Splatoon

[seansthomas]

We should put a date in the diary for a C&R night of this once the patch is out, eh?

[mikeleddy83]

I'd love to see it, picked up a copy yesterday and I'm racing through the pre big patch stuff before tomorrow.

[Flabyo]

I can recommend playing through all of the single player mode. A, because it'll teach you some traversal options that aren't immediately obvious and that are very handy on some of the stages and B, it's one of the best single player games of the year too.

[seansthomas]

^ What he said. It has the best final boss in a game I've played in years. Maybe, ever?

[Grimsgrams]

We should put a date in the diary for a C&R night of this once the patch is out, eh?

I'd absolutely be up for that, been looking forward to the update for a while now!

[MAp]

I'm almost at the point where I've learnt the basics with most weapon types so I'm good to go on a C&R night

I'm now learning the rollers role, especially in a turf war. I'm having a lot more success now I play the coward that runs away to find a new see ocean of floor to paint, unless you suddenly appear in front of me, then you're mine!

[Scrustle]

Splatoon update is live! New weapons! New modes! New map! New music! Inkstrikes everywhere!

I've played a little bit so far. I tried out the new weapons in the test range, and bought the Splatling gun. Haven't tried it out in an actual match yet though, because everyone is using the new stuff right now and I don't want to unbalance my team more than it already is. Plus I'm still having loads of fun with my brush. Both the new weapons seem cool though. The Splatling gun is somewhat like a charger. You need to charge it up before you can start firing, and once you let go of the button it just dumps ink for as long as you've charged it for, relatively. As in the longer you charge the longer you shoot. Not the exact same length of time though. The charge is quick and you can let go at any point. The range is also pretty good, and it's quite powerful. I haven't messed around with the bucket as much, but it seems good too. It throws ink more in a straight line than I was expecting, and it has decent range too. Both new weapons have the Inkstrike as their special, so at the moment matches are full of them.

Urchin Underpass is massively different. Even more than I was expecting. It's way more complex and open. I'd say it's 2/3 different now. The only parts that are the same are the spawn point area, and the side path to the right of the spawn. But the main path through the middle is now much wider, with three ramps to give cover and a high vantage point. The other side path is much wider, but with corners to hide behind. There are also two exits on to the central area from that path now, but one of them has glass under it, so you can't climb up it. The exits are also much wider than before. The central area itself is also resized, and they've put some trees there among other things. It's basically a completely different map now.

Haven't tried out the new modes yet though. Need more people online and organised to do that.

Oh, and apparently there's another big change happening. Nintendo are launching a site where you can track a bunch of your stats and compare them with your friends', so now you can know exactly how much you suck! Japan only right now, with no word of it launching anywhere else as of yet, but a message that appears in the game with this new update seems to point towards it being rolled out everywhere. You can actually log in to the Japanese site right now, but of course it's still all in Japanese.
Link here: https://splatoon.nintendo.net/
More details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/splatoon/comme ... r_viewing/

[Grimsgrams]

Great write-up Scrustle!

I was thinking about how to communicate while playing in squads and private matches. Would anyone be interested in doing voice calls for that purpose? If so, any suggestions on what software to use? Me and a few other forum members have been using Hangouts for games without voice chat, which I think has worked quite well.

[Scrustle]

I guess it doesn't really matter much. As long as it's stable and sounds alright, then you can use anything. Currently I don't actually have any VOIP program installed, but I'm sure I could get one easily.

Been playing some more and tried out the Splatling gun. I was a bit worried that the charge time might be a problem in actual matches, but it was fine. It's great for taking out enemies at long range, and it covers ground pretty well too. Hanging back seems to be a good tactic with it, but still pushing forward when you get the chance. It has the power to be aggressive, but you need to leave a distance in front of you to take advantage of the range. It seems that you only need to charge it for half a rotation to get enough to take anyone out, so it's reasonably fast. I have been jumped a few times by rollers, but it seems to do a good job against everything else. It's especially good against Aerosprays. Range is their weakness, and now this thing can take them out when they're not even anywhere close to being able to fight back.

I have to wonder if Aerosprays have become somewhat obsolete now. The N-Zap already outclassed it on range, and the '89 version has very similar sub-weapons, and now the Splatling is pretty much untouchable against it, if you don't get jumped that is. The Aerospray used to be used be an obvious go-to for its fire rate. But now there's other stuff with a similar fire rate and nowhere near as much drawbacks.

EDIT: I also came across a table showing what the EXP requirements past level 20. They're pretty insane, as I was expecting they might be. I can't see myself getting too far past level 30.
https://www.reddit.com/r/splatoon/comme ... _level_20/

I was thinking about this topic the other day actually, and wondering how Splatoon would handle it. Part of what turns me away from a lot of games with a big emphasis on leveling is just how much it takes to get through them sometimes. I find just looking at how far some games go with it just makes me not want to even engage with it, and even makes the lower levels feel arduous, because I know that I'm making comparatively little progress compared to what may only be a little bit more up the ladder. I like the end to at least seem achievable to have the motivation to even start, no matter how many rewards I get on the way. I don't like games when they design the levelling around the ultra-hardcore who are happy to devote insane amounts of time to a game, and are fine with being on the treadmill for so long. Not that I think I'm going to give up on Splatoon. I love the game. It's just pretty daunting, and a little bit odd that Nintendo would embrace that kind of design philosophy.

[Flabyo]

"I love my splatling gun, I shall hug him and squeeze him and..."



Cutest animation ever.

[Scrustle]

Splatfest was good fun again. Picked South Pole. That means I've been on the winning side for every single Splatfest so far. I've got more Super Sea Snails than I know what to do with! The actual event was great too. Good competitive matches for the most part, but on some occasions my team completely destroyed the enemy. On one match on Camp Triggerfish I had a really good team, and we managed to take the entire map and push the whole enemy team back to the spawn point by the end of the game. It was pretty fun to be able to do that on that map, where people can get around behind you easily. We had pretty good coordination just through intuition.

After finishing Splatfest though I carried on playing a few normal Turf War games. Still having trouble with Blackbelly Skatepark. This time though I don't feel like it was me that was letting the team down or anything like that. For the few matches I had on it, I felt like I actually did pretty good. I was even scoring the most out of anyone on both teams if you deducted the win bonus. I was managing to sneak past the enemy a lot of the time, even on one occasion when my entire team was literally pushed back to the invisible wall at the spawn point. Yet it was still never enough. The enemy was always completely dominating the entire map every time. I wonder if maybe they will change the map like they did with Urchin Underpass. Going by my recent experiences at least, Blackbelly seems by far the most unbalanced map in the game. I don't know, but something is certainly not going right.

Also recently I've been having trouble in ranked modes. I swore off Splat Zones a while ago, as I got tired of how much of a pointless meat grinder it was starting to feel. Not long after though Tower Control started feeling the same. I've been stuck at middle B rank for quite a while now, but at one point I managed to get to 70 points. But then I had this terrible losing streak and plummeted down to 20 or 30, and that's where I am now. So I think I'm quitting ranked mode for now. Hasn't been fun for a long time. I might try out the blaster weapon that everyone else uses at some point. Whenever I've tested it out myself though, I've always been unimpressed. But recently I got the chance to try some local multiplayer against someone who had never played the game before, and they were using that same weapon, and doing pretty well against me. Seemed so much more effective then. Doesn't make sense how it can be so awful on the test range but so lethal in reality, but whatever. Next time I can be bothered to give it another go, I'll try that one out. Right now I'm not bothering to take the game too seriously. Just messing around in Turf War, trying out new weapons, and collecting all the new gear that I like the look of.

[Grimsgrams]

I've been looking into voice chat options and I think I've found a suitable candidate. It's called Discord and seems to be, simply put, a free alternative to Teamspeak and Mumble and the like. It's on Android, iOS, Windows and Mac OS X, but can also be run in-browser on a computer. To use the mobile app, you first have to register an account either on a computer or by setting your mobile/tablet browser to desktop mode and accessing the website.

You can have multiple rooms for text and voice chat on a server and the way it works is the person who has the server shares a link (which can be set to expire after a certain amount of time) which when clicked immediately invites you to the server. The upside of this compared to Skype and Hangouts is that you don't need to add people to your contacts just for a single voice chat session. Makes me think this could be a useful tool for C&R game nights in general.

If you want to try it out (I'm still gettin the hang of it myself) the current link to the server I made is https://discord.gg/0RotWrxSkEw2IiyE

[Scrustle]

Sounds like a good option.

With that, shall we organise something? Say, next weekend?

[Grimsgrams]

if I'm available I'm game. As it happens, four of us are playing right now so if anyone wants to join, welcome aboard!

[mikeleddy83]

Lovely playing with you all today, glad I got clarification on how to actually play (sans walls). My effectiveness went up sevenfold!

[Scrustle]

Yeah, it was a load of fun. Lately I've been playing Splatoon more in short spurts rather than long binges. It was fun to have a nice long session again. I think we were all more or less the best players in the room too. Whenever we were on the same team, we seemed to always win pretty comfortably.

It was a bit disappointing I couldn't join in the chat though. I was listening along the whole time. I managed to get my 360 headset to connect, but I don't think it worked properly. Sound didn't come out of it, and even though on my end it said it was picking something up when I spoke, I'm guessing it didn't reach any of you since I got no reply. Looks like I'll need to get a headset then. What kind of thing do you people use? I'm not sure I'm too in to the idea of spending loads of money on a headset, and even if I was, I don't want something that covers both my ears and blocks out the sound of the TV. I was taking a look at maybe a cheap Bluetooth headset, but I don't want to get something that won't work, or will just break instantly.

[Grimsgrams]

I just used the cheap little thing that came with the PS4 in conjunction with the iPhone app running on my iPad, but for science I tried unplugging it and just using the iPad's built-in mic and speakers and that worked too. Did you try the app? In that case, do you have a tablet or phone, iOS or Android? And on that device, have you previously used an app like Skype or similar which requires mic input? Just wondering what the cause is here.

[Scrustle]

I tried downloading the app for my iPhone, but it didn't work. When I tried to open it it just sat on a loading screen forever. I've only got an old iPhone 4, so I thought maybe it's just not compatible.

[Grimsgrams]

Okay, maybe that's it then. That's a shame. One last thing to try maybe would be to try using the actual program on your computer instead of the web app, see if that does anything. In the meantime I'll PM you my google info in case you want to join us on Hangouts. It's not ideal but it is voice chat, and a pretty good way to quickly set up games.

[Scrustle]

I'm pretty sure my problem is with hardware, not software. Just need something I can talk in to.

But back on to the topic of Splatoon itself! Has anyone else tried out Rain Maker mode yet? I have, and I'm not quite sure what to think. Like I said before, I've turned away from ranked modes lately, and this mode doesn't seem to do anything to change my mind. It's complete chaos. Constant deaths, and a non-stop feeling of just having no chance to make a difference at all. There's nothing wrong with the mode itself. Seems like it's somewhat in the same vein as Tower Control, but more like CTF too, as one would expect.

But the experience of playing it had me more thinking about the ranked modes in general. I'm starting to think they're just too much for me. Initially, I wanted to at least be above the average rank, so I was aiming for something like A- or maybe A. Somewhere on the right side of the bell curve. Never felt particularly bothered about the S ranks once they added them in. But more recently as my rank has just been tumbling non-stop I decided to give up on having a decent rank. I was fine just being average (or lower), as long as that meant I could have fun. Not sure exactly what "average" is though. I expect it's B, which is where I am now, for the moment. But with my bad luck recently I did drop all the way down to B-, but once I did, I immediately started winning again and got back up up B again as soon as possible. But once I was there again, it was back in to the meat grinder. Haven't played much since bumping back up, but my experience of it so far seems the same as it was last time I was here. It's so annoying too, because before I started this downwards spiral, I was actually really close to getting up to B+.

I know what I need to be doing is playing smarter and using more tactics, and I've actually been looking up a bunch of tricks to try to make myself better, but once it comes down to a real match, everything just goes out the window. I feel like I have zero chance to actually do anything. I don't get any opportunity to even try out anything else other than a mad dash in to the melee, because my team is either already horribly losing, or we are just about to if I don't do something right now. And no matter what I try to do, there always seems to be someone from the other team bothering me as well. I can't take a moment to set up a trap or do anything, because I've always got someone firing at me that I need to respond to. It all just feels totally hopeless. Like even if I had the potential to improve I don't get the chance to actually do it.

I haven't been letting it get me too down lately though. Mostly still sticking to Turf War, and simply not caring about my rank any more any time I do try the other modes. I just sometimes wish I could get more out of them than just an incomprehensible mess of non-stop failure. Also I kind of wish there was more variety to the non-ranked stuff too. Right now it's only one mode vs. three for ranked, unless you get a private match together. Much easier said than done though.