A Game's Depth Shouldn't Scare New or Casual Players 

daily reminder that we had objectively better versions of scorch and eeltail but the dev team intentionally changed them to their current state

I don’t want the old mahi back because I thought it was more competitively viable, I want it back because it was more fun

As a very low level casual who only ever dabbles in ranked, I can't stress how important depth and freedom of skill expression is for splatoon. I struggle ever using squid rolls or substrafing or ledge snaps properly, but there's fun in *trying*. I have the choice to spice up my own gameplay for better results, and it's rewarding when it works! I don't have to learn advanced techs because I'm not interested in reaching the skill level where they become necessary. Limiting what comp players can do because of theoretical matchups they shouldn't even be in is awful and only makes gameplay more stale. Restricting map layouts so that "sweaty players can't flank kids" does nothing but hurt the game. Being locked out in turf war maps like scorch gorge means the only way to push is hope for an unlikely wipe in your spawn or somehow winning fights in mid against more skilled players. Casuals can only run in and hope they win, or stay locked on the plat chucking bombs at each other. There's no other routes, no stealthing, no hopes of sneakily stealing turf. If you're pitted against players above your level, losing is not the issue. It's having nothing to do other than take fights you cannot win. It makes gameplay overall more mind-numbing and frustrating, as the winning team has no need to check flanks or keep tabs on the map. All chokepoints do is stall the pace of matches and being forced to hide until a special is over or a backline looks away. I love splatoon best when it's fast-paced and chaotic, and maps like mincemeat seem so deadset on having everything be as predictable as possible

I just want to be able to play creatively, and even Walleye Warehouse had more routes than the average Splatoon 3 map.

The problem is that those who complain about a game's depth are looking at the wrong thing. Rather the *rate of progression* between skill levels is what should be looked at. If a S+ rank player uses various techniques to it's limit, it does not mean that said technique is something you encounter at B rank. The depth of how far you are in the game's mechanics change on skill level. Those who play casually have a different depth than those who play competitively and so if a game's depth is widened by more mechanics, it won't affect the casual player because they won't ever reach as deep into the game to be able to learn said thing. In my opinion, the rate of progression players experience is a good one. I never felt like I was overwhelmed when climbing from turf war, to various ranks. Competitive players shouldn't be nerfed to please casual players if they aren't going to fight meet each other anyway.

As a casual player (roughly 200 hours of play time, mostly Turf War), I love the idea of having more depth to the game. It seems easy at first, but you quickly realize how very much there is to learn. And that's worlds better than a game where I play it for 20 hours and I know everything there is to know about it. The pro Splatoon players such as Gem, Prochara and the likes, through their videos, show how I can improve. And I've seen their advice improve even my casual play, so I trust their experience.

Fighting games are "hard" and tend to have a high skill ceiling, but Street Fighter 6 proves that complexity is not the main factor that keeps casual players away.

There are three "main" arguments about the ways Splatoon is beginner-unfriendly, and I feel like the validity of those arguments varies wildly. The most valid, I feel, is the argument that Splatoon 3's customization is too slow to unlock, and punishes beginners during the phase they're most likely to drop the game. I have 400+ hours in S3 and I STILL don't have the splashtag titles and banners I want. Some players will literally never unlock the Lucky-Duck banners because their rng seed will require them to put more time into grinding the game than there are hours in the season. Splatoon 3 makes your custom Inkling feel like an uncustomized Loser for way longer than virtually every other shooter on the market. The second argument, which is largely not an issue in Splatoon (yet), but still important to acknowledge, is that complex, high-execution mechanics is disability and hardware-restrictive. Many players feel they can't get into competitive Smash because their controller prevents them from being able to consistently execute techniques that give a tangible advantage. Many casuals worried that this exact thing would be an issue with Squid Rolls because they played Splatoon 2 with drifting joycons that don't register flicks correctly. The third argument, the one that this video addresses, which is most understandable, is that learning Splatoon 3 is slow and its modes are very complex. TF2 can explain its game modes in one splash screen, and its most complex game mode is still less complex than frickin' Rainmaker. I would largely argue that TF2 has about the same level of depth as Splatoon, but it's more accessible to casual players because it does a better job Explaining itself. I've known friends who picked up Splatoon 3 who dropped it before even reaching level 20 because many of the map modes, rulesets, and weapons are just plain BADLY conveyed. I've seen commenters in YOUR videos react with comments like "I was today years old when I found out the penalty is half the points you scored". The learning curve on this game is steep and doesn't have enough grips, and I don't think the players making the argument that Nintendo should "reduce the complexity" are complaining about how high the skill ceiling is when they can't even get off the skill floor.

I think the depth people are afraid of are things like Melee's L-cancelling, fake depth; there's never a point where you don't want to L-cancel, and it just serves to widen the skill gap.

I think Pokemon is really interesting here, as it's a super duper deep game, yet it's a very accessible game - the solo campaign can be breezed through with a basic understanding of type match-ups, and it's probably a fun casual game with friends. In fact, I see a lot of casual Pokemon players complaining that the game doesn't have enough depth, that it isn't difficult enough, that spamming the super effective move will let you breeze through the solo campaign. However, the solo campaign, and the competitive scene are two very different things, and the solo campaign doesn't teach you anything about competitive. That's the issue there - the fact that the transition between "casual solo play" and "competitive multiplayer" is brutally rough. Scarlet and Violet specifically only has like 6 Double Battles in the entire game - Doubles being the official Competitive format. Depth isn't the problem, it's the complete lack of learning tools in-game. Bad tutorialization is also a big problem with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, funnily enough.

I will say personally when I tried out a friend's copy of Splatoon 2 casually after playing a little bit of Splatoon 3 the number of kits and weapons was really overwhelming to me. This is a different kind of depth than you're focusing about, but it was a form of depth that WAS pretty overwhelming to me as a casual player (compared to Splatoon 3 where because I got it day 1 everybody started out with Jrs and then slowly new weapons were added over time)

as a casual who struggles with awareness (thanks adhd!) and has poor reflexes… i think depth is really important to keep the game accessible. otherwise it would be down to who can react faster which is a fight i’ll never win

I like how crazy the movement gets at higher levels. Im not there yet, but it makes me excited to know that one day, I could be that good

I think some useful terminology related to this topic would be 'skill floor' and 'skill ceiling' which are terms I've used for years when discussing this stuff with friends. Skill floor would be how much it takes for a player to feel like they have a handle on things, to more or less consistently do what they intend to without too much clumsiness. And skill ceiling would be how far a player aiming for mastery can push things before they run into a wall of "there's not really anything more to learn/practice". Best case scenario is a game with a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, which I think Splatoon overall does pretty well with. A good recent-ish example from my own experiences that displays the differences between the terms would be the rework of Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter Rise. I first started playing Monster Hunter with the release of World, and after putting dozens of hours into the game I started trying out weapons that weren't Bow; I quickly fell in love with Hunting Horn. A thousand-ish hours later I had a lot more experience with every weapon in the game but Hunting Horn was definitely established as my main, and I felt like I was pretty good with it, but loved that I still had more I knew I could learn and practice to get even better. Then Rise comes out and I'm super hyped because of all the new moves they're showing off for Hunting Horn, and I soon learn that's because they reworked the weapon. Seems fair to me, Hunting Horn was a distinctly unpopular weapon in World for various reasons, and among those reasons would be a high skill floor for not a lot of personal damage, so I wasn't too upset that they decided to rework it. A couple hundred hours into playing Rise after release though and while I held to my reasoning for being fine with them reworking the weapon to begin with, I wasn't near as personally happy about the results of that rework. The rework needed to lower the skill floor of the weapon, and that they certainly managed, well if I might add. But it brutalized the skill ceiling of the weapon, because at a couple hundred hours into playing Rise I felt like I'd already slammed into that wall of not being able to further improve with it. I think reintroducing a higher skill ceiling is easily possible without ruining the new lower skill floor, by simply adding in some of the Encore moves it had in World; and its skill ceiling got fixed a bit with the expansion, but not as much as I'd like (ironically they did give it one of those encore moves back, but not all five, and that one could've easily been all five because they were dependent on a directional input and one button). I still think the rework was a good idea overall because to my knowledge it did greatly help the weapon's popularity, it just happened to leave those who already liked the weapon and were interested in pushing it to its limits kinda out in the cold, which was a fairly small number of players all things considered.

For some reason, a lot of casual players think fun and competitive play are mutually exclusive. They think anything that makes competitive play better must also make a game less fun. They think playing competitively must come at the sacrifice of fun and those that do play comp do not have fun. I think these are the people insistent that depth shouldn't be added, as to them, depth means better for comp play, and therefor must mean less fun for everyone else. Gameplay additions that can make a game more fun for everyone AND more competitively deep are inconceivable to them. It's a strange way to think.

What I find that developers don't understand when they decide to remove mechanics to nerf competitive players is that they don't understand that being a competitive player doesn't only mean using mechanics in the game to their fullest, but being able to adapt really well to any situation. If Nintendo came out tomorrow and said that they're removing squid rolling, a competitive player would do a better job at not putting themselves in situations where they would need to squid roll bombs or inkjet shots than a less competitive player or casual player. Yeah it would take some getting used to not squid rolling up small ledges to get there quicker, but at that point it's a minor inconvenience for comp players. At that point developers would just be removing mechanics and dumbing down the game thinking casual players would have a leg up when in reality, they just removed something that made the game cool and fun.

Apart from the really important life advice you've given, this is probably one of the most important videos for just about everyone in gaming to watch

As someone at around 1800-2000 XP, I do in fact, get matched up against super cracked teams like DNA or Last Resort on occasion Also yeah I watch Scott the Woz, I do know the Nokia Engage

The fewer playstyles concern actually is a problem in casual. I've played a very small amount of Splatoon 1, so I gravitated to painting edges and other less transversed areas so I could get my coverage down to be ready if someone did come in. I entered the global testfire and there were no areas to be able to get comfortable and have was just constantly getting splatted. And so I was turned away from wanting to get it and give the series another go

The problem with this game isn't "depth". That's what makes this game good. No, the real problem is the bullshxt matchamking that results in month-long losing streaks for some players.

As someone who’s tried playing competitively in some games, and just plays casually now, reducing depth is not what I want. I just want fair, skill based matchmaking. A friend of mine recently got into Splatoon, they were new to the game and simply could not win any games. It was loss after loss which is very frustrating. I don’t know how exactly Splatoon does matchmaking, but it sure could use some more work to prevent stuff like that from happening.

Giving more options to players can very much make the experience better for casual players as well as competitive players. I was very much a casual Splatoon 1 player, but the wider map design the game often featured over the current one allowed me to come up with a strategy that was (as far as I knew) unique to myself. I would use one of the inkbrush kits (can't remember what it was called, but it had splat bomb and kracken). I used the brush to sneak behind enemy lines, used the bomb to draw the opponents' attention away from my teammates, and then used kracken to scatter the enemy team and allow my team to push forward. Nobody told me to do this; the options the game provided me with allowed me to figure this out on my own. Such a strategy would never work in Splatoon 3, save for a small selection of maps, which is such a shame.

I sometimes still see new players in my turf war lobbies due to splatoon 3 matchmaking. The sad thing is that I am more than good enough to easily splat them repeatedly, but not good enough to help get them a win when they are on my team. I just hope they won't drop the game

I see depth as a good thing for casual players, and better than adding breadth, as it provides competitive players with lots of options while being less overwhelming to casual players

This is why in MMORPGs like Final Fantasy XIV, new players have a icon that tells veteran players that player is inexperienced and is encouraged to instruct newer players how to play better at the game. Its why FFXIV is so comfortable to play.

On a similarish topic, I have heard the argument that developers should never listen to pro players because they aren't the main population of the game, and doing so would risk alienating the larger population of casual players. I still don't know how I feel about this, as it is an interesting point, but it would also be outrageous if Nintendo buffed tentamissiles because they did a pole of all the turf war only players and all of them said it didn't do anything because you can just dodge the missiles. Imagine if Nintendo removed substring because they were worried casual players wouldn't appreciate the extra depth.

i agree with the video and think another point for people not to join or leave very qickly could be the high amount of community members complaining and harping on things they percieve as wrong. This is not just competitive players and it's definetly not just Splatoon, but it has kept me from wanting to join any communities, because i'm scared that i won't be able to enjoy the game as there is always someone being in a bad mood or putting something down because it's imperfect. i understand complaining and frustration, just don't want it as a constant

Based on what I've seen in turf war, I doubt there's actual skill based matchmaking there. Weird mixes of skill levels are incredibly common.

9:34 yet another section of your videos that im going to refer to friends of mine because the amount of times/ways I've tried to explain this exact concept to different people is wild.

as a splatoon and fighting game player, its so interesting seeing the overlap in philosophy and ideals despite tha gameplay being completely different.

WHOA!! 😱 I remember the N-gage! 🤯 What a blast from the past!

I think some people don't like certain moves with depth is because they might see them as unintended by the devs or that you can't often learn the techniques by experience and must discover them online or through some else who knows how to do it

Gem at it yet again with some of the best game analysis videos I've ever seen Seriously, this is legitimately the best way of putting this idea I've ever heard. I've heard it put many ways, but this is the only one of them which has no logical counterargument that could override all the points you made here - which you explained extremely well, I might add. I really hope people see this video, both because it completely deserves that attention and also because a lot of people need to hear what's being said here

this is actually the same reason why people never play rhythm games anymore and why etterna/stepmania is so underground.

to me, a monkey frontliner, the better maps are more fun to play on because its a lot easier for me to kill longer ranged opponents, whereas on the bad maps its less fun having to either get lucky with diving or get my special. not sure if im casual or competitive. I do play the game to be good at it, but also because its fun

Thanks for the game design advice, Gem.

He did it. He actually became more based

Beautifully stated video, fully agree that more depth can be beneficial for a game when it makes room for more options!

This is literally so true

It's not like competitive players (you know the ones who put in lots of time and effort) wouldn't be better than casual players (who don't make as much of an effort) no matter the mechanics.

There is no Santa Claus, there is no Easter Bunny, and there are no tic tac toe influencers!

Someone finally put it into words, thank you so much Mr. Gem Squid School

I personally watch this and I see a lot of what you are talking about..... However I can't shake that feeling that despite WANTING to be competitive I can't put time into it these days. I just don't know...

Unfortunately, I dont believe Nintendo knows what they're doing with their "matchmaking" as my 8yo daughter's first game included 2 S+ players...she might have lost that one 😅

Having a healthy casual playerbase is super important. That was something Destiny 2 lost when they catered to Streamers by removing SBMM, and making the game more of a time sink. In my experience, if you only have sweaty high skill players a game’s playerbase becomes rather toxic.

Here's the problem with the skill based matchmaking: It doesn't apply to the game's most popular mode: Turf War. Anarchy Battle separate players by rank. A C rank player will never encounter a B rank player until they rank up. In Turf War, I (an S rank player, not S+) have gotten walloped by people who were using advanced techniques like sub strafing and sharking during a fight very effectively with people on my team who ended up with 0 splats and 8 deaths. There is clearly a discrepancy in skill there, which only gets worse during splatfests. I think they should add a separate ranked turf mode, like an anarchy open slot except it only ever does turf war. That would provide a good entry for beginners and a more fitting challenge for competitive players who want to mess around a little without crazy teammate RNG (I mean seriously, sometimes in turf war it feels like I have a disconnect when there are 3 other people on my team, which is frustrating, or I feel like I'm fighting 3 year olds, which is boring).

Thinking about your Melee vs Brawl comparison just reminds me of controversial Strive is in the Guilty Gear series. It did make the series more "accessible" on the surface for lower level players, but the skill ceiling looks so different and the best character is the one who breaks the conventions set by Strive and the problems it created. The most ironic part about all of this is that many of these more shallow games and the changes they've made to make the game more accesible (Strive, Brawl, etc.), it's often times that even casual players can start to take fault with these changes.

Gem, you forgot to mention L-cancelling when you mentioned smash's "depth". there's real depth, like how you mentioned, and then there's "fake depth". l-cancelling, at anything less than the tippity top of players, is completely false-depth. it's 100% false depth, to add arbitrary inputs just to get to play the game at a mediocre bare minimum level(this is easily provable, by asking whether we should have L-cancelling on all attacks, grounded or not, or whether jumping should be 5 inputs, not 1. if L-cancelling is good, then more arbitrary inputs must be better, yes?). it's lack of buffer is also "added complexity" is also bullshit non-depth. there's a reason modern games have a buffer for their inputs, it's because it feels objectively horrible to have your inputs eaten because you did them just a little too early. expecting players to have to practice a tonne before they're even able to play the game, isn't engaging depth, it's dumb busywork, and a dumb barrier to entry. what you're not discussing is "how do we add depth, without adding busywork?". for that, I'd point to DI, as a great example of depth without busywork. it's a mechanic that adds a lot to smash bros, adds a lot of interaction where previously you're just getting hit, and doesn't add to the barrier of entry overmuch. DI is the sort of enjoyable mechanic you learn and express with more experience, without it being a massive barrier to entry when you start playing. games having depth is fine. casual players hear that though, and the concern of theirs that you're not hearing or talking about, like the melee player you were, is that you're thinking they're arguing against DI, when they're arguing against having no buffer, or arguing against L-cancelling.

I'd argue that we also need more recognition of the third, more in-between mindset (that I'm currently calling "challenger" until I'm told of something better, or that there's a proper name for it I'm unaware of) People who don't necessarily want to "win", but rather want to see how far they can go based on what playstyle comes most naturally to them; those who take a game more seriously than a "casual" player, but also aren't interested in the highly-technical stuff a "competitive" player would be studying.

do you have a video that could help controlling the negative feelings?

Great vid, Gem 👍

What I take from this video is, if this game had competent matchmaking that did its job, matched players accordingly based on their skill level and their team’s weapon comp, most of the complaints we hear from the casuals wouldn’t be happening. This games matchmaking has proven itself time and time again to be complete dogwater compared to the last 2 games, and it basically almost guarantees that little Timmy is gonna be matched with a player who is at least 20 levels higher than him! And frankly, this is just unacceptable!

Sounds like an interesting topic, let's watch it!

My favorite videos are always the ones that were life lessons in disguise

I have a question Given that Splatoon 3 is a game with very bad matchmaking, is it possible people use the argument of depth because they fear the competitive players will use those techniques to punish casuals even harder? In order words, do they oppose because they fear it?

I think that the dev's are gonna double down on the simplified map design in the next game

8:12 I mean Hax kinda did give himself a calcified bone growth that one time... And that's why I'm (mostly) not against box controllers.

Sakurai definitely learned from what happened with Brawl, considering tripping was taken out of Wii U/3DS and Ultimate, and from what I hear Ultimate's roster is mostly the most balanced out of the entire series (aside from Steve, who has an exploit that makes him Brawl!Meta Knight busted, or even worse, and last I checked I think he might have actually been banned from tournament play. Personally I consider that a case of "and nothing of value was lost".). In terms of mechanical depth, I personally have one specific question for mechanics and design aspects that come first before any other considerations - does the mechanic/design aspect make the game more interesting to play and compete with? Probably secondary to that is that is utilizing the mechanic/design aspect fun to watch for spectators, and is it fun for competitive players? That would go a long way to help figure out what works and what doesn't for improving a game's depth.

For me, I've always found the "amount to learn" and the number of mechanics, both of which contribute to a game's depth, are more so the bigger turn offs for people starting a game casually or competitively. They contribute to a bigger knowledge barrier to entry. For instance in using Chess, it's easily accessible to new players because there's really only 6 pieces you have to know how they work. After that, the overwhelming majority of Chess' depth comes from *you* the players and what choices you make. Whereas if your depth comes from a mechanic or adding or taking away a mechanic, for instance let's say you add another new piece to Chess. Yes, technically you're adding depth to the game and the variety of plays and strategies you can employ, but you're also adding to the knowledge required to effectively play the game. *That,* I feel, is the bigger turn off.

I mostly agree with this, particularly about game depth not really being an issue, but I kind of disagree with the notion that option of including randomness has to be one with 100% randomness for a 50/50 win rate. Any game with any kind of player agency can't be 100% random even if it has a lot of randomness in. Any action the player makes is not random (unless they are doing a Twitch meme or something). And I don't think the causal player needs to win 50% of the time to stay interested, they just need to know that they have a chance of winning. And knowing that their is the chance that it's possible for them to catch a lucky break due to randomness in a game adds to that perception. To take Smash Bros, I'd hazard to guess that most casual player never even encounter the competitive scene, and instead only interact with the game as it's initially presented, that is, with random items on, usually on asymmetric stages, and often with more than two players. In this situation, a higher skilled player is still more likely to win, but not as likely as they would be with all the random elements shaved off. To be honest, I don't play a lot of what are generally considered casual games (I originally thought usine Fall Guys as an example but I've never actually played it so can't really speak about it with any real knowledge). But I kind of think this discussion would be helped by examining games that are considered successful casual games, and comparing them to more competitive games like Splatoon.

5:11 man i cheat a lot at chess.

if there's one skill barrier in this game i would want to complain about, it's squeezer's tap shots. having to mash so fast just isn't healthy h-3 and l-3 are hard but they require learning like a lot of other weapons, i don't like them in salmon run but that's about it lmao

2:20 i remember me and my dad went to this restaurant when i was younger and they gave you crayons with the kids menu so we tended to play tictactoe on the blank side of the menu paper (were we supposed to do that? probably not) and now i know tictactoe strategies

You bought an ngage didn't you

“If you need to be able to win the game for it to be fun for you, then you ARE competitive” Wow. That’s a paradigm-shifting line. I don’t consider myself interested in competitive Splatoon because I have no desire to attend tournaments or reach X rank or anything. Nonetheless, I get frustrated when I lose, and that means I’m competitive. Which means that if I want to enjoy the game casually, that’s something I have to learn how to do. I have to develop the right mindset for it, just the same way a competitive player has to have the right mindset to be able to ascend to the top.

19:12 It’s me! I’m famous!

Whenever I see players complain about how games having movement tech or attack canceling or some other complex mechanic, I think of stuff like Divekick or Nair, games with a single attack, and in the former's case, only requiring a single hit to land to decide a round, and how people will somehow STILL complain about "sweatlords ruining the game" There are just some people that want to complain more than they want to improve.

It's crazy how people think melee players only play competetivly lmao I just kick people with zelda it's very fun!

Let’s take a moment to laugh at White in that chess game for blundering so hard he immediately lost on that castle.

And yes this is dating advice too

Also I would like to add that I think there is a bit of emotional burn. And you kinda touched on it a bit. But gaming culture at large has a bully problem of casual players. The Splatoon community is actually extremely nice and kind compared to other competitive games but that’s unfortunately the exception not the rule. Not every single player in other competitive videos are mean obviously, but there is a culture of “pub stomping” and “teasing” from skilled players that make casual player feel like they have to fight for their life to have fun or just leave the game entirely. Where opinions are disregarded by “well you’re so low rank you don’t have you monitor on, so why should I care about what you have to say.” To being laughed at when asking for advice on how to be more competitive with “oh your [insert very low rank]. Just turn your brain on idiot and you’ll climb.” And overall just toxic “gamer” behavior that makes casual players on edge. Again, splatoon is actually really peaceful and it’s one of the nicest communities I’ve been in when it comes to competitive games and I hope to see more games have this energy. But ngl I was hesitant to try to engage with the community because I was already prepared to get bullied like I do elsewhere. And I can see that the people who are new or haven’t been able to quite shake their trauma from bullying, they are immediately defensive.

I’m excited to see some people trying to counter the argument that if they want to win they need to get better at the game.

Except open doesnt do skill based match making, and frequently will force you to fight the same loosing match over and over. This is a complaint of open matchmaking, not wishing for the game to be made shallower (please give us more fun maps splatoon)

pov fortnite

All i can say is just do better not try harder you'll hard yourself if u think you're gonna lose every game

While I appreciate and support the intent of this video, I think it misses the point. As good as Splatoon's interface and story/training modes are, inconsistencies remain in the game design that can throw off new players. Why can I shoot a torpedo, but not a bomb? Why will a bomb take wildly different amounts of time to explode? Even smaller details for intermediate players feel inconsistent. Why does the same sub weapon see different whiting ink recovery on different weapons? Sure, we learn these details after enough time with the game, but we hold video games to a higher standard because interface interactions make a disproportionate impact on the game compared to board games and sports.

I think the disagreement comes from that some people don't agree that a game should be played competitively. Some people think it's wrong to play "a kids game" like that and see people who are better that them as a barrier to their own enjoyment

I don't know how Mario Kart 8 determines matchmaking, but if it's by the points you get at the end of a race, I've been flooded with so many points, even gaining points as low as 8th place, and basically have to intentionally get 12th place to lose just a miniscule amount of points, that I'm constantly being matched up with people who are mechanically strong at the game, snaking on straightaways, getting pretty much every shortcut, and just dominating the race. Played like a racing game I'm pretty good at it, but my mechanical skill is low. Sure, I can pull off a few tricks from time to time, but mostly I'm basic. Then there's the items. From first place all the way back to twelfth all I ever get is mushrooms while I'm constantly getting pegged with every attack item available, so I can't even play it like a battle game because I never get any weapons. It is impossible for me to get matched with people of my skill level, and I can't compete in any way, shape, or form. The game is not fun anymore. Splatoon 3 is kinda similar. For the PvP side, it's competitive, and if you're not winning then you're losing. Winning means you get to fiddle the sticks, press the buttons, and do stuff. Losing means you are met with a god-awful sound, and then get to sit there doing nothing for 5 seconds, only to shoot back out and immediately get punished with the god-awful sound and more waiting. It's not fun. In a competitive game there's going to be ups and downs, and how one comes to terms with that varies. I honestly don't know what two evenly matched teams would look like, because everyone can't be killing AND getting killed at the same time, and if you aren't doing one, you're going to feel like you're the other. I used to like Turf War more because the best games let me ignore everyone and just paint the ground, and I had fun doing it. This past season I've been doing more Anarchy, and it's not too bad, having the objectives give me focus, but it also amplifies the aggravation between killing and being killed. It's why I'd rather be playing Salmon Run. Opponents are CPU, so you aren't hurting anyone's feelings by killing them, and there's a secondary objective with egg collecting that really wouldn't effect the other side even if they were live players (think of the snatchers like opposing players collecting those eggs you aren't). In Splatoon 2 I loved Salmon Run because there was no reward for winning. Yes, technically there was, but losing still got you the same rewards only slower, and those rewards barely mattered to begin with. Splatoon 3 ruined that with the king salmonids and the scales. Filling the Salmonmeter is guaranteed whether you win or lose, but once filled you MUST win for a CHANCE for the king to spawn (just had 6 clears in a row with a full meter and no king, so fuck Nintendo right there), and even if you do get the king the odds of getting anything but bronze is lower than your chances of getting shot in the face and living (so fuck Nintendo again). Plus they added the shell out machine that requires endless amounts of Cash, but also took the cash option out of Salmon Run so now I'm forced to play PvP if I want any chance at the gambling machine's banner or title. I can often tell within the first 30-60 seconds of a match how it's going to go, and if it's clearly going poorly for me then it's suicide off spawn because I can't just put the controller down and walk away, because it'll comm error and give me a 10+ minute penalty timer where I can't play anymore, so instead I have to sit there and constantly suicide and get even more pissed off instead of being allowed to legally quit the match or otherwise walk away and calm down. And the reason I suicide is because there's no reward for losing. May sound counter-intuitive, but in Turf War you get 1 cash for every pint of turf inked, and so there is actually a reward for losing in Turf War, but in Anarchy all you get is a big bucket of "eat shit and die." As far as I can tell, the medals you get at the end of a match give you XP towards ranking up in a Series battle, but in Turf War and Anarchy Open they do nothing. So think about it, if I suck that bad, why would I want extra XP to rank up faster into match ups you have no business being in? And why have them in any other mode? They don't even track what medals you get anywhere in the game. They are literally meaningless. Maybe if medals game me cash instead (say 100 for silver and 25 for gold) then there'd be reason to keep trying even if I'm losing, because who knows? Even though I'm getting curb stomped I still have a chance at getting the gold medal for "popular target" and the 250 cash that goes with it; except you don't and it's meaningless so why bother trying?

I’m a casual player; I don’t want to invest time in being competitive and I’ve accepted that I’ll never be the best for it. But for crying out loud: DO. NOT. REMOVE. DEPTH. INTENTIONALLY. (After all, does Timmy really have a chance either way? How ‘bout anyone not in the top .01%? No? So stop ruining everyone’s fun over an illusion that you’ll enjoy a competitive point-and-click adventure game better!)