Theoretically Unwinnable Situations and How to Respond to Them 

>theoretically unwinnable situation >example is just some bozo with a trizooka relatable

Sometimes you have to 1v1 the inkjet as an explo, but sometimes the inkjet accidentally floats next to a wall.

No, Dave! Don't fall for the CHEESE! Dave! DAVE!!

In a similar vein, taking the play that loses 99.99% of the time is better than the play that loses 100% of the time. If there are five seconds left in a game of Splat Zones and it will take 4.5 seconds to reach and flip the zone, literally just swim directly through the enemy team and put any paint on the zone you can. If the clam basket is about to close and end overtime and you cannot delay any longer and are the only player who can score, stop trying to shoot the enemy team and just beeline the basket and try to make a throw. It will almost never work, it's obvious, it hurts your KD ratio, it might look stupid -- but if you're already in that situation, it is the only play with a chance of working at all, so it is the best play, and maybe you'll get that miracle where everyone misses you, or is too distracted to notice you moving to the zone, or your teammate splats someone just before they can hit you and you manage to extend overtime with that fraction of a second to spare.

Talking about chess, Gothamchess (a youtuber aimed at beginner chess players) always says to "Never resign." because for everyone below GM level (and even at gm level sometimes) that chance of your opponent giving you an opening is definitely there. It's basically the same thing as this!

The trizooka player in the clip did actually miss all of their shots, so if the nautilus had shot the player in front of them and THEN the trizooka player, they might have been able to get out of that situation.

Winning feels good, but losing with the right mindset is more important to growth. I've played many games against people I was outclassed by. I just keep playing with them. Yes I know I'm probably going to lose, but I learn to adapt and improve much faster that way. I'd rather play my best and lose, than win with ease. There's more to learn that way.

To expand on never giving up, it really is worth stressing how important with how fast this game is. Obviously getting opponents to pop a special to secure the kill they otherwise were very likely to have is huge, but it can go beyond that. Even surviving a second or two longer is time that they’re not playing the objective, shooting at someone else on your team, or taking space. It’s also costing them ink so even if a teammate can’t come to your rescue, if they’re on their way and you forced your opponent to use more ink, maybe now your opponent can’t use their sub weapon or just runs out of ink entirely when your teammate takes them on.

NEVER GIVE UP NEVER SURRENDER

1:34 Since chess was brought up, Levy Rozman (GothamChess, a chess youtuber) talked about this in a recent video "Road to GM: Episode 1!" where he discusses making mistakes in winning positions. Gem talked earlier about losing to his higher-skilled friend even when he got himself into better positions, because his fallibility was higher, and Levy/Gotham goes into that in this video. Some of it is winning the psychological battle against yourself and being able to focus on making your best move. 3:36 Something to note about this clip specifically is that it was played at a tournament to determine the challenger to the title of "World Chess Champion". This tournament allows for games that could go up to six hours in length. With that much time, if a game reaches a decisive position, both players will know that the outcome is foregone. It is like if your opponent is indirectly controlling your controller inputs. They are planning their win around what your theoretical best moves could be, and if you play any worse you just lose sooner. Even in winning positions in Splatoon, I am not sure any opponent is yet at the point where they know what your best move in a lot of situations are, and can plan around having your best moves give them the win. Even the small things that Gem says to do can introduce uncertainty in how a winning/losing situation can play out, enough that the advantage can be turned. 7:15 "Even if you've got ten seconds left and the enemy team has the lead...", a lot can happen in ten seconds of Splatoon, as short and fast paced as it is. Even chess played with a time control of three minutes for each player will cause them to make mistakes simply because they do not have a lot of time to think about each move.

"What are my chances, like one out of 100?" "I'd say more like one out of a million." "....So you're telling me there's a chance, YEAH!”

First of all I would say to remember to hold charge as Nautilus

Unwinnable situation i get in the most: getting queued into div2-4 players

“So you’re telling me there’s a chance”

Before the recent splatfest, I was in a losing situation with both a splatling and a charger outside my range, a bucket with the clear kill advantage on the other side of a cover, and a splattershot cutting off my escape route. One teammate had disconnected and one was waiting to respawn. I had run out of ink and was jumping around frantically to throw off the charger's shots. The splatling was revving up and the bucket had hit me once, so I was expecting to get splatted in a second or two. Suddenly, my one surviving teammate came out from behind the splatling and sent a single trizooka shot, which took out the entire team because of the way they were lined up. My teammate still had two shots and used them to paint my feet. I spammed "nice" and we just barely retook the zones long enough to gain the lead and come out on top, despite our numbers disadvantage. I saved the video of that moment to my switch and watched it over and over, like, two dozen times. Wherever you are, ☆カミリア☆, you are my hero~

I really want to add to the: "there's no point in trying to learn from someone that much better" part. Cuz there 100% is a lot of value to it. Even if you're not aware it's happening, there's at least some level of subconsious learning at least a little bit in my experience. For our whole lives, my brother has been better at fighting games and FPS. It sucked a lot losing to him in SSB (all of them) a lot, but I realized over time how even though I continuously lose to him, I still was at least decent at the game whenever I did pick up the game with friends and strangers alike. Back in the first Overwatch, my brother is about the same level as his friend who played Ranked. I can't remember what it was but I'm just a casual regardless. I would sometimes play with them; but i would get dragged into games with significantly more skilled players than me while for them they get dragged down. So they'd be messing around and STILL get kills easily. I was obviously more or less the deadweight in those games lol. When I resumed playing at my normal level, my personal skill levels dramatically improved. I don't mean this was overnight, but it became more noticeable the more I did it. Playing with them was really difficult due to everything happening at what feels like 10x the speed that i usually experience. but the more i did it, even though I don't really do much better when I play with them, I notice how much SLOWER games at my level became.

I'm reminded of your short regarding being overwhelmed-- I think about it a LOT, and sometimes a long session of this game requires an insane amount of brain energy and is quite exhausting because I never want to ease up on the gas, so to speak... But it really is satisfying to never just say "well this is too hard" or "it can't be done" and to sit down and try as hard as you can! I swear I've had those moments and actually won. Doing the main-strafe-shuffle through enemy ink like a Sploosh player, or bouncing around with Squid Rolls, to just straight up "Ok well they're behind me and looking straight at me-- if I snap my aim 180° and point directly at this player that I literally cannot see behind me in the next 0.2 seconds, I might be able to get them first" and sometimes? you really do get 'em

In this kind of situation, i'd have the same advice. Just commit to your play since you're likely screwed anyway. If you're out outnumbered, just focus a single player and try to splat them before you die yourself. If you're machanically outmatched, try getting your opponent's attention for as long as possible before getting splated to distract them from your teammates. Ultimately, in every bad situation, ask yourself "What is the best value i can get out of my remaining time ?" and try to act accordingly. And who knows ? Maybe sometimes you might pull off some incredible play and win a 1vs2 or even 1vs3 against all odds.

this is how I typically play, force trades, sometimes the opposition panics and makes an opening, or I just get splat and take someone with me

As a melee player its actually hilarious how much defensive counterplay is not decision making but just making it more executionally difficult to kill you Its probably the reason why my brain works like this in splatoon by default

If you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer an ink battler.

Everything you do in Splatoon has both negatives and positives, no matter what it is. Miss a shot with a charger? You've just put paint down for your team to use. Miss all 3 zooka shots? You've forced them to take the time to repaint over them. Rush in to their team and get 4v1'd? You give the rest of your team time to move up while you're distracting them. I could go on, but the point I'm trying to make is that there's always a right answer in every scenario. Some answers are obviously better than others, but the only wrong answer is giving up.

the exact philosophy being explained here is my practice in splatoon and sometimes i end up on top of the 99.99% losing position

In my competitive game experience, we often call this "playing to your outs." Is the chance you are going to win so low that it might never happen in a million years? Maybe. But you won't get that one in a million shot if you don't go for it, and you were going to lose anyways if you didn't. A 0.000001% chance to win is better than a 0% chance.

aww man brought me back to my smash locals in my head how dare you.

As a wise man said, “you miss every shot you don’t take… unless you’re playing .96 gal”

I always love when you apply Melee to Splatoon

When I'm in a bad situation and I now I'm probably going to be splatted if I have my special I usually use it so I can get that tinniest little bit of advantage and if I do get splatted I at least helped my team a little more than I would if I'd given up.

If i go down, I'm taking you with me

The best I ever got in TF2 was when I played only arena (team deathmatch) with and against people much much better than me. I would get bodied 9 times out of 10, but when I found that one thing that sort of worked I could work at it until they had to actually respond to that strategy. This forced me to get used to using everything in my disposal from weird map features, to strange tactics, to the other players to get an upper hand. At the same time they forced me to get better on a more base level so that I could pull off more things. After a couple years playing with that group I was now one of the top players rather than at the bottom.

We kinda had this playout in our team practice last night. Undertow Rainmaker, teammate saw an oppertunity to solo push the Rainmaker on the left. Somehow, not only did we get checkpoint, but we kept the rainmaker there in a sorta of rotating pick up, between two or three different people and managed to basically solo push it to goal. Shouldn't have worked. Against any competent team that NEVER works. It was however, funny in the moment.

Thanks for this video gem! I'll be sending this to friends who question why I never surrender in league games

This is a very good video with good tips and will definitely help me reframe my mindset in tricky situations, but I think my uncles and grandpas and every vaguely Fatherish Figure in my life have actually managed to get me to absorb hockey knowledge, because I couldn't stop hearing "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" as if Mr Gretzky's ghost himself were whispering in my ear

2:14 yo what it’s me

The thumbnail is most of my games but that one sploosh player is the cheese and I'm the e liter with the rope

hell yeah i love getting trades out of bad situations

7:36 hey wait, where have I heard this before?

You gotta channel your inner Yujiro Hanma. Got it!

Tips on protesting and social movements

This is great advice for anything games and life too

Depending on the average skill level that that interaction happened in, I'd actually argue it was nowhere near "unwinnable". Unfavourable, sure, but not unwinnable. Popping zooka there was a misplay in my eyes, because if you don't hit your first shot, that gives the opponent ample oppurtunity to rush you down (given both the endlag and the movement penalty) that they wouldn't have gotten if you just held down ZR. If it were me, I would've charge held, jumped over to the zooka's platform, hoped they miss, shred them, and then taken a defensive position against the other enemy to potentially convert into a jump out if nobody else comes in and helps.

If you're doomed to go down anyway, might as well try to take someone down with you!

I’d say take your chances superjumping as opposed to jumping off. Because no matter what, there’s always a *small* chance they’ll miss their shots or get distracted long enough for you to jump back.

Our jumping isn’t unnecessary! Squiffer doesn’t have anything to make fun of now!

The last thing I want to do is to give up before the match is truly over I'll take a 99% lose rate by trying to come hack despite the situation, than a 100% lose rate by giving up Remember, your lack of grit to fight for the win may end another player's series challenge prematurely. Do you really want that to happen without even trying to prevent that from happening?

this also looks like a situation of just shouldnt really be dropping left at all, flingza was already staggered before they dropped, other 2 teammates in a 2v3 on the right side, so bow gets picked just after they drop, then nova gets picked, then they get picked probably want to be moving to main fan there instead to play with teammates or at least maybe be able to force a trade, as well as having safe escape back to plat if that happens

this is exactly how i play, if i'm in a bad situation i just tell myself i'm better and push in and go for the crazy 1v3

Basically never back down never what?

So you’re saying there’s a chance

In a game like splatoon would there ever be a reason to go down quicker in a situation like this so that you respawn sooner?

this is not the best example since your team is already a player down, doesn't have the zone, and also you get a shorter respawn timer by jumping off the map rather than getting splatted. the best play from there probably actually was to jump off the map and go for another push along side the player that already got splatted. The main point of the video still stands in a lot of situations though

Hi, I just want to ask a little question. Whenever I start a S3 session, I find that one of two things happen: one, I go on a hot winning streak and gain 300+ points. (I'm in S rank with 500+ hours in the game if your wondering, not like that matters) But the second thing that happens is that I go on a hot loosing streak and loose a bunch of points, and that always carries over until the end of the day. I guess my point is how to keep a good winning streak, (Not wining every game necessarily) and what to do if I start a loosing streak. I'm not wanting to know how to win every game, because I know everybody goes on loosing streaks daily, but I feel like all my time on Splatoon has been spent of S rank, and I have improved, but I feel I can never improve enough to actually get out of S rank, and I am determined to reach X rank.

It's never just about Splatoon is it jem?

This can also extend to those who see a japanese player in que and immediately assume that the jp players are better and their team is going to get washed by them. They basically give up as soon as they see them. Last i checked, they are not perfect. They are simply human like everyone else and make mistakes and have flaws. Make them make mistakes as you would in a match with anyone else.

WPI Krona!!!

Wee

Off topic, but i was wondering how the name Gem came about for you? Like is that your normal name or was that something you came up with (either way gem is cool as fuck and i wish i thought of that before settling on summer)

As a cat owner who has a big garden that is filled with mouses when its fruit season mouses dont realy like cheese. Mouses and rats prefer smal fruits like what we call jujubes (red chinese dates) and sometimes even the mangoes and using cheese as bait for a mouse trap is as usefull as meat. Im glad i have a cat now. Sure there are a few rodents lizards, insects or birds that she catches and if we dont burry them they rot very fast because i live in the caribbean (exept insects) but there are less of these delicious mangoes, jujubes, tamarins and acerolas that get eaten. In conclusion, screw natural diversity, i want my damn fruits to not be eaten bt rats.

so you're saying my "Fuck It, We Ball" strategy is correct?

Never back down never what? "Never give up"

At least re: your very last bit, I agree - you might as well toss yourself at the wall and go for the glory shot in hopes it might just barely work, even if there's every reason to believe it won't. Because maybe it WILL work, and you'll get to see what played into it working in the replay. I had this opportunity a while back with a panic Booyah, knowing I'd get punished for it and it probably won't do anything because you can ink through it... but they didn't ink through it. We got the zone. Which somehow bought us the time to properly regroup and win. I think it was a mix of the other team not inking through it, somehow near-perfect Booyah placement (Brinewater zone thank you for being on the smaller end for single), and juuuust catching the end of someone else's ink storm to catch it. I could've given up, accepted I'd get punished and we'd lose, but nope, I panicked and yeeted a Booyah that led to us winning. At the very least, now I know that a well-placed Booyah can help catch Brinewater zone. I got the chance to see it in the opposite direction during an X-Battle, where the enemy team's carbon disconnected towards the end. Yeah, they were probably going to lose, but not long after they disconnected I got splatted, and with the Hydra outta the way... maybe they could've popped off, gotten people off the tower, and at the very least delayed the inevitable. Or maybe they'd ride the tower for so long, keeping us off it, that we'd be in the situation they were earlier. But because they dipped, they were down a cephalopod, and I could fairly safely jump back the tower to help carry it to the end. You'll always miss the shots you never take, so you might as well throw them and see if it works in your favor.

I feel like the odds of jumping towards and picking the zooka, and then falling down and using the ledge as cover to super jump out are fairly decent as long as it takes the other player by surprise and you have a sub or two of qsj

I live by this - Have patience. Never rush into a mistake. It works in Splatoon as well.

never expect victory, but just go for it. this video reminded me of this sentence ive implanted into my mindset for everything

if an unforced error can get you into this situation, then an unforced error will get you out!

Never ever ever ever give up 👏🏻