Topic: Splatoon 2

@Mellor2000 What do you mean?

@-Green- I think they confirmed that lobbies/severs (that's what they're called right XD) will be worldwide wide rather than region based so that could cause some trouble for voicechat with strangers.

@Eric258 if that's the case, why not just have like a mute option so you can mute it (if you want to) in those circumstances?

Honestly, every time the "just mute them" argument comes up, I just think of how most most people will just end up trying playing with random chat on a few times, get frustrated/jaded by the lack of effect on overall gameplay, then wind up muting by default, which in turn begs the question from them in "why even bother with this feature in the first place?". But not openly, because no one wants to be "that guy" who seemingly clamours for less features to be a hipster/blind fanboy.

Not only do you have to deal with language barriers (especially in a game that is hugely popular in japan), but among the ones you do understand, how many just use the chat to trash talk/grief? How many make distracting noise, whether or not it's their fault? And in other shooters, how many times did you get coherent chat and strategy that wasn't actually from a clan of organized players? Yes, you can usually mute specific trouble players, but for most it gets to the point where identifying them every game gets tiring, and, again, leads to global mute on by default to save themselves the hassle.

@meleebrawler Very good point, and let's not forget that Splatoon is a game in which going in and out of matches is quite fast, so you would have to do this every 2, 3, 4 or 5 minutes. That is pretty ridicolous from my standpoint

I'd still like the option.

You're most likely going to mute everyone in your team, then.

When chat with randoms works it works very well. Especially when the most vocal people are calling out the right things and know what they are doing. But when it doesn't work? It fails spectacularly. And you just get abuse hurled back and forward. Most of the time nobody is talking anyways....

I think with a game like Splatoon there's a pretty clear objective in most matches. You're working towards a fairly obvious common goal. It's not like the specials that charge up can stack like they do in a game like Overwatch. Aside from maybe pointing out that there's a sniper somewhere I can't see much reason to talk.

It can be quite helpful in coordinating during Ranked battles, especially during the higher ranks.

@skywake It is actually very useful for a lot of aspects, and not because of saying "sniper is there". To make an easy example: if you get killed by someone and that someone gets the special by killing yourself, you can call it for the team. Seems a tiny thing, but if the team can counter that special it can really change the entire battle since specials in Splatoon are vital

There's been a new interview with Nogami, where he talks about the changes in greater detail. For example, the Curling Bombs doesn't explode on impact (with enemies), but only when you release the button (unless the timer runs out). Also, HD Rumble will be supported. There were other details mentioned as well, pretty interesting interview!

@FragRed No, they already stated that updates (like maps and weapons and adjustments) will come incrementally like in the first game and that they will be for free, just like in the first game.

Maybe not much of a surprise, but fantastic news!

Well, I mean, you could chat with a bunch of non-English speaking players

Honestly, I made it to S-rank so many times while using Booyas to communicate. We can live without chat

Actually, what would infinitely be more useful is more options for the texts. "Watch out", "Over here", "I got this" would be a good start

I'm not that fussed, I'd probably have it on mute anyway so the other players won't hear my music in the background but you'd think with Ninty trying to turn this into an e-sport voice chat would be a must.

NONSENSE! We will learn morse code through booyas!

@meleebrawler I agree. Random voice chat would miss so many more times than it would hit. Every time I go online at the moment, it's with 6 or 7 Japanese players, meaning much of the time there are no other English speakers, and when there is one, it's still only a 50% chance they'd be on the same team. And even in that case, you'd then have a team with a language barrier splitting in half, leading to mixed messages (one player might be telling everyone to get to point A in one language, and another to point B in another).

Most non-Japanese speakers would get frustrated that every time they went online, the rest of their team would be yelling in a language they didn't understand, and then we'd inevitably see a bunch of racist guff online (in extreme cases), and calls to separate the matches by region to address the issue (which in turn would lead to increased lobby times if implemented and continued frustration if not).

If Nintendo has learnt anything from Miiverse, it's that allowing random people to yell at each other on the internet requires an awful lot of work to keep clean. The mods here have a hard enough job trying to keep this place respectable, and they don't have to deal with practically everyone who owns a Nintendo console.

It's not like it's even particularly necessary for Splatoon either, compared to games with more sophisticated goals that require absolute team precision. One of the first skills you develop online is to learn from context what needs doing in order to further the goal, without explicit communication. You pick up on where your team are, what state the map is in, where the enemy team are likely to be, and how the objective slots into all that. On that basis, you can generally make a logical decision that qualifies as 'good teamwork', without the need for anyone to open their mouth. The maps are tight enough, and the goals self-evident enough that you don't get players wandering around aimlessly because they didn't receive some key piece of information. Everyone has something useful to do at all times.

It's easy enough to say, "but it'd be nice to have the option", but when that option only works once in a blue moon and is just a frustration the rest of the time, it wouldn't really be nice at all. It's better to have nothing than something 95% frustrating IMO.

And Nintendo being Nintendo, the most we could have hoped for is Private voice chat - which we've apparently got. The question is how that will turn out.

Basically, what @TheLZDragon said.

Inklings are certainly capable of communicating through noises without the need for abusive noises (otherwise known as "chat"). We only really need up to 4 phrases like these:

"Booya!"
"Watch out!"
"Coming!"
"Over here!"

@TheLZdragon I'd definitely nail the "Watch Out" button whenever anyone Super Jumped to me while I was in a dangerous location. At which point it'd be too late...

Although I suppose you could use it if someone were hammering your name in those second before you can actually perform the jump.

I agree those would be pretty useful though.

@Maxz
Kind of reminds me of the Dota2 community, to be honest. When I still played, it was sort of a running gag that you'd usually be placed into games with a couple Russians on your team, making the communication extremely difficult. It sounds ridiculous, but seriously, it was like that. You'd be on voice comms and could probably communicate just fine with 1 or 2 people on your team, but there was a relatively high chance that at least 1 of the rest didn't speak English.

I think love of the game prevails, though, as cheesy as that sounds. And you found people who could speak serviceable English - if the player base is large enough, you never know! I think the best thing would be to have both, obviously. Quick emotes and phrases for the stuff that you really only ever need, and then the presence of voice comms IF you want to give it a shot. (Along with the ability to easily turn comms OFF haha)

@Maxz It's the sad thing about our app-driven generation; the "app for that" mentality encourages us to always go for more functionality in our electronics, even if said functionality is barely used or useful, poor value or even detrimental at worst. It's part of the reason such a big stink has been raised here over the Switch's lack of browser at launch; sure, some people may have gotten good use out of it as they did with Wii U, but they're rare, yet even the ones that don't complain about it for the principle of having options, because that's ALWAYS better, right?