SHUFFLE
Not being able to play with your friends on the same team is definitely going to turn people off. There will be less people buying it, and of the ones that buy they'll shelve it quicker. It's a no-brainer to let friends go in as a team. They're playing to have fun with friends, when they're forced to fight against each other they may not like it. This is a major oversight of a basic feature in every other online game for more than a decade. Splatoon is suppose to be Nintendo's answer to the team based shooting genre and they skimp on the team aspect? Why? Okay I'm not stupid I know why: they rushed it. If it's going to take 3 more months(!!!!!) to implement teams they should have released it then. As it stands I think they should reduce the price to $50 as an apology, this would at least get more people in on day 1. I guess that's why the digital version is $50 but it should be for physical too. I know it won't happen.
Full disclosure: I'm mainly going to be lone-wolfing it because my friends don't have Wii U. I wouldn't be using team features like friend teams and voice chat but those should be included. As game designers the team at Nintendo should know those features need to be there from the get-go to foster a strong community.
I've seen some people say "but a team of 4 working together would dominate 4 randoms". That wouldn't happen if the matching system is well thought out. Only match full teams vs other full teams. If none are available match 4 vs 3+1 or 2+2. Simple.
PERKS
Look at this. 24 perks or "abilities" all with the potential to change to tide of a fight, likely without you knowing the enemy has it. This is reminding me of CoDs perks and the luck kills they facilitate. How bad it will be here is dependent on how much power each perk has. Based on the name + picture some of them have real potential to be annoying.
Here's what I think they do:
Ink Saver (Main) - Uses less ink, if shooting for a second used half a tank now it only uses a quarter.
Special Charge Up - Charge meter will build faster.
Quick Respawn - Respawn faster.
Ink Saver (Sub) - Uses less ink, if a grenade used half a tank now it only uses a quarter.
Ink Recovery Up - Ink will recover faster.
Bomb Range Up - Looks like you throw bombs farther.
Tenacity - Not sure about this one. Maybe if you're outnumbered you get some kind of stat boost?
Quick Super Jump - Super jump engages faster and/or moves faster.
Damage Up - Deal more damage.
Special Saver - If you die your special meter progress does not reset.
Run Speed Up - Increased run speed.
Swim Speed Up - Increased swim speed/
Comeback - Maybe after being killed you respawn where you died.
Defense Up - Additional health.
Special Duration Up - More time in special mode.
Bomb Sniffer - Alerted to enemy items in the level.
Opening Gambit - For the first 30 seconds of the match you get a stat boost.
Ninja Squid - While moving in squid form your ink doesn't ripple.
Recon - While respawning you see where enemies are on the map?
Last-Ditch Effort - For the last 30 seconds of the match you get a stat boost.
Cold Blooded - Recon items or abilities can't see you.
Haunt - While dead you can see the player that killed you?
Stealth Jump - Invisible while super jumping.
Ink Resistance Up - Can walk faster and/or take less damage in enemy ink.
ACCESSORIES
It was bad enough when I heard accessories had perks tied to them but up to 4 EACH? With 3 star accessories that's a total of 12 perks. Tally up the whole team and its 48. CoD only has 3 per player and that's already a pain in the ass. There will be no way to keep track of this shit in a fight even if it listed all 12 of the enemy's perks on the death screen. And it probably won't do that anyway, too much clutter, so now you'll just never know what your opponent has until its too late. You get the jump on him and he has Defense Up? Too bad, he reacts to your advantageous position and manages to edge you out. You kill him and he immediately comes back and kills you with a special thanks to Special Saver? Too bad! Of course he would have that one! With no indication of what powers they might have you'll have to play as if they have every one. That's a lot to factor in, in addition to their weapon combo.
On an aside it looks like they
may have done weapon combinations right from what I saw in the direct. You buy a set from the shop like splattershot, ink bomb, and multiple ink bombs for the special and I assume it's permanent. When you see an enemy with a splattershot you'll know that they can use the ink bomb and possibly the special, and you adjust your play style to deal with that. I'm just assuming though. You might be free to mix and match which would make it just like the perks scenario I described above. I hope not.
I've previously praised the Splatoon team for what looked like great game design sense but the addition of this bloated perks system will likely throw it all out the window. I haven't played it yet so my opinion could change in a snap but from what I'm seeing... fucking 12 perk slots. Jesus. Hopefully there's a mode with no perks or locked loadouts where the weapon, sub weapon, special, and perks are set and you can only choose the well crafted loadouts.
It also seems like the perks have been tacked on to make people grind. I'm sure they started out with the intention of having the 3 perk system, and that would've been tolerable like in CoD but at some point during development they went too far. You have to level up your accessories to roll a random additional perk. If you don't get the one you want you go to Spike and re-roll with a hard to acquire snail creature. This is not the game design prowess they showed at e3 with the barebones demo. It's just randomness, and grinding to trap the player. This is not what an online shooter should try to be. The base mechanics should just be set and you go at it. Players will continue to play on the merits of the gameplay. What they've shown now seems to have muddied the whole affair.
FOUR HOURS
This is a strange limitation. Why not have a voting system like most other games? "But then people won't use all the maps." If you design the selection algorithm well you can make players play each map more evenly. Keep count of how many times the player plays each level online. At the voting screen present only 2 of the 5 levels. The players choose one and when they play it to completion/enough it adds 1 to the played count of that level. He plays 4 times and now the lremaining level gets priority to show up on the next vote. Write the code to prioritize showing the least played level more often and it should eventually build up till the others are less played.
In the direct the stated goal of 2 levels for every four hours is to make players consider what is good for that level combination,The dev team will likely farm the supposedly consistent data and balance the game around it. And also its to make players check in more frequently to play the map they want. That's great for them and all but forcing players in this way will ultimately lead to quicker abandonment of the game. People want to play what they want to play. Impose easily identifiable unnecessary limitations and they will get fed up and not play at all.
This choice may also be influenced by the absence of a loadout system. I don't know if it's been confirmed but it looks to me like you can only have one loadout. Hardly anyone plays like that or wants to play like that. This would be baffling if true. Everyone will have to constantly switch guns and accessories on their one character. Please no. Allow an infinite amount of loadouts.
PLAZA
The Booyah Base is great and all but I hope there is a quick select menu. Once I'm done with single player I'll want to jump straight into multiplayer from the start screen. I don't want to waste time running around the plaza. Sometimes sure but not every time I want to do anything. Hopefully they'll update us on the specifics of menu navigation.
This is just cool. Look at this Naruto pose. So anime.
I'm definitely looking forward to Splatoon. I'll play it either way, it looks amazingly fun as always but this recent direct has shown many potential missteps that were worth pointing out. I'll see you in the demo(stress test)!
Gonna miss all the launch day excitement
