Video: Nintendo Treehouse Discuss Splatoon 2 Invitational With Gridiron Star Jordan Kent

Who? Nah, don't bother. I will possibly watch the invitational but I'm not particularly interested in this sequel. I think the first game quenched my thirst and this looks too similar, just remixed. Yes, there are new elements but it's basically the same. Graphically too.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE
Hi, wanna watch the Treehouse alone ?

"When you get splatted, you become a huge liability to your team" Has this guy even played the game or seen the current meta? Death is an annoyance at best in Splatoon.

@Zebetite I think he's on point when it comes to the competitive modes. Yeah, there's no numerical penalty like in standard Deathmatch, but being out of the action and leaving your team down a member can seriously weaken your overall strength in numbers.

Being down one member leaves a full opposing team with a 33% larger army. Being down two means they're 100% larger. And if your entire team is down, then you've got no-one to super-jump to, leaving the enemy with massive window to make a push and gain territory in both the objective and ink coverage, which will only cement their footing.

It's precisely because the game isn't solely based around killing people that by simply being alive you can be so useful; either by contributing directly to the objective, claiming turf, or at the very least being a reliable beacon to super-jump to.

I was surprised by how much Mr. Gridiron understood the games' nuances.

Mind you, I can't profess to knowing the 'current meta', so maybe I'm massively off about this. I got to S, so I don't consider myself a complete noob, but there's still probably a lot I don't know. Even so, I thought it seemed clear that Jordan had a level of understanding beyond what is normally expected of a 'celebrity sports shoe-in'.

@Maxz In the current meta everyone stacks quick respawn to overwhelming effect, and even when that ability isn't in the match a good play can render death irrelevant - if a player takes out 2-3 opponents or makes good hustle with the rainmaker and then dies, they still came out on top.

Also hi, I'm a giant nerd!

@Zebetite I have yet to watch the video so maybe I don't understand the context, but isn't your example kind of part of the point he was trying to make? If you are the 2-3 players who are splatted, then your team has less players to defend the objective which allows the other person (with the rainmaker in this example) to grab it and get a good push before being taken out.

@yokokazuo Fair enough, I shall elaborate. A good push can often involve death. If a player grabs the rainmaker, rushes and gets a 30-50 point lead, then dies, they've still potentially won the game for their allies even if they never make any further headway. This is particularly devastating on short maps like Walleye Warehouse and Arowana Mall.

Likewise, Luna Blasters with the aforementioned Quick Respawn, particularly in Tower Control. Stealth jump to the tower (another delightful ability), splat as many opponents as you can, die in the retaliation, repeat. It's an effective enough tactic to have become controversial among high-level players, you know, the type that yell for things to be banned.

Also, the tactic of resetting the rainmaker to the center of the map by grabbing it and jumping into a pit or water.

I guess what my point is that senselessly being splatted is a liability, sure, but there's a great many game-winning tactics that involve getting taken out in the process.

@Zebetite Echoing @yokokazuo, isn't the idea of a 'good play' in that example one in which you take out 2-3 of the opposing team before getting splatted yourself? In which case, isn't the death of those 2-3 opponents extremely relevant?

If 'dying doesn't matter', then it logically follows that 'killing doesn't matter', but it was the killing of 2-3 opponents that facilitated the 'good hustle' given in your example, so one would assume 'killing' (and therefore 'dying') had some relevance in the wider game.

EDIT: Just seen your reply. I take your point. You don't always have to play super-cautiously (as might be assumed from the phrase, "dying makes you a huge liability for your team"), and there are many situations in which a kamikaze type strategy in advantageous.

@Maxz Never said that dying doesn't matter. Your words, not mine. It's just that dying isn't a "huge liability" unless your death isn't contributing, and getting taken out to advance the goal has become an increasingly common tactic.

@Zebetite Yeah, I think I absorbed "a good play can render death irrelevant" as something like "a good player can render death irrelevant".

The latter meaning, "if you're good enough, the concept of death is outright rendered meaningless", while the former just means "if you do something useful enough, death can be a pretty meagre penalty to pay". Anyway, I edited my other post before you sent the one I'm replying to, so most of what I'd say here is in there. I think we're basically in agreement, and as a man of 'the meta' I'm sure you have a much tighter grasp on the game's workings than I do.

I still think we should let Mr. Kent off the hook for not knowing the current state of the metagame though.

@Maxz Fair enough, really! I mostly commented because hearing that from Mr. Kent got a good chuckle out of me

@Zebetite ah, I see more of what you mean. I do main the charger though and so dying is usually something I'd want to prevent when possible. Although I do also use the brush a good amount and I think I often try to be (sometimes a bit too) aggressive with it and I think I usually get a bunch of kills as well as deaths with it. And I also do sometimes take the chance with the rainmaker and go for a good push for the lead.
And of course QRSJ is a thing... I never really used it myself, but sometimes it's been kind of dumb haha. Did a quad with some friends and we were all luna blasters with QRSJ (and I think blasters are my worst weapons) and despite all of us having way more deaths and less kills than the other team, we managed to win the game.

@yokokazuo By all means, I recommend using quick respawn with chargers! I do so myself. Sure, it sounds unconventional, but there's little more irritating than putting the effort to take out the enemy's sniper only to find them back in position the moment you turn away

@Zebetite ah, that's interesting. I have actually seen some chargers who used it and thought it was kind of odd. Although I think my set up is also kind of weird
I like to use quick super jump often, with the Custom in particular and I use beacons to get to different vantage points quickly

I'll watch, I have nothing better to do anyway

Just noticed that the date is listed as the 13th of July... I think E3 will be over by then

Completely irrelevant comment on how I don't care for the game or system, but care enough to leave a comment about how I don't care

@Zebetite I'm not sure if I've seen the types of games you describe, but in playing general ranked matches A- rank and above, I find that quick respawn or no, it's best to push the rainmaker, and that being afraid of being splatted tends to be a detriment. Especially in the beginning, just getting a lead puts the pressure on the other team, and / or doing that to get just a few points up from a prior record can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

The main point there is that once you've done some good splatting, if you delay too long, you give the other team a chance to respawn, recoup, and then effectively target/splat your rainmaker, where if you push hard after 2-3 splats you can usually do pretty well. I can see where a quick respawn would be quite handy then.

In general, though, Splatoon is an interesting game, in that there's a lot of advantage (to being active, covering ground, splatting foes), but hiding in the ink makes your opponents have to be much more careful (else they'll get sneak attacked, particularly useful in said Rainmaker mode, cause the main thing you need to do when on defense is splat the rainmaker, which would delay the opposing team and give you time to mount a proper defense).

As someone mentioned before, the less team members you have, the more bold the opposing team can / should be (because the less risk they have of being sneak attacked / confronted). If your team is aced (all team members down), they can charge in with no worries and it doesn't matter how much ink you have on the ground. On the other hand, as long as you have 1-2 team members active, if you have a lot of ink on the ground, they can't (reasonably) charge forward without a fairly large risk to being splatted. Again, sometimes it's still worth it to charge forward, particularly if the opposing team is unaware of their situation, etc.

But i.e. roller hiding in ink waiting for the right moment, you have a lot of power via the element of surprise in that situation, if your area is largely covered in ink as a defensive measure.

Aside from that, even with quick respawn (though I don't know the full effects of max quick respawn, it may need a bit of nerfing), I'd think in a mode like tower control, it wouldn't be game-breaking or be considered unfair with a proper defense. I.e if you have a luna/regular blaster, or suction bombs or good aim with regular splat bombs, you should be able to near insta-splat anyone super jumping to the tower. Or a roller on it circling the tower top. Once you splat enough such that they can't super jump to it, it goes back to the regular turf war fare. As long as you defend that and push forward while covering more area in your team's ink color, that should slowly restrict / prevent them from gaining ground or sneaking up on you. I'd think that (which is the goal of effective turf/rank mode battling and covering ground) should outweigh much else, assuming you can effectively do that as a team (and you aren't constantly down a squid or 2 ... or 3, with some teams you get at times >_< ;p)

@DeltaPeng Right on. I agree with most of your points, and now I shall discuss them, which I love doing
The thing with the quick respawn/stealth jump combo is that whole teams will run that. It's been described as akin to fighting zombies, hah. Will it get nerfed? Maybe, but possibly not, because people doing that (me) have to sacrifice everything else to make splattage less of an issue. Suction bombs/ink mines can deter chain stealth jumps directly to the tower, sure, but a roller circling the tower is a target that's wasting ink on a gamble, and the result is largely the same if there's an ally only a few seconds away from the action.

For reference, 1 main and 9 subs of quick respawn removes 3.4 seconds from your respawn time. That is an eternity in this game. Using a recent match of mine as an example, I facetanked with the .52 gal in a tower control match and got a k/d of 18/18, while my allies had 0 to 2 deaths on account of my giving as good as I got. My QR ability stacking lopped a full 61 seconds of downtime from my match. Powerful stuff! And it'll continue to be powerful even if the ability's half as effective in the sequel.

Regardless, as you've pointed out, Splatoon is a game that rewards courage. It's advantageous for rollers and short-range fighters to set up ambushes, yes, but the most effective ambushes are done on the enemy's side of the map or in forward points that the enemy commonly uses. That requires being very proactive. Likewise, the most effective chargers I've seen aren't afraid to move on up to really press foes as the opportunity arises. I'm S+ (needless bragging yay) and I only ever see a player with zero splats if a battle was notably one-sided or they were REALLY hiding in the back. GO FORTH TO SPLAT AND GLORY, SQUID KIDS!

And you're right, I can only hope the netcode is better next time around, egh...

@Beeit
Thanks for making me chuckle.