When was a game's price worth it to you?
Pretty small patch overall, little bit underwhelmed.
Main weapon changes all look fine. I might give Hydra another go because I do like the kit, we'll see how impactful this is.
Curling bomb 70%-65%... why. This is the teensiest tiniest non-buff that won't help. At this point it just feels like they want half the subs in the game to be garbage, they'll never get meaningful buffs.
Zooka nerf, it's something. Still combos with itself, but you'll have to be quick enough for them to not heal, and it does reduce how easily it combos with other things. But IMO what Zooka needed more than anything else was startup frames. It needs to be less of a jumpscare.
What did Custom Dualie Squelchers do to deserve 210p?
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Are these mutually exclusive?
No one but John Nintendo actually knows for sure how matchmaking works, since that's all server-side. We have some idea of parameters it looks at - rank, Glicko-2 rating, weapon range, location/ping, how long you've been waiting in queue. But there's no way of knowing for sure what the server does with that information, how these parameters are weighted and prioritized against each other.
Based on what I've observed though, I think it is likely that only Series cares about letter rank (some people even think Series doesn't either, but based on how Rank-Up Battle works I don't think that's correct), Open doesn't appear to pay much attention to it. Letters are fake anyway, there's a second internal rating being tracked: Glicko-2, which is a much better algorithm.
When Open was reworked a little while ago as a replacement for League, Glicko-2 is now visible when playing as a group. Press L during matchmaking and you'll see "Calculating: X/5" for the first five games you play in a rotation, then after 5 games it'll show your rating. Note that you only get to see it when playing with a team, and if the team changes it'll take another 5 games to become visible again, but we know it's always being tracked even when it isn't shown. It's a pretty safe assumption that this is what Open cares about, moreso than letters.
One important detail to note here is that it is calculating a rating for your team as a whole, which is why it goes back to "Calculating: 0/5" if the team changes. Even if there is a skill gap between teammates, that can be balanced by tracking how you perform together.
OP said remaster.
They already did, Reroll came out in 2018.
Brellas finally got buffed, it only took an entire damn year. I don't actually know if regen time was what it needed, the real problem is client-side hit detection, but they can't change that so I guess they can only play with other parameters and see if it helps. Everyone's been looking at the Sorella kit thinking "Wow this could be really good... if the main weapon gets a buff", and this is a buff, so let's see.
Tacticooler definitely needed a nerf, and I think meter cooldown is the appropriate way to go. The Special Saver had some self-synergizing benefit to building your next Tacticooler again, this reduces how much you can take advantage of that. I do not expect this to kill Tac, just comps that are built around trying to repeat it as much as possible. And that's deserved.
LDE... okay, yeah, this was fair when so many weapons always always always run it. But as someone who relies on it like I rely on oxygen, oof. Explo has really been falling off, I feel its limitations more and more, this has me questioning if it's time for me to drop the weapon. Please just give this thing some ink efficiency, if this and other weapons needed LDE so badly maybe that's an underlying problem that needs to be addressed at the source.
Still zero changes to any subweapons. I just don't know why this has gone untouched for so long. The fact that we can look at these new kits and know that more than half of them are dead on arrival, that's a huge problem for the game. Not just because we want better balance, but I feel that this issue is hurting the hype cycle around updates if we can't get excited about most of these kits.
- New music and new band! Rip & Stop by H2Whoa. Banger.
- Dread Wringer isn't a backline but it looks like it might be at least a little longer range than vSlosher, hard to tell for sure. If it is I may consider pocketing it.
- Crableg Capital looks like Mincemeat 2. I already hate this just looking at mid.
- Shipshape Cargo looks better though. But maybe actually too much cover for once? If this is Flounder 2 I'm scared.
- A new Splatling has my attention, though they didn't give us a clear look at what it does. It looked like it may have Ballpoint's mode changing since there was an effect while it was charging?
- A button to turn your hat around, and this being a feature to advertise in the trailer, is such a Splatoon thing to do. I love these devs.
- Salmonid Smokeyard, eh.
- I see my old flame Bloblobber, that means it's finally getting its second kit. Please be good, but the main weapon still sucks so I dunno if even a great kit will save it. Also Ballpoint and Tri-Stringer, nice. I'm trying to learn Ballpoint but I'm awful at Inkjet, I know that's why it's top tier but hopefully the second kit is still viable. And I've had my eye on Stringer, if it gets something good I might try to learn it.
Matchmaking typically has to balance four factors:
- Skill level
- Ping/connection quality
- Weapon composition
- Not making you wait in queue too long
During Splatfests, one more parameter has to be added:
- All your teammates must be on the same team, and prefer opponents on a different team
The more factors have to be considered, the more it's going to have to compromise on some of them. Splatfest teams are a hard requirement that can't be compromised, teams will never be mixed, and that limits the pool of eligible teammates and opponents considerably. So yes, matchmaking quality does suffer as a result.
Plus Splatoon is a very volatile game in general, even when players should be evenly matched it often doesn't look like they are as soon as someone gets a lead and holds onto it. I would conjecture that the system has a harder time than usual accurately measuring player skill levels when matchmaking is inconsistent... which is a bit of a negative feedback loop.
As for Tricolor, a non-mirror needs all three teams, but Team Fame literally didn't exist.
Mr. Tonegawa: Middle Management Blues and Splatoon 3
It's just Grizzco
I'm not asking them to totally shoot it dead, but if Ballpoint can go down to 210p so can Splash. It's overtuned as-is and they've gotta scale it back at least a tiny bit. 210p is plenty fair, it won't kick Splash out of the meta or anything.
Ballpoint 210p and Inkjet nerf are very valid, not an overnerf either, just the right slap on the wrist it needed.
Shot buffs????
No changes whatsoever to Splash or Crab...
Everything else seems like little bitty baby buffs that I certainly won't complain about, they deserve something, but also am not sure they're enough. It's something I guess.
Pretty small patch overall, and the game is in a healthy enough state that it makes sense for this patch to be small. I'm still raising an eyebrow at Shot but otherwise nothing crazy.
You wouldn't experience being the clone though. You'd only be one of you, the other person is completely separate.
As far as an outside observer is concerned, the clone is identical to you in every way. But now you're the outside observer, a dead outside observer, while that clone goes on and lives your life.
It's not really about a 'soul', but your first person perspective of being you and not being someone else. Imagine if the teleporter malfunctioned and created the clone without disassembling you. That clone isn't 'you', and disassembling you still wouldn't make the clone you.
Place was good once, but you're not missing anything now. Trying to recapture that magic just feels like Reddit is out of ideas and just desperately trying to remind people of the one good thing they ever did. It's like Al Bundy still hyping up his high school football career because the rest of his life has been downhill since then.
Greatest of all time had to be the Nintendo DS. Such an amazing library full of games that weren't afraid to try all kinds of crazy experiments.
Current-gen, my loyalty lies with Linux, even if the state of native ports isn't so great.
I don't often preorder, but when I do it's because I know I won't regret my purchase, and I know I want a physical copy to arrive on day 1. Of course I know there's some risk, but if I felt a game really was that risky then I would wait, I just buy the ones I feel are safe bets.
I know what developers and series I like, and if one of my favorite games is getting a sequel I know I'm playing it. Even if the sequel isn't quite as good as the prior game I liked, they're never bad enough for me to not want to play them at all.
I suppose it helps that my tastes lie far enough outside the kinds of mainstream AAA games that are prone to totally botched launches that I've never been truly burned.
Golden Sun holds a place in my heart as the first JRPG I played that had me do more than just click Attack for the majority of turns. A lot of older titles suffered in that regard, but Golden Sun addresses it with regenerating PP and free Djinn actions to encourage you to explore your toolkit. Puzzles were also fantastic.
Skip the DS game though, it's bad.
I already have enough zillion-hour games to grind, I don't need every game to be that. As much as I love JRPGs I have a hard time setting aside time to finish one these days since I have too much else I also want to play.