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Sorry, Nintendo: Splatoon wouldn’t make a good esport (Polygon)


Chrom

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http://www.polygon.com/2016/10/31/13462168/splatoon-nintendo-nx-esport-no

 

Excerpt:

 

Quote

Splatoon is a fantastic game that is not a great fit for a spectator sport.

 

Making a game that’s fun to play is very different from making one that’s fun to watch. A candidate for esports requires a certain amount of tension to keep audience members engaged. Teams must have the ability to grow in dozens of small, subtle ways, leading to a field of competition with a wide range of levels of mastery over the game in question.

 

In League of Legends, as an example, each individual game has a sense of momentum that pulls in viewers. Once one team pulls ahead, the burden is on them to grow that lead as much as they can, like a snowball rolling down a hill. While games are won and lost over a long period of time, the mechanics of the game allows swings to happen periodically. One player gets caught, killed or outplayed and, all of a sudden, the losing team has a window to come back. It can be a hard game to fully understand, but the basics are simple: Every kill is important, and could turn the tide of the match.

 

We see a similar idea in Counter-Strike: An amazing play by a single player can turn an expected loss into a shocking, and riveting, victory. Those are the moments that make these games not only enjoyable to learn and play, but to watch.


Splatoon doesn’t provide the same opportunities for drama to play out. There is a lack of growth over the course of a match. Teams come in at a certain level of strength, due to the clothing, weapons and abilities that they have equipped before the match begins. That strength level does not change over the course of a match. It’s static.

 

I personally can't say a whole lot from experience but it's no secret that Nintendo has been making an effort to deliver Splatoon as that kind of high level competitive game with things like the Nintendo World Championships, the Nintendo Switch preview, and the upcoming tournament thing they're doing. And Splatoon multiplayer is certainly popular, especially in Japan. This article's an opinion piece by Ryan Gilliam expressing that he doesn't feel that Splatoon is suited as an esport nor should have to be, and his given reasons are interesting, speaking as someone who's not into mobas or anything like that.

 

Curious to know how you feel about this and how you'd like to see Splatoon handled.

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In it's current form, no, it absolutely wouldn't. It would take quite a lot of changes to make it ready, most importantly full LAN support and spectator modes. Without at least those two things, it's a complete nonstarter.

 

1 minute ago, Tyranogre said:

>Polygon 

 

Stopped reading there.

 

don't cut yourself on that edge bruh

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9 minutes ago, Tyranogre said:

>Polygon 

 

Stopped reading there.

 

We all know the Polygon reputation schtick, but they're a big news outlet and nothing stops them from having new writers with valid articles.

 

It'd be fine if you could rebuttal the article in even the most minimal of ways (ideally by reacting to more than the headline).

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47 minutes ago, purple_beard said:

Without voice chat to coordinate attacks online I don't see how Nintendo can put that game out there as a eSport game.  Now, with Switch, maybe they have decided voice chat is a good thing and will add it.

 

Theoretically, any championship wouldn't rely on online voice chat anyway. They'd, y'know, put the team within close proximity and/or connect them through their own voice chat thing.

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I don't watch eSports so I don't really know what makes a good eSport or spectator game, but his arguments in this article seem thin. There are absolutely clutch moments in Splatoon matches where one player leads her team to victory at a pivotal moment, especially in ranked modes. I can't even count the number of times I've been looking at a sure victory only to have the enemy team steal it away at the last second or in overtime just because of one key play. Granted that's not every match, but just like any competitive game a match in Splatoon isn't over until the fat lady sings, or in this case the judge cat appears. The writer makes it sound like matches are practically pre-determined by the equipment you bring in which a) is not true since there is plenty of room for skill in Splatoon, and b) seems to contradict his later point that stat boosts and special weapons are minor features that don't significantly affect the players. Maybe he's trying to say that, since you can't change gear mid-match, players are kind of locked into certain roles or playstyles, which is limiting? If that's what he means I can understand the annoyance of no mid-match changes, but at the very least his point is poorly conveyed.

 

I'll grant that Splatoon's neutral objectives can make matches, for the spectator, seem more bland (for lack of a better word). I'd actually love to see divided objectives in Splat2n like a more traditional attack/defend match (and also co-op modes like assault but that's another discussion). However there is still a bit of that attack/defend mentality in the game. For example, if your team is ahead by a large margin in one of the ranked modes and the match is down to the last sixty seconds or so you do kind of feel like you're on defense and prioritize just keeping the enemy team off of the tower. Like I said I know it's not the same but it can still elicit those feelings.

 

I don't know, I get the feeling that the writer hasn't played much Splatoon, at least not at high level ranked modes and especially not squad battles where players do communicate with one another to strategize. It kind of sounds like he's not necessarily arguing that Splatoon can't be a good eSport but that Splatoon isn't enough like League of Legends.

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2 minutes ago, Satomi Famicom said:

I meant it in a frustrating way, haha. I'm not a fan of Polygon particularly.

 

Ok, but it doesn't really add much to the conversation.

 

Polygon is formed of a cycling variety of writers, it's not exactly easy to dismiss it on face value.

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I feel like Splatoon has potential, but it's missing some obvious features like spectator mode and voice chat. Having played my fair share of S and S+ ranked matches, high level play in Splatoon can get real intense. It's fast paced, there are tons of options for any scenario, and huge comebacks happen all the time. Splatoon might need some more features to make it as an esport, but the excitement that can put you on the edge of your seat is certainly there. 

 

I really feel like the way Nintendo presented it during the Nintendo world championships didn't help the games esport image. Watching a bunch of nearly clueless people play turf war isn't very fun. y;

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4 hours ago, Namevah said:

 

Theoretically, any championship wouldn't rely on online voice chat anyway. They'd, y'know, put the team within close proximity and/or connect them through their own voice chat thing.

 

Sure on PC it's easy to have a team join a Discord server, but that's not an option on console unless you have a PC there. There needs to be voice chat. And talking to teammates is key in many of these games and it's done through voice chat. Ain't no one got time to look away from a screen or shout out opponent placement in a tournament environment.

 

One big problem I see with Splatoon is the randomness of gear abilities. In Street Figher, HoTS, Overwatch and in ways LoL/DoTA is that it comes down to knowledge of characters and their hard/soft counters as well as a person's skill with their own character. Random gear effects kind throws the meta-game out the window a bit.

 

And let's be honest, there is still a bunch of OP or clear dominant choices of loadouts in Splatoon *cough* Aerospray RG *cough*

Edited by Punchy
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