Update [Mon 26th Sep, 2022 09:45 BST]: The winner of the first proper Splatfest for Splatoon 3 is Shiver's Team Gear!
At the time of writing this, Team Gear also received the highest number of votes in our poll — 54% of you sided with Deep Cut's blue idol. That means Shiver has won two Splatfests so far, with her vote also winning the Splatfest World Premier demo.
Until the next Splatfest!
Original article [Fri 23rd Sep, 2022 17:00 BST]: It's nearly the weekend, but — more importantly — the next Splatoon 3 Splatfest is almost here! Revealed during the September 2022 Nintendo Direct, Deep Cut announced that we would all need to answer that crucial life question: "What would you bring to a deserted island?"
It's a hard one, especially given the options! But the three-team Splatfests opens up the opportunity for the biggest question in life, and even more difficult decisions, so we understand. The choices this time are for Team Gear, Team Grub, and Team Fun. We could honestly make a case for any of them — we need ways to simply get by on the island, easy food would make life much easier, but we also need fun in our lives — especially on a deserted island.
If it helps you decide, Shiver is Team Gear, Frye is Team Grub, and Big Man is Team Fun (he is the epitome of fun, after all).
The last Splatfest — which pitted Rock, Paper, and Scissors against each other — saw Team Rock snatch victory.
As always, we want to know who you'll be representing in this weekend's event. Vote in our poll below and let us know in the comments which side you're on!
The Splatfest kicks off for most people on Saturday 24th September, but we've got a list of times per region right here for you:
- Europe: 24th September (1am BST/2pm CEST) to 26th September (1am BST / 2am CEST)
- North America/Australia/New Zealand: 23rd September (5pm PST) / 24th September (10am AEST / 1pm NZST) to 25th September (5pm PST) / 26th September (10am AEST / 12pm NZST)
- Japan - 24th September (9am JST) to 26th September (9am JST)
Further reading
Comments 98
Team Grub here! Looking forward to it.
Good luck to all players of all teams!
I'm going for the boring choice of Team Grub. Can't survive without food.
This one has a right answer, can't survive without food!
Logically I would say gear. But I’m on whatever team Frye is on so pizza and root beer it is!
Shiver's my favourite but I'm going Team Grub this time round.
Think about it: if you have food on you at all times then you'll always have the energy to find/make gear. And if you have all of your favourite foods, then you'll always be having fun whilst doing so. My logic is infallible.
I was going to pick fun (my friend is a Big Man guy), but I’m fairly certain Team Gear is going to win. I just have a feeling I guess!
There is no weapon to surpass Team Gear.
Good luck to all teams, though.
Shiver is my least favorite of Deep Cut, but I picked Gear.
@Fizza Exactly! and you can have fun with a stick, like honestly team grub is the only right answer!
I can live on peanut butter on a desert island. Its got the protein, calories, fats in just a few spoonfuls. Its got a good shelf life. Not to mention its got taste and therefore will be me spirit. Have fun using that gear for breadfruit or whatever you cam scavenge on a deserted island you won’t even have the nourishment to use that gear well after a few days.
So in a broad sense, Team Grub, but specifically, team peanut butter.
I'd assume the food would be finite so Team Gear for me. Plus it has the best colour and Team Grub has the worst so easy choice.
Food can be foraged. Fun can be made. But survival is a hell of a lot easier with gear.
Team Metal Gear.
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. Food is finite, hence why I'm going gear.
Just make gear? Have fun doing it.. grub is needed to sustain the energy levels!
You can get grub with gear
....let it soak in....
Too bad this isn’t an Animal Crossing collaboration but oh well. I chose gear. This is a tricky question because there’s a lot of unknowns here. Is it survival or just a vacation? Is it just for a day or are we here for days? What kind of island is it? Tropical or temperate?
A beach picnic or playing my Switch in the tropical outdoors sounds great but I went with gear because I think this is still mostly about survival, and even if it isn’t, it’ll still make my vacation way easier and more comfortable. Food I bring with me would only last so long and I can’t charge a Nintendo Switch in the wild or play a mostly online game like Splatoon! I do like being unbothered and I don’t want to risk freezing all night. I can hunt, fish, and gather my own food as well as make simple instruments for fun, and with a tent, I’d be guaranteed to have something to take shelter in and lay down my head.
team gear. here's hoping shifty stations are back, especially for tri-color.
I'm Team Grub but I know in advance that Team Gear will most likely sweep the competition because in Clout era splatfests, the popular team almost always ends up winning (85% of the Splat2 clout era splatfests and the Rock v Paper v Scissors splatfests are proof of that) xD
Still, I chose Grub because I love eating food (despite my small appetite) and I just found the orange ink colour in the preview trailer to look very aesthetically pleasing!
Yup the one person that went fun XD
GLHF everyone!
Gear. So I can hunt for my own food and craft things for fun.
I would have picked gear but my friend already picked fun because he liked the colour, so team fun lol
I mean realistically none of us here would actually survive on a deserted island so it doesn't make any sense to try and pick logically, just choose your favorite
Grub all the way!! We need fooooooddd
My friends and I chose team gear since it's the only one that makes sense.
Honestly this is probably one of the most uninspired splatfest ideas, especially when theres so potential for splatfests ideas for 3.
I'm with Team Fun. The food and gear will come in time on an island, but I have to have my Switch with me! Plus, they've got Big Man, and they're green! There's only one choice for me.
Team Gear because it is the most sensible but probably most people are going to choose that so we'll lose in the end.
those who are smart
choose Gear
cause with the gear you are safe, can fish for food & create some fun
Gear is the obvious choice... but I picked grub to play with my friends. I voted for gear, though.
Team Gear, most definitely. Take it from someone who was in the Scouts for many years: gear can get you both grub and fun. It is by far the most logical choice.
They should had made splatoon 3 f2p lol
Surprised to see Big Man losing this time… Shiver’s my favourite though, so go Team Gear!
Even though I don’t have this game!
Give me some good tools and we’ll rough it like Davy Crockett.
Need food if ya wanna live!
Gear is the only logical choice
Since I don't think it was necessarily implied that the only goal on the island is to survive...team fun for me, though I'm sure we'll get demolished. Not enough numbers.
Gear. Then I can get grub and won’t have the fun stop when night falls and it’s freezing and the air is 50% bugs.
Team Gear were such tryhards I swear to God.
GG's to everyone though, we'll get 'em next time!
The Matchmaking was embarrassing and they should rename the game Spawn Camper Simulator 3. An absolute sham atm.
Won my first Splatfest in Splatoon 3! I thought Gear was doomed at first because I thought the dreaded popularity curse that’s haunted Splatoon since the beginning would return, even though it didn’t with Rock last time. But Gear being nearly tied with Fun for clout at halftime gave me hope, and evidently it turned the tide. So I guess there might not be a popularity curse anymore, but now there might be a halftime curse instead.
Even though Tricolor was ridiculously rare this time and I never played a single one, Fun just collapsed like Scissors did. I didn’t think there was a point in trying to play Tricolor since Gear was barely tied with Fun, so I didn’t see the need in taking down Fun that way. In the last two hours of Open matches, I never played against Team Fun a single time, as if they just disappeared. Go figure that was the mode that put Gear on top. Poor Big Man. Now to start using Super Sea Snails!
As a massive Splatoon fan I have to say I was disappointed with the Splatfest. Too many disconnects and I didn't get to play one Tri-color Battle despite playing for hours yesterday.
Once win for me then, me and my partner played around 6 hours for the splat fest and had a blast, although I do have a complaint, on Sunday we joined the tri colour war queue and it 3 hours we only had two of those matches, they need to increase the frequency.
Also I wonder what next months splat fest will be, I'm guessing something along the lines of Ghosts vs Bat's vs Pumpkins.
Also can anyone confirm what happens if say me and my partner played the splat fest in a party but chose seperate teams, as this time we chose the same and was so naturally was always in the same team.
Well this grinds my gears!
That was fun! The music and atmosphere for the Splatfest was awesome. I hope they keep moving some things around to keep it fresh tho.
Is matchmaking different during Splatfests? I was doing really OK, winning way more matches than I lost since launch, but I lost all but one match during the three hours I managed to play the Splatfest. And it wasn`t even close. I got slaughtered match after match. Weird.
Disconnect galore.
Thanks to all players playing on wifi for ruining the game for everyone else.
Team Gear here. The last battle I had was a 100x on Mahi Mahi. It was such an epic victory to remember.
@Geit_de
I played on Wifi and I didn't ruin anyone's game. Had my Switch close to my router, which supports Wifi 6 and is currently on close to a gigabit download speed.
Wow it’s been years since I picked a winning splatfest team! Sunday I played around 30 matches in a row waiting for a TriColor battle, but only got in once. Maybe bc I was on an attacking team, and probably the most populous one, too? Also I only made it into one10X battle (no 200X, or whatever the mega-multiplier match is).
I enjoyed nonstop tricolor battles and more multiplier matches in the kickoff splatfest, when I was on Paper, a minority team. Of course, they said they would re-tune things, so who knows…
@Geit_de That's right lad blame everybody else. Typical attitude of this Community like the way I keep seeing people blaming their Team Mates for losing and "being bad" without even thinking that it could have been their actions and that not everyone has the free time to play and "get good and get on your skill level"
So fed up of seeing this attitude. Just a FYI I use wired with 1gb Fibre Optic with 3ms PING and I had no issues but still you shouldn't be blaming people for something that's beyond their control.
Take that Big Man!
I'm now two for two in Splatoon 3's splatfests!
@Dev9417 I played on and off all day yesterday and like you didn't get into a single Tricolour match, I'm guessing it's the popularity of Gear making those matches less likely but to not get into a single one is ridiculous.
I'm shocked we won, pretty much all weekend the only matches I seemed to manage to win were the ones against my own side (which were frustratingly frequent) and every time I was against an opposing team it seemed like we were just completely outmatched! Glad I didn't drag the side down too much though haha
@RubyCarbuncle
Funny, I use fibre, too. With other games on other consoles I have no issues.
You may know that nintendo is not using any servers. It is P2P, so if one player drops out, he takes other with him.
We played with four people in one physical room (as in sitting next to each other) over the same connecton. All wired. Every three/four games the game was canceled by Nintendo, we had a lost connection.
Randomly one of our players dropped out and the other followed. Or the game just stopped because one of the other four gamers dropped out and took people from the other team along
And no. It does not happen with the same connection and playing a non Nintendo game like Fortnite, Valorant or what not all day without having any issue, but with Splatoon we have the problem since Splatoon1.
@Moddedkling
The problem with Wifi is that you have no control over the stability. Anyone around can turn on a badly shielded device and the connection is gone for a millisecond. Same for e.g. phones, BR Players, TVs, ... start updating apps.
The main reason with splatoon are all the Kids playing wifi and not caring about running around with their consoles in mobile mode.
Nintendo simply should split lobbies for wifi and non wifi players. They also should fix their lobby *****. Everytime they cancel a game you need to recreate the room and join again. There is so much stupid stuff in there. Even with four people in the same room talking with each other, this takes time.
Of course gear was going to win, it was the only choice.
I still picked fun though cause why not
Not a salty squid though, was a good time!
Welp, we did it team gear
@Geit_de Good for you you had no issues I stand by what I said though. It's a fact disconnections are beyond the Player's control and you should be directing your frustration to Nintendo not innocent Players.
Pretty sure Team Gear was cheating, felt like Team Fun was being DDOS attacked during Splatfest. XD
Joking, well done!
It was a really good Splatfest but the matchmaking was horrific. I was constantly 1500p coverage, 12 splats.. and I was paired with people who couldn't aim at the floor successfully only about 8 wins from 30+ matches.
@Geit_de Oh and not everyone has wired unlike us and you're more or less admitting nobody can control the stability of the connection either plus if they're kids then as an adult you should know better kids aren't exactly going to have much knowledge when it comes to Internet connections.
@DanteSolablood You were 1500P? I was lucky to get over 1000P. Every match I played nearly was ruined by Spawn Campers and up to 3 opposing Players being in my face the entire time. Some games I scored less than 600P, it was just unbearable and extremely stressful. I genuinely felt like I was letting my Team down.
@Geit_de @RubyCarbuncle "Thanks to all players playing on wifi for ruining the game for everyone else."
Um, you do realize it's a handheld console that doesn't have a built in Ethernet port, right? And if you put the handheld in it's dock, unless you own the OLED version, then the dock also doesn't have an Ethernet port. (And if you paid $50 more for that screen you shouldn't be playing in docked mode anyway.🤑)
We actually played on wired for a few days when we first got the Switch, I moved our USB adapter over from our Wii, but that adapter maxes out at 10 and the Switch wireless maxes out at 100, so we took it off. Of note, our PS4, next to our Switc, runs at about 250 wireless. I'm only paying for 300, so I don't know what the PS4 max is, but it's more than the 100 the Switch is, Nintendo cheaped out.
So yeah, blame people for playing wireless on their wireless handheld w/ the portless dock, surely it's their fault. 🙄 Pretty sure if you got your wish and Nintendo split the game between wired and wireless you'd be kicked out every 3 minutes and never get a match wired, or you'd be playing the same 4 people over and over again. I'm not saying the system isn't in dire need of repair, dedicated servers should be fix one, but blaming the players is just...
@RubyCarbuncle 1500p was some of my higher scores when I was warmed up. Probably averaged about 900p for the night.. but spawncamping & hiding in the ink was definitely at insane levels.
You didn't let anyone down, I think the matchmaking was awful & needs some real work before the next splatfest. At one point it was me, three brand new players vs. a team of four Gear Ruler+6s who were obviously in a team chat.
@Rjejr I used to have an ethernet adapter especially for my Switch, it was pretty cheap but my landlord removed the cables from the flat. Though all the connection dropouts during my fest were someone else.
@RubyCarbuncle @DanteSolablood My points, was that "Clout"?, was fairly consistent all weekend, 600-700 when I lost, 2/3 of the time, and 1900 when I won the other third. My high was around 2200. One thing of interest, my wins were always 45-44, my losses 60-40, which I think means I'm good enough to play, but just barely. The other thing, if I have the highest score on my team, we lose 100%. If I have the lowest, 100% win. I'm usually 2 or 3 and couldn't find a trend there.
Adding to the list of people on team gear who played for hours yesterday, purposely chose "tricolor", yet never played in a single tri color match. Not 1. 🤷
@DanteSolablood The highest I got was 1300P and my average was about the same as yours when I was in a good game with evenly matched Players but sadly they were few and far between.
Congrats team gear(even if u were fully stacked with like 90% of the players). I defended u every time in tricolor, so u can’t take that from me at least
I wonder if Nintendo has a (granted, small) problem on it’s hands. Shiver seems quite popular, and she’s won both Splatfests so far, and the Tricolor mode seems unreliable and kinda messes up the mid-way winners. Seems like stuffs kinda broken?
I don't own the game yet but I would have not thought twice about going with TEAM GEAR!
@Ryan_Again they’ve already announced they are fixing it fyi. Changes supposed to be implemented next season
We're there more levels this time? I beat champion (I think) believing I'd done it and then there another 1000pt level to beat
@Sequel Previously the highest rank was "King/Queen" beyond Champion. They've now changed the rank to gender-nonspecific "Ruler" and added the ability to keep ranking up, i.e. "Ruler +1", "Ruler +2".
I’m kindve surprised we won this one. I feel like I had more losses than wins but I held my own. I didn’t have the best luck connecting online Saturday.
I only played one tricolour turf war in 2 hours
Why are they so rare?
The matchmaking is baffling to me. I tried to be a good teammate, I always led my team in points (1300 or so) and always lost. I think at one point I dropped 7 in a row, and just about every single time I was the top points player, I lost. I was always paired with players who had rollers and never fought back. I would follow teammates to defend them, but that never worked. There is a severe discrepancy between noobs and highly skilled players, and I never seemed to be paired with skilled players. I felt like a high scoring player on a lottery team. When I finally did get with a group that played great together, I got a disconnect error and the team was disbanded.
I am not sure what the solution is here, but it feels like top players are constantly paired with noobs, and it simply isn't fun when that happens. You can just tell when you are playing against a team on mics, they are well organized and tactically superior.
The game should pair good players with other good players, and have a G league for the noobs to square off. I never get frustrated with games, and found myself frustrated during the entirety of splatfest due to wonky matchmaking.
so has tri-color matches been removed? I joked about getting less than my 1 match in the demo and it happened, 50 tries in tri-color mode never got one. even weirder is that my roommate played a regular turf match on Hammerhead that really got me wondering.
@silverninja I think they've really lowered the chance of getting one but I really do hope they increase it more. I played all day and only had one, I also have friends who didn't get a single one all day!
Tricolour battles are so difficult as the winning team holy crap. Just absolute chaos. Won lots of matches in the first half and the just got steamrolled it felt like on Sunday. I would suggest never picking shiver if you want to experience tricolours or matchmaking against the opposite team. I think I played against my own team (fun) maybe 5 times all weekend.
Ok wait. Why was clout scored differently for open and pro. Fun won pro by a bigger margin but only got 10p, where gear won open and the margin was closer but got 15p????? Was that just to prevent a tie? I kinda wish they never changed the scoring from wins to clout.
Is Shiver a "her"?
@GogGogGogGog Tricolor battles were rare for Gear because there were literally more than twice as many people trying to get in.
Shiver is literally OP now
Crashfest more like!!!!! Shocking disconnects constantly. Sort it out nintendo
@Ryan_Again Yeah I've picked Frye both times because Splatfests used to have the popular side have the biggest range of the player skill. so the less
popular option tended to make up the difference in battling.
But I think what happens is the 2nd most popular option starts a bit behind and takes the lead by half-time based on wins. Then the popular option pulls back ahead due to tri-battles and votes.
Though it does mean one thing, if you don't want to fight defence
on Tri-Color Battles pick Frye because she'll never be popular enough
to take the lead at half-time.
@Geit_de Not everyone's Wi-Fi connection is as unstable as yours apparently is.
@Ashunera84 I was team grub tho and also Shiver is female.
@Paddle1
Congratulations! You just showed, that you did not read my post at all.
I don't even use any Wifi. And yes. Wifi cannot be stable at all time. I guess you would know if you ever heard any type of radio, where e.g. noices of mobile phones came out of the speakers. This happens with wifi, too. Just more random as stations may be over loaded with signals. Old devices like fridges cause a surge and so on. The problem is you cannot always resend wifi data in time. It then gets lost and so does the connection.
Wired 400/200 fiber without any connection issues with any game beside in serverless P2P Splatoon. We played non Nintendo games with the same setup using WiiU, Switch and Playstation. All wired and all without any issue. Just with serverless Nintendo games like Splatoon we waste 2-3 games per hour just because of a connection error.
P2P is where everyone is part of the data chain sending data directly to other servers and one of the players is "hosting" the game. Basically the same when you use the Inkade and play locally. Not only is wifi more unstable, but P2P also requires more data to be transferred compared to a normal server game.
Using P2P for gaming is Nintendos fault as it makes the game unstable for multiple players, when a single person drops out and it requires more data to be transferred. So just one wacky connection is required to terminate at least a single random player beside the one caused it. Since we played wired from the same network with four people, the wacky connection always was on the other team. Randomly one player gets disconnected and everyone else knew the game will get terminated soon.
Regarding to Digital Foundry Nintendo even doubled the games tick time. That is the reason why you get so much double kills (you and the opponent) in Splatoon3.
Another think probably no one is thinking about, but it is happening twice as often as before.
We are all a happy community. Luckily there is no voice chat. That would just increase wifi load even more and is probably impossible, even so other companies manage that fine.
@GMACPLAYS If Shiver is OP then Pearl was the Queen of Splatfest in Splatoon 2. I remember when Pearl would win three or four Splatfests in a row and Marina started to complain about it! Let's see what happens in next month's Halloween Splatfest first. Having three teams still shakes things up.
Cheaters! Only had one disconnect during the splatfest and of course it was on a 100x battle. Otherwise it was fun
@Geit_de I did read your post, what I was saying is that not everyone's Wi-Fi is so flaky that it's unusable which you seem to assume. "Thanks to all players playing on wifi for ruining the game for everyone else." The vast majority of people playing are using Wi-Fi as it is a portable console that doesn't even have an Ethernet port. You can still lose connection even when wired if your internet is poor. People who always disconnect ruin it for themselves as well and if it still works like Splatoon 2 the game actually bans you for frequent disconnecting. Your post sounds like you're attacking people for using Wi-Fi regardless of how stable it is, in which case you should realize that not everyone is fortunate enough to have the same setup as you.
Woohoo! My team won! I very nearly didn't get to participate in this Splatfest. I forgot that my Switch Online subscription expired a few days ago, so I had to make an emergency run out to the store to buy a new Switch Online gift card.
Plus, my folks kept bothering me while I was playing. I very nearly made it to the max rank of Gear Ruler, but my parents then called me out to dinner. But by the time the food was on the table and we finally sat down, though, the Splatfest just ended. I could have made it to the max rank, had they called me out when dinner was actually on the table.
But as I said previously, Gear makes the most sense. As someone who was in the Scouts, you can use gear to scrounge up and cook grub, and also create your own fun. It's easily the most versatile and logical choice of the three.
@AstroTheGamosian One day you will realize how fortunate you were to have your parents call you out to dinner while you played videogames.
@Jiggies It's not that I don't appreciate it, but when I get so absorbed in an activity and put myself in a particular mental zone, any time my folks interrupt whatever I'm doing, it can be quite jarring when I'm snapped out of that mental zone. Especially for someone on the autistic spectrum like myself.
That's more where the frustration lies, if that makes any sense. Not so much the fact that I'm being interrupted in my activity, but that I am being jolted out of the focused mental state I'm in so abruptly, instead of being eased out of it.
@AstroTheGamosian I understand exactly what you mean, because I've been there. I'm just saying there comes a point in life when you get to miss even the things that once annoyed you. I didn't mean to sound preachy.
@Jiggies Everyone says that people will eventually miss the things that annoy them, but personally, I have yet to see it happen.
For example, my little brother always annoyed me when we were kids. But he's gotten more arrogant as he's gotten older, to the point where I am literally physically uncomfortable when I have to be in the same room as him, he gives off that bad of an aura.
He lives several states away right now (I live in America), but I don't really miss him. In fact, the less I see of him, the better. We never really got along as kids, but after growing up, we now have very different values and beliefs. Plus, my parents always talk up his accomplishments to their friends, but almost never mine.
I'm basically the Cain to his Abel, or the Loki to his Thor. It's probably for the best that we never see each other again, as it would be damaging to my mental health. Family or not, I need to put my own mental and emotional well-being first.
@Geit_de Trades (when two players kill/splat simultaneously) usually happen in Splatoon because most of the weapons are projectile-based not hit-scan based, not necessarily because of the tick rate. If a shot is is the air it’s still active, and will remain active until it lands, regardless if the player who shot it was splatted or not. Now, tick rate does affect how frequently players’ systems are trying to communicate their game states to one another. If information from one Switch doesn’t reach the others in time, but the redundant info on subsequent packets does, it’ll look like weird things are happening. Teleporting, shots hitting late/all at once, shots ‘not doing any damage’, trades, and so on. Obviously, higher is better when everyone involved has a similar setup, but that’s only one part of the internet gaming puzzle. Since this is 2022, I’m hoping you’re using a gigabit ethernet switch for your setup (if it’s a managed switch even better), and your upload can handle at least 35mb/s per player plus overhead for whatever other internet traffic you have going on in your household. (and really, you can get by with much less upload speed than that). Oh, and increase the MTU setting of every Switch to 1500 if you haven’t done so already. If everything’s good on your end, then we can go back to blaming Nintendo for their shoddy p2p network code/settings…or the rage-quitters on the other team.
@AstroTheGamosian That makes lot of sense. And you're absolutely right about your mental health and emotional well being. Stay strong.
Gear will help you for everything you need to survive, including food, which you will eventually have to source yourself.
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