Nintendo released the original Splatoon to criticism about its lack of content. Splatoon 2, released to criticism about its lack of content. But how is Splatoon 2 now? The game now has 62 weapons, 14 stages with 2 more on the way. A brand new mode, Clam Blitz. Unfortunately the biggest issues this game has created, still haven’t been addressed in subsequent patches since then.
Weapons and abilities are still being exploited in matches. The recently added Squeezer just adds to the problems and can be easily exploited base on its usage with external apparatuses (turbo features). Swim speed and run speed exploits are rampant in league and they make the game completely unfair as they take advantage of a persons connection to the other player. I do understand a lot of these issues can stem from having a bad day. But these are concerns of mine and they are very clear . Nintendo needs to do a better job with balancing weapons and abilities. I have well over 600 hours between both games and am saying this; The first game was much more balanced in terms of weapons, secondaries and abilities. I have even went as far to create a massive spreadsheet showing just basic weapon stats. Some of the weakest weapons in the game are some of the biggest offenders. When snipers were given the ability to hold their charge and splatlings weren’t, I already knew we were dealing with devs who didn’t know a lot about the shooter genre.
Before anyone cries foul and says its ‘part of the game’. Consider this, Nintendo wants this game to be a major eSport. Between the weapons and abilities being unbalanced, and the embarrassingly low tickrate (to compensate for mobile players); This game can’t stand up to games like Overwatch and Rocket League as an eSport title. However, newcomers to gaming can begin with League of Legends or other online games. Initially, they might have difficulty learning tips and tricks to turn the game in their favor. For example, in LOL, knowing where, how, and when to ward and how to best limit the opposing team’s vision can be beneficial. New League players who want to find out more about guides on League of Legends or other similar games can visit websites such as MOBA Champion.
I went this long without explaining what the exploits are, but I cant call these absolute facts. These are things I have observed and done basic testing on. I absolutely feel all these balance issues can be fixed if they increased the tickrate up from 16hz to 25hz (where Splatoon 1 sat) or even 30 to keep it in line with many FPS games. No one on mobile is going to be playing this game and it was a very poor and deliberate decision to gimp this game for people on cell phone data plans. So to keep this as brief as possible and explain the issue with the 3 things I’ve mentioned above.
- Swim speed allows you to swim faster in your own ink, but due to the low tickrate it allows you to skip frames and ‘teleport,’ which gives an unfair advantage. This becomes worse when you add more swim speed.
- Run speed becomes a problem mainly when you combine it with an equal amount of swim speed. On its own, its effects cap out at roughly 2 main chunks. But it pretty much acts similar to swim speed.
- Squeezer’s long distance shot does 38 base damage, and its rapid shot does 30. Turbo controllers can take advantage of the long distance shot and fire it in succession.
The TL:DR version of this post if people really don’t want to read the full thing. Swim speed and run speed needs to be fixed and given a hard cap on their effects. Tickrate needs to be increased from 16hz to 25 or 30hz. I’m on a wired and very high-speed internet connection, I shouldn’t have these problems.
Mike has been with NintendoFuse since January 2015 as a Social Media Manager. He has always had a passion for Nintendo games, and his favorite game series is Donkey Kong Country.