feel like they tend to have a high skill floor. Like its infamous that noobs resort to button mashing. Also this is definitely going to piss of the entire fgc, but smash did the controls right. For example the shoryuken input is so counterintuitive. like a quarter circle from left/right(depending on which way you’re facing) to up + attack would’ve made way more sense for an attack that hits upwards.
Shoryuken isn’t imputed via quarter circle, it’s imputed via a Z input. I’d argue inputting up and an attack button would actually make the input harder since you can easily accidentally jump. Then there’s the issue of being able to input an invincible move in a singular frame, whilst this doesn’t apply to dps in newer street fighters, it’s still applies to other fighting games so I’ll bring it up. If you can activate an invincible move in one frame for no resource, your game no longer has frame traps since your opponent can just dp during any holes in your strings and knock you away. The only way I’ve seen one button dps balanced is by either using a cool-down system (eg gran blue vs) or tying one button inputs to meter usage (eg DNF Duel).
i know it's a z input, the quarter upwards input was my suggestion of what it should've been. accidental jumping is an issue if there wasn't an extra button on the arcade cabinet that the creators could've mapped jump to. and yeah fair enough about it being to op unless the move gets nerfed like added start up frames or something but im not a game designer to know whats the best approach to balance that. all i know is that the z input was too difficult to do consistently for me because often times i end up doing hadouken instead @@Okami_HD
The fewer playstyles concern actually is a problem in casual. I've played a very small amount of Splatoon 1, so I gravitated to painting edges and other less transversed areas so I could get my coverage down to be ready if someone did come in. I entered the global testfire and there were no areas to be able to get comfortable and have was just constantly getting splatted. And so I was turned away from wanting to get it and give the series another go
As someone who’s tried playing competitively in some games, and just plays casually now, reducing depth is not what I want. I just want fair, skill based matchmaking. A friend of mine recently got into Splatoon, they were new to the game and simply could not win any games. It was loss after loss which is very frustrating. I don’t know how exactly Splatoon does matchmaking, but it sure could use some more work to prevent stuff like that from happening.
I think it might be matching similar weapon classes The issue is that because of weapon classes, bamboo and e litre are the same thing, according to the game, which can lead to very unbalanced matchups
What I find that developers don't understand when they decide to remove mechanics to nerf competitive players is that they don't understand that being a competitive player doesn't only mean using mechanics in the game to their fullest, but being able to adapt really well to any situation. If Nintendo came out tomorrow and said that they're removing squid rolling, a competitive player would do a better job at not putting themselves in situations where they would need to squid roll bombs or inkjet shots than a less competitive player or casual player. Yeah it would take some getting used to not squid rolling up small ledges to get there quicker, but at that point it's a minor inconvenience for comp players. At that point developers would just be removing mechanics and dumbing down the game thinking casual players would have a leg up when in reality, they just removed something that made the game cool and fun.
@@LiEnby Would it? I can only think of one or two spots where you need it, and even then, I think you could still get by without it. Squid surges are certainly needed, but I'm not sure if squid rolls are.
For some reason, a lot of casual players think fun and competitive play are mutually exclusive. They think anything that makes competitive play better must also make a game less fun. They think playing competitively must come at the sacrifice of fun and those that do play comp do not have fun. I think these are the people insistent that depth shouldn't be added, as to them, depth means better for comp play, and therefor must mean less fun for everyone else. Gameplay additions that can make a game more fun for everyone AND more competitively deep are inconceivable to them. It's a strange way to think.
The problem with this game isn't "depth". That's what makes this game good. No, the real problem is the bullshxt matchamking that results in month-long losing streaks for some players.
Giving more options to players can very much make the experience better for casual players as well as competitive players. I was very much a casual Splatoon 1 player, but the wider map design the game often featured over the current one allowed me to come up with a strategy that was (as far as I knew) unique to myself. I would use one of the inkbrush kits (can't remember what it was called, but it had splat bomb and kracken). I used the brush to sneak behind enemy lines, used the bomb to draw the opponents' attention away from my teammates, and then used kracken to scatter the enemy team and allow my team to push forward. Nobody told me to do this; the options the game provided me with allowed me to figure this out on my own. Such a strategy would never work in Splatoon 3, save for a small selection of maps, which is such a shame.
I sometimes still see new players in my turf war lobbies due to splatoon 3 matchmaking. The sad thing is that I am more than good enough to easily splat them repeatedly, but not good enough to help get them a win when they are on my team. I just hope they won't drop the game
Yeah turf war matchmaking sucks tbh. not only by skill but also weapon composition on both teams. So many times have I gotten chargers /long range stacked on one team rather than an attempt to balance it out. Makes it worse that maps are overly restrictive and lacking flank options presumably to simply the game for casuals
9:34 yet another section of your videos that im going to refer to friends of mine because the amount of times/ways I've tried to explain this exact concept to different people is wild.
I see depth as a good thing for casual players, and better than adding breadth, as it provides competitive players with lots of options while being less overwhelming to casual players
This is why in MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV, new players have a icon that tells veteran players that player is inexperienced and is encouraged to instruct newer players how to play better at the game. Its why FFXIV is so comfortable to play.
as a splatoon and fighting game player, its so interesting seeing the overlap in philosophy and ideals despite tha gameplay being completely different.
i agree with the video and think another point for people not to join or leave very qickly could be the high amount of community members complaining and harping on things they percieve as wrong. This is not just competitive players and it's definetly not just Splatoon, but it has kept me from wanting to join any communities, because i'm scared that i won't be able to enjoy the game as there is always someone being in a bad mood or putting something down because it's imperfect. i understand complaining and frustration, just don't want it as a constant
to me, a monkey frontliner, the better maps are more fun to play on because its a lot easier for me to kill longer ranged opponents, whereas on the bad maps its less fun having to either get lucky with diving or get my special. not sure if im casual or competitive. I do play the game to be good at it, but also because its fun
On a similarish topic, I have heard the argument that developers should never listen to pro players because they aren't the main population of the game, and doing so would risk alienating the larger population of casual players. I still don't know how I feel about this, as it is an interesting point, but it would also be outrageous if Nintendo buffed tentamissiles because they did a pole of all the turf war only players and all of them said it didn't do anything because you can just dodge the missiles. Imagine if Nintendo removed substring because they were worried casual players wouldn't appreciate the extra depth.
@@dewroot5176 nope. They don't usually know what anarchy battles are. I think I heard somewhere most players never bother with anarchy and only play turf war. I don't know if this number is inflated because turf war is so bad that they quit before they even unlock anarchy, or if most players genuinely think that turf war is better.
@@buzzy4227 turf war is the casual mode, and the simplistic maps hamper the mode's ability to _do its job_ in that sense, anarchy is _kinda_ better, since the objective does the job of funneling players into an intense battle in mid
I'd argue that pro players alienating the rest of the playerbase is a very real possibility but I'm not saying this because I think pro players are selfish or anything like that. I think this'd happen because the opinions of competitive players are usually fairly consistent. You ask a handful of comp players, or even just players that pay attention to the comp scene about why ballpoint is good and you'll get very similar answers, most of which would be mentioning its strong main and inkjet buff that happened a while ago. These opinions are probably widely held because discussion about this type of thing always happens, and conclusions are reached with the input of multiple people. Overall, I think it's easier to understand what the smaller, competitive part of the playerbase would want because of this. It might be harder to gauge what the casual playerbase thinks because I'd imagine that people don't congregate to share or discuss ideas about the state of the game and it's meta as often, so there'll probably be more difference in what that part of the community wants. That's just my best guess on why the alienation would happen, at least.
@@what_did_you_expect I don't think its completely fair to say pro players alienate the rest player base. It's on the developers who get to choose who to listen to. But I totally get what you're saying, pro players definitely have a louder and more focused voice than casual players, so it's probably easier for a developer to only listen to them.
I think some people don't like certain moves with depth is because they might see them as unintended by the devs or that you can't often learn the techniques by experience and must discover them online or through some else who knows how to do it
Gem at it yet again with some of the best game analysis videos I've ever seen Seriously, this is legitimately the best way of putting this idea I've ever heard. I've heard it put many ways, but this is the only one of them which has no logical counterargument that could override all the points you made here - which you explained extremely well, I might add. I really hope people see this video, both because it completely deserves that attention and also because a lot of people need to hear what's being said here
Here's the problem with the skill based matchmaking: It doesn't apply to the game's most popular mode: Turf War. Anarchy Battle separate players by rank. A C rank player will never encounter a B rank player until they rank up. In Turf War, I (an S rank player, not S+) have gotten walloped by people who were using advanced techniques like sub strafing and sharking during a fight very effectively with people on my team who ended up with 0 splats and 8 deaths. There is clearly a discrepancy in skill there, which only gets worse during splatfests. I think they should add a separate ranked turf mode, like an anarchy open slot except it only ever does turf war. That would provide a good entry for beginners and a more fitting challenge for competitive players who want to mess around a little without crazy teammate RNG (I mean seriously, sometimes in turf war it feels like I have a disconnect when there are 3 other people on my team, which is frustrating, or I feel like I'm fighting 3 year olds, which is boring).
What I take from this video is, if this game had competent matchmaking that did its job, matched players accordingly based on their skill level and their team’s weapon comp, most of the complaints we hear from the casuals wouldn’t be happening. This games matchmaking has proven itself time and time again to be complete dogwater compared to the last 2 games, and it basically almost guarantees that little Timmy is gonna be matched with a player who is at least 20 levels higher than him! And frankly, this is just unacceptable!
Matchmaking might not have been ideally sophisticated in turf, but Splatoon 3's Splatlandian maps in the first year _prevent the game from getting away with_ the matchmaking's flaws.
For me, I've always found the "amount to learn" and the number of mechanics, both of which contribute to a game's depth, are more so the bigger turn offs for people starting a game casually or competitively. They contribute to a bigger knowledge barrier to entry. For instance in using Chess, it's easily accessible to new players because there's really only 6 pieces you have to know how they work. After that, the overwhelming majority of Chess' depth comes from *you* the players and what choices you make. Whereas if your depth comes from a mechanic or adding or taking away a mechanic, for instance let's say you add another new piece to Chess. Yes, technically you're adding depth to the game and the variety of plays and strategies you can employ, but you're also adding to the knowledge required to effectively play the game. *That,* I feel, is the bigger turn off.
Unfortunately, I dont believe Nintendo knows what they're doing with their "matchmaking" as my 8yo daughter's first game included 2 S+ players...she might have lost that one 😅
Having a healthy casual playerbase is super important. That was something Destiny 2 lost when they catered to Streamers by removing SBMM, and making the game more of a time sink. In my experience, if you only have sweaty high skill players a game’s playerbase becomes rather toxic.
This is especially important because of how many polished games are for profit -- the people who get your game, play it a bit, and then don't go too deep into it is such a big group that they're giving you the most money.
I personally watch this and I see a lot of what you are talking about..... However I can't shake that feeling that despite WANTING to be competitive I can't put time into it these days. I just don't know...
It's not like competitive players (you know the ones who put in lots of time and effort) wouldn't be better than casual players (who don't make as much of an effort) no matter the mechanics.
Thinking about your Melee vs Brawl comparison just reminds me of controversial Strive is in the Guilty Gear series. It did make the series more "accessible" on the surface for lower level players, but the skill ceiling looks so different and the best character is the one who breaks the conventions set by Strive and the problems it created. The most ironic part about all of this is that many of these more shallow games and the changes they've made to make the game more accesible (Strive, Brawl, etc.), it's often times that even casual players can start to take fault with these changes.
I mostly agree with this, particularly about game depth not really being an issue, but I kind of disagree with the notion that option of including randomness has to be one with 100% randomness for a 50/50 win rate. Any game with any kind of player agency can't be 100% random even if it has a lot of randomness in. Any action the player makes is not random (unless they are doing a Twitch meme or something). And I don't think the causal player needs to win 50% of the time to stay interested, they just need to know that they have a chance of winning. And knowing that their is the chance that it's possible for them to catch a lucky break due to randomness in a game adds to that perception. To take Smash Bros, I'd hazard to guess that most casual player never even encounter the competitive scene, and instead only interact with the game as it's initially presented, that is, with random items on, usually on asymmetric stages, and often with more than two players. In this situation, a higher skilled player is still more likely to win, but not as likely as they would be with all the random elements shaved off. To be honest, I don't play a lot of what are generally considered casual games (I originally thought usine Fall Guys as an example but I've never actually played it so can't really speak about it with any real knowledge). But I kind of think this discussion would be helped by examining games that are considered successful casual games, and comparing them to more competitive games like Splatoon.
Sorry, to clarify, I don't think Splatoon should be changed to have more random elements and thus be more casual friendly. I think the primary issue is that the aesthetics lead a lot of people to assume it's a casual game when it is truly a competitive game (including all the various scoring/reward mechanisms Splatoon has). I do kind of do wonder if it might make sense to add a new mode aimed at more casual players that does include more random elements in it though.
Sakurai definitely learned from what happened with Brawl, considering tripping was taken out of Wii U/3DS and Ultimate, and from what I hear Ultimate's roster is mostly the most balanced out of the entire series (aside from Steve, who has an exploit that makes him Brawl!Meta Knight busted, or even worse, and last I checked I think he might have actually been banned from tournament play. Personally I consider that a case of "and nothing of value was lost".). In terms of mechanical depth, I personally have one specific question for mechanics and design aspects that come first before any other considerations - does the mechanic/design aspect make the game more interesting to play and compete with? Probably secondary to that is that is utilizing the mechanic/design aspect fun to watch for spectators, and is it fun for competitive players? That would go a long way to help figure out what works and what doesn't for improving a game's depth.
Gem, you forgot to mention L-cancelling when you mentioned smash's "depth". there's real depth, like how you mentioned, and then there's "fake depth". l-cancelling, at anything less than the tippity top of players, is completely false-depth. it's 100% false depth, to add arbitrary inputs just to get to play the game at a mediocre bare minimum level(this is easily provable, by asking whether we should have L-cancelling on all attacks, grounded or not, or whether jumping should be 5 inputs, not 1. if L-cancelling is good, then more arbitrary inputs must be better, yes?). it's lack of buffer is also "added complexity" is also bullshit non-depth. there's a reason modern games have a buffer for their inputs, it's because it feels objectively horrible to have your inputs eaten because you did them just a little too early. expecting players to have to practice a tonne before they're even able to play the game, isn't engaging depth, it's dumb busywork, and a dumb barrier to entry. what you're not discussing is "how do we add depth, without adding busywork?". for that, I'd point to DI, as a great example of depth without busywork. it's a mechanic that adds a lot to smash bros, adds a lot of interaction where previously you're just getting hit, and doesn't add to the barrier of entry overmuch. DI is the sort of enjoyable mechanic you learn and express with more experience, without it being a massive barrier to entry when you start playing. games having depth is fine. casual players hear that though, and the concern of theirs that you're not hearing or talking about, like the melee player you were, is that you're thinking they're arguing against DI, when they're arguing against having no buffer, or arguing against L-cancelling.
I'd argue that we also need more recognition of the third, more in-between mindset (that I'm currently calling "challenger" until I'm told of something better, or that there's a proper name for it I'm unaware of) People who don't necessarily want to "win", but rather want to see how far they can go based on what playstyle comes most naturally to them; those who take a game more seriously than a "casual" player, but also aren't interested in the highly-technical stuff a "competitive" player would be studying.
2:20 i remember me and my dad went to this restaurant when i was younger and they gave you crayons with the kids menu so we tended to play tictactoe on the blank side of the menu paper (were we supposed to do that? probably not) and now i know tictactoe strategies
I feel like this doesn’t take into account there being a wait period to enter ranked matches, in which players have to miserably grind turf war, a mode that doesn’t have any form of matchmaking. You can be Lvl 1 and matched against a Lvl ⭐️43
Whenever I see players complain about how games having movement tech or attack canceling or some other complex mechanic, I think of stuff like Divekick or Nair, games with a single attack, and in the former's case, only requiring a single hit to land to decide a round, and how people will somehow STILL complain about "sweatlords ruining the game" There are just some people that want to complain more than they want to improve.
Yeah, well, it is incredibly hard to improve when you're constantly getting your ass handed to you with no way to determine what you did wrong. Sometimes, it's thru no fault of your own!
@@esmooth919 yeah, improving at ANYTHING is gonna be hard, man. Getting stomped or cheesed is inevitable when you're new, you're why it's cheese to begin with. As for what you're doing wrong, Honestly, it's generally better look at it as things that you can do later, focusing on the big "I lost because this hit me" or "I lost because I couldn't get past this" and then asking around on how that's beaten. Them's the breaks, and if you genuinely feel like you're unable to do so, then it's probably for the best to focus your attention on matters you feel you can get down instead. Also, "through no fault of your own" is a very dangerous mindset to have, you better think REAL hard and make DAMN sure that there was nothing you could have done to beat something, because otherwise it ends up hard in scrub territory, and a scrub won't ever improve.
Gem I want you to know that as I was listening to this video, I got in a 2v1 and won without trading thanks to a piece of advice you gave a year ago about managing aggro. I think it would be cool if you revisited some topics from the past that you stance might have changed on or you have gained new understanding of.
I have a question Given that Splatoon 3 is a game with very bad matchmaking, is it possible people use the argument of depth because they fear the competitive players will use those techniques to punish casuals even harder? In order words, do they oppose because they fear it?
Well, yes, that IS the argument they're trying to make I think. However, the argument gem is making is that depth gives players more OPTIONS. It's not always about mechanics and skill, it's also about knowledge and not making mistakes. You can be the best player with perfect aim and know how to do every tech in the book, but still loose because your opponent outplayed you, or you made one mistake that cost you the game. Depth makes games more fun, even for casual players, even if they're playing against better players. It's frustrating NOW, because Splatoon lost a lot of it's depth moving from 2 to 3, and players don't realize it. You can't outsmart someone, because you really only have a few limited options to choose from. That's how I see it.
@@tanookiesgrin9756 I agree with gem said. Just asking in parallel as another reason and more likely, since humans can be easily sway by fear, rather than logic
if there's one skill barrier in this game i would want to complain about, it's squeezer's tap shots. having to mash so fast just isn't healthy h-3 and l-3 are hard but they require learning like a lot of other weapons, i don't like them in salmon run but that's about it lmao
Yeah that is 100% an accessibility issue, it's data is just absurdly good to the point where it's accessibility concerns are pretty much the only reason why we don't see MORE of it which sucks
@@InvalidOS Frfr like it's mere existence invalidates so many weapons and it's just such a worse situation bc of how it works I just want forge pro to work 😭
Idk where to place myself in this game. Maybe im competitive. I've reached x rank (only twice in my life, but I ig that's more than most), and i have a decent amount of hours in all 3 games. But by the talk of the actual competitive players, im still seen as a more casual member of the community. My mechanical skill and decision making arent enough to put me into x rank constantly. Hell, i think i got in with luck on my end or just being just a bit better than my opponents (which i didn't know could happen in s rank). I also have no where near the mental capacity and capability to be mature enough to exist in a competitive environment (in any video, not just sploon). I think i just accept that i am just bad at the game and stop complaining about being rolled. I hate how the derank button has limited uses.
“If you need to be able to win the game for it to be fun for you, then you ARE competitive” Wow. That’s a paradigm-shifting line. I don’t consider myself interested in competitive Splatoon because I have no desire to attend tournaments or reach X rank or anything. Nonetheless, I get frustrated when I lose, and that means I’m competitive. Which means that if I want to enjoy the game casually, that’s something I have to learn how to do. I have to develop the right mindset for it, just the same way a competitive player has to have the right mindset to be able to ascend to the top.
Also I would like to add that I think there is a bit of emotional burn. And you kinda touched on it a bit. But gaming culture at large has a bully problem of casual players. The Splatoon community is actually extremely nice and kind compared to other competitive games but that’s unfortunately the exception not the rule. Not every single player in other competitive videos are mean obviously, but there is a culture of “pub stomping” and “teasing” from skilled players that make casual player feel like they have to fight for their life to have fun or just leave the game entirely. Where opinions are disregarded by “well you’re so low rank you don’t have you monitor on, so why should I care about what you have to say.” To being laughed at when asking for advice on how to be more competitive with “oh your [insert very low rank]. Just turn your brain on idiot and you’ll climb.” And overall just toxic “gamer” behavior that makes casual players on edge. Again, splatoon is actually really peaceful and it’s one of the nicest communities I’ve been in when it comes to competitive games and I hope to see more games have this energy. But ngl I was hesitant to try to engage with the community because I was already prepared to get bullied like I do elsewhere. And I can see that the people who are new or haven’t been able to quite shake their trauma from bullying, they are immediately defensive.
Now I just want to share my experience as a casual player a bit. I fully agree with the “if wins and losses effect you that much emotionally when playing a game, then you might have more of a competitive heart than you think”. I think I could be competitive if I had more time. Being a responsible adult is anti fun fr. But I, like you said, just adjust my mindset. When I run into people really good in one area if not all (because as you mentioned, splatoon is the one game I know where good players just end the game instantly) I see it as a game or challenge. For example on turf war if the enemy decides to spawn hold us because they are that good at splating us. Cool, that’s a challenge of me trying to be sneaky. How can I try to sneak by. It won’t do much, but it’s a new goal I give myself because winning isn’t on the table. Or I can try to practice my 1v1 ability. They are clearly good at combat so this is a perfect opportunity to practice that isn’t the simple dummies in the lobby. I make my own fun out of getting my but kicked. Sometimes I try to play as chaotically as possible to throw the good player for a loop and be either entertaining or a new challenge. I do this in fighting games especially. They studied the rules but I don’t know the rules so that can’t stop me! Feral bagger strategy go! I tend to get a laugh of them and throwing all care into the wind and just surviving is how I make me fun if sweating isn’t gonna get me anywhere.
Except open doesnt do skill based match making, and frequently will force you to fight the same loosing match over and over. This is a complaint of open matchmaking, not wishing for the game to be made shallower (please give us more fun maps splatoon)
Specifically open shouldn't force the same fight over and over :V it's fine it's not skill based, it's just constantly keeping the same group matched is awful
What did you think the power that you get in open came from? That's a Glicko power. There are other factors involved in matchmaking and sometimes it has to compromise between them, but it's there.
@@SquidSchool that's fair, it was ignorant of me to say it's not skill based. It's just the lack of moving along that's the issue. I shouldn't have spouted that nonsense
So I was very confused what number you were talking about as I've never seen a number that could correspond to that power. Turns out it's not a number that shows by default and I have to hold a button to see it. Which... is very strange design to hide that.
While I appreciate and support the intent of this video, I think it misses the point. As good as Splatoon's interface and story/training modes are, inconsistencies remain in the game design that can throw off new players. Why can I shoot a torpedo, but not a bomb? Why will a bomb take wildly different amounts of time to explode? Even smaller details for intermediate players feel inconsistent. Why does the same sub weapon see different whiting ink recovery on different weapons? Sure, we learn these details after enough time with the game, but we hold video games to a higher standard because interface interactions make a disproportionate impact on the game compared to board games and sports.
I think the disagreement comes from that some people don't agree that a game should be played competitively. Some people think it's wrong to play "a kids game" like that and see people who are better that them as a barrier to their own enjoyment
I don't know how Mario Kart 8 determines matchmaking, but if it's by the points you get at the end of a race, I've been flooded with so many points, even gaining points as low as 8th place, and basically have to intentionally get 12th place to lose just a miniscule amount of points, that I'm constantly being matched up with people who are mechanically strong at the game, snaking on straightaways, getting pretty much every shortcut, and just dominating the race. Played like a racing game I'm pretty good at it, but my mechanical skill is low. Sure, I can pull off a few tricks from time to time, but mostly I'm basic. Then there's the items. From first place all the way back to twelfth all I ever get is mushrooms while I'm constantly getting pegged with every attack item available, so I can't even play it like a battle game because I never get any weapons. It is impossible for me to get matched with people of my skill level, and I can't compete in any way, shape, or form. The game is not fun anymore. Splatoon 3 is kinda similar. For the PvP side, it's competitive, and if you're not winning then you're losing. Winning means you get to fiddle the sticks, press the buttons, and do stuff. Losing means you are met with a god-awful sound, and then get to sit there doing nothing for 5 seconds, only to shoot back out and immediately get punished with the god-awful sound and more waiting. It's not fun. In a competitive game there's going to be ups and downs, and how one comes to terms with that varies. I honestly don't know what two evenly matched teams would look like, because everyone can't be killing AND getting killed at the same time, and if you aren't doing one, you're going to feel like you're the other. I used to like Turf War more because the best games let me ignore everyone and just paint the ground, and I had fun doing it. This past season I've been doing more Anarchy, and it's not too bad, having the objectives give me focus, but it also amplifies the aggravation between killing and being killed. It's why I'd rather be playing Salmon Run. Opponents are CPU, so you aren't hurting anyone's feelings by killing them, and there's a secondary objective with egg collecting that really wouldn't effect the other side even if they were live players (think of the snatchers like opposing players collecting those eggs you aren't). In Splatoon 2 I loved Salmon Run because there was no reward for winning. Yes, technically there was, but losing still got you the same rewards only slower, and those rewards barely mattered to begin with. Splatoon 3 ruined that with the king salmonids and the scales. Filling the Salmonmeter is guaranteed whether you win or lose, but once filled you MUST win for a CHANCE for the king to spawn (just had 6 clears in a row with a full meter and no king, so fuck Nintendo right there), and even if you do get the king the odds of getting anything but bronze is lower than your chances of getting shot in the face and living (so fuck Nintendo again). Plus they added the shell out machine that requires endless amounts of Cash, but also took the cash option out of Salmon Run so now I'm forced to play PvP if I want any chance at the gambling machine's banner or title. I can often tell within the first 30-60 seconds of a match how it's going to go, and if it's clearly going poorly for me then it's suicide off spawn because I can't just put the controller down and walk away, because it'll comm error and give me a 10+ minute penalty timer where I can't play anymore, so instead I have to sit there and constantly suicide and get even more pissed off instead of being allowed to legally quit the match or otherwise walk away and calm down. And the reason I suicide is because there's no reward for losing. May sound counter-intuitive, but in Turf War you get 1 cash for every pint of turf inked, and so there is actually a reward for losing in Turf War, but in Anarchy all you get is a big bucket of "eat shit and die." As far as I can tell, the medals you get at the end of a match give you XP towards ranking up in a Series battle, but in Turf War and Anarchy Open they do nothing. So think about it, if I suck that bad, why would I want extra XP to rank up faster into match ups you have no business being in? And why have them in any other mode? They don't even track what medals you get anywhere in the game. They are literally meaningless. Maybe if medals game me cash instead (say 100 for silver and 25 for gold) then there'd be reason to keep trying even if I'm losing, because who knows? Even though I'm getting curb stomped I still have a chance at getting the gold medal for "popular target" and the 250 cash that goes with it; except you don't and it's meaningless so why bother trying?
I’m a casual player; I don’t want to invest time in being competitive and I’ve accepted that I’ll never be the best for it. But for crying out loud: DO. NOT. REMOVE. DEPTH. INTENTIONALLY. (After all, does Timmy really have a chance either way? How ‘bout anyone not in the top .01%? No? So stop ruining everyone’s fun over an illusion that you’ll enjoy a competitive point-and-click adventure game better!)
![Megan Thee Stallion - Roc Steady (feat. Flo Milli) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/HozPPyqW0dY/mqdefault.jpg)
As a very low level casual who only ever dabbles in ranked, I can't stress how important depth and freedom of skill expression is for splatoon. I struggle ever using squid rolls or substrafing or ledge snaps properly, but there's fun in *trying*. I have the choice to spice up my own gameplay for better results, and it's rewarding when it works! I don't have to learn advanced techs because I'm not interested in reaching the skill level where they become necessary. Limiting what comp players can do because of theoretical matchups they shouldn't even be in is awful and only makes gameplay more stale.
Restricting map layouts so that "sweaty players can't flank kids" does nothing but hurt the game. Being locked out in turf war maps like scorch gorge means the only way to push is hope for an unlikely wipe in your spawn or somehow winning fights in mid against more skilled players. Casuals can only run in and hope they win, or stay locked on the plat chucking bombs at each other. There's no other routes, no stealthing, no hopes of sneakily stealing turf. If you're pitted against players above your level, losing is not the issue. It's having nothing to do other than take fights you cannot win. It makes gameplay overall more mind-numbing and frustrating, as the winning team has no need to check flanks or keep tabs on the map. All chokepoints do is stall the pace of matches and being forced to hide until a special is over or a backline looks away. I love splatoon best when it's fast-paced and chaotic, and maps like mincemeat seem so deadset on having everything be as predictable as possible
I just want to be able to play creatively, and even Walleye Warehouse had more routes than the average Splatoon 3 map.
Yeah. One time, my team got spawn-locked on Walleye but I noticed through observation that all four players would always push to engage so I used the flank route and waited for my teammates to push the front so I could flank them and I got a team wipe with a *Bloblobber*. A Bloblobber of all things. My favorite playstyle is to poke and prod the enemy defenses wherever and however I can until I break through and then just wreak havoc and flanks played a huge role in that. Thankfully, even with a lack of flanks, Tent and CJet still allow me to break through and cause chaos but it's nowhere near as fun as when I could do it with a Bloblobber.
There are three "main" arguments about the ways Splatoon is beginner-unfriendly, and I feel like the validity of those arguments varies wildly.
The most valid, I feel, is the argument that Splatoon 3's customization is too slow to unlock, and punishes beginners during the phase they're most likely to drop the game. I have 400+ hours in S3 and I STILL don't have the splashtag titles and banners I want. Some players will literally never unlock the Lucky-Duck banners because their rng seed will require them to put more time into grinding the game than there are hours in the season. Splatoon 3 makes your custom Inkling feel like an uncustomized Loser for way longer than virtually every other shooter on the market.
The second argument, which is largely not an issue in Splatoon (yet), but still important to acknowledge, is that complex, high-execution mechanics is disability and hardware-restrictive. Many players feel they can't get into competitive Smash because their controller prevents them from being able to consistently execute techniques that give a tangible advantage. Many casuals worried that this exact thing would be an issue with Squid Rolls because they played Splatoon 2 with drifting joycons that don't register flicks correctly.
The third argument, the one that this video addresses, which is most understandable, is that learning Splatoon 3 is slow and its modes are very complex. TF2 can explain its game modes in one splash screen, and its most complex game mode is still less complex than frickin' Rainmaker. I would largely argue that TF2 has about the same level of depth as Splatoon, but it's more accessible to casual players because it does a better job Explaining itself. I've known friends who picked up Splatoon 3 who dropped it before even reaching level 20 because many of the map modes, rulesets, and weapons are just plain BADLY conveyed. I've seen commenters in YOUR videos react with comments like "I was today years old when I found out the penalty is half the points you scored". The learning curve on this game is steep and doesn't have enough grips, and I don't think the players making the argument that Nintendo should "reduce the complexity" are complaining about how high the skill ceiling is when they can't even get off the skill floor.
Lmao I have 2000 hours in Splatoon 2 and over 400h in Splat 3 and also didn't know that penalty is half your points
As a casual player (roughly 200 hours of play time, mostly Turf War), I love the idea of having more depth to the game. It seems easy at first, but you quickly realize how very much there is to learn. And that's worlds better than a game where I play it for 20 hours and I know everything there is to know about it. The pro Splatoon players such as Gem, Prochara and the likes, through their videos, show how I can improve. And I've seen their advice improve even my casual play, so I trust their experience.
daily reminder that we had objectively better versions of scorch and eeltail but the dev team intentionally changed them to their current state
DO YOU LIKE THE TINY AWFUL MAP DESIGN OF NU-MAHI MAHI?? - no
DO YOU LIKE THE MID-GRINDER THAT IS SCORTCH GORGE WITH LITERALLY NO WAY OUT OF MID BUT A GRATE WALKWAY? - hell noooo
WELL GOOD NEWS, WE COMBINED THE TWO IN THE NEW MAP, CRABSOMETHING! ITS MAHIS TINY SIZE COMBOED WITH A MEATGRINDER MID AND GRATE WALKWAYS WITH NO FLANKS OR COVER! - .... why has the map designer not lost their job?
no I think they got new ma designers
As someone who doesn’t like either maps, this makes me sad
I miss when the maps were bad in a fun and unique way, now they're just bad in a boring and limiting way and all share the same exact reasons for being bad.
Always had this theory that the map designers from before were let go for having differences with the director (also probably the reason why spl2 maps were a bit less gimmicky than spl1 maps)
I don’t want the old mahi back because I thought it was more competitively viable, I want it back because it was more fun
as a casual who struggles with awareness (thanks adhd!) and has poor reflexes… i think depth is really important to keep the game accessible. otherwise it would be down to who can react faster which is a fight i’ll never win
The problem is that those who complain about a game's depth are looking at the wrong thing. Rather the *rate of progression* between skill levels is what should be looked at. If a S+ rank player uses various techniques to it's limit, it does not mean that said technique is something you encounter at B rank. The depth of how far you are in the game's mechanics change on skill level. Those who play casually have a different depth than those who play competitively and so if a game's depth is widened by more mechanics, it won't affect the casual player because they won't ever reach as deep into the game to be able to learn said thing. In my opinion, the rate of progression players experience is a good one. I never felt like I was overwhelmed when climbing from turf war, to various ranks. Competitive players shouldn't be nerfed to please casual players if they aren't going to fight meet each other anyway.
I would believe your argument if the matchmaking wasn't trash.
@@esmooth919 I admit that the matchmaking has it's problem, but I don't think shallowing the game's mechanics would fix that since better players would still win over less experienced players. I think only being able to party with those in your rank would be a good change. Although I personally haven't had that many problems with the matchmaking.
@@esmooth919But the matchmaking isn’t so bad that a c rank player is going to be playing against someone in S+.
@@turtlefalcon5546someone could make a smurf account and turf war has that issue
@@turtlefalcon5546 Pretty sure this has been said on another squid school episode
Ranks themselves don't count towards how good you are on average, there's an invisible glicko rating that determines what players you match up with
So that means if the S+ player is with C players, that means around the same glicko skill level at the time of calculation.
I will say personally when I tried out a friend's copy of Splatoon 2 casually after playing a little bit of Splatoon 3 the number of kits and weapons was really overwhelming to me. This is a different kind of depth than you're focusing about, but it was a form of depth that WAS pretty overwhelming to me as a casual player (compared to Splatoon 3 where because I got it day 1 everybody started out with Jrs and then slowly new weapons were added over time)
Well that's why people unlock them slowly over time; playing on someone else's copy isn't intended play
@@SquidSchool nah, I was on a fresh save, it was the opponent kits I had a problem with! also even though you unlock them over time it honestly doesn't help a ton because the Sheldon UI being a single linear list makes it hard to find / conceptualize the different options
@@nightpool42 that so real honestly. I say this as someone who watched splatoon 2 for at least serveral years before getting the game - it did not occur to me at all that in my first turf match ever i would be pitted against people using booyah bombs. imagine how confused a completely new player would be, especially if that's your first encounter with that special, nevermind the whole kit
I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.
I think Pokemon is really interesting here, as it's a super duper deep game, yet it's a very accessible game - the solo campaign can be breezed through with a basic understanding of type match-ups, and it's probably a fun casual game with friends. In fact, I see a lot of casual Pokemon players complaining that the game doesn't have enough depth, that it isn't difficult enough, that spamming the super effective move will let you breeze through the solo campaign.
However, the solo campaign, and the competitive scene are two very different things, and the solo campaign doesn't teach you anything about competitive. That's the issue there - the fact that the transition between "casual solo play" and "competitive multiplayer" is brutally rough. Scarlet and Violet specifically only has like 6 Double Battles in the entire game - Doubles being the official Competitive format. Depth isn't the problem, it's the complete lack of learning tools in-game.
Bad tutorialization is also a big problem with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, funnily enough.
Honestly idk how they messed up so bad with the tutorials in xc2, the tutorials in xc1 and xc3 work just fine 😭
xc2 has been out for 6 years and it was only just discovered that you can mash like in 3 to get out of topple and launch faster
great comparison!! i haven’t been keeping up with the s/v meta but pokémon has always had a surprising amount of depth. but even an experienced player can be predicted by a newer player, which i think makes it really rewarding to get into if you’re willing to be observant of what moves other players often make
@bfpncsr3608 Jesus yall slow, I've been doing that for years!
@@bfpncsr3608 Wait what?! I didn't know that!
As someone at around 1800-2000 XP, I do in fact, get matched up against super cracked teams like DNA or Last Resort on occasion
Also yeah I watch Scott the Woz, I do know the Nokia Engage
I think the depth people are afraid of are things like Melee's L-cancelling, fake depth; there's never a point where you don't want to L-cancel, and it just serves to widen the skill gap.
That is a rather rare occurrence though, I'd say? I mean I agree that such "depth" isn't fun or interesting though.
I think some useful terminology related to this topic would be 'skill floor' and 'skill ceiling' which are terms I've used for years when discussing this stuff with friends. Skill floor would be how much it takes for a player to feel like they have a handle on things, to more or less consistently do what they intend to without too much clumsiness. And skill ceiling would be how far a player aiming for mastery can push things before they run into a wall of "there's not really anything more to learn/practice". Best case scenario is a game with a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, which I think Splatoon overall does pretty well with.
A good recent-ish example from my own experiences that displays the differences between the terms would be the rework of Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter Rise. I first started playing Monster Hunter with the release of World, and after putting dozens of hours into the game I started trying out weapons that weren't Bow; I quickly fell in love with Hunting Horn. A thousand-ish hours later I had a lot more experience with every weapon in the game but Hunting Horn was definitely established as my main, and I felt like I was pretty good with it, but loved that I still had more I knew I could learn and practice to get even better. Then Rise comes out and I'm super hyped because of all the new moves they're showing off for Hunting Horn, and I soon learn that's because they reworked the weapon. Seems fair to me, Hunting Horn was a distinctly unpopular weapon in World for various reasons, and among those reasons would be a high skill floor for not a lot of personal damage, so I wasn't too upset that they decided to rework it. A couple hundred hours into playing Rise after release though and while I held to my reasoning for being fine with them reworking the weapon to begin with, I wasn't near as personally happy about the results of that rework. The rework needed to lower the skill floor of the weapon, and that they certainly managed, well if I might add. But it brutalized the skill ceiling of the weapon, because at a couple hundred hours into playing Rise I felt like I'd already slammed into that wall of not being able to further improve with it. I think reintroducing a higher skill ceiling is easily possible without ruining the new lower skill floor, by simply adding in some of the Encore moves it had in World; and its skill ceiling got fixed a bit with the expansion, but not as much as I'd like (ironically they did give it one of those encore moves back, but not all five, and that one could've easily been all five because they were dependent on a directional input and one button). I still think the rework was a good idea overall because to my knowledge it did greatly help the weapon's popularity, it just happened to leave those who already liked the weapon and were interested in pushing it to its limits kinda out in the cold, which was a fairly small number of players all things considered.
Fighting games are "hard" and tend to have a high skill ceiling, but Street Fighter 6 proves that complexity is not the main factor that keeps casual players away.
Part of what makes SF6 so great is that despite the simpler control scheme, its drive system adds far more options and depth than SFV. They successfully catered to both sides, and it’s so much more fun for it.
Honestly anyone who wants to actually learn a fighting game can learn to throw out a quarter circle and a DP input, with the exception of people who physically cannot do motion inputs for whatever reason, most people complaining about fighting game controls being "too hard" or "too complex" just doesn't want to invest the time into developing that skill. I guarantee if you give yourself 20 minutes of actual lab time learning how to do motions you will be able to do them consistently 99% of the time.
I feel like they tend to have a high skill floor. Like its infamous that noobs resort to button mashing. Also this is definitely going to piss of the entire fgc, but smash did the controls right. For example the shoryuken input is so counterintuitive. like a quarter circle from left/right(depending on which way you’re facing) to up + attack would’ve made way more sense for an attack that hits upwards.
Shoryuken isn’t imputed via quarter circle, it’s imputed via a Z input. I’d argue inputting up and an attack button would actually make the input harder since you can easily accidentally jump. Then there’s the issue of being able to input an invincible move in a singular frame, whilst this doesn’t apply to dps in newer street fighters, it’s still applies to other fighting games so I’ll bring it up. If you can activate an invincible move in one frame for no resource, your game no longer has frame traps since your opponent can just dp during any holes in your strings and knock you away. The only way I’ve seen one button dps balanced is by either using a cool-down system (eg gran blue vs) or tying one button inputs to meter usage (eg DNF Duel).
i know it's a z input, the quarter upwards input was my suggestion of what it should've been. accidental jumping is an issue if there wasn't an extra button on the arcade cabinet that the creators could've mapped jump to. and yeah fair enough about it being to op unless the move gets nerfed like added start up frames or something but im not a game designer to know whats the best approach to balance that. all i know is that the z input was too difficult to do consistently for me because often times i end up doing hadouken instead @@Okami_HD
The fewer playstyles concern actually is a problem in casual.
I've played a very small amount of Splatoon 1, so I gravitated to painting edges and other less transversed areas so I could get my coverage down to be ready if someone did come in.
I entered the global testfire and there were no areas to be able to get comfortable and have was just constantly getting splatted.
And so I was turned away from wanting to get it and give the series another go
Apart from the really important life advice you've given, this is probably one of the most important videos for just about everyone in gaming to watch
As someone who’s tried playing competitively in some games, and just plays casually now, reducing depth is not what I want.
I just want fair, skill based matchmaking. A friend of mine recently got into Splatoon, they were new to the game and simply could not win any games. It was loss after loss which is very frustrating.
I don’t know how exactly Splatoon does matchmaking, but it sure could use some more work to prevent stuff like that from happening.
I think it might be matching similar weapon classes
The issue is that because of weapon classes, bamboo and e litre are the same thing, according to the game, which can lead to very unbalanced matchups
@@rubellite4480sure, but that's not a reason for a new player to lose consistently, while an experienced player does not
I like how crazy the movement gets at higher levels. Im not there yet, but it makes me excited to know that one day, I could be that good
What I find that developers don't understand when they decide to remove mechanics to nerf competitive players is that they don't understand that being a competitive player doesn't only mean using mechanics in the game to their fullest, but being able to adapt really well to any situation. If Nintendo came out tomorrow and said that they're removing squid rolling, a competitive player would do a better job at not putting themselves in situations where they would need to squid roll bombs or inkjet shots than a less competitive player or casual player. Yeah it would take some getting used to not squid rolling up small ledges to get there quicker, but at that point it's a minor inconvenience for comp players. At that point developers would just be removing mechanics and dumbing down the game thinking casual players would have a leg up when in reality, they just removed something that made the game cool and fun.
Removing squid rolling would make after alterna impossible ..
@@LiEnby Would it? I can only think of one or two spots where you need it, and even then, I think you could still get by without it.
Squid surges are certainly needed, but I'm not sure if squid rolls are.
For some reason, a lot of casual players think fun and competitive play are mutually exclusive. They think anything that makes competitive play better must also make a game less fun. They think playing competitively must come at the sacrifice of fun and those that do play comp do not have fun. I think these are the people insistent that depth shouldn't be added, as to them, depth means better for comp play, and therefor must mean less fun for everyone else. Gameplay additions that can make a game more fun for everyone AND more competitively deep are inconceivable to them. It's a strange way to think.
The problem with this game isn't "depth". That's what makes this game good.
No, the real problem is the bullshxt matchamking that results in month-long losing streaks for some players.
Giving more options to players can very much make the experience better for casual players as well as competitive players. I was very much a casual Splatoon 1 player, but the wider map design the game often featured over the current one allowed me to come up with a strategy that was (as far as I knew) unique to myself. I would use one of the inkbrush kits (can't remember what it was called, but it had splat bomb and kracken). I used the brush to sneak behind enemy lines, used the bomb to draw the opponents' attention away from my teammates, and then used kracken to scatter the enemy team and allow my team to push forward. Nobody told me to do this; the options the game provided me with allowed me to figure this out on my own. Such a strategy would never work in Splatoon 3, save for a small selection of maps, which is such a shame.
I sometimes still see new players in my turf war lobbies due to splatoon 3 matchmaking. The sad thing is that I am more than good enough to easily splat them repeatedly, but not good enough to help get them a win when they are on my team. I just hope they won't drop the game
Yeah turf war matchmaking sucks tbh. not only by skill but also weapon composition on both teams. So many times have I gotten chargers /long range stacked on one team rather than an attempt to balance it out. Makes it worse that maps are overly restrictive and lacking flank options presumably to simply the game for casuals
9:34 yet another section of your videos that im going to refer to friends of mine because the amount of times/ways I've tried to explain this exact concept to different people is wild.
Thanks for the game design advice, Gem.
I see depth as a good thing for casual players, and better than adding breadth, as it provides competitive players with lots of options while being less overwhelming to casual players
This is why in MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV, new players have a icon that tells veteran players that player is inexperienced and is encouraged to instruct newer players how to play better at the game.
Its why FFXIV is so comfortable to play.
as a splatoon and fighting game player, its so interesting seeing the overlap in philosophy and ideals despite tha gameplay being completely different.
i agree with the video and think another point for people not to join or leave very qickly could be the high amount of community members complaining and harping on things they percieve as wrong. This is not just competitive players and it's definetly not just Splatoon, but it has kept me from wanting to join any communities, because i'm scared that i won't be able to enjoy the game as there is always someone being in a bad mood or putting something down because it's imperfect. i understand complaining and frustration, just don't want it as a constant
WHOA!! 😱 I remember the N-gage! 🤯 What a blast from the past!
to me, a monkey frontliner, the better maps are more fun to play on because its a lot easier for me to kill longer ranged opponents, whereas on the bad maps its less fun having to either get lucky with diving or get my special. not sure if im casual or competitive. I do play the game to be good at it, but also because its fun
Beautifully stated video, fully agree that more depth can be beneficial for a game when it makes room for more options!
On a similarish topic, I have heard the argument that developers should never listen to pro players because they aren't the main population of the game, and doing so would risk alienating the larger population of casual players. I still don't know how I feel about this, as it is an interesting point, but it would also be outrageous if Nintendo buffed tentamissiles because they did a pole of all the turf war only players and all of them said it didn't do anything because you can just dodge the missiles. Imagine if Nintendo removed substring because they were worried casual players wouldn't appreciate the extra depth.
so casual players don't usually know what displacement is???
@@dewroot5176 nope. They don't usually know what anarchy battles are.
I think I heard somewhere most players never bother with anarchy and only play turf war. I don't know if this number is inflated because turf war is so bad that they quit before they even unlock anarchy, or if most players genuinely think that turf war is better.
@@buzzy4227 turf war is the casual mode, and the simplistic maps hamper the mode's ability to _do its job_
in that sense, anarchy is _kinda_ better, since the objective does the job of funneling players into an intense battle in mid
I'd argue that pro players alienating the rest of the playerbase is a very real possibility but I'm not saying this because I think pro players are selfish or anything like that.
I think this'd happen because the opinions of competitive players are usually fairly consistent. You ask a handful of comp players, or even just players that pay attention to the comp scene about why ballpoint is good and you'll get very similar answers, most of which would be mentioning its strong main and inkjet buff that happened a while ago.
These opinions are probably widely held because discussion about this type of thing always happens, and conclusions are reached with the input of multiple people.
Overall, I think it's easier to understand what the smaller, competitive part of the playerbase would want because of this.
It might be harder to gauge what the casual playerbase thinks because I'd imagine that people don't congregate to share or discuss ideas about the state of the game and it's meta as often, so there'll probably be more difference in what that part of the community wants.
That's just my best guess on why the alienation would happen, at least.
@@what_did_you_expect I don't think its completely fair to say pro players alienate the rest player base. It's on the developers who get to choose who to listen to. But I totally get what you're saying, pro players definitely have a louder and more focused voice than casual players, so it's probably easier for a developer to only listen to them.
I think some people don't like certain moves with depth is because they might see them as unintended by the devs or that you can't often learn the techniques by experience and must discover them online or through some else who knows how to do it
Gem at it yet again with some of the best game analysis videos I've ever seen
Seriously, this is legitimately the best way of putting this idea I've ever heard. I've heard it put many ways, but this is the only one of them which has no logical counterargument that could override all the points you made here - which you explained extremely well, I might add. I really hope people see this video, both because it completely deserves that attention and also because a lot of people need to hear what's being said here
Here's the problem with the skill based matchmaking: It doesn't apply to the game's most popular mode: Turf War.
Anarchy Battle separate players by rank. A C rank player will never encounter a B rank player until they rank up. In Turf War, I (an S rank player, not S+) have gotten walloped by people who were using advanced techniques like sub strafing and sharking during a fight very effectively with people on my team who ended up with 0 splats and 8 deaths. There is clearly a discrepancy in skill there, which only gets worse during splatfests.
I think they should add a separate ranked turf mode, like an anarchy open slot except it only ever does turf war. That would provide a good entry for beginners and a more fitting challenge for competitive players who want to mess around a little without crazy teammate RNG (I mean seriously, sometimes in turf war it feels like I have a disconnect when there are 3 other people on my team, which is frustrating, or I feel like I'm fighting 3 year olds, which is boring).
There is no Santa Claus, there is no Easter Bunny, and there are no tic tac toe influencers!
This is literally so true
He did it. He actually became more based
What I take from this video is, if this game had competent matchmaking that did its job, matched players accordingly based on their skill level and their team’s weapon comp, most of the complaints we hear from the casuals wouldn’t be happening.
This games matchmaking has proven itself time and time again to be complete dogwater compared to the last 2 games, and it basically almost guarantees that little Timmy is gonna be matched with a player who is at least 20 levels higher than him! And frankly, this is just unacceptable!
Matchmaking might not have been ideally sophisticated in turf, but Splatoon 3's Splatlandian maps in the first year _prevent the game from getting away with_ the matchmaking's flaws.
I think that the dev's are gonna double down on the simplified map design in the next game
For me, I've always found the "amount to learn" and the number of mechanics, both of which contribute to a game's depth, are more so the bigger turn offs for people starting a game casually or competitively.
They contribute to a bigger knowledge barrier to entry.
For instance in using Chess, it's easily accessible to new players because there's really only 6 pieces you have to know how they work. After that, the overwhelming majority of Chess' depth comes from *you* the players and what choices you make.
Whereas if your depth comes from a mechanic or adding or taking away a mechanic, for instance let's say you add another new piece to Chess. Yes, technically you're adding depth to the game and the variety of plays and strategies you can employ, but you're also adding to the knowledge required to effectively play the game. *That,* I feel, is the bigger turn off.
Unfortunately, I dont believe Nintendo knows what they're doing with their "matchmaking" as my 8yo daughter's first game included 2 S+ players...she might have lost that one 😅
Someone finally put it into words, thank you so much Mr. Gem Squid School
this is actually the same reason why people never play rhythm games anymore and why etterna/stepmania is so underground.
Having a healthy casual playerbase is super important. That was something Destiny 2 lost when they catered to Streamers by removing SBMM, and making the game more of a time sink.
In my experience, if you only have sweaty high skill players a game’s playerbase becomes rather toxic.
This is especially important because of how many polished games are for profit -- the people who get your game, play it a bit, and then don't go too deep into it is such a big group that they're giving you the most money.
I personally watch this and I see a lot of what you are talking about.....
However I can't shake that feeling that despite WANTING to be competitive I can't put time into it these days.
I just don't know...
It's not like competitive players (you know the ones who put in lots of time and effort) wouldn't be better than casual players (who don't make as much of an effort) no matter the mechanics.
My favorite videos are always the ones that were life lessons in disguise
8:12 I mean Hax kinda did give himself a calcified bone growth that one time...
And that's why I'm (mostly) not against box controllers.
Thinking about your Melee vs Brawl comparison just reminds me of controversial Strive is in the Guilty Gear series. It did make the series more "accessible" on the surface for lower level players, but the skill ceiling looks so different and the best character is the one who breaks the conventions set by Strive and the problems it created.
The most ironic part about all of this is that many of these more shallow games and the changes they've made to make the game more accesible (Strive, Brawl, etc.), it's often times that even casual players can start to take fault with these changes.
I mostly agree with this, particularly about game depth not really being an issue, but I kind of disagree with the notion that option of including randomness has to be one with 100% randomness for a 50/50 win rate. Any game with any kind of player agency can't be 100% random even if it has a lot of randomness in. Any action the player makes is not random (unless they are doing a Twitch meme or something). And I don't think the causal player needs to win 50% of the time to stay interested, they just need to know that they have a chance of winning. And knowing that their is the chance that it's possible for them to catch a lucky break due to randomness in a game adds to that perception.
To take Smash Bros, I'd hazard to guess that most casual player never even encounter the competitive scene, and instead only interact with the game as it's initially presented, that is, with random items on, usually on asymmetric stages, and often with more than two players. In this situation, a higher skilled player is still more likely to win, but not as likely as they would be with all the random elements shaved off.
To be honest, I don't play a lot of what are generally considered casual games (I originally thought usine Fall Guys as an example but I've never actually played it so can't really speak about it with any real knowledge). But I kind of think this discussion would be helped by examining games that are considered successful casual games, and comparing them to more competitive games like Splatoon.
Sorry, to clarify, I don't think Splatoon should be changed to have more random elements and thus be more casual friendly. I think the primary issue is that the aesthetics lead a lot of people to assume it's a casual game when it is truly a competitive game (including all the various scoring/reward mechanisms Splatoon has). I do kind of do wonder if it might make sense to add a new mode aimed at more casual players that does include more random elements in it though.
Sakurai definitely learned from what happened with Brawl, considering tripping was taken out of Wii U/3DS and Ultimate, and from what I hear Ultimate's roster is mostly the most balanced out of the entire series (aside from Steve, who has an exploit that makes him Brawl!Meta Knight busted, or even worse, and last I checked I think he might have actually been banned from tournament play. Personally I consider that a case of "and nothing of value was lost".).
In terms of mechanical depth, I personally have one specific question for mechanics and design aspects that come first before any other considerations - does the mechanic/design aspect make the game more interesting to play and compete with? Probably secondary to that is that is utilizing the mechanic/design aspect fun to watch for spectators, and is it fun for competitive players? That would go a long way to help figure out what works and what doesn't for improving a game's depth.
Gem, you forgot to mention L-cancelling when you mentioned smash's "depth".
there's real depth, like how you mentioned, and then there's "fake depth". l-cancelling, at anything less than the tippity top of players, is completely false-depth. it's 100% false depth, to add arbitrary inputs just to get to play the game at a mediocre bare minimum level(this is easily provable, by asking whether we should have L-cancelling on all attacks, grounded or not, or whether jumping should be 5 inputs, not 1. if L-cancelling is good, then more arbitrary inputs must be better, yes?). it's lack of buffer is also "added complexity" is also bullshit non-depth. there's a reason modern games have a buffer for their inputs, it's because it feels objectively horrible to have your inputs eaten because you did them just a little too early. expecting players to have to practice a tonne before they're even able to play the game, isn't engaging depth, it's dumb busywork, and a dumb barrier to entry.
what you're not discussing is "how do we add depth, without adding busywork?". for that, I'd point to DI, as a great example of depth without busywork. it's a mechanic that adds a lot to smash bros, adds a lot of interaction where previously you're just getting hit, and doesn't add to the barrier of entry overmuch. DI is the sort of enjoyable mechanic you learn and express with more experience, without it being a massive barrier to entry when you start playing.
games having depth is fine. casual players hear that though, and the concern of theirs that you're not hearing or talking about, like the melee player you were, is that you're thinking they're arguing against DI, when they're arguing against having no buffer, or arguing against L-cancelling.
I'd argue that we also need more recognition of the third, more in-between mindset (that I'm currently calling "challenger" until I'm told of something better, or that there's a proper name for it I'm unaware of)
People who don't necessarily want to "win", but rather want to see how far they can go based on what playstyle comes most naturally to them; those who take a game more seriously than a "casual" player, but also aren't interested in the highly-technical stuff a "competitive" player would be studying.
2:20 i remember me and my dad went to this restaurant when i was younger and they gave you crayons with the kids menu so we tended to play tictactoe on the blank side of the menu paper (were we supposed to do that? probably not) and now i know tictactoe strategies
I feel like this doesn’t take into account there being a wait period to enter ranked matches, in which players have to miserably grind turf war, a mode that doesn’t have any form of matchmaking. You can be Lvl 1 and matched against a Lvl ⭐️43
Whenever I see players complain about how games having movement tech or attack canceling or some other complex mechanic, I think of stuff like Divekick or Nair, games with a single attack, and in the former's case, only requiring a single hit to land to decide a round, and how people will somehow STILL complain about "sweatlords ruining the game"
There are just some people that want to complain more than they want to improve.
Yeah, well, it is incredibly hard to improve when you're constantly getting your ass handed to you with no way to determine what you did wrong. Sometimes, it's thru no fault of your own!
@@esmooth919 yeah, improving at ANYTHING is gonna be hard, man. Getting stomped or cheesed is inevitable when you're new, you're why it's cheese to begin with.
As for what you're doing wrong, Honestly, it's generally better look at it as things that you can do later, focusing on the big "I lost because this hit me" or "I lost because I couldn't get past this" and then asking around on how that's beaten.
Them's the breaks, and if you genuinely feel like you're unable to do so, then it's probably for the best to focus your attention on matters you feel you can get down instead.
Also, "through no fault of your own" is a very dangerous mindset to have, you better think REAL hard and make DAMN sure that there was nothing you could have done to beat something, because otherwise it ends up hard in scrub territory, and a scrub won't ever improve.
do you have a video that could help controlling the negative feelings?
Gem I want you to know that as I was listening to this video, I got in a 2v1 and won without trading thanks to a piece of advice you gave a year ago about managing aggro.
I think it would be cool if you revisited some topics from the past that you stance might have changed on or you have gained new understanding of.
I have a question
Given that Splatoon 3 is a game with very bad matchmaking, is it possible people use the argument of depth because they fear the competitive players will use those techniques to punish casuals even harder?
In order words, do they oppose because they fear it?
Well, yes, that IS the argument they're trying to make I think. However, the argument gem is making is that depth gives players more OPTIONS. It's not always about mechanics and skill, it's also about knowledge and not making mistakes. You can be the best player with perfect aim and know how to do every tech in the book, but still loose because your opponent outplayed you, or you made one mistake that cost you the game. Depth makes games more fun, even for casual players, even if they're playing against better players. It's frustrating NOW, because Splatoon lost a lot of it's depth moving from 2 to 3, and players don't realize it. You can't outsmart someone, because you really only have a few limited options to choose from. That's how I see it.
@@tanookiesgrin9756 I agree with gem said. Just asking in parallel as another reason and more likely, since humans can be easily sway by fear, rather than logic
Sounds like an interesting topic, let's watch it!
After watching it and thinking about it for a solid 20 minutes. I'll simply say that I coincide with Gem here.
5:11 man i cheat a lot at chess.
Great vid, Gem 👍
if there's one skill barrier in this game i would want to complain about, it's squeezer's tap shots. having to mash so fast just isn't healthy
h-3 and l-3 are hard but they require learning like a lot of other weapons, i don't like them in salmon run but that's about it lmao
Yeah that is 100% an accessibility issue, it's data is just absurdly good to the point where it's accessibility concerns are pretty much the only reason why we don't see MORE of it which sucks
@@theghostcreator776 yeah :(
i'd want squeezer to be nerfed into the ground more than anything just because of the accessibility issues it causes
@@InvalidOS
Frfr like it's mere existence invalidates so many weapons and it's just such a worse situation bc of how it works
I just want forge pro to work 😭
19:12 It’s me! I’m famous!
You bought an ngage didn't you
I only know about it because of the Flash animation "The Decline of Video Gaming"
Let’s take a moment to laugh at White in that chess game for blundering so hard he immediately lost on that castle.
Idk where to place myself in this game. Maybe im competitive. I've reached x rank (only twice in my life, but I ig that's more than most), and i have a decent amount of hours in all 3 games. But by the talk of the actual competitive players, im still seen as a more casual member of the community. My mechanical skill and decision making arent enough to put me into x rank constantly. Hell, i think i got in with luck on my end or just being just a bit better than my opponents (which i didn't know could happen in s rank). I also have no where near the mental capacity and capability to be mature enough to exist in a competitive environment (in any video, not just sploon). I think i just accept that i am just bad at the game and stop complaining about being rolled. I hate how the derank button has limited uses.
And yes this is dating advice too
“If you need to be able to win the game for it to be fun for you, then you ARE competitive”
Wow. That’s a paradigm-shifting line. I don’t consider myself interested in competitive Splatoon because I have no desire to attend tournaments or reach X rank or anything. Nonetheless, I get frustrated when I lose, and that means I’m competitive. Which means that if I want to enjoy the game casually, that’s something I have to learn how to do. I have to develop the right mindset for it, just the same way a competitive player has to have the right mindset to be able to ascend to the top.
I’m excited to see some people trying to counter the argument that if they want to win they need to get better at the game.
g3T bEtTeR aT tHe gAme NoOb
It's crazy how people think melee players only play competetivly lmao
I just kick people with zelda it's very fun!
Also I would like to add that I think there is a bit of emotional burn. And you kinda touched on it a bit. But gaming culture at large has a bully problem of casual players. The Splatoon community is actually extremely nice and kind compared to other competitive games but that’s unfortunately the exception not the rule. Not every single player in other competitive videos are mean obviously, but there is a culture of “pub stomping” and “teasing” from skilled players that make casual player feel like they have to fight for their life to have fun or just leave the game entirely. Where opinions are disregarded by “well you’re so low rank you don’t have you monitor on, so why should I care about what you have to say.” To being laughed at when asking for advice on how to be more competitive with “oh your [insert very low rank]. Just turn your brain on idiot and you’ll climb.” And overall just toxic “gamer” behavior that makes casual players on edge.
Again, splatoon is actually really peaceful and it’s one of the nicest communities I’ve been in when it comes to competitive games and I hope to see more games have this energy. But ngl I was hesitant to try to engage with the community because I was already prepared to get bullied like I do elsewhere. And I can see that the people who are new or haven’t been able to quite shake their trauma from bullying, they are immediately defensive.
Now I just want to share my experience as a casual player a bit. I fully agree with the “if wins and losses effect you that much emotionally when playing a game, then you might have more of a competitive heart than you think”. I think I could be competitive if I had more time. Being a responsible adult is anti fun fr. But I, like you said, just adjust my mindset. When I run into people really good in one area if not all (because as you mentioned, splatoon is the one game I know where good players just end the game instantly) I see it as a game or challenge. For example on turf war if the enemy decides to spawn hold us because they are that good at splating us. Cool, that’s a challenge of me trying to be sneaky. How can I try to sneak by. It won’t do much, but it’s a new goal I give myself because winning isn’t on the table. Or I can try to practice my 1v1 ability. They are clearly good at combat so this is a perfect opportunity to practice that isn’t the simple dummies in the lobby. I make my own fun out of getting my but kicked.
Sometimes I try to play as chaotically as possible to throw the good player for a loop and be either entertaining or a new challenge. I do this in fighting games especially. They studied the rules but I don’t know the rules so that can’t stop me! Feral bagger strategy go! I tend to get a laugh of them and throwing all care into the wind and just surviving is how I make me fun if sweating isn’t gonna get me anywhere.
Except open doesnt do skill based match making, and frequently will force you to fight the same loosing match over and over.
This is a complaint of open matchmaking, not wishing for the game to be made shallower (please give us more fun maps splatoon)
Specifically open shouldn't force the same fight over and over :V it's fine it's not skill based, it's just constantly keeping the same group matched is awful
What did you think the power that you get in open came from? That's a Glicko power. There are other factors involved in matchmaking and sometimes it has to compromise between them, but it's there.
@@SquidSchool that's fair, it was ignorant of me to say it's not skill based. It's just the lack of moving along that's the issue. I shouldn't have spouted that nonsense
So I was very confused what number you were talking about as I've never seen a number that could correspond to that power. Turns out it's not a number that shows by default and I have to hold a button to see it. Which... is very strange design to hide that.
While I appreciate and support the intent of this video, I think it misses the point. As good as Splatoon's interface and story/training modes are, inconsistencies remain in the game design that can throw off new players. Why can I shoot a torpedo, but not a bomb? Why will a bomb take wildly different amounts of time to explode? Even smaller details for intermediate players feel inconsistent. Why does the same sub weapon see different whiting ink recovery on different weapons? Sure, we learn these details after enough time with the game, but we hold video games to a higher standard because interface interactions make a disproportionate impact on the game compared to board games and sports.
I think the disagreement comes from that some people don't agree that a game should be played competitively. Some people think it's wrong to play "a kids game" like that and see people who are better that them as a barrier to their own enjoyment
pov fortnite
All i can say is just do better not try harder you'll hard yourself if u think you're gonna lose every game
I don't know how Mario Kart 8 determines matchmaking, but if it's by the points you get at the end of a race, I've been flooded with so many points, even gaining points as low as 8th place, and basically have to intentionally get 12th place to lose just a miniscule amount of points, that I'm constantly being matched up with people who are mechanically strong at the game, snaking on straightaways, getting pretty much every shortcut, and just dominating the race. Played like a racing game I'm pretty good at it, but my mechanical skill is low. Sure, I can pull off a few tricks from time to time, but mostly I'm basic. Then there's the items. From first place all the way back to twelfth all I ever get is mushrooms while I'm constantly getting pegged with every attack item available, so I can't even play it like a battle game because I never get any weapons. It is impossible for me to get matched with people of my skill level, and I can't compete in any way, shape, or form. The game is not fun anymore.
Splatoon 3 is kinda similar. For the PvP side, it's competitive, and if you're not winning then you're losing. Winning means you get to fiddle the sticks, press the buttons, and do stuff. Losing means you are met with a god-awful sound, and then get to sit there doing nothing for 5 seconds, only to shoot back out and immediately get punished with the god-awful sound and more waiting. It's not fun. In a competitive game there's going to be ups and downs, and how one comes to terms with that varies. I honestly don't know what two evenly matched teams would look like, because everyone can't be killing AND getting killed at the same time, and if you aren't doing one, you're going to feel like you're the other.
I used to like Turf War more because the best games let me ignore everyone and just paint the ground, and I had fun doing it. This past season I've been doing more Anarchy, and it's not too bad, having the objectives give me focus, but it also amplifies the aggravation between killing and being killed.
It's why I'd rather be playing Salmon Run. Opponents are CPU, so you aren't hurting anyone's feelings by killing them, and there's a secondary objective with egg collecting that really wouldn't effect the other side even if they were live players (think of the snatchers like opposing players collecting those eggs you aren't). In Splatoon 2 I loved Salmon Run because there was no reward for winning. Yes, technically there was, but losing still got you the same rewards only slower, and those rewards barely mattered to begin with. Splatoon 3 ruined that with the king salmonids and the scales. Filling the Salmonmeter is guaranteed whether you win or lose, but once filled you MUST win for a CHANCE for the king to spawn (just had 6 clears in a row with a full meter and no king, so fuck Nintendo right there), and even if you do get the king the odds of getting anything but bronze is lower than your chances of getting shot in the face and living (so fuck Nintendo again). Plus they added the shell out machine that requires endless amounts of Cash, but also took the cash option out of Salmon Run so now I'm forced to play PvP if I want any chance at the gambling machine's banner or title.
I can often tell within the first 30-60 seconds of a match how it's going to go, and if it's clearly going poorly for me then it's suicide off spawn because I can't just put the controller down and walk away, because it'll comm error and give me a 10+ minute penalty timer where I can't play anymore, so instead I have to sit there and constantly suicide and get even more pissed off instead of being allowed to legally quit the match or otherwise walk away and calm down. And the reason I suicide is because there's no reward for losing. May sound counter-intuitive, but in Turf War you get 1 cash for every pint of turf inked, and so there is actually a reward for losing in Turf War, but in Anarchy all you get is a big bucket of "eat shit and die."
As far as I can tell, the medals you get at the end of a match give you XP towards ranking up in a Series battle, but in Turf War and Anarchy Open they do nothing. So think about it, if I suck that bad, why would I want extra XP to rank up faster into match ups you have no business being in? And why have them in any other mode? They don't even track what medals you get anywhere in the game. They are literally meaningless. Maybe if medals game me cash instead (say 100 for silver and 25 for gold) then there'd be reason to keep trying even if I'm losing, because who knows? Even though I'm getting curb stomped I still have a chance at getting the gold medal for "popular target" and the 250 cash that goes with it; except you don't and it's meaningless so why bother trying?
I’m a casual player; I don’t want to invest time in being competitive and I’ve accepted that I’ll never be the best for it. But for crying out loud: DO. NOT. REMOVE. DEPTH. INTENTIONALLY. (After all, does Timmy really have a chance either way? How ‘bout anyone not in the top .01%? No? So stop ruining everyone’s fun over an illusion that you’ll enjoy a competitive point-and-click adventure game better!)